A report last week in the prestigious scientific journal Nature revealed that the hole in the ozone layer over the Arctic was the largest ever recorded—comparable for the first time to the man-induced hole that appears every year in the ozone layer over the Antarctic. But when reporters asked Canadian scientist  David Tarasick, who was involved in the study, to explain its findings, Environment Canada refused to let him speak. [caption id="attachment_8689" align="alignright" width="150" caption="David Tarasick, muzzled by Environment Canada"][/caption] Environment Canada scientist David Tarasick, whose team played a key role in the report published Sunday in the journal Nature, is not being...

08 October, 2011

Air Canada did not respond to Contrarian's invitation to explain its price gouging on the Halifax-Sydney run, where it often costs more to get off in Halifax than to fly on to Toronto or St. John's (original complaint here). However, an Air Canada employee has argued forcefully that Sydney Airport (now called J. A. Douglas McCurdy Airport) "has extremely high fees and rents even for a Canadian Airport." I challenged my correspondent for specifics, and he responded: I called the YQY airport and asked how much it cost to land an airplane. There does not seem to be anything published. [An employee] said it...

03 October, 2011

Contrarian's aviation guru, Adrian Noskwith, thinks the Porter Airlines 50%-off sale may have played a role in the weird pricing I encountered flying from Toronto to Sydney (as Joe MacKay argued), but it's not the whole story. Airline pricing is a weird science at the best of times. When Porter is whipping Air Canada's ass out of Toronto Island, as they are at the moment, this drives airline pricing executives to do even weirder things. But why is it consistently cheaper to fly from Sydney to St. Johns (via Halifax) than from Sydney to Halifax? To check this claim, I priced one-way Air Canada...

27 September, 2011

During a brief stopover in Ottawa yesterday, a gracious member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery took me for a sail on the Ottawa River, where I snapped this photo: In case you don’t recognize the building, it’s the posterior of 24 Sussex Drive, home of Canada’s Prime Minister. Even without Bruce Cockburn on board, I was struck by the wondrous want of any obvious standing on guard for Stephen Harper. Our small party boarded my friend’s sailboat at the Hull marina, just across the street from the Museum of Civilization. No one checked our ID, demanded we sign a register, or x-rayed...

26 September, 2011

The Globe and Mail says Scarborough-Rouge River MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan, 29, might be "the most compelling of the new crop of young NDP MPs." She's the first Tamil-Canadian MP, and so has become the de facto standard-bearer for thousands of Canadians who have felt defeated – militarily, in their country of birth, and politically, in their new home. As a 29-year-old woman from political cultures – both Canadian and Sri Lankan – in which older men make most of the decisions, she exudes the poise, organizing skills and confidence of an old-school political veteran. How awkward for Contrarian, then, to report alert reader...

20 September, 2011

Contrarian needed to make a reservation yesterday from Toronto to Sydney. The fact I had to get all the way to Sydney meant I couldn't use Porter Airlines' magnificent service from Toronto Island Airport. Porter is the upstart airline known for its curious, retro habit of treating passengers as welcome guests. Leaving from the Island Airport avoids the time and money wasted getting to and from unspeakable Pearson. So I made a quick check to see if Air Canada could accommodate me from Toronto Island. To my astonishment, I found the following: $219.36 is an almost unheard of low fare. As I snapped...

19 September, 2011

For the better part of a decade, developers have successfully quashed efforts to block new office and residential projects in the city, and then failed to build them. Contrarian reader Marian Lindsay asks: What gives? Does anyone have anything to say about all this procrastination? This seems a ridiculous waste of time and perfectly good space. Does no-one in power find this unacceptable? Can no-one get these projects rolling? And, why, I ask, if these are private developers, are they dependent on government hand-outs? Has this just become the standard way of operating in this province? Yet, it seems to me, that...

15 August, 2011

Nova Scotians could be forgiven for feeling confused about prospects for shale gas fracking in the province. Is shale gas a sensible short-term approach to reduced carbon emissions? Or an environmental calamity waiting to happen? Those who stand to profit from shale gas, and governments desperate for energy solutions that won't cripple the economy, are predictably bullish on our shale gas reserves. Many environmentalists oppose fracking with the unreassuring obduracy they bring to every issue (see: the nonsensical flap over biosolids). I have no idea who's right about shale gas, but today's New York Times offers a massive dump of insider documents purporting to...

26 June, 2011

The reliably sage Jim Meek comes a cropper this morning with a column plucking nits off Canada's medical marijuana policy. The occasional Herald columnist, Nova Scotia's best, professes shock that the number of Canadians with federal permission to smoke dope for medicinal purposes has swelled to 10,000. Well, that's 0.03 percent of Canada's population, or about the number who support Elvis for Prime Minister—not exactly a blown floodgate. Nor is the other number Meek decries, the 1,400 Canadians who received permission to grow the drug after Ottawa proved incompetent to deliver reliable quality. Along the way, Meek finds one grower who...

25 June, 2011

  11:45 PM ADT: Barring some unexpected last minute breakthrough, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers is set to strike Canada Post in about 75 minutes. Amazing these organizations could both think it clever to remind Canadians how much their importance has shrunk in 30 years....

02 June, 2011
Show more
Loading...