The whole SNC-Lavalin business is a mess. It contains a nasty combination of commercial, criminal, and political matters that need to be teased apart to make any sense of it. Before I go into this in any depth, I want to be absolutely clear here: I do not believe that
Continue readingAuthor: MgS
The Cracked Crystal Ball II: On Deferred Prosecution Agreements
With the uproar over SNC-Lavalin this past week, I decided it would be a worthwhile exercise to familiarize myself with this legal construct that the government introduced with Bill C-74 (2018 Budget Implementation). Because this is a large chunk of the legislation, I’m not going to do a detailed analysis
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: In Response to Ron Ghitter
In the Saturday, February 2 edition of the Calgary Herald, former Senator and MLA Ron Ghitter published an opinion piece titled “O dysfunctional Canada, laments former senator Ghitter”. This piece is perhaps good rhetoric while being terrible reasoning. Structurally, Ghitter’s argument is intended to get readers to “buy it” by
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Reasons To Dismantle The Current Party System
I've never been a big fan of the political party system. Partly because it's rare that party even remotely resembles the kind of perspective in government that I think we need, partly because I believe the party system has become a fundamental problem in our political discourse. The current
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Let’s Stop Conflating Transgender and Toxic Masculinity
I ran across an essay that was trying to argue that somehow transgender activism was “peak male entitlement”. “The Wolf of Masculinity is Dressed Up in the Sheep’s Clothing of Gender Ideology; Progressiveness is Now an Exercise in Destructive Male Entitlement” It’s quite lengthy, but more or less it boils
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: No, 2008 Wasn’t A Failure Of Socialism
In the Financial Post today, we have Terence Corcoran yammering on trying to claim that the 2008 Subprime Mortgage Crisis was the result of the evils of “socialism”. That the collapse of Lehman Brothers was the final explosive device that rocked the world financial system is beyond dispute. But why
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Conservatives in the Social Sciences
This was inspired by some of my own thoughts while listening to a CBC Ideas program on the lack of “conservative” academics in the Social Sciences. For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to stick to the broader, “small-c” conservative, “small-l” liberal concepts rather than the very specific
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Whither NAFTA Negotiations Now?
After yesterday’s revelation that Trump is not negotiating with Canada in good faith, where do NAFTA negotiations go from here? Up to this point, I have chosen to be quiet about the NAFTA negotiations because I really don’t believe they will go anywhere. If an agreement is reached, Trump’s track
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: On "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria"
About a year or so ago, we started hearing about "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria". This has primarily been a result of a "poster study abstract" by Lisa Littman. For the most part, the supposed phenomenon has been commented on at length by TERF blogs like "Fourth Wave Now", and "Transgender
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: No, Maxime Bernier is not "Questioning An Orthodoxy"
So, CBC’s Neil MacDonald published this screed defending Maxime Bernier’s stream of tweets about “extreme multiculturalism” this week. In an e-mail conversation about it, here’s what I wrote, explaining why MacDonald is dead wrong: I think more to the point, MacDonald is missing several aspects of the picture. First of
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: On Pride and Inclusiveness
So, according to the bright lights on the Calgary Herald’s editorial board, Pride needs to become about including everyone, including those who have a track record of oppressing the LGBT community. Harrison Fleming, Alberta co-ordinator of LGBTory, an LGBTQ conservative organization, calls organizers’ position short-sighted and characterizes their decision to
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: On Ending Political Tribalism
Political Tribalism is the idea of belonging to a particular political “tribe” (in Canada, that’s often expressed as a party) to the point of being utterly unwilling to consider ideas from outside of the dictates of whatever power structure exists within that tribe. Federally, the long standing feud between Martin
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: On Trump and the G7 Meeting
The meta messages coming from Trump over the G7 conference are interesting. It's not the actual messages themselves, but the the framework that they imply. On one hand, we have Trump spouting a bunch of trade war rhetoric on Twitter. Taken on its own, you might simply interpret that as
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Tying A Few Things Together
I have written a few posts recently which criticize quite strongly the recent spate of conservative “we must cut everything” hysteria over Alberta’s budget: On Alberta’s Budget 2018 On Government Finances and Debt About Hospitals and Ian Brodie All of these posts revolve around the basic theme of how ridiculous
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: About Hospitals … and Ian Brodie
So, this week Albertans were treated to a column from Ian Brodie on the subject of building hospitals. Mr. Brodie is a former Harper advisor, so we shouldn't be too surprised that he doesn't especially like the idea of spending public money on projects that he or his companions can't directly profit
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: About Carpay’s Bill 24 Lawsuit
So, apparently John Carpay has managed to persuade a bunch of fear-filled people to participate in an attempt to quash GSAs in Alberta schools. Carpay runs a Canadian version of the American ADF under the guise of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF). Although the JCCF bills itself as "defending constitutional
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Of Patterns and Puppetry
I’ve noticed a few patterns in this country’s right wing politics that make me deeply suspicious. Consider the following: 1) Andrew Scheer flies to London to “prepare a trade deal with post-Brexit UK“ 2) Jason Kenney travels to BC to “sell pipelines” (Facebook only) 3) 3 Conservative Senators Travel To
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Junk Science: Universe As Simulation Theory
On CBC Radio's "The Current" this morning, there was a long segment about the bogus hypothesis that the universe we live in is really just a giant computer simulation. I've heard this concept before – it's rattled about in computer science circles since I was an undergraduate student in the
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: On Alberta’s Budget 2018
The Alberta Government released its 2018/19 Fiscal Year Budget this past week, and many people are talking about what it does, or does not address. Yesterday, noted Alberta economist Trevor Tombe released his thoughts on the budget in the form of an editorial piece on CBC. Normally, Dr. Tombe
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: On Using Straw Man Arguments To Support "Conversion Therapy"
If you have been living under a rock for some time, you may not have noticed the uproar over so-called "conversion therapy" techniques. They have been declared unethical by the major mental health associations, outright banned in a number of states, and so on. However, that doesn't stop their advocates
Continue reading