Opinion

Apr. 20 was a day marked by sharp contrasts in judicial verdicts relating to harm.In Quebec Superior Court, Justice Marc-Andre Blanchard issued a ruling regarding Bill 21, Quebec’s “secularism” law, which bans the wearing of religious symbols for government employees deemed to be in a position of authority, such as...

The English Montreal School Board says it can’t yet begin hiring teachers who wear religious symbols despite its court victory Tuesday in a challenge of the province’s secularism law.A spokesman for the board says its lawyers have advised that hiring of teachers who wear hijabs, turbans or other symbols has...

A Quebec Superior Court judge ruled this week that the province’s law banning teachers, police officers and other government employees from wearing religious dress is an infringement of the constitutional right to religious freedom. But we already knew that.As Justice Marc-André Blanchard wrote, one can “easily understand” that forcing a...

Amanda Munday is the Founder of The Workaround, a co-working and flexible child-care space for parents in Toronto.Jessica Weisz is an adviser and writes about businesses creating systemic change so more can win in the game of life.It’s been an excruciating year for parents and the federal promise to spend...

In 1970, when a national child-care program was first proposed as part of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, many girls across the country weren’t allowed to wear pants in high school. That seems bonkers, right? In 2005, when Paul Martin’s government proposed yet another child-care plan, the...

A year of undergraduate tuition at a university in Canada typically runs between $6,000 and $7,000. Expensive? No, it’s a relative bargain compared with the price tag for child care.The annual cost of higher education is enough to cover just four months of a toddler’s care in Toronto, or around...

Ontario reversed course on sweeping new police powers Saturday, just one day after Premier Doug Ford announced the measures that triggered a swift and furious backlash.Officers will no longer have the right to stop any pedestrian or driver to ask why they’re out or request their home address, Solicitor General...

The Ontario government has voted against a series of Opposition motions aimed at supporting essential workers, including one that sought to create a provincial paid sick-leave program.NDP Leader Andrea Horwath presented the motions – which required unanimous consent of the legislature to pass – during a session today.She called on...

The Ontario government says it is considering a paid-sick-day policy for essential workers, an idea it has rejected for months, while Toronto and Peel Region issued orders that would shut down workplaces after COVID-19 outbreaks.Health experts in the province are adamant that these measures could slow the spread of the...

In a time of crisis, people should either lead or get out of the way. This week in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford appears to have chosen Option 2.He didn’t show up for Question Period on Monday and Tuesday, and skipped his government’s daily COVID-19 briefings. His sudden absence, after a...

Prospective first-time home buyers who were hoping that the federal budget would unveil a suite of measures to cool runaway markets across Canada will be disappointed: Help isn’t coming. Not from the federal government, at least.Granted, it is very hard to put a time machine – or a magic wand,...

In plotting a path for containing Canada’s post-pandemic debt and deficits, the federal Liberal government has embraced the route over which it has the least control. It might ultimately prove to be a wise course. But it’s certainly not a low-risk one.Monday’s budget features the second-largest deficit in history –...

Measured in number of pages and volume of words, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s budget is bigger than anything produced by any of her predecessors. There’s a lot in it, because a minority government eyeing an early election has reason to offer pecuniary acknowledgment to virtually every constituency imaginable. At a...

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the Liberal government planned a postpandemic, pre-election budget. It would land at the height of spring, and be all about the big, bright capital-F Future.COVID-19 had other ideas. Last week was arguably the pandemic’s darkest, and worse lies ahead. It leaves Finance...

For most of the pandemic, the view south was flattering.No matter how bad things got, Canadians were always able to console themselves with how it could have been worse. Why, we could have been living in the United States. It took only a cursory glance at Donald Trump’s America to...

At long last, Canada’s silly war over carbon pricing is over. As often happens in historic moments like this, the armistice came in the form of a simple statement, this one from Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole: “We recognize that the most efficient way to reduce our emissions is to use...

About the only thing more changeable than the weather this spring is the daily stream of news related to Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout.One minute the forecast is sunny, with doses arriving ahead of schedule and the possibility of everyone getting their first shot by summer. The next it’s clouding over,...

Ontario physicians have been urged to ration one of only two drugs known to reduce mortality in critically ill COVID-19 patients, a harbinger of what lies ahead for other provinces if the third wave keeps rising and Canada cannot secure more of the medication.A shortage of the anti-inflammatory drug tocilizumab...

In Canada, ending the COVID-19 pandemic is about one thing, and one thing only: vaccines.Sure, there have been lockdowns and curfews and stay-at-home orders at various times and of various lengths in different provinces. But most provincial governments have treated those centuries-old, proven pandemic countermeasures as inconvenient precursors to the...

On Wednesday morning, the BC Coroners Service issued its latest grim news: Illicit drug toxicity killed 162 people in October in British Columbia.It had been another brutal month, and one that again saw a spike in deaths involving “extreme fentanyl concentrations.” The death toll this year in B.C. is now...