Wednesday, 21 May 2025

 

On "responsible" business and the 2025 Responsible Investment Association in Toronto

                          
When profit needs meet ethical goals is there room for convergence?  'Ethical' businesses believe so and the proof must be in their ability to survive and thrive if social enhancement tracks initiative, whatever the unavoidable dilemma. As an aspirational endeavour ethical enterprise is not a field for perfectionism, and improvement requires the enabling condition, that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. For over 20 years TorontotheBetter has existed to help interested shoppers find Toronto enterprises that speak to their values as well as their necessities, from food and health to culture and aesthetics.As information professionals we invite discovery, we do not decide.Whether a focus on private "do-gooding detracts from public responsibility is a question that must be pondered by all investors and we invite a healthy examination of the issue at all events like the upcoming Responsible investment Association (riacanada.ca) in Toronto in June 2025. 

Our directory lists hundreds of value-supportive retail stores in Canada's largest city. Visit TorontotheBetter.net to check them out.



Saturday, 19 April 2025

 

Tecumseth and Canada's Social Economy

Tecumseth and Canada as a Social Economy

Yes, Canada is a mixed (state-capitalist) economy like others, but recent events have clarified its core, and often missed, differences with its closest North Amedrican neighbour . They go back to 1776 and the point of separation of the founding colonies of the USA from those generally north of the 49th parallel that came to be known as British North America and ultimately Canada. The key indicators of difference were Canada’s retention of social (inon-financial) elements, in its cultural DNA, specifically French, through Quebec, and indigenous, through Shawnee first nation ally Tecumseth. Though these constituent factors derived from loyalty to the imperial settler regimes installed originally by Great Britain and France on reflection it emerges that they contained supra financial cultural values that, over time facilitated the inclusion of multiculturalism and key public institutions (most notably healthcare) in Canada’s. body politic.

It is this sometimes hidden counter-cultural statehood that has ensured independence over time and the current upswelling of popular antipathy to recent attacks by the present leader of the republic to the south. In essence, by birth, therefore, Canada is a social economy. however complicated by its imperial origin,  and so supports the concept of social economics that was our mission when TorontotheBetter was founded: economic affairs dedicated to values other than purely mercantile self-advancement. If Canada’s development as a social state has often been ignored it has recently emerged as a powerful emotive factor in the cultural politics of 2025 and what is likely to be a foundational election of North American differentiation. By birthright Canada is a social economy amd it is this that is fuelling the most overt popular resisitance to American hegemony in recent times.

                   


Sunday, 30 March 2025

 

Mar-a-lago and Berchtesgaden

 No, Donald Trump is not a new Hitler, but he has the character of tyrants throughout history: punitive, egotistical and self-aggrandizing. One thing that unites Trump and other historical malfeasants is their love of pastoral retreats as a relaxing break from their serious work of control and predation. Mar a lago fits the Berchtesgaden model of anti-social economic zones. The implications are for viewers to puzzle over. 



Sunday, 23 March 2025

 

Canada's war(s) with the United States

If current tensions with Canada's southern neighbor seem unprecedented they are not. A set of  memorial stones in a park on Portland Street in downtown Toronto mark the graves of Canadians killed in the War of 1812. The war was with the United States. Like most wars it was about economic supremacy between the U.S,A. and British North America, now Canada,and ts indigenous partners. Through the war Canada retained its alignment, as a European counterweight to American imperial expansion of the time. If  Northern North America collaboration ensued in the 20th century European/world  wars,cultural distance nonetheless remains deep and its flare-ups should serve to remind Canadians and the world of the core differences that separate these North American neighbours. They make Canada with our national public health care service and third party a more European and social economic culture. Though some may see Trumpian outbursts as a social media artifact a profound values differential is the root cause and American style social media are, like Trump himself, a symptom of deep and dangerously insecure  isolationist instinct  in our deeply interconnected socio-cultural times.





Wednesday, 12 March 2025

 

On Canadian integration etc.

 

Faced with such a profundity of  ignrance as we see currently from Canada's southern neighbour's leader it is hard to know where to start it is but let is start here: Canada is akready integrated! With Quebec.There is no interest here in other integrations. Canada’s current problems with the USA are - yes, the result of a vicious fool president named Trump (a clown who is clearly envious of Canada's superior ethical status in the world) and - yes, an economic over-dependency on a single country to export to, but - get real! - a mega - sized customer cannot be avoided. A better option is to pick and choose among the customers available. How about a Canadian social economic strategy? There are some progressive actors in the USA. In the current context avoid USA customers as much as possible, but use progressives (union/worker, and environment friendly) options when you can.  



Wednesday, 26 February 2025

 

Markets v. tariffs: confusions clarified

Thought there was a contradiction? One benefit of free floating thugs like the world’s current crop of autocrats is they can erase any confusion people might have about the proponents of  extreme “free” trade. A stroke of autocratic pens clears governments of long standing economic “principles”. Like autocracy “free” trade is a tool to maximize power for the already Empowered. Free trade is only truly free in the service of liberty for all.


Saturday, 22 February 2025

 

World Cup 2026 - Toronto: opium for masses? FIFA scores, people lose?








Football, aka soccer, and more broadly professional sport, have joined, if not surpassed, religion as “the opium of the masses”. If so, then Toronto is in for a very “high” summer in 2026 when the word’s most popular debuts its major tournament in the city for the first time. 

The question for Toronto is whether its world cup will do more than distract attention from everyday realities.   

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* Feb.22 2026.                                                                                                                                              Here begins our tracking of Toronto’s 2026 World Cup, our assessment of how much better the 2026 will be for Toronto, Canada and the world. World soccer/football Governing body FIFA wants 2026 to be the best ever World Cup. Let us see. Initial FIFA references to the Toroto World Cup laud our diversiy and livability but say nothing about the ecomomic assault on the country by its cup co-host, the U.S.A or the poverty and distress that co-exist with the 'enertainment, technology, and innovation' that capture FIFA's attention at www,FIFA.com..




  


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