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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.”

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.