I had a great change of pace last week, when I stayed out at the CAW Family Education Centre at Port Elgin to teach a 5-day course on "Economics for Trade Unionists" through the CAW's Paid Educational Leave program.

While I have guest lectured many times at Port Elgin, I have never actually taught a course there, so this was a great opportunity for me to experience first-hand how our PEL system trains and inspires hundreds of rank-and-file union activists and local leaders every year, through a wide range of peer-taught courses. The Centre was bursting at the seams with about 250 students in a range of courses -- including toxic substances, pride, collective bargaining, and training to be women's advocates.

One of the entertaining characteristics of Ronald Reagan's first cabinet was that most of its members wore a tie bearing a cameo profile of Adam Smith. The new team had a clear vision: it was time to replace the statist capitalism theorized by John Maynard Keynes with the free market capitalism espoused by An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Two recent stories out of Ottawa underline the ongoing political and economic assault on ordinary Canadians. More Canadians are now working for low wages than at any time in decades, continuing a trend that began in the early 1990s, and Stephen Harper has announced major changes to retirement benefits -- including delaying Old Age Security(OAS) eligibility to age 67. What kind of society beggars those of its citizens who worked all their lives and now want to retire in dignity while privileging the rich and super-rich by slashing their income taxes and allowing them to transfer their wealth to their children untouched?

I'd like to join the war against the war against Christmas: a cause bravely championed by muffled voices in the catacombs like Bill O'Reilly at Fox News and Rex Murphy on CBC. So here are some Christmas presents from the Judeo-Christian tradition that I hope will find favour with deniers and those who just don't care if there's a God since it would make no practical difference. I'll draw from the Judeo part, since it's my background. You can call me Santa.

Many long-held tenets of neoclassical orthodoxy have fallen by the wayside in the past three years, but perhaps one of the biggest dominoes that is at least teetering precariously (if not fully tipped over) is the consensus that inflation targeting should be the exclusive focus of monetary policy.