Research to Ruin: The Worsening Spectre of Academic Fraud

Buildings and other public structures, the ancient Roman architectural master Vitruvius wrote, need to be sturdy and long-lasting, must efficiently fulfill the uses and serve the users for which they are intended – and should be pleasing to the eye. Today’s architecture, writes Michael Bonner, is none of these things. In most cases, it’s the opposite – and that is usually by intention, as “starchitects” foist awful designs on an increasingly unwilling public. Thankfully, writes Bonner, there are glimmerings of a way back towards public architecture that not only does its job but reflects timeless principles of form, function, quality and beauty.

Canada has a long record of obscure knife laws. Did you know, for example, that cane swords are legal while comb knives are not? Or that starting in 2025 Manitoba will restrict the sale of machetes throughout the province? Meant to deter young gang members from using the imposing-looking bush knives as weapons, Manitoba’s new law sets a national precedent for knife control. And its proponents want it expanded in ways reminiscent of federal gun control, including bans, a knife registry and storage requirements. In interviewing experts and other key figures, however, Peter Shawn Taylor discovers that Manitoba’s “cutting-edge” law misses the point entirely.

Decades of government neglect and underfunding have left the Canadian Armed Forces a depleted, demoralized and nearly shattered force. The country is increasingly being ignored or even shunned by its traditional allies at a time when an increasingly dangerous world poses escalating national security risks. Canada must urgently rethink and rebuild its military to meet these challenges, safeguard its sovereignty and fulfill its obligations on the world stage, writes David Redman. In this clear-eyed assessment, the CAF veteran and crisis management expert sets out a pathway to renewal, explaining what the armed forces need to rebuild and how Canada’s political leaders – if they have the will and the intelligence – can make it happen.

Canada’s beleaguered economy has become beset with strikes called by unions demanding double-digit wage hikes in an era of constrained budgets and slim profit margins. The latest one, by Canada Post, is already inflicting great damage and threatens to drag on, perhaps right up to Christmas. Yet recent legislation passed by the Liberal government (pushed by the NDP) has made it more likely that major strikes will occur, and even more difficult for employers to try to continue functioning. This, writes Gwyn Morgan, is increasingly dividing Canada into a nation of “haves” – overpaid unionized workers – and “have nots” – everyone else. It is time, says Morgan, that someone stood up for the millions of Canadians victimized by power-wielding union bosses and the governments that enable them.

Few things about Donald Trump’s recent election are causing worse disarray worldwide than the incoming U.S. President’s vow to erect a tariff wall against all imports in order to spur a resurgence in American manufacturing might. Canada’s up to $200-billion-a-year worth of oil and natural gas exports lie at stake, feared to be among the new Administration’s tariff targets. But how strong is the basis for such fears? Probing the political psychology of Trump’s economic and trade policies and examining the intricate mechanism that is North America’s vast integrated oil and natural gas sector, George Koch illuminates the role Canadian energy can play in the U.S. economic revival and the Trump team’s geopolitical drive for global “energy dominance”.

The Justin Trudeau government’s decade-long determination to drive immigration numbers ever-higher – a policy that public outcry now has it scrambling away from – has obscured a rather important and discouraging phenomenon: more and more people are choosing to leave Canada. Emigration is the flipside of the immigration issue – a side that has been largely ignored. With the best and brightest among us increasingly leaving for better opportunity elsewhere, this growing trend reveals Canada is no longer the promised land it once was. Using the most recently released data and analysis, Scott Inniss uncovers why so many are voting with their feet.

“The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify,” cautioned journalist Darrell Huff in his famous 1954 book How to Lie with Statistics. It’s still useful advice, although Canadians might hope such a warning isn’t required for the work of Statistics Canada. In an exclusive C2C investigation, Peter Shawn Taylor takes apart a recent Statcan study to reveal its use of controversial, woke and unscientific methods to confuse what should be the straightforward task of reporting on the drinking habits of Canadians in various demographic groups. He also uncovers data the statistical agency wants to keep hidden for reasons of “historical/cultural or other contexts”.

Most Canadians have come to agree that the federal carbon tax needs to go. But while the rallying cry “Axe the Tax!” has been a deadly partisan tool for Pierre Poilievre, it does not constitute a credible election campaign platform, let alone a coherent environmental policy for a new government. The Conservative Party needs to develop both, writes Robert Lyman. The election this past week of Donald Trump as U.S. President creates an urgency to remake Canada’s climate policy on more realistic, sensible grounds. Drawing upon the pragmatic, economics-driven approach of the Copenhagen Consensus, Lyman proposes a middle path that discards the uncompromising, self-destructive ideology of the Justin Trudeau government while recognizing that most Canadians won’t accept doing nothing.

More people are becoming painfully familiar with the expression “the process is the punishment” – a legal or regulatory matter of such cost, complexity, length and personal stress that, regardless of its formal outcome, the targeted person emerges damaged, sometimes irreparably. It is all-but impossible not to attach this label to the nearly three-year-long prosecution of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, which has included a marathon 13-month-long trial, now awaiting its verdict. In Part II of this series, Lynne Cohen takes readers inside the Ottawa Courthouse – talking to the defendants, their lawyers and other experts – illuminating the Crown’s relentless pursuit of the Freedom Convoy organizers. (Part I can be read here. )

In his judicial review of the Liberals’ response to the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that “there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable.” With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s draconian actions thus exposed as unnecessary and excessive – in other words, illegal and unconstitutional – what now awaits Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, who each face up to 10 years in jail for playing key roles in the protest? In the first of a two-part series, Lynne Cohen charts the lengthy and vindictive prosecution of the pair, from their first appearance in downtown Ottawa to their initial arrest and pre-trial treatment.

The recent collapse of the power grid in Cuba, plunging the island nation into darkness and grinding its meagre economy to a halt, served as a reminder of electricity’s centrality to modern civilization. That dependency is only expected to increase as more electric vehicles take to the road – and, writes Gwyn Morgan, as the tech sector’s voracious appetite for electrons expands unabated. Morgan pours a pail of cold water on the much-mooted “nuclear revival” that has yet to deliver any actual new electricity. He argues instead that what’s needed is clear-eyed recognition that the most reliable, most abundant, most flexible and most affordable energy source is a fossil fuel located in vast quantities right beneath North Americans’ feet.

The devil’s greatest trick, the saying goes, is in convincing the world he doesn’t exist. You could say the same thing about cancel culture. Supporters of this poisonous phenomenon often deny its very existence, claiming those who find themselves fired or publicly ostracized for running afoul of wokist demands are simply being held to account for their own actions. Yet Collin May is proof cancel culture is a real and dangerous thing. Combining rigorous scholarly research with his own personal experience as a target, May reveals how a cancellation takes shape, the characters involved and the roles they play, as well as how – and how not – to defend oneself against this modern-day scourge.

Climate change has ingrained itself so deeply in the public consciousness that it’s likely an article of faith that the foundational science was all conducted, tested and confirmed decades ago. Surely to goodness, exactly how carbon dioxide (CO₂) behaves in the atmosphere is “settled science”, right? That more CO₂ emitted equals more heat and higher temperature is a cornerstone of the ruling scientific paradigm. And yet, finds Jim Mason, the detailed dynamics of how, when and to what degree CO₂ transforms radiation into atmospheric heat are anything but settled. So much remains unknown that recent academic research inquiring whether CO₂ at its current atmospheric concentrations can even absorb more heat amounts to breaking new ground in climate science. If it can’t, notes Mason, then further changes in CO₂ levels not only won’t drive “global boiling”, they won’t have any impact on climate at all.

Among the fundamental freedoms guaranteed to all Canadians is the “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression.” The liberty to speak one’s mind and engage in public discussions forms the very foundation of Canada’s democracy. And it is under attack. Investigating a prolonged and often vicious debate in Powell River, B.C. – which includes the denunciation of white British Columbians as “subhuman” – Frances Widdowson reveals how residents have had their basic freedoms denied by a group of well-placed “reconciliation” activists determined to change the name of their city regardless of public opinion or historical fact. As Widdowson discovers, expressing oneself in Powell River has become a risky business.

If one were to rank contenders in the global trade wars, Canada would likely sit somewhere between pint-sized and pipsqueak. Then why would such a nation’s government choose frontal assault against the world’s biggest and most ruthless economic combatant, one wielding a range of weapons and tactics to organize a counter-attack? Yet this is just what the Justin Trudeau government has done in imposing massive import taxes on electric vehicles from China, writes Gwyn Morgan. And worse, Morgan notes, Trudeau & Co. are sacrificing farmers from western Canada on an altar dedicated to eastern auto workers – while taxing those farmers to help pay for the vast subsidies needed to keep the auto workers employed.