PBO: Canada's Labour Shortage, Skills Mismatch Don't Seem To Exist

OTTAWA - Canada's budget watchdog says there's little evidence of serious labour shortages or a skills mismatch problem in the country.

The finding by the parliamentary budget office could once again put it on a collision course with the Harper government.

The government has made much of a skills mismatch to justify measures such as the foreign temporary workers program, stricter employment insurance eligibility rules and the Canada Jobs Grant program.

This Law Allows Genetic Counselors to Turn Away Gays and Unwed Parents

In February, when Arizona state lawmakers passed a bill allowing business owners to refuse service to gay and lesbian customers on religious grounds, a ferocious national backlash forced Republican Gov. Jan Brewer to veto the legislation. But while Arizona legislators were catching heat, controversial "conscience clause" legislation quietly glided to passage in Virginia and was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Now, certain health care providers in Virginia have the right to turn away gays or lesbians or to withhold test results that could cause a patient to consider terminating her pregnancy.

The Other Keystone

Don’t Be a Fracking Gashole. Thus urged one of the signs at a boisterous climate change rally held in front of Baltimore’s City Hall on February 20. As unseasonably warm breezes spun the blades of the tiny windmills many of the 800-plus protesters held aloft, a dozen students carried a mock pipeline made of white plastic through downtown. Black letters on the pipeline announced a new front in America’s escalating battle over fracking and climate change: Stop Cove Point.

It Saves Millions To Simply Give Homeless People A Place To Live

It is cheaper to give homeless people a home than it is to leave them on the streets.

That’s not just the opinion of advocates working to end homelessness, nor is it the opinion of homeless people themselves. It is a fact that has been borne out by studies across the country, from Florida to Colorado and beyond.

Capitalism's Central Contradiction: The Past Devours the Future

Rarely does a book come along, like Karl Marx's Das Kapital, that completely alters the paradigm through which we frame our worldview. Thomas Piketty's magisterial study of the structure of capitalism since the 18th century, Capital in the 21st Century, is such a book. In this important way, he is the Marx of our new age of inequality, albeit absent the historically misguided prescription of communism.

Punitive Isolation Will Do to Russia What Versailles Treaty Did to Germany

PARIS -- Sometimes, I ask myself whether it is possible to be right, though it means dismissing everybody else's opinion. Or, must one surrender to the idea that unanimity should prevail? In the light of what is happening at the moment in Ukraine, I feel reinforced in my initial intuition: It is crazy for the West to turn the Crimean problem into an opportunity for confrontation with Russia.

To embark on such a path is not in Europe's interest. On the contrary, we should be doing everything possible to insure that our important eastern neighbor is integrated with Europe and not isolated from it.

"A Slow Genocide of the People": Uranium Mining Leaves Toxic Nuclear Legacy on Indigenous Land

The iconic Grand Canyon is the site of a battle over toxic uranium mining. Last year, a company called Energy Fuels Resources was given federal approval to reopen a mine six miles from the Grand Canyon’s popular South Rim entrance. A coalition of Native and environmental groups have protested the decision, saying uranium mining could strain scarce water sources and pose serious health effects. Diné (Navajo) tribal lands are littered with abandoned uranium mines. From 1944 to 1986, 3.9 million tons of uranium ore were chiseled and blasted from the mountains and plains of the region. More than 1,000 mines have closed, but the mining companies never properly disposed of their radioactive waste piles, leading to a spike in cancer rates and other health ailments. Broadcasting from Flagstaff, Arizona, we speak with Taylor McKinnon, director of energy with Grand Canyon Trust, and Klee Benally, a Diné (Navajo) activist and musician. "It’s really a slow genocide of the people, not just indigenous people of this region, but it’s estimated that there are over 10 million people who are residing within 50 miles of abandoned uranium mines," Benally says. Benally also describes the struggle to preserve the San Francisco Peaks, an area considered sacred by 13 Native tribes, where the Snowbowl ski resort is using treated sewage water to make snow.

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Elections Canada, you got some ‘splainin’ to do

After 34 months on the scent of corruption most foul, Elections Canada may soon be calling off the hounds.

In about a week, we will either have the solution to the biggest unsolved crime in Canadian electoral history, or something far less satisfying. Here are 10 questions that need to be answered about what has come to be known as the Robocalls Affair.

EC investigator Al Mathews did a superb job of following the electronic tracks of Robocalls to the doors of the Conservative Party of Canada. Mathews learned that the list used by telephone fraudsters in the 2011 election matched a list from the Constituents Information Management System – (CIMS). 

Nato to bolster defences of Baltic states amid Ukraine crisis

Britain is to join forces with its Nato allies to help bolster defences of the Baltic states amid fears that Moscow may use the presence of substantial Russian minorities to destabilise Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

As Downing Street indicated that the leaders of the G7 countries were likely to punish Moscow for its annexation of Crimea by mothballing the larger G8, which includes Russia, the prime minister said Nato would send a "very clear message" to show it believed in the security of all its members.

Election bill doesn't close parties' privacy gaps

The Conservatives' election law reform bill clocks in at 242 pages, but doesn't have any measures to fill gaping holes in privacy protection that experts have been warning about for years.

The proposed updates to Canadian election law contained in Bill C-23 don't include measures to protect the private information that political parties hold and could actually make the situation worse, says Colin Bennett, a political science professor at the University of Victoria.