Winemakers doing their part to help the planet

Like most agricultural industries, winemaking has been impacted by our changing climate.

Regions have been hit by drought or increasingly frequent hail storms, others ravaged by wildfires. Rising temperatures has seen some regions become too hot for grape-growing, while cooler-climate regions such as Nova Scotia and southern England have carved out a space in the world of wine production as significant players.

Making wine also impacts our planet, and not typically for the better — vineyards encroach on the natural habitat of flora and fauna, producers use precious water sources for irrigation and then transport heavy glass bottles thousands of kilometres by boat, truck or plane, contributing to global CO2 emissions. Conventional winemaking can employ a range of chemical pesticides that aren’t great for the environment.

But many wineries are also doing their part to reduce their impact on the climate, making more responsible choices in the way they produce wine.

Food safety, security concerns evergreen

Readers are always quick to respond with comments, questions and even the occasional correction when I write about the tools of modern agriculture, such as GMOs and pesticides.

Last week’s column contained an error.

The column highlighted the risk to Canada’s mustard industry from a new variety called InVigor Gold.

I mistakenly stated the variety is a herbicide-tolerant canola built from borrowed genes from its mustard cousin.

It’s never been easier, cheaper to do-it-yourself invest; just remember to keep it diversified

Reality frequently suggests we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.

Yet from a do-it-yourself investor (DIY) perspective, perhaps present times do represent the best of all possible worlds.

DIYers have plenty of well- designed, easy to access and use discount brokerages to choose from — be it offerings from the big six banks or fintechs. Today, you can easily set up a self-directed account to trade stocks, bonds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and even options at relatively low cost from a smartphone or laptop in a matter of minutes.

And in the last few years, most platforms have begun offering commission-free trading.

Why good employees struggle in wrong workplace

A manager once told me about an employee she couldn’t figure out. In one role, he had been described as disengaged, resistant to feedback and difficult with his team. When he joined her department, she braced herself. She expected the same issues to surface within weeks.

Schools honouring my father will help make Canada a more inclusive place

In 1968, my late father Murray Sinclair was named valedictorian and athlete of the year at Selkirk Collegiate Institute in his hometown.

He was very proud of this accomplishment in his final year of high school — so proud, in fact, he brought it up all the time.

“Hey Dad, I got my PhD,” I remember proudly telling him after finishing at the University of British Columba.

“But were you valedictorian and athlete of the year at SCI in 1968?” he responded, with a smile.

Moneyball — Scottish Premier league style

The numbers don’t lie.

As the Scottish Premiership gets set for its annual split, when the 12-team league divides in two for the final five games of the season, first-place Heart of Midlothian is targeting a most unlikely title and its first since 1960, when Tommy Walker’s side topped the table twice in three years.

With 70 points from 33 matches, Hearts has a one-point lead on Rangers and a three-point advantage over Celtic — the Old Firm that has finished champions every spring since 1985. Nothing and no one suggested that would change this term, especially after Hearts came an unremarkable seventh just 11 months ago.

That is, nothing but a mysterious supercomputer and no one except Tony Bloom, the gambler-slash-entrepreneur-slash-data geek who bought a minority stake in the club last summer. He intuited that Hearts would challenge for the title immediately and would win it, and break up the Old Firm, within a decade.

City failed to read the room before ditching Sals

If ever there were a moment to rethink how governments award contracts, this would be it.

National patchwork of half-measures not real interprovincial trade reform

It’s hard to find a more stark example of shooting oneself in the foot than Canada’s interprovincial trade barriers.

For decades, we’ve made it easier to buy a bottle of wine from California than from British Columbia, easier to ship bourbon from Kentucky than a craft whisky from Alberta. And now, even with governments finally agreeing in principle to fix the problem, Canadians are still being told to wait.

Again.

The latest promise is that by May 2026 Canadians in 10 provinces and Yukon will be able to order beer, wine and spirits directly from producers in other parts of the country. That’s the goal, anyway.

No better time for Canada to refine fossil fuel contingency plans

The oil crisis gripping the planet could be described as an economic apocalypse. Or, it could be positioned as an unprecedented economic opportunity.

ESG, ru OK?

It’s been a rough year, depending on your viewpoint, for the world.

That’s especially true for folks who believe in climate change science, as they watch the largest economic power in the world make statements like: “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”

That’s a March 2025 statement by Lee Zeldin, head of the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.

Since then, the Trump administration hasn’t just embraced climate scepticism, it’s seemingly tried to accelerate climate change, repealing protections while rapidly expanding oil and gas, and even coal development.