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Opinion

The Independent welcomes opinion pieces from readers on any topic. These pieces reflect the opinions of the writers. The Independent editorial staff reserves the right to edit the opinion pieces for clarity and length.

Prime Minister Trudeau: ‘It’s Time to End the MSM Blood Ban’

Published on Jun 5, 2018 in Opinion by Donovan Taplin

Dear Prime Minister, It’s time. In March of 1983 the news was broadcast over CBC Radio: “The Canadian Red Cross announced it is advising promiscuous homosexual men, Haitian immigrants, and drug users not to give blood. These groups are all in the high-risk category for a deadly new disease, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS.” I am writing to urge you to bring an end to the discriminatory MSM blood ban at Canada Blood Services. As you know, in its current iteration, the policy prohibits any man who has had sexual contact with another man in the last 12 months from giving blood. In order to understand the need to eliminate the MSM (men who have sex with men) ban one must revisit the AIDS crisis of the 1980’s and the depth of its prejudicial history. Early reporting on AIDS was often problematic and actually labeled the disease GRID (gay-related immunodeficiency).…

Residents growing ‘increasingly alarmed’ about ‘lack planning going into development’

Published on Jun 5, 2018 in Letters by Pam Coristine

I am a resident of the Kenmount Park area in Mt. Pearl. After ten years of living overseas (to pay down our student loans and put enough aside for a down payment on a house) my husband and I returned to Newfoundland in 2016. We had already spent two years searching for a house online and following our return spent another 8 months seeing properties all over St. John’s, Mt. Pearl, and Kilbride before finally settling on a modest home, at the top end of our budget, that answered most of our needs. A deciding factor in our decision, were the woods and trails directly behind the property, as well as the view of the lovely trees behind the back fence. Following the purchase of this, our first home, we set to work cleaning, painting, re-sanding, and doing all the other little jobs new homeowners do to turn a house…

Is the Canadian-American window a myth?

Published on Jun 1, 2018 in Opinion by Conor Curtis

It was in the early hours of the morning that I finally went to sleep, but not before witnessing the election result that would bring in the current U.S. president. I messaged the words ‘are you okay?’ to my friend Rose in the U.S., who had as it turned out gone to sleep early. For them it would be a very different morning. For me it already was. From the second my friend had read the message they understood what had happened. While this was not the good news they had hoped for they thanked me nonetheless because it had been the gentlest way of finding out how the election had gone. Or at least a gentler way than turning on the cacophony of reports on TV. For so many of my fellow Canadians the events and conditions—both social and political—in the United States seem overwhelming. Our neighbors have always…

Why is the United States always fighting a war somewhere?

Published on Jun 1, 2018 in Opinion/The Nonagenarian’s Notebook by Ed Finn

Why is the United States always fighting a war somewhere? Could it be because war is profitable? Harper’s magazine, in its June issue, reports on a panel of former soldiers that it convened at the U.S. Military Academy at Westpoint, New York. They were all veterans of wars waged by the U.S. over the past 30 years, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, or stationed in some of the nearly 800 military bases the U.S. maintains in more than 70 countries and territories around the world. These veterans were asked to explain why their country has been engaged in so many armed conflicts, and why, in none of them since World War II, has the outcome resulted in a decisive victory. And this despite the U.S. having the world’s best-trained and best-equipped armed forces. The war in Afghanistan has now dragged on for 17 years, under Presidents George Bush, Bill Clinton,…

Why is Canada far behind other countries in switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources?

Published on May 20, 2018 in Opinion/The Nonagenarian’s Notebook by Ed Finn

It is depressingly ironic that, while many other countries are steadily switching from fossil fuels to clean and renewable sources of energy, Canada’s federal and provincial governments squabble over building yet another pipeline to British Columbia—one that, with the existing Trans-Mountain pipeline, would nearly triple the delivery capacity from 300,000 barrels of oil a day to 890,000. And the planned new Kinder Morgan pipeline would carry the thickest and dirtiest oil of all: bitumen. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blithely claims that this massive increase in the extraction of oil from the tar sands is not incompatible with saving the environment from global warming. He proudly points to his government’s carbon pricing policy as evidence of a commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He projects emissions will fall by 90 megatonnes by 2022, conveniently not mentioning that this reduction, even if achieved, will still be inadequate. It will fall far below…

Does the NL government have the same environmental policies as President Trump?

Published on May 12, 2018 in Opinion/The Green Space by Douglas Ballam

I have a confession—I am moderately addicted to reading negative stories about President Trump. I think it’s because I loathe him as a human being and because negative stories about him support my internal narrative. In this, I think, I am far from alone. Before I go on, I would like to say that I know several intelligent and kind people who are Trump supporters. To blindly assign negative labels to all his supporters is unfair. I’ve found, for the people I know anyway, that their support is more a reflection of their frustration with the economy and perceived corruption in Washington than any crazy alt-right ideology. But I digress. While following stories on Trump, I began to notice curious similarities in his environmental policies and our own government’s here in Newfoundland and Labrador. To be honest, this didn’t surprise me at all. Our government’s policies rightly belong in the…

What’s behind the Canadian pension crisis?

Published on May 12, 2018 in Opinion/The Nonagenarian’s Notebook by Ed Finn

Most Canadians today are not financially prepared for retirement. According to recent polls, over two-thirds of us (68 percent) don’t have a retirement plan, 30 percent have paltry or no savings, and 62 percent end up retiring earlier than they expected or wanted. The Broadbent Institute, in a recent study, found that half of Canadian couples between 55 and 64 have no employer-provided pensions. Fewer than 20 percent of middle-income families have saved enough to adequately supplement the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Old Age Security (OAS). “The vast majority of Canadians without a private pension have totally inadequate retirement savings,” says the Institute’s executive director, Rick Smith. “We have a retirement crisis that requires urgent and immediate government action.” This action would ideally involve a substantial increase in the Canada Pension Plan. At present, the CPP pays a maximum of $12,780 a year, but many retirees don’t qualify for…

Nouns, names, and the continual need for linguistic innovation

Published on May 11, 2018 in Opinion by Nathan Elliott

Nouns matter. Are you talking about a rioter or protestor? That question implicitly informed any number of rhetorical and legal fights in the American 1960s, when the civil rights movement and demonstrations against the Vietnam war were in fall cry. A feminist or a discontented housewife? During the 1980s, the word ‘feminist’ was rhetorically twisted into ‘feminazi,’ and both terms became convenient rhetorical shorthand for a straw man created by conservatives: a bra-burning, abortion-hungry, man-hating extremist impossible to find on this plane of reality. In Canada we have discarded the word Eskimo in favor of works like Innu and Inuit and Inuk and Yupik ; the first is a catch-all used by European colonial adventurers and exploiters who couldn’t be bothered to recognize cultural and linguistic diversity; the plethora of terms to replace it goes somewhat toward undoing that colonial generalization. Yet no easy and fast guide exists. Those confident of their linguistic righteousness…

We need solidarity now more than ever

Published on May 9, 2018 in Opinion/Uncategorized by Rizza Umali

“Power goes to two poles – to those who’ve got the money and those who’ve got the people.” — Saul Alinsky May 1st marks May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, when countless workers across the globe take to the streets to commemorate the sacrifice and struggle of a strong labour movement that faced state-sanctioned violence to bring us the 8-hour work day, wages, benefits, and safe working environments, while continuing to hold institutions and governments accountable in what shouldn’t be an uphill battle for fair working conditions and living wages but often is. As a student at Memorial University for the past six years, I am no stranger to the immense contribution workers on our campus make, to allow students to learn in a safe and supportive environment. Despite the crumbling infrastructure due to years of upper level mismanagement, a profound amount of effort goes into keeping classrooms,…

Letter: Fracking on trial and the rights of nature

Published on May 7, 2018 in Letters/Opinion by The Permanent Peoples' Tribunal

The historic Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking, and Climate Change will take place this May 14 to 18, cohosted by Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University, Corvallis, and live-streaming online. For the first time in its nearly 40-year history, this session of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) will have an international focus and will include arguments about the rights of Nature in addition to the rights of people. Among those participating are individuals and groups from Newfoundland and Labrador. The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal is a highly respected international forum that grew from the Russell-Sartre Tribunal to investigate whether breaches of human rights norms occurred during the Vietnam War. Since then it has conducted a series of high-profile hearings to determine whether human rights standards were abridged in Bhopal, Chernobyl, and other sites worldwide. The Tribunal’s most recent session was on Myanmar’s (Burma’s) crimes against the Rohingya…

The Capitalist God’s Ten Commandments

Published on May 2, 2018 in Opinion/The Nonagenarian’s Notebook by Brian Arden and Ed Finn

The first version of this satiric parody was written nearly two decades ago by Brian Arden, while he was a member of the board of the Manitoba office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. 2018 revisions and updates by Ed Finn. 1. Thou shalt honour Me as your one true God and have faith in my religion of neoliberalism, globalization, free trade, and private ownership. 2. Thou shalt accept the impoverishment of the many and the enrichment of the few, for in my religion avarice is to be valued over social and economic equity, and competition over co-operation. 3. Thou shalt not oppose the decline of democracy. I will permit you the illusion of democracy. You may still vote for and elect parties that purport to be different, but since they now all bow down to Me, it matters not which forms the government. 4. Thy governments shalt provide…

The missing ingredient in the Muskrat Falls Inquiry

Published on Apr 23, 2018 in Featured/Opinion by Marilyn Reid

The one thing that government apparently doesn’t want discussed at the Commission of Inquiry is why our democratic institutions allowed such an uncritical handling of the project. On Friday, April 6th, hearings took place at the Beothuck Building on Crosbie Place to establish who would have standing to appear at the Muskrat Falls Inquiry. A coalition of three volunteer based civil society groups (The Council of Canadians, Democracy Alert and the Social Justice Cooperative) were among the twenty-two requests for standing. I ended up as the spokesperson. What does Muskrat Falls have to do with three groups that have no expertise in finance or engineering? What could we possibly hope to contribute? Look carefully at the Terms of Reference for the Inquiry and you’ll see that they largely confine participation to what the Commissioner, Judge Richard Leblanc, referred to at the hearing as “the business case” of Muskrat Falls. What’s…

Communication is complicated

Published on Apr 14, 2018 in Columns/Opinion/The Nonagenarian’s Notebook by Ed Finn

“But far more numerous was the herd of such Who think too little, and who talk too much.” –John Dryden. During the early 1960s, I was assistant editor of The Newfoundland Examiner, a weekly tabloid published in St. John’s. It was a journal launched to provide progressive news and views that were not likely to be found in the province’s conservative media. Our sole reporter was Malcolm (“Mac”) Maclaren, who had earlier emigrated to Newfoundland from England. He and I were boarders in a lodge owned by Mrs. Penny (not her real name), and she became a good friend as well as a good host. One evening, however, her friendship with Mac was sorely tested. She had a dentist’s appointment at 8 o’clock the next morning, but her alarm clock was broken, so she was worried about getting there on time. “Oh, that’s all right, Mrs. Penny,” Mac assured her.…

The myth of Canadian progress

Published on Apr 14, 2018 in Letters/Opinion by Ed Finn

In the current squabble over improving drug coverage and child care in this country, it’s crucial that the social programs provided in Canada be compared with the far superior benefits that are provided citizens of most European countries. Apart from the United States, Canada is the only advanced nation that confines its public health care to the services of physicians and hospitals. In Europe, coverage is universal and comprehensive, incorporating dental and vision care as well as pharmaceuticals. The latest OECD report on the social spending of its 34 member states ranks Canada 24th for its relatively low 17.2 percent of GDP expended on social programs. Most of the countries that surpass Canada have social spending rates higher than 24 percent of GDP, and several, including France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Ireland, and the three Scandinavian countries, have rates that exceed 28 percent. Incredibly, even the United States ranks above Canada…

Humboldt Broncos, Nora Loreto, and the difficult questions that come with grief

Published on Apr 13, 2018 in Opinion by Hans Rollmann

The tragedy in Saskatchewan has touched people across the country. But it’s also revealed a darker dimension to the country’s passions. On April 8, Montreal-based journalist Nora Loreto raised some difficult truths on Twitter. She responded to the outpouring of cash—a Canadian record for Gofundme—by noting that “the maleness, the youthfulness and the whiteness of the victims are… playing a significant role. I don’t want less for the families and survivors of this tragedy. I want justice and more for so many other grieving parents and communities.” The response was swift: far-right organizers who regularly troll her social media presence launched an all-out campaign to attack her. She has received thousands of vitriolic messages, death threats, rape threats, and more. Mainstream corporate media picked up the onslaught, with editorials published in papers like the Toronto Sun also attacking her. There are few of us who haven’t seen some friend or…

Scorpions, icebergs and cancer cells

Published on Apr 1, 2018 in Opinion/The Nonagenarian’s Notebook by Ed Finn

Feedback from readers of my earlier essay “Who benefits from government policies?” was mostly positive, but a few thought I had taken a view of the future so dire that it implied capitulation—that further “resistance is futile.” Let me clarify my thinking, at least to the extent of assuring readers that I have not lost hope. Although I see unchecked capitalism as inimical to life on Earth—as the deadliest enemy of all that is fair, progressive and wholesome—I believe it can be vanquished and replaced. Eventually. And before its demolition of the environment passes the point of no return. I am reserving my rationale for optimism until the very end of this perhaps overly protracted blog. I think it will be helpful first to consider how and why capitalism has become the world’s predominant economic system. This does not necessitate a tedious academic treatise, but can best be done by…

ArtsNL Forfeits Riddle Fence Sustaining Funding

Published on Mar 20, 2018 in Featured/Letters by Riddle Fence Board

Riddle Fence, along with The Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Arts Society and Wreckhouse Jazz and Blues, was recently denied year 2 and 3 of their previously approved multi-year sustaining funding as a result of administrative errors. Riddle Fence requests that its sustaining funding be reinstated and that an artist engaged review of ArtsNL be conducted. We stand in solidarity with The Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Arts Society and Wreckhouse Jazz and Blues. Riddle Fence is the only independent arts and culture journal in Newfoundland and Labrador. It encourages, supports and reflects arts and culture in Newfoundland and Labrador while contributing to a national and international dialogue. It is integral to the fabric of our artistic and cultural community across all disciplines. Specifically, our error occurred in CADAC, a financial data software program where arts organizations are required to input information from Review Engagements prepared by accountants. Grant Thornton prepared Riddle…

It’s time for serious talk about the NL fiscal bail-out

Published on Mar 17, 2018 in Featured/Opinion by Hans Rollmann

The news is full of prognostications of doom and gloom these days. Province set to go bankrupt, unassailable debt, unpayable power bills. What are we to do? For one, we need to start talking seriously about what a bail-out of this province’s crippled finances would look like, if it happens. More and more people (such as the economist cited in this CBC story) think it’s likely to happen. A country like Canada, which espouses to first-world status, does not simply allow an entire province to go bankrupt and shut down. What we should be focusing serious public discussion about, is not if there will be a bailout, but what the terms and conditions of that bailout will be, and how it will happen. On whose terms, and with what end-goal in mind. We need to be having that discussion now, and it is deeply troubling the government has not made…

Who benefits from government policies? Usually just the rich and powerful.

Published on Mar 11, 2018 in Opinion/The Nonagenarian’s Notebook by Ed Finn

“When it can be said in any country in the world, “My poor are happy; neither ignorance nor stress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive . . . When these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and its government.” –Thomas Paine. Lucius Cassius, a consul whom the people of ancient Rome revered as a wise and honourable judge, was often required to adjudicate disputes involving the laws or policies of the Senate. Time and again, his first question was “Cui bono?” which can be translated as “Who benefits?” or “To whose benefit?” His reasoning was that no political action could be explained unless it was first ascertained who gained from it. The even more illustrious Roman orator and statesman Cicero often quoted this…

The Maritime Link: Remember how we were going to use it?

Published on Mar 9, 2018 in Featured/Opinion by Delia Warren

Muskrat Falls was once touted as the key to long-term economic and energy independence for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. No longer would we be living under the shadow of the bad deal done at Churchill Falls, no longer would we need to burn oil at the aging Holyrood Thermal Generating Station, or face another DarkNL. We would have a transmission link to the mainland through Nova Scotia, giving us access to the energy-hungry eastern United States. Yet, last week the island of Newfoundland began importing mostly coal-fired power from Nova Scotia over the Maritime Link. The Maritime Link consists of two subsea cables that run 170 km across the Cabot Strait between Cape Ray and Point Aconi with the capacity to carry 500 MW of electricity. It was built by Emera to supply Nova Scotia with power from Muskrat Falls and provide NL with access to export markets.…

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