My favourite unofficial pipeline to the Prime Minister’s Office — and I write that with tongue firmly-in-cheek — reports that Facebook has been banned by someone — the reporter here does not say who — within senior federal Conservative ranks. As a result, if you are an “exempt staff” for ...   more »

In 2005, Canada fiddled with its patent laws so that developing countries — the reform initiative was called the “Jean Chretien Pledge To Africa Act” — could get cheap access to drugs that could help fight AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases. Since the passage of the “Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime” ...   more »

Apparently it is or was National Hamburger Day and, to celebrate, the pollsters at Ipsos-Reid have found that more Canadians would like to sit down and have a burger with Stephen Harper than any other federal political leader:

Ipsos asked 1,000 Canadians “Which of the following would you be most ...   more »

Those of you on Facebook — I’m one! — likely know that the Prime Minister, Stephane Dion, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe are all Facebook users. And, for those who are counting, Dion leads the way with 7,819 Facebook friends, Layton has 3,082, and Harper has 2,390.

Duceppe is the last federal ...   more »

For those of you following along at the Conrad Black fraud trial  in Chicago, here is some evidence put on the record yesterday by the prosecution. It’s an e-mail from Black to his friend Donald Trump:

From: Black, Conrad M
Sent: May 20,2003 7:26 AM
To: Millar, Rosemary
Subject: RE: Reminders...    more »

The British government today announced some guidelines and recommendations it believes will help the UK government as it embarks on new regulatory regimes to address issues of climate change. The government was moved to do this in response to a report submitted to it by the Better Regulation Commission (BRC)...   more »

Immigration Minister Diane Finley was mighty unhappy at the grilling bureaucrats in her department received recently at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. A letter from Finley to the committee members was sent at the end of last week, on May 16. Some opposition MPs say it represents interference by ...   more »

A survey presented to a U.S. Congressional committee says average Internet download speeds in Canada are pretty quick — 7 megabits per second — compared to the U.S. but still slow compared to many of Canada’s G7 partners. If you had a 7 Mbps downstream connection, it would take you ...   more »

Global net censorship 'growing'

The level of state-led censorship of the net is growing around the world, a study of so-called internet filtering by the Open Net Initiative suggests.
The study of thousands of websites across 120 Internet Service Providers found 25 of 41 countries surveyed showed evidence of content ...   more »

NYMEX Considers Trading Greenhouse Emissions

NEW YORK - The New York Mercantile Exchange is considering trade in global warming emissions credits, a bourse senior executive said Wednesday.

"We have been looking at it, and will continue, and think it has promise," Robert Levin, senior vice president of research at NYMEX, ...   more »