(with Marc Lee and Iglika Ivanova)

Most British Columbians would agree that everyone should pay their fair share of taxes. And most assume that the wealthy pay more, not only in straight dollars, but also a higher tax rate as a share of their income.

So most would probably be shocked to learn that, in reality, that is no longer how our provincial tax system works.

It’s been an important week for Quebec student protesters, and we had lots of coverage in our blogs section! Ethan Cox discusses a poll which was released Tuesday with encouraging results for protesting students, and on Thursday he argues again that if you go by the numbers, students are winning.

Tuesday started out looking like a bad day for a protest. A constant drizzle fell on Montreal's streets throughout the morning, turning my shoes into a soggy mess before I even reached the demo. In the wake of Loi 78 many expected a record turnout to celebrate the student strike's 100th day, and rage against the infringements of our civil liberties contained in the "Special Law," but with the rain I wasn't so sure.

I should have known my fellow Quebecois are made of sterner stuff! Rather than a wet dud, Tuesday turned out to be the largest demonstration in Canadian history. A moment in time I'm sure I will be telling my grandchildren about one day.

OpenMedia.ca has launched a citizen-made online video educating Canadians about the true cost of the government's online spying legislation C-30 and the threat it poses to personal privacy.

If passed, Bill C-30 will force Canadians to pay for a range of authorities to invasively access their private data, at any time, without a warrant.

"Environmentalism has failed" is a statement that deserves attention. It comes from famed environmentalist David Suzuki marking 50 years since Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, widely regarded as having sparked the environmental movement.

Suzuki's May 2 article on the fundamental failure of environmentalism is ominous. The world faces not only environmental calamities such as deforestation, coral reef depletion and freshwater shortages, it is also mired in economic crises and harsh political realities.

Just about at the same time that people in the province of Quebec decided, in overwhelming majority, that decisive action was required by their provincial government to protect the French language, people in western Canada decided that equally decisive action was required by their provincial governments to ensure control of their own natural resources.

The federal government of the day (led by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau) more-or-less accepted the Quebec National Assembly's right to address the language issue. But the same government waged a battle of sumo-like proportions to try to wrestle control over oil, potash, uranium and other resources from western Canadian provinces.

Which didn't go over very well.

Here at rabble.ca, we've been hard at work to break through the wall of mainstream media that - either by ignoring or cynically attacking - has largely kept the rest of Canada in the dark about the historic social movement taking place in Quebec.

All across Canada and beyond, we need fair and in-depth coverage of the Quebec student strike. Not just so we can show solidarity with their efforts, but so we can learn from their creative and determined movement. Here are a few of my thoughts on the strike, which I originally wrote up for a regular column I do in The Source / La Source, a bilingual newspaper in Vancouver. 

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Exciting news!

As previously alluded to, the Babble Book Club will be hosting Vancouver-based author Kevin Chong for a discussion of his novel -- and current Babble Book Club selection -- Beauty Plus Pity Sunday June 24 3 p.m. EST/ 12 p.m. PST. Kevin will join the conversation for one hour on our previously established babble thread to answer all your questions and receive your comments.

Just in time for the 100th day of Quebec's student strike comes a birthday present of epic proportions for the indefatigable students.

They're winning.

A QMI/Leger Marketing poll released early Tuesday morning by the Journal de Montreal bore the banner headline "Le gouvernment va trop loin" (The government has gone too far).

On the central question of whether respondents supported the government or the students in the ongoing conflict over increases to tuition fees, the poll found a stunning 18 point shift from the government to the students, compared to a poll taken ten days earlier. Although this shift still leaves the students trailing the government by 8 points, the momentum is clearly on their side.

On Friday, Andrew Nikiforuk, the keynote speaker for 'Our World, Our Responsibility: Translating Knowledge Into Action,' opened the day's conference by giving an in-depth and engaging presentation on the Alberta tar sands. Three hundred people, mostly students, packed themselves into a lecture theatre at the University of Toronto Scarborough to learn about Canada’s largest and dirtiest energy project.

Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, showed powerful images of protests against the Northern Gateway pipeline, the tar sands themselves and the pristine landscapes threatened by tar sands development and pipelines that will transport the bitumen to China.