Team Canada wins gold in Women's Hockey (photo: AP)

The Vancouver 2010 Olympics are now over, with the nation receiving a classic showdown of hockey supremacy in the form of the men’s gold medal game between arch rivals Canada and the United States to top things off.

A little more than a week ago, with the medal count looking very different than it did at the end of the Games, Canada’s much trumpeted and controversial ‘Own The Podium’ campaign was enduring a litany of criticisms that it had failed to produce the Olympic hardware that it was specifically designed for.

‘Arrogance,’ many said, ‘unrealistic,’ ‘overreaching,’ ‘doomed to failure,’ were among the chants coming from both domestic and international skeptics for whom the program was a contentious and decidedly un-Canadian effort to dare secure more medals for this country at a Winter Olympics than ever before.
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Opening ceremony for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games (photo by Reuters)

After years of painstaking planning, construction, advertising and anticipation, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics finally opened on Friday February 12.

Athletes, the media and sports enthusiasts from around the world gathered at B.C. place for a nearly 3 hour spectacle that showcased the unique, multicultural element these games have vowed to represent.

Unfortunately for the city of Vancouver and its Olympic Organizing Committee, the games have been subject to a slew of criticism.
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TTC collector dozes on duty; infamous picture sets off debate (photo by Jason Wieler)

All things considered, it has been a less than stellar month for Canada’s largest pubic transportation system.

The veritable Toronto Transit Commission, the historic ‘Red Rocket’ has been stung recently by a series of what can only be considered public relations disasters.

It all began January 9, 2010 when a transit rider snapped a cell phone picture of a TTC fare collector in his booth, apparently sleeping on the job (Jason Wieler photo). This may have seemed like an innocuous action by a bemused patron, but it quickly set off a firestorm among TTC management and staff, not to mention an irate public.

After being covered by nearly every newspaper in the country, the story rapidly made the rounds of television networks and eventually onto the internet, in the form of multiple YouTube videos that have been viewed thousands of times, and prompted this response from transit union president Bob Kinnear:

“Whatever the outcome of the inquiry, it is very discouraging that the picture taker and, apparently, other customers, made no attempt to determine if there was anything wrong with this TTC employee. A simple knock on the glass might have determined if the Collector was, in fact, asleep, or whether he was unconscious as a result of some medical problem. The reports that passengers were laughing at him as they passed by the booth makes this even more disturbing. The union will comment further at an appropriate time.”
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The scale of the destruction in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, Thursday January 14, 2010

In the wake of the devastating earthquake that has decimated much of the Caribbean island nation of Haiti, the Canadian government was among the first in the international community to offer immediate assistance and aid.

On January 13, the day after the destructive quake struck, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon and Minister of National Defence Peter McKay outlined Canada’s response to the massive humanitarian crisis that was unfolding by the hour in the beleaguered country.
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Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrives at Rideau Hall to meet Gov. Gen. Michelle Jean, December 4, 2008
Photo Credit: Adrian Wyld

For the second time in the space of one year, Stephen Harper and his minority Conservative government have forced a little used parliamentary procedure known as ‘prorogue’ to suspend the federal government and delay a new session of Parliament until March 3, 2010.

Apart from the troubling similarities as to the motivations behind these 2 drastic measures, it is impossible to view this second Conservative prorogue request as anything but unprecedented.

On December 4, 2008, Governor-General Michelle Jean granted Harper’s motion to suspend Parliament for over a month, as his Conservative minority strove to fend off an impending vote of no confidence orchestrated by an alliance of the Liberal and New Democratic parties, with the support of the Bloc-Quebecois.

This desperate move by the Prime Minister was in response to the uproar caused by the presentation of his government’s fall economic update, made just days before Harper requested the prorogue. The update included a number of what the opposition parties termed politically motivated measures such as a three year ban on the right of civil servants to strike, limitations on the ability of women to sue for pay equity, and a proposal to eliminate subsidies for political parties.

The Liberals and NDP were outraged that these measures were included at all, and railed against the government for doing little to address the growing global economic downturn while attempting to force these hugely unpopular provisions through the House.
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"We wish nothing more, but we will accept nothing less. Masters in our own house we must be, but our house is the whole of Canada."
Photo Credit: Warren Kinsella

As the first decade of the 21st century passes into its final year, most Canadians will continue to have much to be thankful for.

Our country is a nation rich in history, security, freedom and resources and remains one of the most culturally diverse on the face of the Earth.

For those of us who became politically conscious during the early 1970’s, few can refute the claim that a great deal of our current Canadian identity was forged by the indomitable figure of Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

For all his many critics, it is hard to deny that Trudeau left an indelible stamp on the rest of the world as to what it is to be Canadian.

He envisioned a country that was proud of its dual heritage, one that welcomed immigrants to become a part of the tapestry of this land, one that saw itself not as a global conqueror but rather as a global partner in the stewardship of this nation, our planet and all humankind.
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Embattled Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Photo Credit: CBC

In a span of just a few short weeks, Stephen Harper and his minority Conservative government have demonstrated a near total lack of credibility on two important issues which have dominated Canadian news – their stance on the environment and their knowledge and involvement in the alleged torture of detainees in Afghanistan.

The two issues are not by themselves connected, but they have managed to induce Mr. Harper and his government to deal with them in a strikingly similar fashion; that is, they first vehemently deny that any such issues exist, then they categorically refute that they have played any role in creating or contributing to the existence of these issues, and finally they attempt to downplay any legitimacy of the criticisms cast against them for their inability to deal forthrightly with the repercussions of their actions and or inactions once the issues and the government’s complicity with them have been exposed.
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Official portrait of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Port of Spain, Trinidad 2009

At the recently concluded Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper missed an opportunity to set a firm commitment for a reduction in North American greenhouse gas emissions which would have challenged his American counterpart to follow suit.

The Harper government has made no secret of its disdain for the existing Kyoto targets (which he once called ‘a Socialist scheme’), going so far as to announce what he felt were more ‘practical’ emissions reductions calling for a 20% reduction of 2006 levels by 2020. This has only raised the ire of environmental groups in Canada, who say that the government is in no position to promise alternative emissions reductions while opposing Kyoto and allowing the limits set by that protocol to balloon to levels 30% higher than the agreement called for.
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Canadian soldiers and a captured Afghan insurgent

Disturbing allegations regarding the treatment of Taliban prisoners captured by Canadian forces in Afghanistan have resurfaced this week, after Parliamentary testimony by Richard Colvin, the second highest ranked member of Canada’s diplomatic service in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007.

Colvin appeared before a special Commons committee on Wednesday November 18, 2009 and steadfastly reaffirmed previous statements he has made that senior Conservative government officials and Canadian military personnel had been aware of serious allegations that Taliban prisoners had been subjected to systematic abuse since at least 2006, that such treatment was part of sanctioned government policy, and that those he attempted to raise the issue with made it clear to him that these charges were not to be brought to light at a time when Prime Minister Stephen Harper was attempting to persuade an increasingly skeptical public that Canada’s Afghan mission was being conducted in strict accordance with international law, particularly when dealing with captured Taliban fighters.
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Tar sands oil refinery

Even before acid rain, Canada and the United States have long been at odds over the issue of inter-continental pollution. The debilitating fact that our individual and shared industrial waste respects no physical boundary has become an increasingly destructive and contentious issue, which is matched only by the often impenetrable political boundaries which have prevented substantive policy initiatives from curbing the fundamentally devastating environmental impact this has wrought.

Chief among these transgressors are the Alberta tar sands.

Since 1966, development of these vast areas of petroleum manufacturing has gone full steam ahead, despite persistent and troubling data from environmental protection groups that the massively intrusive and destructive footprint of this endeavour has had disastrously long term effects on native plant, animal and human life in the region and beyond.
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