Amidst Canada’s acute productivity crisis, declining per capita income and crushing public debts, one might think governments would at last refocus on opportunities to grow our economy – or at least not shrink it deliberately. But on the West Coast, activists and decision-makers remain fixated on coddling a few dozen iconic members of a non-endangered species even at the cost of tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in foregone revenue. And the federal government has proved all-too willing to facilitate the devastation. In the second instalment of C2C’s series on Canada’s troubled Pacific Province, Vancouver Island resident Gwyn Morgan explains how environmental politics are creating a biological pecking order in which whales are at the top, salmon in the middle – and humans at the bottom.

Perhaps there is a certain twisted logic to the woke left’s attempt to convince schoolchildren that math is racist and that 2 plus 2 might well equal 5. For this may be the only way to get the “math” surrounding the Justin Trudeau government’s push to force Canadians into buying only electric vehicles as of 2035 to work in any way at all. Gwyn Morgan reviews the actual math of key elements of the EV transition scheme – the electric power needs, the subsidized purchases, the tax credits, the vast number of required charging stations, the maintenance of roads – and finds both the costs and the implementation obstacles to be a mixture of steep, dubious and prohibitive. So much so, Morgan concludes, as to cast the entire EV transition in doubt.

It is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s contention there’s no “business case” for exporting Canada’s abundant, inexpensively produced natural gas as LNG. But Canadians might do well to politely decline management consulting advice from a former substitute drama teacher who was born into wealth and has never had to meet a payroll, balance a budget or make a sale. Bluntly stated, someone who has shown no evidence of being able to run the proverbial lemonade stand. And one whose real agenda, the evidence shows, is to strangle the nation’s most productive and wealth-generating industry. With the first LNG ship finally expected to dock at Kitimat, B.C. over the next year and load Canada’s first-ever LNG export cargo, Gwyn Morgan lays out the business and environmental cases for ramping up our LNG exports – and having them count towards Canada’s greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Shaping criminal charges, bail decisions or prison sentences around an accused person’s political or religious beliefs is utterly odious – a hallmark of tinpot tyrannies and totalitarian hellholes. Such practices have no place in any constitutional nation, let alone a mature democracy that presents itself as a model to the world. But that is increasingly the situation in Canada, writes Gwyn Morgan. Comparing the treatment of protesters accused of minor infractions to those of incorrigible criminals who maim and kill, Morgan finds a yawning mismatch that suggests political motivations are increasingly a factor in today’s criminal justice system.

Ottawa’s post-pandemic $300 billion spending orgy was coupled with the pompous claim to “Build Back Better”. As it happened, most of that spending was recklessly borrowed – stoking inflation – while Build Back Better was a dud, was discarded in embarrassment and, if recalled at all today, is told as a sick joke. Far too many planned projects now sink into a quicksand of political haggling, regulatory overkill, mission creep, design complexity and, if built at all, bungled execution. Looking at specific examples, Gwyn Morgan presents the lamentable results: far less is actually getting built across Canada, nearly everything takes forever and – worst of all – costs routinely soar to ludicrous levels. Added to that, Morgan notes, are woke-based criteria being imposed by the Trudeau government that are worsening the vicious cycle.

It is arguably forgivable for a government long in office to allow one problem to deteriorate into a crisis. Waving off two or three crises at once would require a voter of rare goodwill – or perhaps naïveté or indifference. But four? Especially after said government ignored ample warning signs, years of deteriorating numbers and no shortage of sound external policy advice. That is where Canada finds itself today, governed by a party fixated on riding out the political fallout while Canadians endure the economic hardship and at-times literally deadly effects. Gwyn Morgan examines the entwined crises in housing affordability, health care, immigration and economic productivity, a vicious cycle that the Justin Trudeau government shows few signs of understanding and none at all of resolving.

Among the most painful aspects of Canada’s worsening health care crisis is the sheer lack of doctors, especially general practitioners or family physicians. One reason for this is the education system’s scant production of medical school graduates. Defects in Canada’s method of medical residency – professional apprenticeship – add further obstacles to the flow of new doctors. Drawing upon research into the numbers and nature of the medical education system plus personal experience, Gwyn Morgan lays bare the challenges faced by young residents and offers practical solutions that could help Canada produce more family doctors.

In its fanatical drive for “net zero,” the Justin Trudeau government is eviscerating Canada’s manufacturing sector and imposing massive costs on Canadians, while dancing along to China’s charade that it intends to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions, even as the Communist regime oversees record construction of new carbon-spewing, coal-fired power plants. The economic wellbeing of Canadians is, in other words, being progressively destroyed – and for nothing. It is time to wake up from this absurdist slumber, writes Gwyn Morgan, and also offers a formula for Canada to assign the costs of carbon emissions where they actually belong, rescue the nation’s manufacturing sector before it’s too late, lift the carbon tax burden from Canadians and, perhaps, even help the global environment.

When does a once-lofty ideal that some time ago degenerated into blind dogma collapse further into suicide cult? Right about now, when it comes to “save the planet” by forcing Canada to “net zero.” Gwyn Morgan charts the Trudeau government’s further ratcheting up of taxes and regulatory burdens on Canada’s hard-pressed consumers, businesses and the energy sector, all in the name of fighting climate change to which Canada’s contribution is barely a rounding error – while the big emitters like China get a free pass from the Trudeau government itself.

Canadians, we are often told, are a caring and sharing people. Perhaps Canada’s federal workers and their union bosses failed to read the memo, for their recent behaviour has been the opposite: callous and greedy. After coasting through the pandemic “working from home” on full salary, Canada’s “public servants” threw tantrums over returning to the office, demanded an enormous pay increase – then went on strike and blockaded federal facilities. This week they came out of the process richer and even more coddled. Gwyn Morgan charts the federal government’s cave-in to its unionized employees and the ever-growing disparity in compensation between them and the private-sector workers who are taxed to pay for it all. Part II of a special series (Part I is here).