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.

Canadians have grown familiar with the frequently rocky post-pandemic service quality in the restaurant, hospitality and retail sectors. As well as standard refrains like “We’re short-staffed,” “We can’t find good people,” or “We can’t match the wages of other industries.” Less visible than these inconveniences is a potentially far greater problem lurking in the manufacturing, natural resources, transportation and other sectors: an acute shortage of certified trades workers. Giving three cheers to Canada’s hard-working tradespeople, Gwyn Morgan charts the growth of the economy-threatening shortage, surveys the damage it is wreaking, looks at some of its avoidable causes, and proposes some remedies.

Who would have imagined that Western countries’ increasingly fanatical efforts to phase out fossil fuels would leave two dictators essentially in control of both global energy security and the supply of manufactured goods? As Gwyn Morgan sees it, Western elites’ unreflective zeal is steering us not towards utopia but instead on a descent into a kind of New World Disorder. Not everyone, however, is suffering nor displeased at the worsening global chaos. In the dark halls and tortured minds of the world’s biggest dictators, Morgan shows, the West’s fantasy of “net zero” is something akin to “net awesome.”

Scientists may never trace the origin of our sudden contagion of shameless posing, credit-grabbing and self-pity – yet this strange syndrome proliferated throughout the pandemic. And it lingers still. The most recent outbreak can be found within the leadership of those who suffered the least during Covid-19 – unionized public sector workers. Now these unions are demanding extra compensation for… well, it’s not clear for what exactly. As the demands from this comfortable class grow, the gap between them and the rest of the economy becomes ever-wider. Gwyn Morgan lays out the facts and fundamental injustice of the expanding gulf in compensation between Canada’s public and private sectors – and the harm it is doing to societal cohesion.

It has been said that in the “progressive” mind, intentions matter far more than practical realities. Passion and commitment drive everything, and utopia shimmers on a distant horizon. Who can be against “saving the plant”? The journey may seem pleasant enough for a while, especially in advanced and basically well-run countries whose systems were built with “design margin,” robust enough to absorb some bad contingencies. But that can only carry a country – or a global economy – so far. Gwyn Morgan lays out the awful humanitarian results when unworkable government policies driven by decades of green ideology are compounded by war and geopolitics.

Perhaps the Liberal Party of Canada’s new tagline could become a play on an old song, something like “Up, up and awaaaaay, in our magical, our magical balloon.” As they waft ever-higher, the rest of us will be left behind to deal with the remains. The Liberals’ magical thinking, notes Gwyn Morgan, largely revolves around the fantasy that Canada’s transition to “net zero” can simply be declared, demanded and decreed while Canada’s oil and natural gas sector is regulated out of existence. This is worse than naïve, Morgan argues, it is colossally irresponsible, already doing real damage by indirectly enriching Russia’s war machine. And if not reversed soon it portends even worse for Canadians and others around the world. Morgan offers a bracing list of facts to puncture the Liberal airship.

The world’s nations have endured and discarded dictators and despots of virtually every shape, size and ruling style since the dawn of organized society – only to have them reappear in new form. In the early 1990s it briefly seemed that the era of the dictator had ended for good. That dream proved tragically illusory, as country after country has found out. Might not even Canada be immune? Was our nation recently saved by the bell, or was this just a brief reprieve? Dictators take many forms, after all, including the visage of grinning buffoon who seems happiest dressed in ludicrous costumes. How could such a thing occur during a pandemic through which we were “all in this together”? Gwyn Morgan employs the droll form of the traditional folk tale to remind us of what has come to pass and to issue an all-too serious warning.

As fighting rages in Ukraine, energy prices soar and inflation spirals, countries and their leaders are showing what they’re made of. Some appear jolted by reality and are recalibrating foreign relations, fiscal regimes and energy policies. Others are doubling down on blind ideology. Despite acute vulnerability to Russian energy blackmail, for example, Germany still intends to shutter the last of its nuclear power plants. And Justin Trudeau, representing a country sitting on the world’s third-largest crude oil reserves, was last week pledging to help the world transition to “renewables.” Where will such unshakeable utopianism lead? To a truly terrible combination, writes Gwyn Morgan: inflation- and tax-induced impoverishment for millions of Canadians, increasingly intermittent and unaffordable energy supplies for peace-loving countries, and no effective check on geopolitical bullies who use energy as a weapon.

Reliable, affordable and plentiful energy has been foundational to prosperity in every successful country, and fossil fuels have fulfilled the vast majority of those needs – and continue to. What’s not to like? But if you believe the world is gripped by a “climate emergency” caused by those very fuels, then virtually anything is justifiable to get rid of them. But if, in fact, there are no viable replacements, the results are grotesque performative pantomimes of actual serious energy policies: the “net zero” movement. It aims to defeat and negate not only economics, engineering and common sense but the laws of physics themselves. Gwyn Morgan reviews this world-touring theatre of the absurd and finds there’s no vaccine strong enough to inoculate against global dysfunction.

Early this fall C2C Journal posed the question whether countries should rely so heavily on vaccination to subdue the Covid-19 pandemic – whether we could “inject our way” out of trouble. The massive autumn waves of infection in numerous heavily vaccinated countries should have prompted serious reflection – perhaps even a change in direction. Yet even as the latest mainstream research and recent events demonstrate that the vaccines are only partially protective and woefully temporary, our public authorities are further intensifying vaccination programs while crushing the lives of the unvaccinated. Gwyn Morgan, an early proponent of universal vaccination, puts the pieces together and demands that we consider a new approach.