More information is generally a good thing, especially when it comes to government statistics. Better data should lead to better decisions and better outcomes. But is this always so? Consider Statistics Canada’s recent dive into race-based labour-market data. Philip Cross, former chief economic analyst at Statcan, and Peter Shawn Taylor observe that reporting on unemployment rates across 12 racial categories will do nothing to reduce inequality or make Canada a fairer place to live. It’s far more likely to stoke claims of systemic racism, further polarize society and distract from the task of economic recovery.

Books – what are they good for, anyway? They’re bulky, they gather dust, they get frayed, they offer little that can’t be rendered digitally. Yet in the past, wars were fought over the people’s right to read, and spreading literacy became among society’s foremost social goals. Time was when some even risked prison to get their clutches on books they craved. Today, some see signs we’re about to turn our back on all of that. Patrick Keeney considers this civilization-threatening subject in his light-hearted meditation on his own voluminous collection of volumes.

The closing of the campus mind is proceeding apace. Today more than two-thirds of right-leaning academics across North America consider themselves caught in a hostile workplace. While several Canadian provincial governments have unveiled policies to officially protect free speech at post-secondary institutions, Ian Brodie believes that the nature of the university governance model and sheer resistance doom this top-down model to failure. A new approach is needed. Otherwise, predicts Brodie, the “progressive” left’s campaign to impose its upside-down definitions of diversity and tolerance will continue to rack up wins.

While much of the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s behaviour remains mysterious, one pattern seems clear: the greater the hand of Canada’s Liberal government in the response, the higher the likelihood of a shambles. One can virtually plot the curve! International travel policy is an egregious and worsening example. While “essential” travellers who have collectively logged millions of border-crossings remain exempt from Covid-19 testing, and arriving migrant farm workers head straight to the fields, those travelling for “mere” personal reasons must foot the bill for hotel-prisons and remain quarantined even after two tests. Gwyn Morgan chronicles the mess – and fingers the culprit.

The news business is at its least reliable when reporting on itself. Coverage of a media company’s own financial results, for example, is inevitably glowing and upbeat, whatever the actual figures might say. The same thing holds for concerns over “fake news”. Seizing on recent panic about the spread of misinformation, and thanks to a generous federal grant, Canada’s legacy newspapers have devised their own system for identifying fake news. But as Peter Shawn Taylor discovers, the criteria strangely celebrate their own product at the expense of their many online competitors. And much of it contradicts the basic rules of good journalism.

Who kicks a person when they’re down? Who dresses up their own resentment, spite or ideological fervour as analysis? One doesn’t need to agree with Jordan Peterson’s every idea to regard his recent comeback from the brink of death, destruction and oblivion as welcome, commendable and inspiring. At least worth a shred of empathy. But not from the more doctrinaire of his woke Left critics. As Janice Fiamengo finds, they aren’t just revelling in the popular author’s misfortune but are committing what they normally consider an unforgivable sin: blaming the victim.

“The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought”, George Orwell wrote in his famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. “In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” Orwell understood that whoever controls language controls political thought. And such an insight is as applicable to Myanmar in 2021 as it was to Oceania in 1984. Using Orwell as his guide, and relying on his extensive personal contacts throughout the country, C2C Journal associate editor Patrick Keeney takes a close look at reality and meaning in the recent coup in Myanmar.

Any Canadian possessed of a basic curiosity and sensitivity who ventures abroad will notice the tendency of locals to extol their country’s achievements and their culture’s delights, rendered with an enthusiasm and detail that quickly make it plain what the place and its people are all about. So why should Canadians be condemned to inhabit a country that has been engineered not even to have a culture all its own? John Weissenberger, a Montreal native and son of postwar refugees, chronicles the disturbing decisions of an increasingly self-loathing governing elite, how it spurned the legacy of a once-confident millennium-old society and offered millions of newcomers a hollowed-out shell.

Pandemic-rattled politicians and health officials would do well to recall the lesson of King Canute. The early 11th century Danish-English king had his throne carried to the seashore and commanded the tides to stop. They didn’t. It was meant as an exercise in humility; Canute was revealing that even absolute monarchs face limitations to their powers. Such self-awareness seems to elude Canada’s present-day rulers. Last spring, Brian Giesbrecht and George Koch write, our leaders simply got lucky when the Covid-19 tides receded. And having drawn exactly the wrong lesson about their powers, they set for themselves a political trap that has ensnared us all.

One might think that with Canada’s formidable array of pandemic restrictions, lockdowns, curfews, shuttered businesses and myriad other prohibited places and activities, the last thing Canadians need is another incentive to stay home and do nothing. And yet demands for paid sick days are now reaching a fevered pitch. Alongside labour and the political left, even some business groups claim to support the idea. As Peter Shawn Taylor finds, however, European-style sick-day benefits are no panacea. In fact, they threaten great harm to Canada’s post-pandemic economic recovery.

Preston Manning, former Leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition, founder and leader of the Reform Party of Canada and, most recently, member of Alberta’s Fair Deal Panel, compares the many damaging consequences of Canada’s pandemic management to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and finds that governments have violated virtually every right it enumerates – repeatedly and egregiously. Furthermore, governments have refused even to attempt to show that such violations are “demonstrably justified” in a free and democratic society. Though retired from politics, Manning brings a stature that cannot be ignored, giving voice to millions of Canadians who believe that individual rights and freedoms need protection most especially during times of national crisis.

The “Great Game” was a series of military and political manoeuvres and confrontations during the 19th and 20th centuries between Imperial Britain and Tsarist Russia over control of central Eurasia. Today that game continues, but with regional power Turkey having replaced Britain. A bloody war late last year between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the ancient battleground of Nagorno-Karabakh represents the latest episode of this ongoing powerplay. Arriving just weeks after the fighting ended, Fin dePencier offers an eyewitness account of the war’s chaotic aftermath, its terrible human cost and the role played by Canadian volunteers in helping Armenia recover from its devastating loss.

The rise of the educated middle class over the past 250 years is one of the great triumphs of Western civilization. But just as the middle class became ascendant, the intellectual left began figuring out how to tear it back down, an impulse that has since spread to virtually every privileged element in society. The elite’s war on the middle’s prosperity, social mobility and freedom has been accelerating. Where might it take us? Author David Solway is not alone in thinking it won’t end until we are reduced to a new serfdom that, though partially masked by the peons’ access to 21st century gadgetry and other technology, will be very similar in social structure and oppressiveness to the Middle Ages.

We have fallen a long way since the day, seemingly lifetimes ago, when “The End of History” and the global triumph of liberal democracy were considered plausible political predictions. Today a bellicose Russia is still tormenting its neighbours, China is on a global rampage and democracy itself is looking beaten-up. Why is this happening? Maria Krylova believes that totalitarianism derives much of its momentum and longevity from the human psyche itself. In this essay drawing on her understanding of Russian history and literature, her formal education and her burning belief in freedom, the adoptive Canadian issues an eloquent warning that no society is truly immune.

Canada’s economy was supposed to have been cruising along the road to recovery by late last year. Instead, the nation is once again shedding jobs, unemployment is high, companies continue to shrink or go under, entire industries are threatened and growth is almost nowhere to be seen. So why are governments seemingly doing everything in their power not only to hold back recovery but destroy much of what remains? Gwyn Morgan assesses several key areas of our nation’s battered economy and reviews the central role played by poorly thought-out, unneeded and avoidable government policies in each one.