Why did Harper Invite the Chinese Government to Buy Canada’s Tar Sands?
Oil politics makes for greasy bedfellows, and that accounts for some odd and ominous slipping and sliding on the part of Albertan oil developers and their guy in Ottawa, prime minister Stephen Harper. Back in the 1980s, gas and oil tycoons were so … [Read More...]
Time for Ontario’s Neo-Liberal Innovators to Innovate
A new report on Ontario’s economic problems has been released just in time to invite comment and debate from the leadership candidates of both Ontario’s and Canada’s Liberal Party. In one neat package of 75 pages, the government-funded Task … [Read More...]
Quebec City Uses Food as Pioneer Species of Urban Revival
By sheer luck, our family stumbled on a little-known urban success story while looking for a place to crash in Quebec City that offered direct access to the throughway to northern Quebec, where our daughter was going to learn French. Right next to … [Read More...]
Getting to the Right Question on the Nutrient Benefits of Organic Food
The international media had a field day headlining a Stanford university study dissing the nutritional benefits of organic food. I hope it’s not too late for me to ask a few questions that might steer the debate in a more useful direction. I … [Read More...]
McGuinty Era in Ontario Reveals Neo-Liberal Formula
Premier Dalton McGuinty’s misfortune was to govern Ontario – and Ontario’s misfortune was to have him govern – at a time when the province faced three excruciating challenges. Unlike Empire Ontario that set prosperity in place a hundred … [Read More...]
Ontario’s Local Food Act: More Maybe Than Act
To get a handle on the Promoting Local Food Act tabled in the Ontario legislature on October 4, it helps to know the difference between government support and government policy. If you choose door 1 and get support, you’re in luck. If you choose … [Read More...]
Green Infrastructure and Food
I started my research by typing “crumbling” into Google, and as soon as I hit the first letter in the second word, up popped “crumbling infrastructure.” I think that shows a lot of people are tracking what is often called a silent crisis … [Read More...]
My dirty secret
Weird as it seems, this summer’s scary news stories about drought and global water crisis took a load off my shoulders – and allowed me to come clean with a dirty secret I’ve kept from neighbours and friends for almost 20 years. It goes back … [Read More...]
No water, no crops: how this year’s North American drought will impact you
I can’t figure out why Mark Twain is considered such a smarty pants for noticing that people always talk about the weather but never do anything about it. If people talk about the weather – this summer’s drought, and its likely impact on … [Read More...]
Forest Gardens in Honduras make the best of two worlds
The drought parching harvests in several of the world’s most productive food baskets is the summer’s hottest global food story. Eerily, it’s matched by the season’s hottest archeological finding, which comes across as a cautionary … [Read More...]
Book Reviews: Avant Gardeners Awake! Food systems affect everything from pollution to mental health.
Food pairs well with writing. Writerly minds are attracted to the food and agriculture scene, and the food and ag scene comes across well on the printed page. It may be because food, agriculture and writing occupations all rely on … [Read More...]
Can Main Street shops stop the traffic jam blues?
Going for a drive along a nearby street isn’t my usual idea of a good conversation starter or a way to get to know someone, but it was all for a good cause, so I gave it a try—and ended up seeing the internal workings of my main street for the … [Read More...]
How Food Will Make Edmonton: check out a recent talk I gave in Edmonton, Alberta
I recently had the pleasure of giving a presentation at Edmonton's Food in the City Conference. Check out my video … [Read More...]
New City Moves Help Wipe Away Tears After Rio +20
Suppose they held a United Nations conference on sustainability and nobody came? As much as leaders of global citizen groups have tried to rally world opinion around the June 20-22 Rio + 20 conference with a petition called The World We Don’t … [Read More...]
Mental Health Report Shows Need for Screening Questions on Food
Crazy as it sounds, the Mental Health Commission of Canada – appointed in 2007 by Canada’s Conservatives and received respectfully when its report was released last week – has just tabled Canada’s first- ever mental health strategy. … [Read More...]
Human Rights Investigator Hits Sore Point in Review of Canada’s Food Scene
Nothing befit Olivier de Schutter’s tour of Canada’s food security situation as his leaving it. Two senior federal cabinet ministers heaped scorn on this soft-spoken, mild-mannered and unfailingly-polite Belgian law professor’s May 16 report … [Read More...]
Japan’s Earthquake
The world is still reeling and shaking from afterthoughts of what happened in March, 2011 when Japan was hit by a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, which exposed how vulnerable all basic institutions have become when Nature acts up—something … [Read More...]
Mental Health Report Shows Need for Screening Questions on Food
Crazy as it sounds, the Mental Health Commission of Canada – appointed in 2007 by Canada’s Conservatives and received respectfully when its report was released last week – has just tabled Canada’s first- ever mental health strategy. There’s … [Read More...]
Green Roof Schools
The conflict between sound financial axiom and ludicrous financial dogma will hit the roof at Toronto city council sometime between May 11 and 13 -- appropriately enough on the issue of whether schools will be exempted from the city’s … [Read More...]
Cities May Look Left to Protect Their Future as Centers of Innovations and Development
It was called “re-imagining our cities,” but the summit was just as much about re-imagining Canada’s social democrats -- the New Democratic Party, now positioning itself as a national government in waiting. At one of its first public events … [Read More...]
Food Industry Named World’s Worst
Dangerously low levels of sustainability in the food industry may skyrocket to the top of the to-do and worry-about lists of business executives, government officials, and perhaps even environmentalists and shoppers. Late last month, KPMG, one of … [Read More...]
Resource Revolution
Did you hear the one about a physicist, a chemist, and an economist who were stranded on a desert island without any food, when all of a sudden a can of beans was washed ashore? The physicist identifies the pressure points in the can and proposes … [Read More...]
Revolting Food Trends of 2011-2012
Four uprisings of global significance surprised the world in 2011, and the spirit of all four will surprise those who manage the food system in 2012—which leads to my choice of year-end and year-beginning indicators that pick up the colors of … [Read More...]
Assets in the Dirt: Even if bank economists like Drummond can’t add them up, Ontario has lots we can bank on
The people of Ontario have taken two weeks of being kicked in the assets following the release of bank economist Don Drummond’s report on government overspending. The document is one-third wake-up call (we’re spending a lot of money very … [Read More...]
Designs on equality: City planning is a mechanism of discrimination – it mainly serves the able-bodied
Okay, I admit it, the Canadian Urban Institute’s new report doesn’t exactly have a catchy title. But don’t be deceived – Repositioning Age-Friendly Communities: Opportunities To Take AFC Mainstream, far from being a staid policy tract, … [Read More...]
Bare essentials: T.O. org puts women’s underpants on Haiti’s aid agenda
On the second anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, let’s get down to a skimpy project that lays bare a whole lot about the men in charge of international emergency aid missions. This has to do with women’s drawers, and their new role in … [Read More...]
The waist in Rob Ford’s Weight Loss Challenge: Mayor Ford’s 2-pounds-a-week ambition casts will power in a heroic role that can’t prevail
Whatever happens in his 330-pound challenge, Mayor Rob Ford has a lot to gain or lose politically from the big publicity splash of his pledge to cut 50 pounds, the halfway mark for his long-term commitment to a healthier weight. The problem is, … [Read More...]
Have a Gratitudinous New Year
One of the first lessons most of us learned at our mother’s knee about table manners. Hold back before gobbling the grub, and share a moment with everyone at the table to say “grace,” or some toast for all there is to be grateful for. At the … [Read More...]
Revolting Food Trends of 2011-12
Four uprisings of global significance surprised the world in 2011, and the spirit of all four will surprise those who manage the food system in 2012—which leads to my choice of year-end and year-beginning indicators that pick up the colors of … [Read More...]
Fairly Good Success Story Hits a Snag
Fair Trade sales have skyrocketed to 70 times what they were a decade ago, but – here comes the bad news – Fair Traders are now suffering from their first serious food fight. Fair trade practices have been especially helpful for coffee … [Read More...]
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