Is Canada on the precipice of war?

The Prime Minister is holding a rare emergency debate Tuesday evening to decide Canada's next steps into what could be an international war in the Middle East.

Canadians were recently shocked by the news that some 130 Canadian citizens -- many from Calgary -- have been drawn into an extremist Islamic military movement, called ISIS, according to a new federal report on terrorist threats to Canada.

The movement -- also known as ISIL -- has some 80,000 members in Syria and northern Iraq who are seizing control of the region, in pursuit of establishing an Islamic caliphate—or state.

Supreme Court rejects Burnaby's injunction to stop Kinder Morgan

Under a cloudy, grey sky  on top of Burnaby Mountain, a crowd of around 25  rolled out a banner that read “Stop Kinder Morgan!” in bold red letters and prepared to hear the news from the B.C. Supreme Court.

They had gathered from all around Metro Vancouver to hear Justice Brenda Brown's decision on whether to grant the City of Burnaby an injunction to stop Kinder Morgan’s controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

Putting Solar Panels On School Roofs Could Dramatically Increase America’s Solar Capacity

Any building with a large, flat rooftop is a prime candidate for a solar installation. And one particular large, flat roof that’s ubiquitous in the U.S. is on schools.

According to a new report by the Energy Department and the Solar Foundation — the research arm of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a solar trade organization — if schools took advantage of their full potential for solar, they would add 5.4 gigawatts to the country’s solar capacity. That’s just over a third of the 16 gigawatts of total capacity America currently boasts. That would be enough to power roughly one million homes, and a carbon emissions reduction equivalent to taking around one million passenger vehicles off the road.

Harper Conservatives Enable U.S. Steel’s Latest Blow to Canada

TORONTO - The United Steelworkers (USW) union is committed to defending the interests of its members and pensioners affected by U.S. Steel Canada's application for bankruptcy protection.

"We are extremely concerned about these developments and we intend to do everything we can to protect our retirees and our members," USW National Director Ken Neumann said following today's filing by U.S. Steel under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA).

"Once again U.S. Steel has left thousands of families and entire communities in limbo. They will have to endure a long and complex court process," Neumann said. "We will work together with other stakeholders to seek the best outcome for our members and retirees."

Trudeau Says Ideological Tax Cuts Won’t Spur Canada Jobs

Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau said Canada’s government should abandon its “ideological” focus on tax cuts and instead boost infrastructure spending to help the country pull out of the worst job slump since the 2009 recession.

“They’re in a tax-cut box,” Trudeau said yesterday in an interview in his office in the nation’s main parliament building, referring to the ruling Conservative Party. “There’s nothing wrong with tax cuts, as long as they’re targeted toward helping the economy grow, helping people get jobs.”

José Mujica: is this the world’s most radical president?

Emo Mannise was just 16 when he met Uruguay’s current president, José Mujica. On a spring day in 1969, Mannise was at home alone with his sister, Beatriz, when the future president burst out of the lift outside their penthouse in Montevideo with a pistol in his hand. “Turn around, shut your mouth and keep your hands above your head!” he barked. Mannise immediately recognised the pinched eyes and thick, wavy brown hair of one of the most notorious members of the daring, violent Tupamaro guerrillas. After his initial sense of panic subsided, he recalled, he felt strangely calm. “I remember telling the young gunman who was with him not to worry, that I wasn’t going to do anything,” the 62-year-old travel agent told me when we met in his favourite Montevideo bookshop, a short distance from the murky waters of the immense River Plate. His sister, who suffered from polio and used a wheelchair, was taken off to another room. “Don’t worry viejita,” Mujica told her, “you’ll be fine, this has nothing to do with you.” The colloquial, affectionate viejita – “little old lady” – was a typical Mujica touch.

The Walmart Heirs Give a Measly Amount to Charity

The Walmart heirs are infamous for their wealth and penny-pinching. Christy, Jim, Alice, and Rob Walton wouldn't be the sixth-, seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-richest Americans, respectively, if not for Walmart's relentless exploitation of its low-wage workers. But the Waltons' stinginess also extends to their philanthropy. According to a new analysis by the union-backed Making Change at Walmart campaign, the Walton scions give way less money to charity than other über-rich Americans.

5 Signs the Dark-Money Apocalypse Is Upon Us

It's the home stretch of the 2014 election season. No single theme or issue has dominated the midterms, but 2014 is on pace to be the Year of Dark Money.

Nonprofit groups, some well known (such as the US Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Prosperity, founded by the Koch brothers) and some obscure (America Inc., anyone?), have dumped huge sums of anonymous money into every competitive Senate race and many House contests. Here are five eye-opening indicators showing the rapid spread of dark money in this year's campaign season—and why it's going to get worse as Election Day approaches.

Deep Inside the Wild World of China's Fracking Boom

ON A HAZY MORNING LAST SEPTEMBER, 144 American and Chinese government officials and high-ranking oil executives filed into a vaulted meeting room in a cloistered campus in south Xi'an, a city famous for its terra-cotta warriors and lethal smog. The Communist Party built this compound, called the Shaanxi Guesthouse, in 1958. It was part of the lead-up to Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward, in which, to surpass the industrial achievements of the West, the government built steelworks, coal mines, power stations, and cement factories—displacing hundreds of thousands and clearcutting a tenth of China's forests in the process. Despite its quaint name, the guesthouse is a cluster of immense concrete structures jutting out of expansive, manicured lawns and man-made lakes dotted with stone bridges and pagodas. It also features a karaoke lounge, spa, tennis stadium, shopping center, and beauty salon.

Harper ramps up his war on independent thought

In the conservative quest to shape public debate in recent years, no tool has proved more useful than the think tank. Nobody understood this better than the director of the ultra-right wing U.S.-based ATLAS Foundation, who once stated that his mission was “to litter the world with free-market think tanks.”

Mission accomplished. Certainly the Canadian landscape is cluttered with right-wing think tanks — the Fraser Institute, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Montreal Economic Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, the Frontier Institute, just to name a few — all well-funded by a business elite keen to have its message packaged in a manner that makes it appear grounded in serious research.