Houses of worship are as much an essential service for our physical needs as grocery stores
Springtime – which includes observances like Easter, Passover and Ramadan – seems a good time to bust the popular Canadian myth that religion is a completely private, personal matter with little relevance for broader Canadian society. New evidence from the Angus Reid Institute, in partnership with the think-tank Cardus, indicates the opposite is true: religion…
Fed up with the Saudi's "artificially jacking up the prices"
An oil war is brewing between the world’s largest crude exporter, Saudi Arabia, and the world’s third-largest crude consumer, India. India has long pleaded with Saudi Arabia to keep oil prices lower to help sustain economic growth in the developing and emerging economies of Asia. In rather hushed tones, for diplomatic reasons, India has protested…
Race-based programs are an insult to those who have achieved success on their merit and hard work
‘Pretendians’ are what Indigenous people call non-Indigenous people who claim that they are Indigenous. Government financial incentives reserved exclusively for Indigenous people – supposedly, to achieve equity – have created pretendians, who are increasingly called out by other Indigenous people for not being Indigenous enough. Canadian novelist Joseph Boyden and filmmaker Michelle Latimer (maker of…
Covid-19 has proven the feasibility of online conferences. But as we emerge from the pandemic, will we slip back into our old ways?
As a conference co-ordinator, Oliver Rossier couldn’t believe the sheer waste of time, money and carbon it took to fly an international scholar to Edmonton for a one-hour lecture. “I tried to set up workshops with graduate students and other researchers the following day, but he had to get on a plane right after his…
In his first serious foreign policy test in 1961, the new American president flunked badly. He was in way over his head
Things were going swimmingly for U.S. President John F. Kennedy immediately following his January 1961 inauguration. Despite being elected by a mere whisker, his approval ratings were stratospheric and much of the media was in love with him. It was as if he was a political superman. Then came the fiasco at the Bay of…
Job site and neighbourhood risks should be taken into account when setting priorities, experts argue
It's time for a more nuanced approach to prioritizing COVID-19 vaccinations as more contagious variants become prevalent and a third wave of infections threatens to overwhelm hospitals in some provinces, according to an analysis published recently in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. “It’s time to move the debate away from age and medical risk factors,” said lead author…
Global taxation schemes always stall because fiscal policies are seen as ways for governments to influence their economies
Nobody wants to hear about higher taxes. It’s an unpopular and counterintuitive notion to those who believe taxation is a call of death for economies looking for growth. But the world is different now, which is why United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s call for a minimum corporate tax to stop the so-called race to…
Whether it’s a manager having trust in a staff member, employees having trust in their leader or leaders having trust in their decisions
As a child, I had a tremendous fear of falling. I would climb a tree and couldn’t trust that the branch wouldn’t break. I climbed cranes, cliffs and buildings, and was always afraid that my footing would slip and I would fall. Perhaps that fear was grounded in the fact that I had already fallen…
Canadian elites accepted the old-world model of political and social organization based on identification with racial groups
Columnist and author Richard Gwyn wrote that the 1950s was a time “when Canadians came to realize and believe that a ‘new nationality’ could be political rather than ethnic, or composed of values and attitudes, rather than races.” Gwyn, author of Nation Maker – Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, a biography of Canada’s first prime…
U of A researchers are harnessing AI to analyze patients’ own cells to create islet cells for transplant
University of Alberta researchers are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to find a safer, more personalized source of islet cells to treat Type 1 diabetes. The research project, a collaboration between the departments of surgery and computing science, aims to use AI to analyze images to speed up the process and reduce the need for human decision-making…
Springtime – which includes observances like Easter, Passover and Ramadan – seems a good time to bust the popular Canadian myth that religion is a completely private, personal matter with little relevance for broader Canadian society. New evidence from the Angus Reid Institute, in partnership with the think-tank Cardus, indicates the opposite is true: religion…
