No one is protected from COVID-19 until everyone is protected, says letter writer
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, recently announced that “this pandemic has demonstrated that inequities in our society place some populations—and ultimately, all Canadians—at risk. No one is protected from the risk of COVID-19 until everyone is protected.” This doesn’t mean only within Canada: as long as the virus circulates, it can return […]
Don’t put yourselves in knots over all political family ties
OTTAWA—Time for a true confession. My first job on Parliament Hill was given to me by my cousin, John Crosbie. He gave me an opportunity because my parents were family and they had always been supportive of him. In fact, he was the master of ceremonies at their wedding and he grew up with my […]
Canada’s security is languishing under the Trudeau government
As the COVID-19 pandemic ravages the Canadian economy, it also lays bare Canada’s vulnerability to increasingly hostile foreign actors. The Liberal defence plan, Strong, Secure, Engaged, left Canada ill-prepared for the real world. The new reality of COVID-19, the return of great-power rivalry, and interrupted supply chains for critical equipment, is causing Canadians to doubt […]
Success in defence comes with across-the-board co-operation
Security is a fundamental responsibility of any state, but Canada cannot do it alone. The COVID-19 pandemic has only served to underline that we live in an interconnected world of intersecting threats. From cybersecurity to climate change to transnational crime, the modern threats we face can only be defended against through co-ordinated international action. It […]
Canada’s surface combatant costs might be taking on water
Sometime soon, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) will release an updated costing of the Navy’s Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) project. Much of Canada’s naval future, military combat capability, and ability to defend our country and continent are wrapped up in that project, the most expensive we have ever undertaken. Currently budgeted at between $56-billion and […]
While Trump spews lies next door, countries join forces here for global media freedom
OTTAWA—It’s hard to imagine a more pressing context for a conference on media freedom than a moment when the president of the United States is engaged in a full-scale campaign to reverse the truth about an election he lost. On Nov. 15, nearly two weeks after Donald Trump was defeated at the polls, he stuck […]
In Quebec, a wilful blindness to racism against Indigenous people
KAMOURASKA, QUE.—The death of Joyce Echaquan on Sept. 28 in the Joliette, Que., hospital, northeast of Montreal, drew national headlines for the way she died: Facebook Live streaming nursing staff as they hurled racist insults at her in a hospital bed. When the 37-year-old Atikamekw woman received morphine for stomach pains, she complained to the […]
Resist the MAGA-lite theatrics and make premiers accountable again
CALGARY—Canadian conservatism is showing itself to be a whiny bastion of imperious, incompetent, and now flailing mostly white men—and their co-conspirator women—who blame everyone else for their problems and shortcomings. It’s beginning to look like a lighter version of our MAGA-obsessed southern neighbours. What the pandemic has shown is that the so-called “Resistance”—as defined by […]
In the return of major power rivalry, Canada should cement its role
The demise of NATO, especially, and NORAD, occasionally, has been declared by many pundits on numerous occasions. During the 1990s, having defeated the Soviet Union and reached “the end of history,” NATO and NORAD discovered new missions. NATO went out of area and added counterterrorism and crisis management to its to-do list. NORAD provided air […]
The civilizing effect (touch wood) of lockdown on social media
For all the incalculable personal tragedy and economic disruption the COVID-19 pandemic has produced, there have been, if not entirely countervailing positives, at least unintended consequences of the rare, uplifting variety. One of them is that social media seems to have become less toxic in lockdown. I have nothing beyond anecdotal evidence for this assertion, […]
