Feature

Are Immigrants Falling out of Love with Canada? (And is it Because We Feel the Same?)

Peter Shawn Taylor
March 18, 2023
Do you love Canada? The answer ought to be axiomatic. How could anyone not love a country with such a long democratic tradition, born of a spirit of accommodation and committed to the betterment of all who live within its borders. Yet expressing such an emotion today seems utterly obsolete, as our national narrative has become obsessed with shame and regret over our colonial past and racist present. If even native-born residents can’t find a reason to show any ardour for their homeland, why should we be surprised when new arrivals act likewise? Peter Shawn Taylor examines the recent decline in citizenship rates among immigrants to Canada and wonders if it says more about us than about them.
Feature
Do you love Canada? The answer ought to be axiomatic. How could anyone not love a country with such a long democratic tradition, born of a spirit of accommodation and committed to the betterment of all who live within its borders. Yet expressing such an emotion today seems utterly obsolete, as our national narrative has become obsessed with shame and regret over our colonial past and racist present. If even native-born residents can’t find a reason to show any ardour for their homeland, why should we be surprised when new arrivals act likewise? Peter Shawn Taylor examines the recent decline in citizenship rates among immigrants to Canada and wonders if it says more about us than about them.
Parliament vs. Courts

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Evolving Families

Where Have All the Babies Gone? The Unmet Fertility Goals of Canadian Women

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Indigenous Reconciliation

Jawbones, Gophers and Tainted Milk: What Do We Really Know About Missing Children at Canada’s Residential Schools?

Hymie Rubenstein and Tom Flanagan

Current News

Defending Academic Freedom
As wokism rampages throughout society, a few are attempting to fight it head on – and paying the price. One is political scientist Frances Widdowson, previously fired for sheer outspokenness from her professorship at Calgary’s Mount Royal University. Earlier this month Widdowson was shouted down by a 700-strong mob at the University of Lethbridge as she prepared to deliver a talk to which a faculty member had invited her. Those tempted to wave off the incident as irrelevant might remind themselves that today’s out-of-control students are tomorrow’s managers, leaders and (presumably) parents. Widdowson describes the encounter, its place in the broader intellectual and moral degradation of Canada’s universities – and what might be done to begin restoring balance.
Politicized Medicine
It hardly seemed the stuff of “professional misconduct and incompetence.” The wrong kind of hand towel hung in a patient washroom. An incorrectly worded report. Some pointed Tweets. Pushing the bounds of patient advocacy. Yet these are among the triggers used by Ontario’s medical college to destroy the careers and livelihoods of physicians who departed from the official Covid-19 narrative and exercised independent professional judgment in treating their patients. In so doing, the regulatory body also robbed patients of their doctors amidst a worsening physician shortage. Jason Unrau reports on three suspended Ontario doctors who – like psychologist Jordan Peterson – are waging a spirited defence. There are many more like them across Canada.
Social Health
Scratch the surface of any ancient civilization and you’ll likely find alcohol in some form, often consumed in copious quantities. Why is that? While the scolding voices of public health would prefer humanity put aside the crude and untutored needs of our ancestors, some things just seem to stick around forever. We still eat meat, we still watch combat sports, we still have religious beliefs and we still like to drink. With the federally-funded Canadian Centre for Substance Use and Addiction’s new drinking guidelines arguing every sip you take brings you a step closer to your grave, Peter Shawn Taylor looks at the reasons behind booze’s remarkable staying power. And its many, unspoken benefits. Part I of this two-part series can be read here.

On Point

COVID-19

The Private Sector Must Get a Larger Role in Canadian Health Care

Gwyn Morgan
Stories

The Revolution Eats a Few More of its Own

C2C Journal
Stories

The Justice Legacy of the Harper Years

Rory Leishman
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American Medical Association Journal of Ethics
Public skepticism isn’t something doctors need to “cure,” write medical ethicists Isabelle Freiling, Nicole M. Krause and Dietram A. Scheufele in the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics. They argue the medical profession’s tendency to label all opposing views “misinformation” is “riddled with ethical pitfalls,” paternalism and political bias. Instead of being bullied or nudged, patients should be allowed to make their own informed decisions.
Law & Liberty
In Law & Liberty, John O. McGinnis and Mike Rappaport make the case for “prospective overrule,” an approach that would allow originalist courts to overturn precedents without opening the can of worms that is overturning rights currently held as constitutional.
The Imaginative Conservative
Gary W. Houchens’ review in The Imaginative Conservative of the educational implications of Conservatism: A Rediscovery by Yoram Hazony, spells out how we should treat educational policy: as a tool with which to form young people into virtuous adults with a deep respect for family, faith, tradition and nation.

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Late Spring 2022 Issue

Page 1 | Quelle Surprise! Quebec Wants More (Seats in the House of Commons, that is)
Page 9 | How Taxes and Regulations are Worsening Vancouver’s Housing Crisis
Page 15 | Who Killed Granny? Pandemic Death Protocols in Canada’s Long-term Care Facilities
Page 1 | Quelle Surprise! Quebec Wants More (Seats in the House of Commons, that is)
Page 9 | How Taxes and Regulations are Worsening Vancouver’s Housing Crisis
Page 15 | Who Killed Granny? Pandemic Death Protocols in Canada’s Long-term Care Facilities

Stories

Automobility
The Trudeau government recently released its regulatory impact statement – including a cost/benefit analysis – explaining the plan to make Canada an all-electric-vehicle nation by 2035. James R. Coggins takes a deep dive into the document and finds it full of wishful thinking and sloppy logic. It also excludes many of the biggest costs consumers and taxpayers will face in the shift to electric cars and trucks. If the Liberals confronted the real costs and benefit of their policy, they’d have to admit that forcing Canadians to go electric will be as impractical as it is pricey. Those amazing and expensive electric pickup trucks? They won’t get you very far with a load in tow.
Politicians and Prosecutors
Too much Hollywood can damage your understanding of Canada’s legal system. When Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she was thinking of “pardoning” many who were charged with violating Covid-19 public health orders, her critics claimed that was something only U.S. governors could do. Then they accused her staff of contacting Crown prosecutors for a similar purpose – violating the purportedly iron ring of prosecutorial independence (another American concept tied to elected Attorneys General). But as Grant A. Brown explains, Smith is well within her powers to hand out pardons and deliver guidance to Crown prosecutors. In fact, there’s ample precedent federally and in Alberta. If handled correctly, both are entirely proper practices.
C2C Original Research
After talking about little but Covid-19 for two-and-a-half years, governments, academia and media became strangely incurious about the net effects of the pandemic on the overall mortality of Canadians. It seems a fundamental question worth asking. Learning the true toll taken by the disease and the measures meant to contain it is vital to assessing the efficacy and rationality of our responses – and whether we should do things differently next time. Using raw data from the federal government, Jim Mason, PhD, performed extensive statistical analysis of Canada’s death dynamics before and during the pandemic. Did Covid-19 raise Canada’s death numbers above normal? Was the government-imposed cure worse than the disease?
Nanny Statism
Just three years ago, governments across Canada effectively recognized liquor as an essential good, exempting alcohol sales from otherwise-restrictive pandemic lockdowns. Now, a federally-funded agency wants Canadians to largely stop drinking altogether, portraying alcohol as essentially toxic in even the smallest quantities. While claiming this advice is built on a foundation of unassailable scientific evidence, these new recommendations deliberately ignore a vast body of credible countervailing research in an effort to scare Canadians into swearing off booze forever. In part one of a two-part series, Peter Shawn Taylor exposes the biased and deceptive playbook of Canada’s new Temperance crusaders.
Society and Culture
In a digitized world where you can connect instantly with almost anybody – often by mere voice command – it seems hard to imagine anyone could ever feel alone. Nevertheless, our era’s widespread and chronic sense of loneliness is inescapable. Despite our natural human drive to seek happiness and fulfilment through contact with others, Canadians find themselves suffering from the physical and mental damage wrought by social isolation. But is this a problem government can fix? Aaron Nava lays out the evidence of our “other” pandemic – loneliness – and why some experts think we need a national strategy to help Canadians make friends again.
Electoral Politics
Near the end of Elizabeth Truss’ disastrous 45-day stint as British Prime Minister, the Daily Star tabloid famously asked readers if Truss could outlast a head of lettuce. After six days, the lettuce won. Elizabeth May has had a considerably longer run as head of Canada’s Green Party. Since returning to the job in November after a previous 13 years at the helm, she’s the longest-serving leader of any current federal party. Yet the wilt is unmistakable. Riven by internal dissension, plummeting election results, troubling allegations of anti-Semitism and a platform that’s been stolen by other, more credible parties, can May refresh a Green Party that appears well past its best-before date?
Challenging “Net Zero”
In Germany, coal-fired electricity plants are being recommissioned and floating liquefied natural gas import facilities are being connected to pipelines. The UK recently even decided to construct a new coal-fired electricity plant. Meanwhile, nuclear energy is experiencing a worldwide renaissance, with dozens of facilities under construction or approved. In country after country, the cold realities of energy supply and national need are reasserting themselves and even decidedly left-wing governments are acting with pragmatism. Every government, that is, except Canada’s, points out Gwyn Morgan. Here the Liberal-fuelled frenzy to impose the technically impossible and economically ruinous “net zero” energy regime continues to gather momentum. Canada must be edged off this path, Morgan warns, before it is too late.
Stories
As the recent FTX cryptocurrency collapse demonstrates, anyone from sophisticated investors to retail dabblers can experience big losses when making risky investments. Not even the pros really know what the future holds. But at least they’re playing with their own money. When governments play the same game, it’s on the taxpayers’ bankroll – whether they like it or not. Peter Shawn Taylor examines the Trudeau Liberals’ new plans for an activist industrial policy that will see several yet-to-be-created federal agencies making big bets on businesses in favoured industries. “Picking winners” is back in fashion.
National Identity
In these, the longest nights of midwinter, Canada feels as “northern” as it ever gets. Though we may dream of beaches and warm sunshine, our nation is second only to Russia in its sheer northern expanses, and most Canadians still seem to think of themselves as northerners, even if reluctant ones. But what is the north? Does it, in one writer’s words, dazzle with the promise of “the luminous, pearl, interior day”? Is it, as another put it, “a physical challenge and a hard thought”? Or does it signify something else entirely? David Solway harnesses an impressive troupe of writers and artists to help him explore these questions, finding that, for some, heading North can be a one-way journey.
West vs. the Rest?
Western countries have thrown no end of kind words, large sums of money and aid, and a considerable panoply of armaments into helping Ukraine survive Russia’s invasion. All accompanied by unending Angst. Could Ukraine go too far with that latest weapons shipment? What might Vladimir Putin be thinking? Can we help him engineer a dignified way out of Ukraine? How much land should Ukraine give up? Perhaps, suggests Borys M. Kowalsky, the West should instead mount a more serious effort to understand Putin not through psychological projection but according to Putin’s words and deeds. Clearly evaluating the aggressor, Kowalsky proposes, is critical to developing a counter-strategy that is realistic, achievable and responsible – helping Ukraine survive while avoiding nuclear war.
Criminal Justice
It stands as one of this country’s worst mass murders: eleven dead on and near the James Smith Cree Nation in rural Saskatchewan by the hand of career criminal Myles Sanderson. But after a brief flurry of attention and trite claims that a history of colonialism and racism were to blame, Canadians have shown little interest in discovering the real reasons behind this tragedy. Or how to ensure it never happens again. Hymie Rubenstein looks closely at the details of Sanderson’s violent life of crime and why Canada’s criminal justice system repeatedly set him free. In our efforts to reduce the suffering of Indigenous Canadians, are we actually making things worse?
Truth vs. Narrative
Like “safety” and “racism,” the word “science” has gained a near-magical power providing the right user with nearly unassailable authority. Its invocation often becomes a conversation-ender. Despite infinite repetition and evident failure, “following the science” maintained its awesome psychological power throughout the pandemic. Preston Manning pierces this veil of manufactured conformity by posing some basic questions. If science is to shape public policy, how might society ensure that the full range of relevant science is sincerely considered? And once this occurs, how can decision-makers be given a level of understanding that helps them make responsible decisions? These are questions, Manning reminds us, that our political leaders never bothered to ask.
Protecting the Vulnerable
Plenty of government policies act in opposition to one another. The Bank of Canada raises interest rates to fight inflation while politicians fall over themselves handing out money that will stoke it further. But such efforts are at least no worse than economic farce. Ottawa’s current plan to expand doctor-assisted suicide to cover mental illness while simultaneously claiming to take action against rising suicide rates surely reaches the level of ethical travesty. Christopher Snook examines the moral incongruity of the Trudeau government’s willingness to sanction almost unfettered suicide-on-demand as it also rolls out a national 988 suicide prevention hotline.
The New Racism
It required nearly 5,000 years of civilization to reach broad agreement that all human beings are created equal and that each of us is entitled to be treated equally without discrimination. It has taken fewer than 30 years to begin casting this aside once more. It would be bad enough if this retrogressive impulse emanated from society’s margins. In fact, treating people differently based on their race, colour, ethnicity or gender is being propounded at the very top – in our universities. Ted Morton, himself a professor for nearly 40 years, reveals the University of Calgary’s blatantly racist and sexist new hiring policies, recently launched under the guise of “equity” and “inclusion.”
Canada’s Labour Shortage
Society’s overall respect and admiration for science and scientists has probably never been greater. Why, then, do relatively few young Canadians seemingly want to become scientists? Why are so many schoolkids unwilling or unable to dig into the foundational learning needed to position themselves for an adulthood focused on a scientific career? Especially in an era when the economy is generating job opportunities by the tens of thousands for graduates with scientific training. Gwyn Morgan outlines the nation’s growing shortfall of STEM-trained professionals and looks into some ways to start overcoming the troubling inability of the education system to motivate Canada’s kids to focus on science.

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