Policy Options

It is only too obvious that thus far the peoples of the democratic states have failed in our responsibility to protect the people of Syria. This is hardly a...

Get Harvard out of oil and gas Speech at Divest Harvard/ Alumni for Fossil Fuel Divestment demonstration Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts September 16, 2013 In the past year, since...

I teach a class at MIT’s Media Lab called “News and Participatory Media” that’s become popular with Nieman scholars. I designed it as a class for engineers and software...

Legalizing killing through confusion Margaret Somerville October 9, 2013 My concern is that my appearance here might be perceived as my being complicit in helping you to develop Bill...

In a century when the need for innovative pharmaceutical advances remains urgent and the cost and time required for innovation are both growing, the very intellectual property system that...

In order to maintain the close-to-world-class status of our premier economics departments we have resorted to hiring the best available professors. This is key to ensuring that our students...

In North America…academic economists as public intellectuals…have declined in recent decades. Beginning in the 1970s, PhD students in economics understood that, in order to be successful in their discipline,...

The article is thought-provoking and draws out some important and interesting facts about the declining attention of Canadian economists to Canadian topics. My response is coloured by my own...

This report raises three questions for me. First, is this an issue? Second, why is this happening? And third, what if anything can be done about it? Emery, Simpson...

There is a danger [of economists in Canada] becoming so preoccupied with technique for its own sake as to lose sight of our objective as social scientists of understanding...

It is shameful that so few lessons have been learned from Canada’s experiences in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Some “after-action” reports were written, of course, but these generally failed to document...

Are you a Tim Hortons Canadian or a Starbucks drinker? Do you see yourself as a voter, a consumer or a taxpayer? Where do you land in the Phineas...

Paul Wells has written a fascinating, must-read book that details how Stephen Harper has managed to hold power through minority governments and consolidate it with his current majority. With...

Full disclosure: I have always liked and admired Michael Ignatieff. Before he returned to Canada in 2005 to run as the Liberal candidate in Etobicoke-Lakeshore with his not-so-secret plan...

In the competitive global race for high-wage employment, governments have begun to see intellectual property as a strategic tool to be corralled within national borders for the benefit of...

The Internet never forgets. And that permanent digital record, a blessing when it summons a moment we want to recall with the click of a mouse, can be a...

The debate surrounding the proposed Charter of Quebec values continues apace. The most controversial part of the PQ government’s plan is the measure that would prohibit employees in the...

En septembre 2012, le Parti québécois a gagné les élections avec moins du tiers des voix (31,95 p. 100, contre 31,20 p. 100 pour le Parti libéral). Après des...

Public art is not an indulgence. Cities are expressions of our culture, and public art has always played a role in defining that common space. But public art can...

A host of enthusiasts, from the early pioneers of Wired Magazine and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the newest innovators of City Protocol (the new web-based global cities network...

Rust-belt cities often conjure an image of decay and decline, but beneath those easy impressions there is something richer: places that are still very much alive. To see this...

Democratic governments are supposed to express the people’s will and, for the most part, they do, if only out of self-interest. But there is one policy area where governments...

When you think about it, a city is truly an amazing thing. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of people live in close proximity to each other, go about their...

Far from being a land of forests, plains and prairies, Canada is an urban country. Nearly 70 percent of the population lives in urban centres and more than 90...

Too much recent news from cities has been about corruption and other unseemly scandals. But the uncovering of sickness at the top of the municipal political chain threatens to...

When it comes to organ donation rates, Canada does not perform particularly well, falling significantly behind countries like Spain, the UK, the US, France and Austria. This is a...

Cows and sheep have always shouldered a chunk of the blame for rising greenhouse gas emissions, with extensive scientific evidence showing that the livestock production chain is responsible for...

A couple of years ago, as the Internet Goliath continued to drain news consumers away from newspapers and television, old media’s desperation to find a way to fight back...