A closer look at almost every fact-checking organization shows a great deal of politics and vested interests involved
Fact-checking takes us past the spin and straight to the truth. Or maybe not. A closer look at almost every fact-checking organization shows a great deal of politics and vested interests involved. Years ago, I went to Snopes.com whenever someone sent me an email thread I wasn’t sure about. I even recommended to others that…
As the world’s favoured search engine, dominant email service and most popular video provider, Google has immense power over public opinion
“The Google of today is a monopoly gatekeeper for the internet,” reads the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against the tech giant. The document filed on Oct. 20 alleges the company has used exclusionary agreements to block out competitors. Google accounts for 80 per cent of U.S. internet searches and 30 per cent of U.S.…
The United States has been sitting on some stunning discoveries for years
No one ever took U.S. President Donald Trump for Star Trek’s Capt. Jean-Luc Picard. Nevertheless, his creation of the U.S. Space Force in December 2019 resembled the latter’s powerful command, “Engage!” The space race is on but what most people would find surprising is how far along that race is already. “The power of space…
The methods of a former KGB operative remain applicable in the modern era, leading to disinformation and outright lies
“I cannot but wonder why are people pushing for socialism and communism?” an elderly friend wrote on Facebook. “Are they that misinformed and believing it?” If we concede the answer is “Yes,” the next question is “Why?” The late Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB operative with the RIA Novosti press agency, had some answers. One…
The WE Charity scandal shows that our rules surrounding charitable work and fiscal reporting are too lax
The WE Charity scandal inspired the questions but so many other charities should be affected by the answers. In August, the House of Commons standing committee on finance called employees of Charity Intelligence Canada to the stand. Ninety minutes of testimony from managing director Kate Bahen and director of research Greg Thomson demonstrated the need…
The Quebec system offers an opportunity to dive deeply into outcomes. The results aren’t promising for children
Advocates of state-run child care saw opportunity in the COVID-19 crisis. It’s an old idea but not a great one. Working parents returned home to care for their children, some able to continue paid work from home and others not. As a result, calls for universal child care grew louder than they had for 15…
Sex advice for pandemic prevention makes as much sense as implementing a security system while leaving the front door open
The B.C. Centre for Disease Control threw logic out the window with its “COVID-19 and Sex” advice. The document reveals contradiction, ignorance and hypocrisy. “If you’re feeling fine and have no symptoms of COVID-19, you can still have sex. If you’re feeling sick, skip sex,” it says. Thanks. “Not tonight, I have a headache,” is…
Canadians are in greater need of immunity from undue government intrusion than they are from any disease
New Brunswick’s attempt to remove vaccine exemptions has sparked a political, ethical and constitutional controversy. The benefits of the legislation were marginal at best, but the heavy-handed tactics used to try to implement it were even worse. Citizens beware. “Stop the hysteria over measles outbreaks,” wrote infectious-diseases specialist Neil Rau and former Ontario chief medical…
Draconian responses did more to kill the economic, social, spiritual and educational lives of citizens than stop fatalities
Twenty-one years ago, the world panicked over an invisible, media-hyped enemy. That enemy was Y2K, a problem whose shadow was much larger than its substance. Unfortunately, COVID-19 may be this era’s equivalent of that ‘millennium bug.’ The Y2K problem was essentially this: many computers had two digits for dates. If they went to 00, the…
The international lockdown is pointless and unnecessarily painful. Is this really a pandemic or just another round of the flu?
U.S. Gen. George Patton once proclaimed: “Fear kills more people than death!” That makes as much sense as something baseball great Yogi Berra said: “No one goes to that restaurant anymore; it’s too crowded.” These days no one goes to the restaurant because the government freaked out and shut it down. But some eminent medical…
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack could devastate modern society and result in massive casualties
On Feb. 2, thousands of Canadians lost by a landslide – and most weren’t even in politics! Ordinary citizens found normal life interrupted for days after a landslide near North Bend, B.C., cut fibre optic cables. Phone and Internet service was disrupted all weekend. Vancouver parking meters stopped working. Calgary security alarms started malfunctioning. But…
Given the billions of dollars and political agendas at stake, citizens should always take government stats with a measure of reserve
“This is the best number I’ve ever seen in my life!” Jim Cramer told CNBC. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics had just reported a 3.5 per cent unemployment figure in the United States. The November 2019 percentage was the lowest in 50 years. Others would say that might not be the case and that…
The free market economy is beautiful in its simplicity: offer a service people want at a price they will pay for and you get your reward. For decades, cab drivers offered what buses couldn’t – a ride on request from any location to anywhere else in a reasonable distance. But in the past decade, Uber…
Necessity was the mother of invention for Marlon McDougall. After 35 years in the oil and gas industry, McDougall was frustrated with the pressures of regulations, environmentalism, pipeline restrictions and the need for expensive technologies as more easily accessible reserves were depleted. Then, in 2019, he was approached to work with what’s been called “the…
When people believe it’s the government’s job to help someone, they stop doing it themselves
“God giveth and the government taketh away,” goes the old, wry saying. God aside, it’s people who won’t or can’t give when the government takes away. A recent survey of generosity in the United States and Canada gives proof. The more centralist and socialist a society becomes, the less voluntary giving occurs. Socialism doesn't help…
It’s time First Nations adopted property rights, economic development and self-governance
The saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same” should not be applied to First Nations bands. Those bands that have maintained the same tired model that has failed for decades are still failing. Ones that have adopted property rights, economic development and self-governance have improved drastically. Unfortunately, most judges, activists and…
How do we level the playing field when male-to-female athletes want to compete against biological females?
Mixed martial arts fighter Tamikka Brents had never felt anyone or anything like the blows that sent her to the hospital in 2014. Fallon Fox hit Brents so hard that she suffered a broken skull. Despite the brutal loss, observers didn’t wonder whether Brents should be in the ring. They wondered about Fox, a male-to-female…
From 5G concerns internally to military spending on equipment to contributions to NATO, Canada falls far short of pulling its weight
“Canada needs to be in a position to defend itself and defend its values,” U.S. national security adviser Robert O’Brien told delegates at the Halifax International Security Summit recently. He urged Canada to keep its NATO commitments and increase defence spending. He also warned that Chinese company Huawei must be shut out of building 5G…
In one amazing swoop, pagan spiritism, Earth worship, environmental activism, untethered eroticism and necromancy all come together
When creative intellect, left-wing politics and sexuality meet, the bizarre is sure to follow, even if it gets few followers. Take the ecosexual movement, pioneered by California PhDs Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens. In 2016, they penned the Ecosexual Manifesto. Maybe the Earth was screwed before, but this couple wants to work it over in…
The 1990s were a great time in Canadian political history. They marked a course correction after many years of higher taxes, increased spending, and never-ending deficits. Premiers Ralph Klein in Alberta, Roy Romanow in Saskatchewan and Mike Harris in Ontario changed all that and Ottawa followed. In recent months, those provinces have stemmed the growth…
In the U.S., the industry has influenced science, regulators, public perception and government policy
When industry wants science to say something, how does it do it? Last year, The Nation showed us how in its special investigation, How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe. In 1993, a lawsuit alleged that cellphones caused a woman’s terminal brain cancer. As wireless stocks headed downward, the industry unleashed…
Are we prepared for a world full of machines, governing everything in steely alignment with the technocrats’ goals?
The Terminator movies were prediction, not fiction. The proof abounds in China, recently dubbed by CBC as the world’s first digital dictatorship. China has interfaced wireless technology with surveillance cameras and facial recognition software to form Sky Net. And fifth-generation mobile phones, or 5G, are coming to Canada. That means Chinese technology and its usage…
Precious little good will can come from Victoria city council's campaign, but it will certainly cost a great deal of money
The City of Victoria wants to round up municipalities to sue oil companies for damages from climate change. Not only is such a case virtually impossible to prove, it’s also full of rich ironies. Weather-related damages, termed “perils” in Canadian insurance plans, are more commonly called acts of God. How ironic that environmentalists envision the…
A democracy should respect the rule of law and the rights, values and tax dollars of its citizens
China’s dictatorship, once the apparent favourite of Canada’s prime minister, has become his biggest problem. When Justin Trudeau first visited China as prime minister, the Chinese lauded him as the “Little Potato” (with his late father Pierre being the big one). The name may be apt. A young potato has no eyes. Now that a…
If you move from B.C. to Newfoundland, for example, you're likely to be denied coverage
St. John’s sees the sunrise 4.5 hours before Victoria. This means Newfoundlanders are the first to see the light and British Columbians are the last. Unfortunately, some who leave the West Coast to study on the Rock get an unwelcome surprise. Students who arrive from other provinces are denied health coverage, as are their dependents…
The large mass of scientific opinion tends to keep individual scientists in a conforming orbit. But what of the dissenting views?
Galileo wrote, “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” The problem is the ideas and clout of that thousand make that single individual a rare and unappreciated gem. Copernicus defied thousands, if not millions, when he dared suggest the Earth was not the…
Some Canadians and French believe that their ‘leaders’ are mere followers of a supra-national agenda, not champions for their electorate
“Canadians do not need to be liberated,” said Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson half a century ago, after French President Charles De Gaulle lit the fuse for Quebec independence with his famous “Vive la Quebec libre!” speech. But neither of their current counterparts are standing for national freedom, let alone calling for it. President…
Only a free market will balance out pay inequities. If a company fails to compensate fairly, employees will simply move on
From conception to implementation, pay equity is a sham. It’s obscured in double speak, packaged in seemingly laudable goals and promises great results. However, it can’t deliver them because it’s based on false premises. Any good that comes of it is far outweighed by the harm. That’s why Canadians should be wary of any legislation…
Pot’s benefits have been overstated by political advocates and scientists, whose bias may have tainted research results
Marijuana users want society to believe the very thing they’ve told themselves for years – that the highs of marijuana far outweigh its lows when it comes to health and the effect on the masses. Informed minds that remain sober and less tainted by personal bias realize that’s probably not the case. Cannabis is demonstrably…
It's hard to imagine a doomsday scenario with higher stakes, more exaggeration and greater calls for government intervention. It's just moral panic
Canadian Thanksgiving was a blast for climate change propagandists. Monday’s turkey was in the oven as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that increasing carbon dioxide would destroy the Earth. Elsewhere, there was an explosion at Canada’s largest oil refinery. The next day, a pipeline exploded in British Columbia. It was described by…