Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 31, 2025 On Tuesday, October 28, 2025, the Alberta government passed Bill 2 - Back to School Act. [Please note that the link provided is to the Bill before it was assented to. I was unable to find the actual legislation online]. This legislation has three main components for our purposes in this post. First, it orders the teachers back to work. Second, it imposes a four year collective agreement between the various school boards (defined as

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 23, 2025 In this post I question whether the rule of law in Canada is a fiction. In law, according to Black's Law Dictionary, a fiction is "an assumption that something is true even though it may be untrue .... ". Legal fictions are used by legislatures and judges when they deem it necessary to do justice. Here, the untrue assumption may be that in Canada, we are ruled by law and not by capricious decision makers. I am talking about posit

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 12, 2025 Revised: October 13, 2025 Alberta K-12 teachers have grievances which include: pay and working conditions. Regarding pay, they argue they are underpaid. Let's analyze that a bit. Teachers argue that their pay has not kept up with inflation. Their existing pay scale was negotated and set by a collective agreement ratified in June, 2022 covering the school years of 2020/21 to 2023/24 (three years). According to a news article by CBC ,

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 10, 2025 It strikes me that 'right-wing' and 'left-wing' are weaponized labels used to smear someone...

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 6, 2025 I suppose it is not surprising that people support cancel culture provided that, and this is a...

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 3, 2025 Do you feel, from time to time, that political parties seeking election pull a bait and switch with their campaign? They make promises that, when elected, they make no effort to put into effect through legislation or otherwise. If elected, we will eliminate the GST? Hmm, GST. Too lucrative to give up. Elbows up! Where are the elbows? Or, they omit to mention a planned policy, say a carbon tax, in their campaign only to implement the

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 3, 2025 In this post, I will propose, perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, that judges who are overtuned on appeal should be subject to potential cost awards against them. Oy. This is crazy talk. Let me explain. When a party is successful in court, the default rule is that costs are awarded in favour of the successful party against the unsuccessful party. The unsuccessful party, is, in effect, penalized for putting the successful party through the

Author: Tim Platnich Date: October 3, 2025 I am in the process of writing a book on the history of the English Common Law with a Canadian context in mind. In the course of researching and drafting the book, it struck me how the law has evolved slowly and cautiously over at least 800 years. Principles recognized during the Norman period of English history still operate within our legal system today. William the Conquerer, rather than imposing law from Normandy upon his new sub

Author: Tim Platnich Date: September 4, 2025 In ancient times, rhetoric was taught as a necessary skill for public debate. The skill was to be persuasive in speech. The skill was deemed necessary for democratic government. It was also deemed necessary for philosophical debate and the pursuit of truth. Over time, rhetorical speech acquired a structure that we would now call logical argument with an introduction, a narrative, an argument section and a conclusion. In medieval ti

Author: Tim Platnich Date First Published: August 16, 2025 Republished September 4, 2025 with substantial revisions. In this post I will...

Author: Tim Platnich Published: June 20, 2025 The US Supreme Court released its decision in United States v. Skrmetti, et al, on June 18,...

Published: June 10, 2025 Author: Tim Platnich Alcohol consumption, of any amount, is now reported to be akin to playing Russian roulette....

Author: Tim Platnich Orignally published: May 24, 2025 Revised: May 28, 2025 The fight between President Trump's administration and...

Author: Tim Platnich Dated: February 23, 2025 On Friday, January 24, 2025, the Alberta COVID-19 Pandemic Data Review Task Force (the...

Author: Tim Platnich Published: January 10, 2025 It is often reported in the media, in pejorative terms, that non-renewable energy...

Date: August 24, 2024 Author: Tim Platnich I am not a fan of the 'left' and 'right' dichotomy. These days, the media typically express...

Author: Tim Platnich Date: August 12, 2024; Updated August 19, 2024 What I mean by reasonable people is people who think critically about issues. What I mean by thinking critically is explored in my previous post, here . For our purposes in this post, reasonable people are people who have formed opinions on issues after some research and analysis. Their opinions are tentative in that new research or demonstrated errors in their analayis may change their opinions. At the other

Author: Tim Platnich Date: May 18, 2024 Why are people homeless? I am sure there is a lot of data on this point. Without going into that data, analytically, there are four possible types of people who are homeless: 1) those that elect a homeless lifestyle; 2) those that are homeless due to mental illness; 3) those that are homeless due to drug or alcohol addiction; and 4) those who are involuntarily homeless due to financial or other causes. It may or may not be important to