Universities are often called ivory towers -- elite institutions open only to those who can afford the cost. When Lloyd Axworthy took over as President of the University of Winnipeg in 2004, he resolved to throw open the tower doors to disadvantaged families in the surrounding communities, many of them aboriginal. He developed the Opportunity Fund, which turns post-secondary education from pipe dream to real possibility for aboriginal and low income students.

For everything that the Conservatives have done to this country -- from lying about the costs of the F-35 program, to Bev Oda inserting the "not" that defunded KAIROS -- it's quite hypocritical of Harper's government to ask the First Nations for fiscal transparency on National Aboriginal Day.

What the hell has happened to Canadian journalists? In Canada, one of the world's most multicultural nations, our main media are controlled by a tiny group of almost entirely white newsroom decision makers who live in a world cut off from ordinary people like you and me. One result of this is that they produce journalism for each other.

With a host of new changes announced recently, Ontario's Feed-in Tariff (FIT) program is now on much firmer ground. Let's hope these changes will cool some of the overheated rhetoric, so we can all get on with fighting global warming and building a new green economy.

It is okay to find our stuff beautiful, because it is. It is okay to admire our culture. However I then think it is reasonable to ask that if you admire a culture, you should learn more about it. Especially when the details are so much more fascinating than say, outdated stereotypes.

The idea that indigenous traditions require us to only use technologies that were available to us pre-Contact, or more generously just a bit post-Contact, is silly. If silly was all we were dealing with, then I'd let it be. But silly ends up translating into policy, and I have to take that seriously.

Given the cynicism about politics today, some people ask me why I would want to be a MP at all. You see, I wasn't anxiously waiting for a chance to get involved in federal politics. But along with other candidates, staff, volunteers and, as it turned out, a whole lot of Canadians, we agreed to begin a journey together.

EthicalOil.org has a reputation for using just about anything to promote Canada's tar sands. This Monday it was my turn to get 'tarred' as the website's spokesperson Kathryn Marshall declared herself to be on "the very same page" as me. The assertion could not be further from the truth.

Walk around the inner-city of Vancouver, and the painful reality is clear. The parks are still strewn with needles; addicts are still lying on the sidewalks in drug-induced hazes; death is everywhere. I'm hoping to be proven wrong, but I suspect that in a decade, despite Insite's zealous staff working away, the problems will remain.

Although the Harper government has no problem spending money, I believe that they will probably ramp up the cuts that have already started. We must make sure that we are not balancing the books on the backs of the poor. Make no mistake, poverty costs us all. It forces up our tax bills and depresses the economy.

Prisons seem to be the Conservative mental health and housing strategy. Perhaps if they transferred the resources they've budgeted for expanded prisons to proper investments in housing, mental health and education, we would make real progress in creating truly safe communities.

'Medicalization' is the term used by sociologists to describe the tendency to understand aspects of social life as medical issues requiring intervention and control on the part of medicine. In Sinclair's case, he became stigmatized as a homeless person -- mentally ill, an addict.

By digging deeply into our royal roots, we wouldn't achieve the "renewed patriotism" Harper, Poilievre and his other Tory cronies covet. Instead, an honest "renewal of historic memory" would expose the truth that modern Canada, like British North America, is a military power that drives civilization to collapse.

The fact that the plight of Aboriginal Canadians still has to be singled out for special attention in the early 21st century conclusively demonstrates the urgent need for outside-the-box thinking and new institutional structures to support good governance.

One of the first lessons I learned from First Nations communities was about the importance of respect. Without respect for each other, we don't listen and we fail to learn. But respect should extend beyond our fellow humans, to all the green things that capture the sun's energy and power the rest of life on Earth.

The great danger now emerging is that if Canadians can no longer be persuaded of the legitimacy of national action, our collective ability to build on what we have in common will gradually, but inevitably, disintegrate.