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What to do about Canada Post

ByDoug Anderson Canada, Government Policy
Doug Anderson

Oct 26, 2025

In 1968, Pierre Trudeau appointed Eric Kierans as Postmaster General in his first cabinet (it was still a cabinet position back then). Judging by the Aislin cartoon from 1970 posted on Facebook recently by the cartoonist himself, nothing much has changed.

Well, yes, a lot has changed – postal rates have gone up dramatically, mail volumes have dropped dramatically as a result of email, parcel volumes have increased dramatically and numerous non-unionized competitors have taken much of that business from the post office.,

So, what’s left. Most importantly – but diminishing every year – the monopoly that Canada Post was given on letter mail. That was supposed to be the revenue generator that would keep them in the black. That’s not working out so well these days.

Kierans made a number of operational changes which included closing post offices and discontinuing mail delivery on Saturdays … More

My Nutritional Awakening

ByDoug Anderson Health

Why I take a lot of vitamins

Doug Anderson

Oct 11, 2025

Back around 1960 my aunt developed breast cancer and had a radical mastectomy (breast, lymph nodes and all – that’s what they did back then). She was told that if she had no secondaries for 10 years she could consider herself cured.

Nine year and several months later a secondary appeared, and that began a long series of further secondaries – each followed by surgery, radiation or chemotherapy regimes which made her life miserable. Like a lot of people in similar situations, she was ready to try anything. At the time there was a little book entitled “Folk Medicine: A Vermont Doctor’s Guide to Good Health” by Dr. D.C. Jarvis, which had been on the New York Times Bestseller list for the previous 2 years. Its prescription was apple cider vinegar and honey. My aunt read it and … More

My vitamins

ByDoug Anderson Health

I take a lot of vitamins because I don’t believe that humans consume anywhere near the quantities that they would have had during their evolution on the savannas of Africa.

In most of the listings below I have included the recommended daily requirement from one source or another

These supplement are of course in addition to what I get from my food.

Vitamin A – WebMD Recommended – Men: 900 mcg/day, Women: 700 mcg/day
Vitamin A aids in the development and maintenance of night vision and aids in maintaining the health of the skin and membranes.
I take 10,000 IU every other day (Halibut Liver Oil capsule -10,000 vtt A/ 1,000 vitD)
Both Vitamin A and D are fat soluble so they are stored in fat and in the liver.
Skim, 1% and 2% milk is fortified with 1,200 international units of vitamin A per litre, as required … More

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Israel’s Conundrum – the World’s Conundrum

ByDoug Anderson International Relations, Politics

UN GA backs 2-state solution – a important 1st step

Doug Anderson

Sep 21, 2025

Normally when I start writing an article, I have an endpoint in mind but in the case of Israel and its war in Gaza, there isn’t one. There are so many contradictions in its actions that I find it impossible to find any logic.

What is their goal? Do they really want to eliminate Hamas? Well, yes, but we have to remember that Hamas ‘success’ was largely due to Israel’s desire to keep the Palestinians divided in order to stifle any chance of a Palestinian state. They may be physically divided now by walls, fences and checkpoints but they are more united in spirit today than ever before.

Also, and most rational people know this intuitively, for every Palestinian killed, there are two or more that will seek to retaliate in revenge – that’s a … More

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We need a Canadian Social Media platform

ByDoug Anderson Canada, Media, Communications

Our Digital Sovereignty is at stake

I got an email Friday from OpenMedia.org, a Canadian advocacy group that specializes in media and privacy issues. The 1st two paragraphs read:

Think about your digital life for a second. The social media apps we scroll through: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. The cloud services our businesses and even our governments depend on: Microsoft, Amazon, Google. The AI systems shaping what news we see and what content gets promoted. Not one of these is Canadian!

Every single one is controlled by foreign powers and corporations that profit off our data, manipulate our choices, and increasingly undermine our democracy. That’s what’s at stake: Canada’s digital sovereignty.

I agree. Preceding this email, a 14+ page open letter was sent to the Prime Minister signed by dozens of public organizations and 70-odd individuals including the likes of Margaret Atwood and former governor general, Adrienne … More

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Deal or No Deal

ByDoug Anderson International Relations, Politics
Cusma is dead! Long live the new world order!

Doug Anderson

Aug 16, 2025

The gyrations of Trump’s trade war remind me of the popular Howie Mandel TV show from the early 2000s (it has been reprised a few times and reruns were still running on closed circuit at my doctor’s office a few months back). Contestants had to blindly choose suitcases with various amounts of cash up to a million dollars, gradually whittling down the number of cases in the hopes of hitting the jackpot. Trump is playing a similar huckster deal maker role as the US’s trading ‘partners’ scramble for their ‘deal’.

But that’s where the similarity ends. Reality takes over.

Canada’s failure to make a deal by August 1 is not the end of the world – it heralds a new era which will probably be better in the long run. Canada is unique among contestants. No … More

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Investments, Blind Trusts and Mark Carney

ByDoug Anderson Canada, Money, Politics

Why Potential Conflicts of Interests are a Red Herring

Doug Anderson

Jul 29, 2025

Mark Carney is apparently a fairly wealthy man. Wealthy people have to put their money somewhere and most of them are smart enough to realize that the bank is neither the best place nor the safest.

The disclosure of the assets that Carney put into a blind trust shows that he had investments in more than 560 companies through a third-party managed account, That 3rd party will be an investment company that is likely managing the wealth of numerous people and they have the expertise and the technology to pick stocks with good growth potential and below average volatility. They would have been operating under general guidelines set out by the portfolio owner. (e.g. no coal, no napalm, yes to clean energy, yes to innovation, etc.)

Beyond that, the owner would have little involvement and would … More

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The intersection of politics and personality

ByDoug Anderson Media, Communications, Personality, Politics
Why Hilary Clinton lost the 2016 election … and what about Mark Carney?

Doug Anderson

Jul 14, 2025

By any rational criteria, Hilary Clinton was far better qualified for the presidency than Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign, but objective qualifications did not decide the race – it was their personalities.

If you’ve ever been accused of being secretive, you’re likely an introvert and Hilary had lots of secrets – her emails, Benghazi, etc. A lot of those secrets were part of her job as Secretary of State (and it’s good that a person in that position can keep their mouth shut) but it left her vulnerable.

In contrast, Donald Trump was an extrovert at the more extreme end. Extroverts get elected because they have a relaxed self assurance that draws people in. They sound like they know what they’re talking about and so people (the MAGA ones anyway) … More

The UN and Bully Politics

ByDoug Anderson International Relations

Stumbling towards a World Federation in which NO country can veto Peace

Doug Anderson

Jun 30, 2025

When I was in high school in the early 60s, The United Nations Association of Canada was running a model UN for High School students. There were 70 or 80 high schools in Toronto at the time including public, separate and private, and each school sent a delegation representing a member country of the UN. Each school studied their country and its foreign policy and debated the issues accordingly.

It was a big deal involving several hundred students. We met on Sunday mornings through the school year and developed policies to solve the world’s problem. We tackled the world’s thorniest issues like Nuclear Disarmament, Refugees (there were already 100s of thousands of Palestinian refugees living in camps throughout the Middle East), Human Rights (apartheid in S. Africa was an emerging issue – Nelson … More

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Behold! The Naked Ape

ByDoug Anderson Evolution, Health

Survival of the Fittest: A Primer on Evolutionary Medicine

Doug Anderson

Jun 16, 2025

Evolutionary medicine is a legitimate but rather obscure branch of medicine. It studies humans and their ailments from the perspective of where we came from originally.

Homo sapiens evolved on the savannas of Africa about 300,000 years ago. Just to put the timeline in perspective, Christ lived 2,000 years ago so our species came into existence 150 times that ago. And moreover our species was preceded by several less developed Homo species over a period of several million years.

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The first humans probably did not wear any clothes and lived in the open unless they could find a convenient cave for shelter. We were hunter gatherers. The food we ate was mostly eaten raw (in spite of the fact that earlier Homo … More