Wayne Roberts

Why did Harper invite the Chinese government to buy Canada’s tar sands?

Oil politics makes for greasy bedfellows, and that accounts for some odd and ominous slipping and sliding on the part of Albertan oil developers and their guy in Ottawa, prime minister Stephen Harper.

Time for Ontario’s Neo-Liberal Innovators to Innovate

In one neat package of 75 pages, the government-funded Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress provides an excellent summary of almost everything that is wrong with neo-liberalism. Who could ask for a better measure of where proposed leaders stand?

Ontario’s Local Food Act: More maybe than act

To get a handle on the Promoting Local Food Act tabled in the Ontario legislature on October 4, it helps to know the difference between government support and government policy. If you choose door 1 and get support, you’re in luck. If you choose door 2 and get policy, that’s the booby prize.

Green infrastructure and food

A late-summer conference that brought city gardeners and construction developers from around the world to Toronto has just issued a declaration. The statement calls for a new generation of living infrastructure that’s built in partnership with what’s conventionally thought of as urban agriculture.

My dirty secret

To get back to this season’s water crisis, it’s the rich opportunities for reuse and recycling – not the scarcity – that should focus municipal debate about water. Actually, conserving or cutting back on water use is only a drop in the bucket of the water cycle-based strategy that’s needed.

Citywatch: Getting to the right question on the nutrient benefits of organic food

The international media had a field day headlining a Stanford university dissing significant nutritional benefits of organic food. I hope it’s not too late for me to ask a few questions that might steer the debate in a more useful direction.

Forest Gardens in Honduras make the best of two worlds

The drought parching harvests in several of the world’s most productive food baskets is the summer’s hottest global food story. Eerily, it’s matched by the season’s hottest archeological finding, which comes across as a cautionary tale...History seems to be repeating itself for the second of the western hemisphere’s great empires entirely dependent on a food supply centered around corn and an …

No water, no crops: how this year’s North American drought will impact you

I can’t figure out why Mark Twain is considered such a smarty pants for noticing that people always talk about the weather but never do anything about it. If people talk about the weather – this summer’s drought, and its likely impact on runaway food prices and forest fires – that’s deep folk wisdom recognizing how completely Nature determines our life prospects, not matter what level of air …

Can Main Street shops stop the traffic jam blues?

Going for a drive along a nearby street isn’t my usual idea of a good conversation starter or a way to get to know someone, but it was all for a good cause, so I gave it a try—and ended up seeing the internal workings of my main street for the first time.

New city moves help wipe away tears after RIO +20

Suppose they held a United Nations conference on sustainability and nobody came?