Not surprisingly, yesterday's Contrarian post on the furore over Rehtaeh Parsons' death has produced a lot of email, pro and con. Much of the angry reaction appeared on Twitter, where Contrarian tweets as @kempthead. Before sampling the reader response, two important preliminaries: What Rehtaeh's family has been through this week is about as awful as human experience gets. They have been loyal in support of their daughter, and courageous in their rejection of vigilante action against those accused of abusing her. Whatever one's views on the issues I raised, compassion for this family ought to be universal. As I said yesterday,  if you or...

12 April, 2013

Yesterday, I succumbed to self-pity about a gastank fill-up that edged perilously close to a C-note. Contrarian regular Denis Falvey offers a dose of reality: We will never get off our dependance on gasoline until the cost of a gallon of the stuff is through the roof. That's what makes the alternatives affordable. I am told that Quebec is currently building the infrastructure necessary for electric cars, and has an $8,000 allowance for each person buying a Volt. Whether that is good or bad, do you think it would happen with gas at $0.50 a gallon? As long as fish caught off our coast can...

10 April, 2012

Many assume the Dexter Government made a mistake when it asked school boards to consider—and report back on—the consequences of a hypothetical 22 percent cut in their budgets. They say this gave the boards and the NSTU a license to frighten voters, and thus rally support for their comfortable status quo. Contrarian reader (and retired Education Dept. bureaucrat) Wayne Fiander puts the case vividly: Having served two premiers in this province, I can say with some confidence that a real education "right sizing exercise" is necessary to preserve public education. No government has yet tackled this issue correctly. They start...

31 January, 2011

Contrarian reader Denis Falvey writes: A decision that flies in the face of one fact of science does not necessarily constitute ignorance. A bounty may not eradicate coyotes, it may not even lower their numbers appreciably, but it will change their habits. Coyotes live in an ecological niche; like any other animal, they will multiply to fill that niche. I would prefer that the limits on their ecological niche not include my doorstep, and the only way to achieve that is for the animals to be wary of coming near my doorstep. That's not going to happen with my singing Kumbayah'....

25 April, 2010