Quebec’s CAQ government was elected on the promise it would not hold another referendum on independence, but it has been engaged in nation-building all the same. The CAQ’s latest effort to defend Quebec’s identity has it demanding that all immigrants adhere to a “common culture” – one that both insists on the absolute primacy of the French language and is anti-religious at its core. The CAQ government is even musing about banning all prayer in public. Anna Farrow deconstructs this determined agenda and discovers not a benign civic nationalism, but a national project that bases inclusion on a difficult-to-access, narrowly-defined common culture – and excludes those who don’t fit.

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies are thoroughly entrenched at Canadian universities, and the harm they cause – from squashing free speech to destroying the merit principle to propagating outright discrimination – is widespread. But there is a path back to sanity. Jonathan Barazzutti lays out concrete steps universities can take to restore intellectual diversity, which should be a pillar of any academic institution and would, as a byproduct, support demographic diversity as well. Barazzutti’s proposals would enable universities to correct current abuses and turn back to their true mission: the pursuit of innovation, knowledge and truth.

With a blunt and determined president south of the border and an election in the offing, Canada is at a crisis point – one that has come after a decade of disastrous policies from Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government that have transformed Canada into an economic weakling. In this devastating critique, Gwyn Morgan lays out the main reasons for Canada’s self-inflicted economic decline and the steps that must be taken to get serious in this new reality. And Morgan offers a stark warning: Mark Carney may seem more sophisticated and competent than Trudeau, but he has spent much of his career as a champion of the same destructive agenda. It’s time for real change.

“Parachute” candidates. Direct appointees. Mysterious disqualifications and rule changes. Elections with just one contestant. The nomination process used by political parties to select their candidates is one of the building blocks of Canadian democracy. And yet on close inspection, this system reveals itself to be profoundly and embarrassingly undemocratic. There must be a better way. Jake Melo Valinho examines the origins and key characteristics of the complex U.S. primary election system and discovers a possible remedy for Canada’s deeply flawed nominations contests: a bracing dose of transparency and vigorous competition.

Concerns over Canada’s eroding free speech rights were eased when the Justin Trudeau government’s Online Harms Act died with the prorogation of Parliament. But this is no time to relax, writes Morrigan Geleynse. The authoritarian impulse to criminalize more and more types of speech still animates Canadian governments. As Geleynse explains, the threat stems from the rise of “legal positivism”, a doctrine that strips morality and higher authority from the time-honoured link between human purpose, individual rights and written law. The solution lies in rediscovering the wisdom and advice of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of history’s greatest and most humane thinkers.

People, cultures and landscapes vary greatly around the world, but totalitarianism’s black heart is basically the same everywhere. And so it is in long-suffering Myanmar – or Burma – where for most of the last 35 years a military dictatorship has frustrated democracy, crushed dissent, murdered opponents and sought to snuff out the very will to resist. In one of C2C’s occasional forays into global affairs, Patrick Keeney travels to the Thailand-Myanmar frontier to visit a place where long-suffering Burmese are tending to their physical and mental wounds and keeping alive the flames of justice, freedom and hope for a better future.