Election 2012: The Final Countdown

If the polls are to be believed (and they shouldn’t), the political landscape the day after the election will probably look similar to the day before and things will likely carry on much as it has for the past four years. However, there are some variables that these polls don’t take into account and I don’t just mean the weather.

NDG cyclists and pedestrians and transit users rail against MUHC super-hospital traffic plans

Emily Campbell speaks with Projet Montreal City Councillor Peter McQueen (Notre-Dame-de-Grace) and community activist Marlo Turner Ritchie who aren’t impressed with traffic plans surrounding the new McGill University Health Centre Super-Hospital. They and other local pedestrians, public transit users and cyclists don’t want to be cut off from an entire neighbourhood…

Total Recall

Thanks in part to government imposed austerity and corporate influence over our public health officials; we no longer know what we are eating, more importantly we don’t really know if it’s healthy. Government cuts in food inspections, deregulation of industry and corporate greed are keeping us in the dark when we go to the grocery store or the butcher shop

728 minutes of fame

Some cops think they’re above the laws they are charged with enforcing, that’s nothing new. But now it looks like the Montreal Police force (SPVM) thinks it’s above the unwritten laws of celebrity and fame. Warhol said that everyone gets 15 minutes in the spotlight. Stéfanie Trudeau, better known as Constable 728, used those up well before the Maple Spring went on its summer break. So why did she turn up again in the news mid-October…

Let the People Decide

Political debates are a series of opinions disputed between politicians. These opinions can range in topic from social issues, to economics, to foreign policy. Debates are routinely used by candidates to try and sway the undecided voters to cast their ballet for them. Undecided voters typically avoid paying attention to politics and are therefore uninformed and susceptible to the media’s influence. In close elections this makes the debates all that more important.

Corruption inquiry shines light on our own lethargy

Of the many appalling similarities between the Cliche Commission and the current Charbonneau Commission, it is the similar lack of judicial ‘teeth’. Do we actually expect someone important, someone at the top, to see the insides of a prison? Of course not.

To Protect and Serve

No system of government has done more for the welfare of its people than democracy, but now modern day free market capitalism is threatening a new age of feudalism. The “New Deal” of the 1930’s brought unimaginable prosperity to the industrialized world; the greatest generation was given decent working hours, good wages, social security, and eventually Medicare & welfare, etc. These middle class citizens in good turn passed it down to their kids; the baby boomers, who over the last thirty years have decided to keep it all for themselves.