TURNING NATURAL GAS INTO HYDROGEN might sound like the alchemist's dream of turning lead into gold but the technology has been around for decades.It's long been the dream of our fossil fuel-hungry society that we can continue to burn fuel without the consequences of climate change. We're totally hooked on fossil fuels ...

UNLIKE ONTARIO, B.C. DOESN'T HAVE A CONSENT AND CAPACITY BOARD. That means seniors, or in fact anyone, can be deemed unfit and their lives handed over to the state.And while there are good reasons why some persons should be deemed unfit in the management of their affairs, there is little recourse once it's done.Once a ...

AS ANNOUNCED IN MONDAY'S FEDERAL BUDGET the Liberals will try, once again, to implement universal child care across Canada.They have been promising it for decades but have never delivered. In 2005, then-Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government pledged to start a program worth $5 billion over five years. Never h...

TWO DEVELOPMENTS have strengthened Canada by making the federal government stronger.The first was a Supreme Court ruling that determined the fed's carbon pricing to be constitutional.Opponents of carbon pricing like to call it a "carbon tax" but, of course, it isn't. A tax is a levy for public services render...

"UNLIKE MOST OF THE COUNTRY, B.C.'s legislation does not provide a lawyer for people with mental illness facing involuntary detention," says Jay Chalke, B.C.'s ombudsperson. (Globe and Mail, September 2, 2020) Unlike other Canadian jurisdictions, mentally ill people can be held indefinitely - B.C. does not ha...

QUESTION: How do electric cars fit into the future of Canada's pedestrian-friendly cities with more green space, shorter travel times, and a focus on communities?Answer: They don't.The problem with electric cars is that they are... cars. Car culture results in the paving over of large parts of cities for roads and park...

I DIDN'T REALIZE MY ART WAS NON-FUNGIBLE but that was because I didn't know what the word fungible meant. Until recently, fungible was rarely used outside legal circles.Now, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have become all the rage.Fungible things can be exchanged for something else of the same kind: they are equivalent. A t...

OVER A YEAR AGO, governments rid themselves of a political problem and passed it on to the Wet'suwet'en people of B.C.'s northern interior. Governments had to "do something" when protesters in support of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs blocked railways and shut down freight and passenger traffic for severa...

PROFESSOR MICHAEL D. MEHTA of Thompson Rivers University makes a number of good points in his recent article regarding a secure electrical system.However, he's thinking in the wrong direction when he suggests that the solution is microgrids.The recent electrical blackouts in Texas have focused the problem of electricit...

I'M SITTING ON THE BANKS of the North Thompson River, not far from my house in Westsyde. People walk along the river, not far away, but they seldom notice me high on the river bank. I'm listening to music and not paying much attention. It's a cool winter day and I'm wrapped in a blanket; enjoying my lunch and thermos o...

WHILE GOOGLE'S RESPONSE to plans by the Australian government to force social media giants to pay for news has been nuanced, Facebook's response has been provocative.Facebook announced last Wednesday that it would block news-sharing on its Australian site. I suppose Facebook hopes to generate outrage from Australians s...

THE NEW CLIMATE DENIERS no longer deny that climate change is happening. It's become too obvious that it is.It used to be that climate change deniers could ridicule the notion that the Earth was warming by pointing to cold snaps like the one in Texas where thousands of cold temperature records are being broken. But cli...

QANON IN THE U.S. has taken on the militaristic quality of a religious crusade with Q as the prophet and Trump as the Messiah. In Canada, the response has been more muted.QAnon has been wildly successful and expanded beyond what the apocalyptic prophet Q intended. The identity of Q is speculative; s/he could be the onl...

USERS OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA FORUM REDDIT organized last Wednesday to save the game retailer GameStop from being driven into bankruptcy by hedge fund managers.Wealthy hedge funds targeted GameStop in a tactic called 'short and distort.' They trigger a selling frenzy by selling large volumes of stock and profit when they f...

WHEN WE PULL TOGETHER, we can quickly achieve results that have escaped us in the past. Some liken to being at war but I prefer to compare the pandemic response to what happened when we created universal health care. Governments have been reluctant to implement the universal coverage of drugs in the past, but in short ...

CANADA MORTGAGE AND HOUSING CORPORATION (CMHC) is attempting to curb the outflow from big cities.Toronto saw a net loss of 50,375 last year as people moved to surrounding small cities - places such as Oshawa, where the population increased by 2.1 per cent according to CMHC.Municipalities around Montreal also experience...

PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS ASSEMBLED a ragtag rabble of misfits into "Trump's Army".The disgraced president was able to unite marginalized groups in a way no other president has done. Believers in alien abductions, the Deep State, QAnon, the Proud Boys and the Illuminati all found a home in the White House.Trump bro...

YOUNG CANADIANS HAVE BEEN BLAMED for being irresponsible during the pandemic for going to parties and bars. But there's more hype than truth to these accusations. The deadly virus has been spread by people of all walks of life.Young people are sacrificing the opportunities of a lifetime. This is a time to build profess...