John Morriss

Reading Time: 3 minutes Private member’s bills are mostly an excuse for MPs, especially in opposition, to issue a press release and get their name associated with some popular cause. The odds of private member’s bill being passed in Parliament may be somewhat better than winning the 6-49, but not much. There’s a lottery system, and even if selected […] Read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes The standard explanation in news reports is that AWB Ltd., formerly the Australian Wheat Board, last year lost its export monopoly due to fallout from AWB officials paying nearly $300 million in bribes to Saddam Hussein’s government as part of the “Oil for Food Scandal.” If so, it seems ironic that one of the companies […] Read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes If you grow flax, you are no doubt aware of the nightmarish plunge in prices due to the apparent discovery of prohibited genetically modified material – probably the variety Triffid – in shipments to Europe. However, this is not the first time Triffid has caused nightmares. Many of us on this side of the Atlantic […] Read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Leaping tall buildings in a single bound at the same time as ensuring world peace may have been easier. A few years ago CBC’s “As it Happens” radio show host introduced a political panel on federal-provincial equalization with the question “Now that the Crow’s Nest rate is no longer an issue, is equalization destined to […] Read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s time to stop giving money to those designing lifeboats from a failing world. In contrast to their parents and grandparents who lived through two World Wars, Canadian baby boomers have lived a charmed life, though not one without some trauma. Practising nuclear-bomb evacuation drills to our school’s mud-floored crawl space during the Cuban Missile […] Read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes If you follow the Canadian stock market, you will probably be familiar with the name of Jeff Rubin, former chief economist for CIBC World Markets. Like all economists, he hasn’t always been right, but he’s been right several times on some bold predictions. In 2000 he predicted oil prices would hit $50 a barrel within […] Read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Stephane Dion may not be a barrel of laughs, but the much-abused former Liberal leader may soon get the last one. That will be when the U.S. imposes a carbon tax – which in some form, is probably what it’s going to do – and Canada, no matter which party is in power, is forced […] Read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and went throughout all the land of Egypt. And in the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls. And he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities: […] Read more