Tim Moen

I've considered myself an activist for as long as I can remember. As a child I was connected to issues far bigger than myself and things like starvation, suffering, and violence around the world were always on my mind. I grew up believing that I could make a difference in this world and I can remember as a child and a teenager standing up for things I believed in and taking action even though I was scared. Sometimes the action I took, although well intended, caused harm. I remember being a camp counsellor at a children's camp and I knew the truth that some of these kids were going to burn in hell for eternity if I didn't do something to try and save them. I believe if you know that somebody is going to burn in hell and you do not do everything in your power to try and save them then you are a terrible person. If you are wrong and there is no hell, or no good reason to believe there is, then you are a terrible person for trying to scare and foist upon children the idea tha...

Liberal northern development critic Yvonne Jones recently came to town to boost the liberal party. Here are some of my comments about what she had to say. “You have to have respect among all the players to find proper solutions. One thing I’m discovering is they feel they are more neglected by government,” she said. “We believe part of the solution is dialogue with partners and adequate infrastructure investment.” I agree with Yvonne here that you have to have respect among all the players. The first and foremost way we respect other people is by recognizing their right to life and liberty, by acknowledging their human rights, their property rights. If the governments is to have a role in development of the oil sands region is to first and foremost help resolve and arbitrate disputes that arise between property owners. To ensure respect we need to understand who owns what, and who the players actually are, otherwise we are creating an environment for disrespect. The t...

This was the last topic I thought I'd ever write about, but this month marks the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's  Gettysburg Address  widely considered one of the greatest speeches ever delivered. I came across this article by a Canadian professor repudiating post-modernism and calling for Canadians to engage in principled rhetoric using Lincoln's famous speech as inspiration. He cites Canadian statesmen Thomas D'Arcy McGee who was Lincolns contemporary and admirer as saying, "A war for the unity of the Republic must be necessarily, ipso facto, a war for liberty. The dogmas of which the Republic is founded are the genuine articles of every freeman’s creed. " This caught my attention as a self-detonating statement. We need to engage in war to compel unity so that we can all be free? If a dogma of the Republic is  individual liberty doesn't that necessarily mean freedom from compulsion, force and unwanted unions? I didn't think they had post-modernists b...

I was recently invited to speak at a rally to impeach Allison Redford in Edmonton. The rally was organized by Richard Heathen a political activist and organizer from Grande Prairie. Here is an excerpt from the Facebook page that explains what spawned this rally: The Alberta Government under the leadership of Alison Redford has, through it's numerous scandals and it's prolonged attack on the property rights of Albertans shown itself unfit to govern. The Redford government with it's fetish for top down central planning, has shown itself incompatible with the Alberta culture of free enterprise and adherence to property rights. Under The Land Stewardship Act The Alberta Government has given itself the power to strip any existing rights to the land from property owner s. Bill 36 is an authoritarian law giving the Alberta Government complete control over what you can and cannot do on all public and private land, every last acre of it. With Bill 24 The Carbon Storage Act the ...

A couple weeks ago I wanted to let my family and friends know what was going on in my life and I tweeted that I was going to be filming with Neil Young and Daryl Hannah in Fort McMurray. I was not prepared for the reaction. My phone was immediately blowing up with media requests to find out what was going on. Reaction from people commenting on social media in the community ranged from concern to rage over how Fort McMcMurray would be portrayed by these people who have a clear environmental agenda. I refrained from commenting in the media ahead of time because I wasn't sure how much publicity they wanted and I didn't want to ruin my chances of working with these people. I agreed to an interview with Wallis Snowden at Mix 103.7 after filming was over and she presented a fair and brief synopsis of our interview to the listeners. I'd like to offer my readers a more detailed account of what transpired. Background I was contacted a few weeks ago by Neil's produc...

My wife called me today while I was downtown and asked me to pick up a Texas Instruments TI-83 graphing calculator for my daughter who is in grade 11 math. I asked why she couldn't use a free app on her iPhone instead of buying $130 piece of 1970's technology. Apparently they aren't allowed to use new technology...it's considered cheating. I remember running into the same line of reasoning when I was a kid with regards to using a calculator. Its cheating. I was required to memorize times-tables up to 12 and spend inordinate amounts of time doing equations by hand that could be rapidly figured with a calculator. Never mind that in the real world we have access to technology, the internet, and all sorts of apps and information that can help us rapidly solve problems. The job of school it seems isn't to prepare kids to problem solve but rather to be tested and ranked on their ability to memorize, regurgitate, and obey. The lesson here kids is that problems are solv...

At the tender age of 15 Rehtaeh Parsons was allegedly raped by four boys about her age. As a father of two girls (aged 15 and 16) I doubt I'd be able to contain my rage or impulse to commit violence against those who harmed my children. I am, however extremely thankful that justice is not left to enraged fathers and lynch mobs, we aren't known for our reflective objectivity, our rationality, our dispassionate evaluation of the evidence. There is a process, in theory, that exists called justice, the rule of law which is to negate the rule of passion and impulse. In an ideal world justice would not be punitive, designed to inflict pain and discomfort in order to gain compliance, but rather restorative and healing. Rather than locking criminals in cages at the expense of taxpayers criminals would be held to account for their crimes. Being accountable means fixing what you broke, restoring a victim to a future you took from her, it means restoring your credibility as a citizen th...