The modern welfare state owes much of its origins to religion. Blessed with ample resources and driven by a moral duty to improve the lives of those in their care, churches and religious orders in the Middle Ages created the first universities, hospitals, homeless shelters and food banks. More recently, however, the pendulum of power has swung mightily in favour of secular government. And now, with church attendance on the wane, those secular forces seem determined to destroy their spiritual competition once and for all. Examining a potentially devastating federal proposal to strip religious organizations of their charitable status, Anna Farrow considers the impact churches play in today’s civil society – and wonders how Canada’s less fortunate would fare in a world bereft of faith.

After more than a decade living in the crush and chaos of Southeast Asia, writer Brock Eldon came back to Canada to root his young family in a place of promise and possibility. He found instead a country in an advanced state of administrative rot and a people who have abandoned ambition for shallow self-righteousness. In this provocative literary essay, Eldon explores the North he long imagined and discovers that returning is not the same as belonging.

The federal government has long objected to provinces using the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ “notwithstanding” clause, arguing it lets them trample over the rights of Canadians. But that view, flawed as it is, is nothing compared to Ottawa’s latest gambit on this issue, writes Andrew Roman. Liberal Justice Minister Sean Fraser’s recent intervention in the case of Quebec’s Bill 21 asks the Supreme Court of Canada to declare limits on the use of the notwithstanding clause. This would amount to a backdoor amendment of the Constitution by the court, one that would give judges even more power and leave elected representatives even less scope to avoid or undo their harmful decisions. More than just an attack on provincial autonomy, writes Roman, it threatens to upset the balance at the heart of Canada’s federal democracy.

It is probably beyond the imagination of most Canadians that they would ever face the kind of evil atrocity Israelis suffered on October 7, 2023. Or that we would find ourselves living next door to savage terrorists bent on our annihilation. But as Gwyn Morgan points out, it is critical to understand that reality as Israel’s struggle for existence carries on. The history of Israel is nothing short of miraculous. As Morgan personally observed on a tour of the world’s only Jewish state, Israelis have with determination and heart built a free, tolerant, prosperous and technologically-advanced democracy while surrounded by enemies. In the face of ruthless attacks by Hamas and the craven behaviour of supposed friends and allies who now lean in favour of the terrorists, Israel has reminded the rest of the world what real courage is.

“Decarbonized” oil is being touted as a way to bridge the policy chasm separating energy-rich Alberta and the climate-change-obsessed Mark Carney government. Take the carbon dioxide normally emitted during the production and processing of crude oil and store it underground, the thinking goes, and Canada can have it all: plentiful jobs, a thriving industry, burgeoning exports and falling greenhouse gas emissions. But is “decarbonized” oil really a potential panacea – or an oxymoron that makes no more sense than “dehydrated” water? In this original analysis, former National Energy Board member Ron Wallace evaluates whether a massive push for carbon capture and storage can transform Alberta into a “clean energy superpower” – or will merely saddle its industry and government with a technical boondoggle and unbearable costs while Eastern Canada’s refiners remain free to import dirty oil from abroad.

What’s the worst possible thing that can happen to a homeowner? It’s probably not a flooded basement, an infestation of rodents or things falling apart due to shoddy workmanship. It’s that the very concept of their ownership rights could be pulled out from under them. Such was the shocking outcome of a B.C. Supreme Court ruling over the summer which handed aboriginal title to a swath of B.C.’s Lower Mainland that has been privately owned and occupied by others in good faith for more than 150 years. On Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Peter Best takes a close look at the judge’s actions in the case of Cowichan Tribes v. Canada and reveals the many ways in which the court abandoned the precepts of impartiality and fact-based legal reasoning in order to come to the aid of the native claimants.

Time was a former political leader’s expected role was to enjoy retirement in obscurity, reappearing at the occasional state funeral or apolitical charity event smiling inscrutably and saying nothing. While former U.S. President Bill Clinton broke this mould and fellow Democrat Barack Obama won’t stop delivering lectures, conservatives generally stick to tradition. Former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, however, just can’t help himself – literally. Collin May probes the curious, maddening and somewhat sad case of a once-respected leader who, having dug his own political grave, now seems to think the way out is to keep shovelling.

The brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk was shocking not only for its violence but for the chilling aftermath – the celebrations on the left, the gloating and the calls for more political violence. In searching for an explanation, Patrick Keeney argues that our culture has lost what Western thinkers long recognized as the “tragic vision” of human life – the idea that suffering is inevitable and even central to the human condition. Without that understanding of innate limits, politics no longer is about compromise or making the best of things but becomes pursuit of a utopia where the righteous are justified in demonizing and destroying their opponents. What is now desperately needed, Keeney argues, is a cultural renewal that accepts the tragedy of life and cultivates courage, charity and, above all, humility.

Lawyers are supposed to defend their clients, the Constitution and the rule of law. But they’re increasingly under pressure from their own regulators to make a political ideology paramount: wokism. It’s a problem across the country, and it’s not limited to the legal profession: teachers, psychologists, nurses and more must now submit to political re-education and push woke principles in their work, while their political speech as private citizens is increasingly policed. This phenomenon is most dangerous in the law: if lawyers change Canada’s “legal culture” to centre woke victimology, they will effectively undermine the law and the Constitution. In this powerful essay, Glenn Blackett uncovers the woke takeover of the Law Society of Alberta and tells the story of the heroic lawyer fighting back: a “recovered Communist” horrified to see the ideological tyranny he experienced as a young man now being applied in Canada.

Alberta separatism is often dismissed – even within the province itself – as the domain of a few deluded rural hardliners. But the sentiment and the movement have only grown since the federal election brought another Liberal government to power. And Bruce Pardy, one of the country’s senior legal scholars (and not even an Albertan), thinks it is time for Alberta to prepare – seriously, definitively, foundationally – for independence. Here Pardy presents 13 provisions that create an elegantly simple architecture for the constitution of an independent – and radically free – Alberta.