Kevin Libin

Whoops! Maybe Canada’s efforts to attract foreign capital to the country are working too well when the Tamil Tigers are looking at moving their headquarters here.

Will Canada play host to a Tamil government-in-exile?

What do you do when boatloads of questionable asylum seekers swamp your country’s generous immigration system—as may be starting to happen with a second Tamil ship washing up on Canada’s coast? Ask the land down under.

What Australia can teach us about the Tamil asylum seekers

Or at least a ridiculous amount of construction material is. I try to find out why… and fail.

Caution in Calgary: Objects continue to fall from work sites

So, you’re the World Health Organization, and you’ve basically been dead wrong in predicting millions of deaths by pandemic. What do you do?

You try again.

Who cancels its false alarm

So the Brits don’t like the anti-oil enviro hysteria? Yeah—guess what? US NEITHER.

My monthly FP Business column, this one on the UK’s taste of its own medicine.

It’s just not cricket

“Albertans need a more progressive alternative” is the cry of the Alberta Liberal, and why the current leader Dr. David Swann is attempting to cooperate with the NDP, among others. Of course, the last time in modern history that the Liberals threatened power in the province is the one time they pitched themselves as more conservative than the Progressive Conservatives. But, hey, there’s always the power of faith and who would doubt the strategic savviness of a party that hasn’t won an election in, oh…89 years.

Liberals have a winning shot, but lack ammo

Alberta PCs once called Ted Morton a “redneck, religious, Republican” stereotype. Today, they’re just grateful to have a respected conservative in their cabinet to beat back the political threat from the right. Trouble is, Alberta’s finance minister may not be ready to fight. It’s my profile of the enigmatic Frederick Lee Morton, aka…

Tory Gunslinger

When is a broken transmission not just a broken transmission? When it’s on Michael Ignatieff’s Liberal Express campaign bus. I argue favour of the hackneyed journalistic metaphor with my critically acclaimed Full Comment Forum peers:

Full Comment Forum: The Liberals on the bus go down and down…

Edmonton has a competitive commercial advantage few cities are lucky enough to own: a commuter airport smack dab in it’s downtown core. Don’t worry: it won’t last.

Class war in the air

History is written by the victors. Street names, on the other hand, are written by whoever makes the most emotional pseudo-patriotic appeals. It doesn’t have to be so, or so I try convincing my erudite peers on the Full Comment Forum:

Full Comment Forum: Wellington St. by any other name is still stuck in Ottawa

Installment #46 in my ongoing, lonely crusade against the entire principle behind Canada’s ill-conceived anti-telemarketing registry. Now featuring an I-told-you-so !

Do-Not-Call on Ottawa to shield you from life’s little annoyances

Seriously… when your response to a mass violation of civil liberties and egregious state-sponsored deceit by Toronto’s G20 security forces is ‘well at least no one got hurt,’ you truly have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from the horrible lessons of the 20th century. Or so I inform my esteemed Full Comment Forum peers in this week’s installment:

Full Comment Forum: I went to the G20 and got a soggy cheese sandwich

It’s the emotional Edmonton taxpayers versus the guy who managed to build a multi-billion dollar drugstore empire using his hard-nosed negotiation skills. And Daryl Katz’s first move—scaring the living crap out of Oilers fans—appears to be working perfectly. I know who I’ve got my money on.

Katz cool as Oilers fans sweat

Hooray! Saskatchewan and B.C. are beating Alberta a little less brutally when it comes to attracting migrants than they were before!

Alberta loses Western lead

Can the Wildrose become Alberta’s answer to the Glenn Beck fan club? Absolutely. Is that a politically viable strategy? That’s the question members will have to ask themselves at their first public annual meeting.

Tending to Wildrose

Canada debates whether locking up more and more prisoners for longer and longer sentences is too expensive.

Me, I debate with my folks at the Full Comment Forum whether the price tag is really the first thing we should be concerned about.

The truth in sentencing is that it costs a fortune

The tension in Mount Royal is so thick you could cut it with a tournée knife. Not since they proposed to allow minorities to join has the Glencoe Club been a site of such controversy. What could be at the epicentre of such chaos?

Why, children’s figure skating, of course.

Skating schism at private club

The Full Comment Forum has arrived, bringing you a weekly weigh-in from the smartest minds at the National Post. Or at least the ones in the editorial department. Last week me, Scott Stinson and the always dashing Kelly McParland kicked off with a debate over whether teachers accused of child abuse should have their names concealed.

Do accused abusers deserve protection?

This week: How do we solve a problem like fathers willing to kill their kids for “shaming” them?

Canada and the culture of honour killings

What terrible crimes against children will we be discussing next week? Tune in to find out!

How US commercial interested cooked up the a BC backlash against fish farms.

Salmon farm battle about ‘competition’

Shutting down the drug lords in Kandahar, Alberta.

Peculiar place to find drug problem

How Stephen Harper’s leadership style looks a lot like Steve Jobs: domineering, but successful.

‘Overbearing’ Harper secret to Tory success

The saga of Brenda Martin takes another bathetic turn: of everyone mixed up in the multi-million Mexican con of AR Waage, only chef Martin remains a ward of the state.

Home, not free

What prompted to ninety-something Calgarians to get in their car one evening and drive until they died?

End of the road

What does Pascal’s wager on God have to do with the way governments spend stimulus money? Um, only everything. My FP Business column for June:

The Stimulus Bluff

Multi-level marketing has gone from selling Tupperware to your friends’ friends in your living room to pushing jewelery, Amway and even sex toys. Of course politics would be next. Welcome to the Big Listen: a progressive plot from the parlour.

The Big Listen: The left tries to find a spark in Alberta

The real reason the Tories cancelled funding for Toronto’s gay Pride parade. Turns out, it’s not altogether different from the speculated reasons.

Grants and drag queens don’t mix

Cigarette smuggling should be, for politicians, the easiest of easy lobs: illegal smokes are targeted at kids, they fund criminal gangs, and steal business from honest shopkeepers. If only cracking down on contraband didn’t also mean stepping on that third rail of politics: native affairs.

Maybe that’s why after the Conservative government promised to get tough on smuggling, it turns out that, well, it really hasn’t done much at all:

Tobacco Troubles

What to do, what to do about Canada’s productivity slump? Here’s an idea: You know that 10% of your country that’s essentially locked out of the country’s modern capitalist economy? How about we do something with them?

My economic argument for First Nations property rights in this month’s FP Business Magazine:

Give Them Some Homes

Give Them Some Homes

No one likes talking about it. I don’t like writing about it. But after 20 years of running from the topic as a policy matter, can Canadians actually suck it up, stop pretending it doesn’t exist, and actually talk about it? Hell, I did. Twice:

Abortion debate dormant no longer

Abortion; Is there any way Canada can have a real debate?

Dozens of Somali-Canadians have been murdered in Alberta in the last few years. All but one case remain unsolved. But there’s no need for any special investigation, says the premier: the police will get to the bottom of things. Eventually.

Somalis raise alarm over killings in Alberta