There’s something conceptually incompatible with the egalitarian promise of Canadian society for the “haves” to be able to own homes and have children and the “have nots” to have neither. These basic milestones shouldn’t be treated as luxury goods.
There’s a profound sense of malaise in the country right now. Although it has economic roots, it also reflects a deeper sense that the basic features of Canadian life aren’t functioning as well as they have in the past and that government is largely responsible.
As the Parliament returns from its summer recess, there are a number of big economic and fiscal questions that will loom over the upcoming House of Commons debates.
As nationalist historians and conservative scholars have slowly yet steadily vanished from campus, the new historians’ ability to defend their ideas and perspectives has atrophied. What’s left are empty claims of bad faith, misinformation, or denialism.
Trudeau’s economic policies have artificially stimulated economic activity by bolstering consumer demand, but they represent the policymaking equivalent of empty calories. They have failed to make the economy structurally stronger or Canadian households any richer.
A review of the CBC should test the basic idea of a public broadcaster itself by returning to the initial case for government intervention in news and entertainment and judging whether it’s still applicable. The most important question shouldn’t be “What is the CBC?” but rather “Do we still need the CBC?”
On a number of big-picture issues—economic stagnation, international isolation, national attenuation, and urban disorder—the government’s ideological agenda has failed according to its own terms. The promise of progressivism has run into the powerful headwinds of reality.
If Granatstein’s ideas and arguments were already dead by the time that his book was released, the intellectual currents that he identified have moved so fast in the subsequent quarter century that even his biggest critic hasn’t been able to keep up.
The inability of many university voices to substantively respond to wonky policy arguments is evidence of an entitlement mentality and a bad sign for the sector’s capacity to defend itself in the face of a less hospitable political environment.
A disrupted legacy media model isn’t a market failure that necessitates large-scale government intervention. It’s a market correction that policymakers should, generally speaking, let play itself out.
