David Crane

We have an economic recovery of sorts. But economic growth remains weak, too many people are unemployed or in temporary jobs, there is downward pressure on wages, income inequality is high and business investment in productivity-enhancing innovation is inadequate. Could it be that the Golden Age of fast-rising productivity and significant improvements in living standards that we experienced in the last half of the 20th century is…

All governments seek to control information. Yet secrecy, message control and disregard for Parliament have probably never been higher than with the current federal government under Stephen Harper. Such secrecy threatens the functioning of an open society, undermines the role of our elected representatives and the democratic process, weakens our institutions, discourages innovation and the giving of sound advice within…

In the wake of the financial and economic crisis, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, a major debate is now underway on the future role of the state and the version of capitalism that is best suited to a modern economy. At issue is the free market philosophy that had dominated thinking—and policy—in the G7 world since the Thatcher-Reagan…

In a far-reaching report on global trends up to 2025 prepared for U.S. president Barack Obama, the U.S. National Intelligence Council warns that the United States’ days as the global hyperpower are quickly coming to an end. “The international system—as constructed following the Second World War—will be almost unrecognizable by 2025,” the report says, declaring that “the transformation is being fuelled by a globalizing…

Perhaps nowhere is the gap between what we know and what we do more glaring than in the unwillingness of Canada and other rich countries to deal seriously with the problems of poverty, disease and despair that afflict more than one billion people in the developing world today. As the World Bank’s 2005 “Global Monitoring Report” reminds…