The mutual gains created by international trade have been well-established since 1817, when economist David Ricardo first explained why Portugal sold wine to Britain, and Britain traded cloth to Portugal. Capitalizing on each’s “comparative advantage,” Ricardo observed, raised overall incomes and left consumers better off in both countries. The same still holds today. Yet our current global pandemic has many claiming self-sufficiency in all things is not only a virtue, but a national necessity. With Canada’s future prosperity at risk from an outbreak of Covid-19 inspired protectionism, Peter Shawn Taylor explains just what’s at stake and offers a stout defence of classic free trade principles.

Remember those anxious days last January when news of a deadly new virus first appeared out of China and then, like an avalanche gathering speed, spread to Italy, Spain and France? Remember how no one seemed to know what to do as the contagion made its way to our shores? If only our governments had a plan – a plan to arrest the disease and protect us from the collateral damage of our own clumsy responses. Drawing on decades of high-level experience in military and civil emergency planning and preparation, David Redman explains what went wrong with Canada’s planning process, how the errors heightened a tidal wave of fear, and what it will take to rebuild confidence in government.

The lessons of history? These days, who cares? The past is no longer revered or even carefully examined as woke-leftists seek to topple statues, cancel contrarian views and remake society in a paroxysm of radical change. Yet such an approach hasn’t rendered history entirely obsolete, just obscure. Amid the revolutionary aspirations of our current age, Peter Shawn Taylor takes a look back to where it all started ¬and finds an era awash in bold promises, tragic failings, bloody repudiations and, in the end, desperate pleas for a return to normalcy. When it comes to revolutions, what goes around, comes around.

In our Unbrave New World, most of us would prefer to keep our heads down or repeat empty slogans rather than face censure from the mob. Against this backdrop of timid conformity, a few determined individuals stand out for the fearlessness and gusto with which they speak their minds. Professor Frances Widdowson of Calgary’s Mount Royal University is among that handful. In a lengthy interview with Peter Shawn Taylor covering a range of important subjects, Widdowson defends her controversial stances, explains the necessity of difficult discussions and reveals how hard it can be to remain rational in these increasingly irrational times.

The debt-fuelled buildout of Canada’s airports, predicated on the dubious though common premise of unending growth in air travel, has stalled badly. While there’s been virtually zero news media attention, it seems the entire Canadian airport operating model could be about to crash and burn – at a time when governments are themselves wildly over-committed through their own borrowing binges. In this thoroughly reported original, Peter Shawn Taylor dissects Canada’s uniquely strange and problematic approach to owning and running airports, explains how we got into this mess and, looking to Europe and Australia for guidance, charts a way back out.

Whatever we might think of marriage and divorce, few of us would claim they are unimportant. The topic has occupied not only the hearts of billions but the minds of great thinkers through the ages. Why, John Milton wrote a whole book on divorce way back in the 1600s. So why have the great thinkers at Canada’s top statistical agency – who spend their days ferreting out the most trivial of trends – closed their minds to the entire subject? Might the numbers point in some politically incorrect directions? Peter Shawn Taylor dives into the subject with gusto and reports on the modern-day benefits of one of humankind’s oldest institutions.

Over the past four months Canadians have been taught to heed and obey their public health officials. And we have dutifully complied, often hailing them as celebrities for their efforts. But as the lockdowns are lifted, what might happen to this habit of control? Peter Shawn Taylor charts the evolution of public health from its early origins to the modern, activist version that eagerly promotes soda taxes and demands an end to income inequality. With public health having become a political movement, are its practitioners prepared to give up their newly-acquired powers of command once the crisis ends?

The infirm and chronically ill seniors who live in long-term care facilities are among Canada’s most vulnerable populations. So too, it seems, are the executives and investors who own and operate many of those nursing homes. The first group is vulnerable to disease and neglect. The second is suffering from aggressive ideological attacks by unions, left-wing academics and politicians who casually accuse them of being greedy “dehumanizing” villains, and are now plotting the expropriation of their entire business. Peter Shawn Taylor seeks to clear the air in this thoroughly reported account of how Canada’s long-term care sector really works.

In our ahistorical age, the “lessons of history” rarely rise above the level of casual slogan or self-serving proof. But what if there were two ready-made historical North American case studies showing how sharply different government approaches to an economic crisis can produce two starkly different results? And what if everyone is now focused on the wrong example? Peter Shawn Taylor dives deep into economic history and, with a respected Wall Street investment guru and historian as his guide, unearths a “Forgotten Depression” whose lessons could help us plot the best way out of our Covid-19 depression.

Solving Canada’s housing crisis shouldn’t require more than a single lesson in economics. When prices are high, a free market always responds and supplies more. Yet amidst Canada’s severe problems of housing affordability, this foolproof mechanism is continually frustrated by governments that are either ignorant of how markets work, fixated on preserving the status quo or display naked contempt for the profit motive. Peter Shawn Taylor looks at the scorn heaped on land developers, landlords and the rest of the housing supply industry and wonders how they became the villains of this story.