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A rowdy Ontario legislature passed a hike in the sales tax and tolls on all highways yesterday. Don't panic though, it was the Ontario Youth Parliament, sitting in London, that gave the green light to highway tolls to pay for our crumbling roads and to raise the provincial sales tax to nine per cent. The 39th Ontario Youth Parliament continues today and tomorrow at Riverside United Church. More than 100 delegates, age 14 to 21, beat the weather and arrived Friday for their annual meeting, held in London for the first time since 2003. Welland delegate Mandy Lewis, a Grade...

Militaristic zeal appears to be sweeping the Stephen Harper Minority government. This militarism is just part of an apparent adopted agenda of 'Americanization' by this government. By the way, thanks so much Mr. Harper, for introducing Canadians to American-style reviews of Supreme Court Judge nominees. You and your associates in CanWest Global, and elsewhere in Canada's 'corporatized' mass-media, appear to be trying to "prepare" us for their apparently desired U.S. take-over of Canada. While Harper stipulates that this initiative was about "accountability", he reportedly shirks the kind of ethics review on which he had campaigned. The spectre of Americanization against...

Call it a sexual revolution of the virtual kind -- young Canadians are practicing a new style of safe sex and the only touching required involves a keyboard. Of more than 2,500 university and college students polled across Canada, 87 percent of them are having sex over instant messenger, webcams or the telephone, according to results of a national survey released on Monday. "We were very surprised," Noah Gurza, a founder of Toronto-based CampusKiss.com, an online dating community for students, which commissioned a Canadian CampusKiss & Tell Survey. "We did realize that new technologies are always embraced by younger individuals,...

RICHMOND, British Columbia (Reuters) - Prime Minister Paul Martin escalated a war of words with the United States on Wednesday, telling Washington not to dictate to him what topics he can raise in the run-up to Canada's January 23 election. U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins warned Martin and other Canadian politicians on Tuesday not to bash the United States as part of their campaigning. But Martin -- who has regularly attacked the U.S. stance on a bilateral trade dispute over softwood lumber and also criticized Washington's approach to climate change -- said he was not paying attention. "When it comes to...

By JOSE RODRIGUEZ   This space is generally reserved for cutting commentary, venomous verbiage and the odd shot of comic relief. Not today. Because even those of us lucky enough to be in the opinion industry (read: professional whiners) know a good thing when we see it.   It's Canada Day and despite the chronic criticisms that clacks from this keyboard all the other days of the year, today is a day to toast the Maple Leaf and raise a beer to Mother Canada. So bottoms up -- we have plenty to celebrate. If it wasn't for Canadians, the world...

Canada's election campaign is turning nasty as accusations fly about being George Bush's lapdog Toronto – The American flag was waving and George Bush was confidently strutting across the TV screen in military fatigues. You might think this television ad was for the US President's campaign for re-election, but it's actually a Canadian ad that began running last week for the left-wing New Democratic Party. The voice-over accuses the two front-runners in Canada's upcoming national election of being "too close" to President Bush and sacrificing Canadian "independence". Canadians go to the polls on June 28 and as the race gets...

'I don't know who taught him to fly, but they didn't tell him to check the gas'. A 25-year-old man is facing several charges after his plane, reported stolen from an airfield in Maine, crashed into a Montérégie field yesterday morning. The man, a Livingston, Me., resident, suffered only minor injuries in the accident. He had been flying a Cessna without a pilot's licence or flight training, said Constable Manon Gaignard of the Sûreté du Québec. For unknown reasons, the man left a private airport, near Turner, Me., about 6:30 a.m., running out of gas three hours later above St....