Passion Power

 

Climate policies must benefit people as well as the environment. Fixating on scary stories about climate change leads us to make poor decisions. One CTV news reporter posted an article recently titled, “Here’s what the era of global boiling means for Canada.” The media outlets have become activists, reinforcing the extreme language against the backdrop of these wildfires. Imposing higher taxes to alter weather patterns is not resonating positively with the public, causing it to become a point of contention. Can we at least admit that it is as much a political issue as it is an environmental one?   Differing perspectives on its causes and consequences spark heated debates worldwide. Right now, there is nothing even close to a consensus on the scope of the problem or the best way to solve it.  Am I the only One?   Greta Thunberg is the poster child for this movement, but I’d like a more credible spokesperson than this.  She is very likely to live a longer, more prospe...

The Ai revolution is coming and get ready, because five years from now things are going to be very different.   Embracing this transformative technology while addressing ethical concerns will be the key to harnessing its full potential and creating a future where AI works hand in hand with humanity, improving our lives in countless ways.   The potential of AI is immense. Everyone will have access to higher levels of human intelligence. There is going to be AI assistants, tutors, therapists, teachers, etc. and it will significantly augment education.    The upside is labour savings and productivity.  You are going to be able to access a wide range of services at a much cheaper price.  AI-powered systems can analyze vast amounts of medical data, aiding in diagnosis and treatment decisions.  The Legal profession will be totally disrupted as well. Reviewing contracts, for example, will be done using AI and will bring the cost down to zero.  Ai is...

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a conference held every year in Davos, Switzerland where leaders around the world meet to address global challenges, share ideas, and promote cooperation on issues such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and technological advancements. Whether the WEF is seen as good or bad depends on individual perspectives.Opinions may differ based on political ideologies, personal beliefs, and experiences.  Supporters of the WEF argue that it plays a crucial role in fostering dialogue between various stakeholders, including governments, businesses, civil society, and academia. On the other hand, the WEF’s platform has faced criticism and argue that it primarily serves the interest of the wealthy elites and multinational corporations. The annual Davos gathering is predominantly attended by wealthy business leaders, politicians, and influential individuals, creating an exclusive environment that shuts out diverse voices and perspectives. Detractors ar...

I watched The Oprah Winfrey Show off and on for 25 years and I can still feel the same emotions that she riled in me. Her show made me laugh and cry.  She inspired me because she genuinely cared about other people and made you want to be a better person. I can’t think of a talk show, news anchor or journalist today that imbues positive optimism and authenticity the way that Oprah did. Her rags-to-riches story exemplifies the American dream. Oprah’s views were balanced between empathy and personal agency. “Turn your wounds into wisdom,” she would say. She was not afraid to open up about her own life struggles.  She didn’t subscribe to victimhood either, which is something I detest.   She had the best quotes; “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you – always.” She understands the magnitude of her platform and stays in her own lane which is something else I admire about her. She has opinions but chooses to keep th...

You might win, but you probably, and most certainly, won’t. Even when the great one, Wayne Gretsky lies to us saying, “with the right attitude and positive outlook you can win too.” In the long run, the chances of successfully coming out ahead are really, really, pathetic. But Connor McDavid and Austin Matthews, two of the best young hockey players in the NHL today, don't mind filling their over-flowing pockets to coerce you into trying it. Pretty sad when they’re targeting younger generations. Gaming advertisements are plastered everywhere on TV, sports broadcasts, billboards, and social media. It’s a total disaster. Yet, the Attorney General of Ontario, Doug Downey, said “We are truly proud of this strong, responsible, competitive online gaming model.” The government continues to bolster this industry at the expense of the next generations well-being and prosperity.  Even my husband admits he would have been in trouble at that age. Meanwhile, Paul Burns the President a...

The adolescent stage is between 13-19 years of age. They are filled with untapped potential, but the teenage years are often not seen as positive. It’s the stage of life where we are fraught with insecurity and self-doubt. The stage where we make mountains out of molehills. We sit around feeling isolated, lonely, and believing we are the only ones. The brain is still developing and there is a lot of life lessons learned during this period of life and it doesn’t always go smoothly. It can be explosive and full of drama. Author Cassandra Clare writes, “All my life I've felt like there was something wrong with me. Something missing or damaged. Every teenager in the world feels like that, feels broken or out of place, different somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants.” I don’t know anyone that wishes to go back to that time in their life again, yet it’s a time of great discovery about ourselves and world around us. There has been so much emphasis on redefin...

Jimmy Carter’s speech as he addressed the US in 1979, talked about a growing doubt about the meaning of our lives and the loss of a unity of purpose for the nation. He said the erosion of confidence is what threatens to destroy countries. The fabric of society used to be woven by strong families, close knit communities, our faith in God and pride in hard work and a job well done. These shared values have been replaced with owning and consuming things. There’s not enough stuff in the world to fill that longing for meaning in our lives. Consumption isn’t making us any happier. Society is getting sicker and sicker, and the solution isn’t more meds. We are confronted with a moral and spiritual crisis and a growing disrespect for government, churches, schools, news media and other institutions. Classic liberals, small ‘c’ conservatives and reasonable middle folks seem to have evaporated as we wrestle with culture wars, forever wars, war on drugs, political and corporate corruptio...

Mutual Respect I wish that I could say that sexism and misogyny was not a part of the work culture I was in, but it was, in every single workplace. Sexual harassment had varying degrees of seriousness and creepy, but it was all just swept under the rug. I remember one place I worked women had to wear skirts, pour the partners their coffee and get their lunch. I didn’t last too long. Blond jokes were funny. I laughed. Comments such as, “when are you going to wear those jeans again to work” were embarrassing, but nothing crazy. Women were seen as less important, less intelligent, and less able than men. We survived, but I much prefer what is happening now. One of Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous quotes is, “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” She was right but exposing people like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby showed the world how men abuse their power. The “Me Too” movement started a global discussion to end sexual harassment and violence. I’m so proud and gratef...

Twitter gives everyone a voice. It’s the wild west, entertaining at best and toxic at its worst. It has mobilized groups like me too and black lives matter and most recently the Iranian revolution and the war in Ukraine. It is a lazy form of activism. Twitter is not a place for a healthy debate. It is a noisy confused state where context goes to die. It never takes more than a minute or two to find something to be annoyed at and yet I’m compelled to return to the chaos and engage in some bickering with strangers online. As a free speech advocate, I applaud Elon Musk wholeheartedly for buying Twitter. Twitter employees were notoriously shadow banning and censoring one political side. These moral arbiters of truth were using the platform to push their own agenda and they got caught multiple times. Elon Musk saw what was happening and vowed to make it a more level playing field. As the famous philosopher Voltaire once said, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend ...

Politics matter because the stability of our country depends on it. Canada is changing and in an effort to remake ourselves, we want to make sure our political leaders are fighting for our rights and upholding the values we believe in. We all want a liveable world we can happily give to our children and grandchildren. In Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Haidt writes, we are divided politically because of our innate differences and that we all suffer from confirmation bias. He says that we make moral decisions intuitively then justify them with rational arguments. For example, I can see why I’m a right of center person politically. I come from a blue collar working middle class home. I was educated in the school of hard knocks. There was no coddling in my household and nurturing someone’s self-esteem was considered laughable. There were no freebies. If I wanted something I had to go out and earn it. My upbring...

The greatest charity of all is to give someone a job and there’s a million of them out there. According to Statistics Canada there are 997,000 vacant positions in the second quarter of this year, the highest quarterly number on record. The working class aren’t working but why? The working class perform essential work. They work in restaurants, cook, serve our food, clean, work as cashiers, take care of the sick and the elderly. We devalue the working class yet who will build your house or fix your steps or mow your lawn or deliver your food or look after you when you’re old? Every trade is desperate to hire workers, but nobody seems to want the job. Parents understand that getting into the trades is the way to go but good luck convincing our kids of that. They look down on their hard-working parents. They want the highest pay possible for the least amount of work. Kids listen to social media influencers and are looking for get rich quick schemes. Who hasn’t fallen for that at...

What walks like a teen fad and talks like a teen fad...is probably a teen fad. Celebrating trans is a growing trend and something I’m not okay with. But then again, I’m not a doctor set out to make millions off confused teenagers and desperate parents. I’m not big pharma that stands to make billions off these kids and the services including endocrinologists, sexual health physicians, speech pathologists, nurses, social workers, child and adolescent psychiatrist and psychologists. I feel sorry for the parents that must navigate this with their teenagers. As if raising kids isn’t hard enough. Am I the only one?  In Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our daughters she alerts us to the newest trend in internet support groups that indoctrinate young girls into believing gender identity as the root of all their problems.  If Shrier is right, a great many people have been complicit in practices that are proving very harmful to adolescent g...

This month my family and I are heading up north to the South Magnetawan river to spend a week reliving our fondest childhood memories and celebrating the life of our late brother, Paul, who passed away in February, six weeks after we lost our mother. We will rent a boat at the marina once we get there. I always thought my brother would have loved working at the marina. He loved up north. Paul, commonly known as ‘Dib’ lived a simple yet hard life. He chain-smoked cigarettes and drank beer every day of his life. We called him the cat with nine lives. He never answered the door or the phone and rarely called anyone. If he did pick up it was a code call from our mother. He probably sensed our sheer horror at his slow demise and mostly just wanted to be left alone. Alcohol controlled his life for as far back as I can remember. It hurt Mom to say it out loud, so we rarely did but it was always the elephant in the room. That’s the part that hurts the most. That he was broken, and no ...

In Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Coddling of the American Mind, he writes how good intentions and bad ideas are ruining a generation of kids. He said that safetyism, trigger warnings and safe spaces are counter-productive and that stressors are a part of life. We must prepare the child for the road not the road for the child.  Over protection equals bad consequences. We must give kids the freedom to develop their anti-fragility and when we don’t challenge ourselves physically and mentally, we deteriorate.   When children are raised in a culture of safetyism, which teaches them to stay “emotionally safe” while protecting them from every imaginable danger, it may set up a feedback loop: kids become more fragile and less resilient, which signals to adults that they need more protection, which then makes them even more fragile and less resilient. My sister-in-law has parents that come in with their teenager for a job interview. Last week, a school principal sent home a letter wa...

In May of 2012 a man drove out of a campground after spending the weekend with his 17-year-old twin daughters and the family dog.   Instead of turning left to head back into the city, he turned right and drove at high speed straight into a cement truck killing all of them on impact.   I cried every day for a month.   The news of the tragedy went on for weeks.   Who could do this to their own kids and why? It came out that his ex-wife had a restraining order against him.   He also had an alcohol problem. Think of the anger that was festering in him. The wrath he must have felt toward his ex raged in his heart until one day he just snapped. So many lives forever changed.   So many questions as to how this could have been prevented. Didn’t someone see his spiralling downward and try to help? Where was his support?   I have the same questions about the school shooter in Uvalde Texas in the US. Didn’t anyone see the warning signs and try to reach out. The s...

Every year with my Ontario sticker renewa I get an application form to fill out to become a registered organ tissue donor. I’m already a donor but instead of a gold star, a thank you or a box check, I must go online and make sure that I am still registered. Perhaps The Trillium Gift of Life Network might acknowledge those who have already registered. I can think of at least a dozen ways they could do this but apparently 12 board members can’t.      My uncle and father both received covid reliefs cheques last year from the Government of Canada.   Let me just say neither one of them needed covid relief cheques.   A friend rides around on his bicycle in a small town.   He hasn’t owned a vehicle in 5 years and just received a cheque from the Ontario government for his sticker renewal refund. Although these are anecdotal stories that only exacerbate the lack of trust in our establishments, they also point out a growing problem which is government accountabilit...

I have always been interested in social issues.  However, everything is upside down. After enduring a long lasting pandemic, the war in Ukraine is now weighing heavily on people’s hearts.  Addiction and poverty are crippling so many people.  Alcohol deaths and suicide rates are up.   As my interests’ meander in the world I see many markers of a society in peril. We have lost trust in our institutions. I see a lack of appreciation for the progress that’s been made regarding bigotry and racism in Canada. I don’t think an honest person can stand before you today and debate that a gay person or a black or brown person is worse off today than they were three or even four decades ago, yet we have a media culture and government obsessed on it. The virtuous trilogy of diversity, equity and inclusion insist that meritocracy should not and cannot exist because of our racist and discriminating past.   I see a society fixated on gender and race.    May...

Companies are doing a great job rebranding corporate greed as “inflation”.   Take Starbucks for example that says they are forced to raise prices due to inflation and supply chain issues and yet profits went up 31% and they gave their CEO a 39% raise to $20.4 million. A corporation’s sole purpose today is to make money. Never has that fact been more evident than in the grocery business.   I don’t have a problem with the Loblaw executive chairman Galen G. Weston making $4 million dollars a year, but I do have a problem with food going green on my counter and being forced to purchase multiple food items to get a sale price. The same Loblaws that has total assets amounting to $36 Billion and cancelled it’s $2-per-hour pandemic bonuses for frontline staff in stores and warehouses. When I asked the local store owner about these nefarious “multi-sales” he says they are profitable but not popular. He could lose his franchise if he doesn’t follow the rules.   So now we h...

I’m old enough to remember when it was considered impolite to discuss religion, politics, or money outside your home.  Then social media came along and gave everyone a voice.  It’s a new era to navigate.  As my mother-in-law would say, this is not our world anymore.  And while there are trolls being paid to create chaos and discourse on the internet by gaslighting people that take social media seriously not all internet storms are bad.  Twitter has brought public awareness and scrutiny on the ruling class and all their questionable ethics. Take the Ontario conservative long term care minister, Merrilee Fullerton, who dropped the ball in long term care homes is now working with vulnerable children and families as the Ontario minister of family and children services. See what I mean.  The former Canadian conservative Health minister Rona Ambrose now sits on the board of Juul owned by a tobacco corporation, an industry that floods our healthcare system with ch...