It’s no secret that the Harper government holds our natural environment in contempt. In fact, as Rick Mercer so saliently ranted recently, for many people the Conservative’s disdain for our environment is a significant selling point. Now if only, as Mercer put it, the Conservatives would stop insulting our collective intelligence by pretending to give a shit about climate change and sea turtles and the like, we could stop mocking their two faced hypocrisy.

It was a fairly normal Monday morning in April in Montreal. The sun was out, the streets were swollen with Montrealers eager the shed the layers of winter clothes and bask in the return of warm weather, and activists were occupying the office of a government MNA.

"This is approaching absurdist comedy," tweeted Montreal Gazette reporter Christopher Curtis Friday night, trapped in a police kettle from which Montreal's finest inexplicably refused to release him as his deadline approached.

"Did they really, actually arrest Anarchopanda????" replied well known Québécoise pundit Josée Legault.

Over the weekend the Quebec Liberal Party, or at least 3,000 of their supporters, met at the Verdun Auditorium in South-Western Montreal, ostensibly to elect a new leader.

In a coronation almost, but not quite, as lacking in suspense as Trudeau the younger's will be next month, Philippe Couillard, former Health Minister come lobbyist for private health care, was swept to the helm of this badly listing Liberal ship with a shade under sixty percent of the vote.

Of all the myriad and varied actions, blockades and events which have taken place since the Idle No More movement came together late last year, only one has resulted in charges being laid. This is the story of the only person in the country facing legal consequences for his role in Idle No More, and his efforts to raise enough money to pay for his defence.

On December 21st of last year members of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, located near Sarnia, Ontario, began a peaceful blockade of CN tracks as an expression of solidarity with Chief Theresa Spence's hunger strike and the broader Idle No More movement.

With omnibus budget after omnibus budget being thrust upon us by our friends in the Harper government, it can become difficult to keep track of what specifically we're losing. Many who are troubled by the deep cuts to government spending the Conservatives have made would nevertheless have trouble pointing to specific cuts which have impacted their lives.

The Quebec and National Capital Region sections of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, whose members are most directly affected by the cuts, plan to change that. 

In October of 2008, Iceland's economy collapsed. In that same month Hörður Torfason, an Icelandic actor and activist, stood out front of the parliament buildings asking two simple questions: what has happened to our country, and what are we going to do about it?

From there built a popular movement that would grow to sizes as yet unheard of in the tiny Nordic country, forcing the resignation of the government, and of the leadership of the financial authority and the national bank.

 A revolutionary folk hero at home, Torfason now spends much of his time touring the world, telling the bittersweet story of Iceland's Nordic Spring, and sharing tactics and strategies with activists in other countries.

With a little over a week to go until the Quebec Liberal Party elects a new leader, a leading contender for the post is facing questions over his work at McGill University during a four and a half year absence from politics.

Dr. Philippe Couillard, the neurosurgeon and former Quebec Health Minister widely considered to be the front-runner to replace former Premier Jean Charest, was appointed Senior Fellow in Health Law at McGill University in January 2009, shortly after his resignation from politics in the summer of 2008. 

When the Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ) announced that they would be breaking ranks with their more moderate colleagues in the student federations and boycotting the new government's education summit it was clear that they were taking a huge risk.

When they called a mass demonstration for the last day of the education summit, and publicly announced that it would be the largest demonstration since the end of last year's unlimited general strike, and that they expected in the neighborhood of ten thousand students to show up, they were doubling down with reckless abandon. 

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The ASSE, parent organization to the Maple Spring's CLASSE, had been remarkably quiet of late, staying largely out of the media spotlight and explaining that they were preoccupied with preparations for the Quebec government's summit on the future of higher education. On Monday morning the other shoe dropped, as spokesperson Jérémie Bédard-Wien delivered an incendiary message to media assembled at an ASSE organized press conference.

Bédard-Wien took the mic to deliver an ultimatum to the Parti Québécois government which the radically democratic student group had voted to throw down during their weekend congress.