Though any deaths from a fast-spreading new disease can be frightening, panic isn’t justified. Most cases are mild and of short duration
I led a trade delegation in Guangdong, China, in December 2002. Business and life carried on as usual even though a new disease, SARS, had begun infecting and killing people in the province a month earlier. As visiting Canadians, we weren’t worried at all because we knew absolutely nothing about the epidemic and had never…
The world is changing very quickly and most of us can’t keep up. Jobs that always were there (think taxi drivers) are fast disappearing. Pre-digital teachers, parents and grandparents are learning from children rather than teaching them. Ideas we’ve long held are no longer valid. Take university for example. We can look at going to…
There's not an economic model or crystal ball that can give us a clear and reliable picture of what lies ahead in 2020. No forecast, no matter how thorough and well thought through, can foresee or take into account all the wild cards that chance, nature or our all-too-human political leaders can throw at us.…
And that could rise to 10 million deaths per year within 30 years, at an economic cost of US$100 trillion
A deadly threat hangs over us that’s much more immediate than climate change and has already started killing people. It now kills over 700,000 people a year worldwide. The fatalities could rise to 10 million per annum within 30 years. Together, cancer, diabetes and cholera take fewer lives. The economic cost would be US$100 trillion.…
The sense of being marginalized and treated as second-class provinces has long been felt in the West. But opting out won't suit our needs
I was born in Quebec, and raised, married and had my children in Montreal. You might think that makes me a Quebecer but there are those who disagree. I’m an Anglophone. Some feel that only Francophones with generations of history in the province are ‘real’ Quebecers. For the past several decades, I’ve lived in B.C.…
Many people take a long time to launch on adult life because they've never been taught to spend less than they make
“The first responsibility of adulthood is paying your own bills,” according to Jamaica Finance Minister Peter Phillips. That country has worked hard to wean itself of dependency on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and is in a position to stand on its own feet economically. Paying your bills is a definition of adulthood that applies…
We were once the envy of the world. Now, talented young people and entire businesses are leaving for better prospects elsewhere
I think Canada is the best country in the world. I’ve always lived here but I’ve travelled extensively. Most people from other countries seem to share a positive opinion of Canada, though a few who live close the equator think of Canada as ‘instant popsicle.’ Climate aside, Canada is seen as a haven of freedom,…
Trying to deal with both affordability and the environment is like to trying to suck and blow at the same time
The goal of politicians is to get elected. At one time, political parties put together carefully constructed platforms, and voters could then support candidates from the party whose platform they preferred. Now, rather than putting a platform together in advance, parties are more likely to poll the populace to find out what appeals to the…
While robots replace human workers on the factory floor, better-paid jobs are created to design, build and maintain the robots
The robots are coming, the robots are coming! They may not be an unstoppable evil army ready to take over the world as in a bad sci-fi movie, but they’re definitely making headway on factory assembly lines and increasingly in other industries. A United Kingdom research firm, Oxford Economics, did a study that covered seven…
Let’s be very careful about electing a government that’s bribing us with our own money
Before we select our next set of national leaders in the Oct. 21 federal election, we should be paying attention to matters that don’t usually concern us day to day, like the treasury. What the treasury does we call fiscal policy, but it’s essentially budgeting: determining levels of revenue (taxes) and expenditure (all the programs…
I led a trade delegation in Guangdong, China, in December 2002. Business and life carried on as usual even though a new disease, SARS, had begun infecting and killing people in the province a month earlier. As visiting Canadians, we weren’t worried at all because we knew absolutely nothing about the epidemic and had never…
