The Year of Bargaining Diplomatically
Last year the government of Alberta faced a mountain of public-sector contract negotiations. A whole mountain range, actually. Collective agreements covering roughly 180,000 employees expired: [...]
Policy
Policy
Social Impact Bonds
Imagine you’re running a shelter for homeless youth, and the government grants you’ve always relied on suddenly dry up. Imagine waging the equivalent of a Dragon’s Den pitch to potential [...]
The Assault on Science
By May 2012 morale was low throughout Canada’s scientific community—and then the country’s scientists received a swift kick where it counts. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) announced [...]
Delisted
Jessica Willes’s delicate complexion reflects her pale-grey T-shirt, creating a translucent backdrop for her sparkly almond-shaped eyes. Wisps of her bob-length ash blond hair frame her face as [...]
Mind Games
There’s an old saying in research: Go to the source. And so, on a cool November Thursday, I stopped in to speak to former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein at his newest place of employment, the swank [...]
By Jeff Gailus
What Are We Fighting For?
In March 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper went to Kandahar, Afghanistan, to speak to Canadian troops. he defended Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, claiming that our military is “defending [...]
MOST READ
MOST READ
The Plans to Strip-Mine Coal in the Mountains
It looks like spectacular wild country, but some see it more as a big money sandwich.
The top layer of that sandwich is comprised of alpine grasses, forget-me-nots and stonecrop, glacier lilies and ancient, brave pines whose branches have been gnarled and weathered by centuries of wind. In summer, solitaires and ...
Herd Memory
On a cold day in February, I flew over the tightly knit stands of black spruce and jack pine in northwestern Alberta, straining my eyes below, eager to catch sight of a woodland caribou. My dad, a wildlife biologist, called them the “grey ghosts” of the boreal. Woodland caribou have ...
The Big Man in Cargo Shorts
Leonard was the first to find him. The man was face down in the school’s outdoor learning space, next to a planter of basil. He was fat, his calves the size of a turkey dinner, his hair a gnarled mess of seaweed. Leonard wondered if the man was dead and ...