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.

Canadian entrepreneurs used to build over 75,000 apartment units per year. Then came rent control, tax changes and other government intrusions, and they all-but abandoned the rental housing market. Now, with rental housing once again in short supply, the private sector has returned – pouring its own capital into improving and expanding Canada’s long-ignored stock of apartment buildings. Rather than celebrating this flood of new investment, however, a federally-funded cadre of housing activists is working overtime to prevent it. Peter Shawn Taylor examines the strange, Soviet-style demands of the Federal Housing Advocate and the harm such policies will do to Canada’s tenants.

Plenty of new public policies, at least to hear their opponents tell it, are destined to end in calamity or failure. But how many can be proven so based on their proponents’ own evidence? Surely such a thing requires a special, perverse kind of political genius. Peter Shawn Taylor takes a close look at the barrage of official reports and analyses released ahead of the Liberals’ ban on single-use plastic items. It turns out the disappearance of disposable plastic bags, straws and cutlery will not be as easy on the economy – or as good for the environment – as the Trudeau government would have you believe.

The laws of economics are crystal clear about what happens when prices fall dramatically. Demand rises in step. Such will be the inevitable result of Canada’s new national childcare program as parents respond to heavily-subsidized fees that will eventually drop to a mere $10 per day. But unless the supply of childcare spaces increases in equally dramatic fashion, chaos awaits. Talking to daycare operators across the country, Peter Shawn Taylor charts the troubled rollout of Ottawa’s new childcare policy, the role played by the Trudeau government’s open hostility towards the private sector and what the future holds for Canadian families.

To hear their ads tell it, Canada’s banks share your values, respect your business and want you to feel very, very comfortable leaving your money with them. That is, until the federal government tells them otherwise. Such was the case in February during the Emergencies Act, when Ottawa told the banks to freeze the accounts of their beloved customers and the banks meekly complied – afterwards claiming hardly anyone even objected to the move. Peter Shawn Taylor reveals how Canada’s chartered banks allowed themselves to become the tip of Justin Trudeau’s spear in his campaign against Canadians who supported last winter’s Freedom Convoy. Perhaps, as one credit union ad now declares, “It’s Time to Unlike Your Bank.”

Are dandelions a blight on the landscape, or a lovely splash of yellow in an otherwise monotonous green landscape? In most parts of the country, this backyard debate was settled years ago – in favour of the weeds. With cosmetic pesticide bans in effect across a majority of provinces, it has become impossible for homeowners and local parks departments to defend their once-verdant lawns and outdoor spaces against weedy and unsightly invaders. Now, however, one province is bucking environmental fashion after taking heed of homeowners, municipalities and the federal agency charged with the safe regulation of chemical pesticides. Peter Shawn Taylor talks to advocates on both sides of the issue and wonders what it will take for all of Canada to enjoy a greener future.

Starting in the 1920s, municipal zoning laws across the U.S. were used to indirectly enforce racial segregation – keeping blacks and some ethnic minorities out of white areas by regulating the size and cost of housing. The history of zoning in Canada is not so nefarious, but it has had a similarly profound effect, with huge sections of most cities set aside exclusively for single-family homes. As rampant house inflation is currently making home ownership unaffordable for many Canadian families, Peter Shawn Taylor investigates the role played by obstructive municipal zoning and approval rules. In Part One of a special series on solving Canada’s housing crisis, Taylor asks what would happen if we put the property rights of homeowners at the centre of the housing supply equation.

“Visible minority” is a term unique to Canada. But unlike other oddities of Canadian English, such as two-four, chesterfield, housecoat or serviette, it does more than just highlight our linguistic distinctiveness. It’s also standing in the way of a fairer and more equitable country. Mustering the latest research and expert opinion, Peter Shawn Taylor reveals the myriad problems with using race to bifurcate Canada into two solitudes of white and non-white, otherwise known as visible minority. There’s a better way forward that could not only build a more cohesive society but also address the disadvantages faced by Canadians of all races.

The concept of academic freedom dates back to royal privileges offered to teachers in Bologna, Italy almost 900 years ago. But is this vital scholarly tradition about to meet an ignominious end? With Canadian universities in the thrall of an intolerant “woke” ideology, the unfettered search for the truth is being replaced by a mandated “culture of respect” that accepts no dissent. Peter Shawn Taylor examines the fate of Frances Widdowson, recently fired as a professor at Calgary’s Mount Royal University for saying unpopular things about Canada’s Indigenous policy, and what her cancellation means for independent thinkers on campuses across the country.

DIED: Edward (Ted) Byfield, 93, a journalist and educator who founded three boys boarding schools in Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario (1957 to 2008) and Alberta Report newsmagazine (1978 to 2003), who gave voice to the political frustrations and demands of western Canada, alongside many other conservative causes, and was instrumental in the founding of the Reform Party of Canada, and who published two series of books on the history of Alberta and the history of Christianity, and who shaped a generation of writers through his tutelage and commitment to the foundations of good journalism; of congestive heart failure, in Edmonton. [Editor’s note: Written in the style of obituaries in Alberta Report.]