Quebec Corruption: May Day Rally Brings Hundreds Of Arrests

MONTREAL - Hundreds of anti-capitalist protesters were detained and ticketed in Quebec as they tried to tie this year's May Day demonstration to the theme of corruption.

The protesters tried to gather Wednesday outside a private club where politicians and construction executives have been known to meet.

Deficit-loving Tories may be brought down by $3.1-billion they didn’t spend

The Auditor-General has some bad news for the Conservatives, and arguably for all Canadian taxpayers. And we’ll get to that in a minute. But first, it’s worth reviewing a bit of recent history.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Conservatives were insisting that they’d never run a deficit. They had inherited balanced books from the Liberals and while they were certainly going to trim revenue (GST cut, anyone?) they were going to keep the books balanced. There were warnings as early as 2008 that the budget was heading into structural deficit because Prime Minister Stephen Harper was spending too much while cutting taxes too deeply. But, according to the party line, the books were good. Nothing to see here.

Bankers Explain How They Cannot Possibly Live On $1 Million Pay

Like many carbon-based lifeforms, you perhaps think that bankers are driven only by naked greed. But that is just because you don't understand them: They actually have a deep psychological need for that money.

In a new article at the U.K. site eFinancialCareers, several bankers explain that they have legitimate reasons for needing more than one million British pounds (about $1.6 million) per year in pay -- more money than most non-banking types could ever figure out how to spend. In a nutshell, it's all about psychology. Abraham Maslow clearly should have added "crap-tons of money" when building his hierarchy of needs.

Keystone XL Oklahoma Opposition: A History Of Oil And A Future On The Line

In March 1912, one lucky wildcatter struck black gold in Drumright, Okla.

One hundred and one years later, Wheeler No. 1 is still pumping -- and north-central Oklahoma remains "deeply engrained in oil," said Gwen Ingram, a local artist and yoga instructor.

Ingram worries that this culture of crude has numbed residents to the latest addition to the region's spiderweb of oil wells and pipelines: TransCanada's Keystone XL.

"This is not your grandfather's oil," she said of the Alberta, Canada, oil sands heavy crude that the company plans to push through the pipeline all the way south to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. "But people don't want to hear that."

Apple Avoids Paying $9 Billion In Taxes With Massive Debt Deal: Report

Sometimes going into debt can actually save you money. Just ask Apple.

Our favorite maker of shiny distractions went $17 billion into debt on Tuesday, despite having $145 billion in cash. This is crazy talk in the Age of Austerity. But in borrowing money, Apple might be saving itself from a $9 billion tax bill, the Financial Times estimates.

Attack Ads Damage Our Democracy

Since Lyndon Johnson launched "the daisy ad" -- accusing Barry Goldwater of capriciously threatening nuclear war -- negative advertising has become common place in politics.

So common place in fact that, almost half a century later, on the heels of yet another volley of Conservative attack ads against another new Liberal leader, Canada's "national" newspaper, The Globe and Mail, is now exhorting Justin Trudeau to counter attack and "fight fire with fire or look weak".

Sexism and Silence in the Literary Community

Zoe Whittall's recent viral poem, "Unequal to Me", exposes the prevalence of sexism in literary book reviews by performing a simple, clever trick. In this found poem, Whittall takes lines from book reviews of women authors and switches the pronouns to male. In doing so, she reveals the absurd ways that women are addressed, commodified, and fetishized in a "literary" context.

It's a great poem, a powerful comedic moment, and a text of bliss. It provides us with a heightened understanding of how language is never truly neutral and how language, often in subtle ways, is capable of performing the tasks of sexism and misogyny even in the so-called enlightened world of contemporary literature. But what happens, in the world of literature, when we encounter blatant, vile hateful speech? What happens when someone with an established literary reputation is guilty of overt sexism or even misogyny?

Temporary Foreign Worker Program Could Lead To Europe-Style Ethnic And Economic 'Ghettos': Critics

OTTAWA — The Tories’ promised reforms to the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program don’t go far enough, say critics who fear the recent explosion in the program’s use will have deep and far-reaching consequences for Canada’s economy and social cohesion.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced new rules for the TFW Program on Monday, in an effort to quell a backlash against it spurred by news that Royal Bank of Canada outsourced 45 information technology jobs to a company whose Indian workers were reportedly brought temporarily to Canada under the TFW program.

Mental Health Issues For Soldiers, Police Up 47% Since 2008

The number of soldiers and RCMP officers suffering from mental health injuries such as post-traumatic stress disorder has skyrocketed over the last six years, driven in part by the gruelling decade-long combat mission in Afghanistan.

Data provided to CBC News Network's Power & Politics from Veterans Affairs Canada shows the number of veterans, soldiers and federal police officers receiving disability benefits for mental health conditions has swelled to 16,206 at last count, from just over 11,050 in 2008. That marks an increase of 47 per cent.

New gang recruitment crime bill passes Commons

The Conservatives say they are getting tough on criminal gangs with a bill that carries jail time for recruiting new members.

The private member's bill from Conservative MP Parm Gill, that passed the House of Commons Wednesday, proposes a new Criminal Code offence that prohibits recruiting or encouraging a person to join a criminal organization. Anyone convicted could be put in jail for up to five years. The offence would have a mandatory minimum sentence of six months if the person recruited is under the age of 18.