Put as much effort into the implementation as you did into the imagination
Imagine spending days in a room with people you may not care to know that well and finding out later it was all a waste of time because the plan you decided upon is never implemented. This happens after many strategic planning sessions. Plans work when they engage your staff and create a framework that…
Immigration policy must build bridges and align with economic, social, education and multicultural policy
I was recently invited to share my thoughts and take a futuristic peek at the role of immigration in the post-COVID-19 economic recovery. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada invited me to speak at its annual executive leadership summit that included more than 250 decision-makers in the executive branch. My presentation spanned the unresolved immigration issues…
Honda got it right in almost every department – except the continuously variable transmission
Cast your memory back to the early and mid 1970s, when Japanese car manufacturers were just starting to make serious inroads into the North American market. Toyota was a presence, as were Datsun, Mazda and Isuzu. But the company that seemed to really get the ball rolling was Honda. When it was introduced in 1972,…
Given Biden’s age and niggling concerns therein, there’s a non-trivial chance he won’t see full term
Just a year after giving Donald Trump his electoral walking papers, the Democrats are in some degree of disarray in the United States. It’s still early days and things may turn around before the 2024 election, perhaps even in time for the 2022 midterm elections in the U.S. But the Democrats’ jubilant triumph of 2020…
Device would allow children with severe mobility issues to control toys or wheelchairs with their minds
Imagine children with severe mobility issues being able to move their wheelchairs with their minds. That’s the idea behind a new brain-computer interface being developed by researchers at the Universities of Alberta and Calgary. Think2Switch is designed to be a simple and nearly universal bridge connecting brain signals to switch-enabled devices such as a wheelchair,…
$2.1B in salaries and wages were generated as the result of oil and gas spending in 2017
By Ven Venkatachalam and Lennie Kaplan Canadian Energy Centre A headline screamed “The end of the Oil Age” in the Economist in 2003. Fast forward 18 years and that still doesn’t make sense in many ways. The demand for oil is increasing across the globe. Even U.S. President Joe Biden is asking the Organization of…
The Wet’suwet’en are trying to preserve our planet in the face of the oil industry trying to amass profit
A major issue is getting surprisingly little coverage in the Canadian media. While we looked away to watch the impact of the climate crisis on farmland in southern British Columbia, 50 heavily armed RCMP constables raided a peaceful blockade in Wet’suwet’en territory in the north of the province. The police used helicopters and canine units…
An influential breast cancer screening trial was not randomized properly and should be withdrawn, new evidence shows
Thousands of Canadian women may have died needlessly of breast cancer because of the fallout from two flawed studies on breast screening, according to a group of prominent researchers. In a commentary published in the Journal of Medical Screening, the researchers say they have new evidence that the Canadian National Breast Screening trials carried out in the 1980s were…
Radon exposure takes the lives of eight Canadians every day
One hates to be part of a statistic, but it seems like I’m one of the 94 per cent of people who had no idea that a silent killer was lurking in my home. It’s radon, which takes the lives of eight Canadians each day. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the Edmonton home…
There needs to be caution about any coercion that could harm our children
The Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics (CA4CE) is a group of researchers and scholars from fields spanning the natural and social sciences and humanities. It is concerned with the mismanagement of the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic response in Canada and around the world. The following commentary was written by Alexander Andrée, PhD, Valentina Capurri, PhD, Claudia…