October 26, 2023 | Much of contemporary American politics can be traced to a little-remembered and dimly understood event that occurred a half-century ago, the Saturday Night Massacre. This article by聽David Shribman delves into the controversies over whether presidents are vulnerable to prosecution.
October 25, 2023 | This piece by MPP Alumnus Phaedra de Saint-Rome,highlights Canada's limited efforts in trying to publish a bill addressing online safety since 2020 and not having one in place to this day. The article provides a timeline of the same bill in the European Union and Australia and shows how other government around the world have been able to take action regarding online safety and harms.聽
"Canadian youth are at greater risk online than their peers in much of the democratic world because our federal government won't table a long-promised bill" said Phaedra.聽
We are in a crisis of knowledge - and it couldn鈥檛 have happened at a worse time | The Globe and Mail
October 20, 2023 | This opinion piece by Taylor Owen talks about the reasoning behind why he decided to take a break from X, formerly Twitter, a platform he has been using as a gateway to information for over a decade.聽
He said "the platform is now broken. Where it once filtered valuable information about the world in a timely manner, it is now calibrated to anger and extremes under the ownership of a spiteful billionaire clearly caught in an ideological rabbit hole."
October 17, 2023 | The federal government is under pressure to carve out exemptions to its carbon pricing system, particularly for rural home-heating fuel in Atlantic Canada. Keeping essentials like energy affordable is a serious concern, but carbon-pricing exemptions are the wrong solution.聽聽
September 16, 2023 | On September 6 the Bank of Canada decided to hold interest rates steady after two years of high inflation and 18 months of rising interest rates. The premiers of Ontario, British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador each wrote to the Bank of Canada urging it not to raise interest rates, following the critics from Justin Trudeau's caucus stating that the government has lost focus on affordability issues, especially regarding housing.
September 14, 2023 | In an opinion piece by David Parkinson he talks about the influx of students that are going to have their first serious exposure to economics in a university setting. He has interviewed Chris Ragan to discuss the value of learning more about economics. A key point from the conversation was that there is a fundamental misunderstanding surrounding economics where it's perceived to be all about money. Whereas it's more about scarcity and the decisions made to allocate limited resources.聽
August 30, 2023 | The Council of Alberta University Students is demanding more government action in the wake of a survey suggesting 50% of respondents have experienced some form of sexual or gender-based violence as a post-secondary student.聽Executive director and Max Bell School graduate Alexandra Ages said she is exited with working with the ministry on next steps.聽
July 2, 2023 |聽Ten finalists have been chosen for the Hunter Prize for Public Policy, along with their groundbreaking ideas to fundamentally improve Canada鈥檚 health-care system. The finalists were picked from over 200 entries and the winning entree will be chosen by an esteemed panel of judges.
August 1, 2023 | The article in The Globe and Mail provides highlights from the report created by Taylor Chase, Alison Clement, Sandrine Desforges and Anmol Gupta for Canada鈥檚 Federal Housing Advocate as part of the Policy Lab 2023. There is a lack of leadership when it comes to veteran housing, which is split between several federal departments with no central co-ordination. They also warn that the federal government does not have a clear picture of the problem because it is not adequately tracking veterans and their housing status.
July 23, 2023 | In this opinion piece by Taylor Owen and聽Supriya Dwivedi, they reflect on the passage of Bill C-18, the Online News Act, where the government is hoping that Google and Meta would expand the deals they currently have with some Canadian publishers to a wider range of outlets. On the other hand, tech companies are clearly using Canada as a trial to other jurisdictions in the process of enacting similar policies. The piece the highlights where to go from here.聽
July 4, 2023 | In an interview conducted by Wesley Wark Vincent Rigby reflected on whether he might be prepared to play beyond the boundaries of his recent testimony on June 8 to the Standing Committee on Procedures and House Affairs, in order to enlarge on some of the issues he raised. The Q&A provides an unedited conversation between Wesley Wark and Vincent Rigby about his testimony.聽
July 3, 2023| In an interview with CBC Pearl Eliadis reflects on provincial government's plan to protect reproductive heath. Some health and legal experts have been questioning a provincial government plan to protect reproductive rights, after the minister responsible for women's health proposed to enshrine a women's right to abortion.聽
June 14, 2023 | Former product manager at Facebook, Frances Haugen,聽released thousands of internal Facebook documents that showed the social media giant was aware of harms caused by its products. One article in a Wall Street Journal series revealed that Facebook鈥檚 own research found that its Instagram app worsened body image issues for one in three teen girls who faced those concerns.聽
June 08, 2023 | The courts were asked by twenty-three municipalities to suspend parts of Quebec's new language law, which they describe as abusive. Mayors are concerned about communications, illegal searches and seizures, government grants and the obligation, set out in the law, to discipline public employees who break the rules by working in English.聽
May 26, 2023 | Following the controversial law in China that compelled companies to hand over platforms' user data if Beijing deems relevant to Chinese security, serious concerns were raised in Canada. Following this update most of the provinces and public institutions prohibited TikTok on government-owned devices. Former ByteDance executive has claimed that TikTok provides the Chinese government 'supreme access' to user data, indicating that the Chinese government is able to obtain information collected on Canadians' phones.聽