Michael Robichaud If you’re a Canadian with an internet connection and one or more functioning eyeballs, you’ve heard about Montreal’s pit bull ban (which has been suspended by a Superior Court judge pending a final ruling on its legality). If I were to gauge the public’s reaction to the ban based on the tenor of…
Author: markruffalo321
Ontario’s Culture Strategy: Monetizing the Arts
Mike Robichaux It’s a new year, kind of, and the Government of Ontario is getting ready to roll out its first-ever provincial Culture Strategy. The draft plan is slated for release this winter (so, any day now), and will be based on an extensive process of public consultation through which Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals have tried…
The Centre Cannot Hold: What the Oil Crash Means for Wage Disparity, Part II
Mike Robichaux This month, Alberta hit a milestone. For the first time since oilsands production began its feverish twenty-first century expansion, unemployment in the province topped 7.4 per cent. Compared to the 7.0 per cent national average, this may not seem like such a catastrophe, but embedded in that figure is a bleak new economic reality:…
The Centre Cannot Hold: What the Oil Crash Means for Wage Disparity, Part I
Mike Robichaux This piece is the first instalment of a two part series When I thought up the idea of writing a piece on the post-oil crash Western Canadian labour market, I knew I was wading into dangerous waters. I had recently come across some research suggesting that the western resource provinces had…
Marketing Canadian Cinema: the Tough Sell
Mike Robichaux This year’s iteration of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) boasted a whole lot of Canadian content. The bill of featured directors on the TIFF 2015 website, in fact, read a bit like an exhaustive list of every Canadian who has ever made or attempted to make a movie this century. You had…
Dry Empire: Ontario’s Liquor Control State
Mike Robichaux My first experience with Ontario’s liquor control board took place minutes after I stepped off a bus from my former home Montreal. I was attending an open house hosted by U of T the following morning, and thought I’d pick up a couple of tall boys to enjoy in my hotel room before…
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