Ottawa’s promise to rescue many dozens of dying Indigenous languages and effectively give them equivalent status with English and French has billion-dollar boondoggle written all over it. Peter Shawn Taylor makes a powerful case for letting lost tongues die a natural death.

The practice of opening public events with a statement acknowledging that the event is occurring on land covered by an Indian treaty really took off after the 2015 Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Among its 94 “calls to action” is a demand to “repudiate concepts used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous peoples and lands”. The rite has become ubiquitous in Canadian public life, and now often refers to “unceded” land, even though treaty land was, in fact, ceded to Canada by the chiefs who signed the Treaties. Far from advancing “reconciliation”, writes Peter Shawn Taylor, this fiction is fueling division between those who are constantly told Canada is theirs, and everyone else.

Add 19th century liberal jurist Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie to the ever-growing list of Canadian historical figures whose reputations have been rubbished in the name of “Truth and Reconciliation”. Begbie presided over the trial of six Tsilhqot’in Indians who were executed for the mass murder of 18 white road builders and settlers during British Columbia’s so-called Chilcotin War of 1864. There were plenty of guilty parties on all sides in that fracas, writes Peter Shawn Taylor, but the mass scapegoating of Begbie – most recently in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s official apology to the Tsilhqot’in killers – is a crime in its own right.

If the oilsands stay in the ground and pipelines and LNG terminals don’t get built, and governments continue to suffocate other natural resource and infrastructure development with excessive taxation and regulation, a lot of Canadians could wind up like the unemployed masses in the U.S. Rust Belt states – and mad enough to vote for a populist demagogue promising to make their lives great again. We’re not there yet, writes Peter Shawn Taylor, but the current rout of capital from Canada’s oilsands represents foreclosure on thousands of high-paying blue collar jobs and raises the risk of a Trumpian political backlash.

Former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s six-year foray into Canadian politics ended in ignominious defeat and was soon followed by his return to Harvard, which validated the lethal Conservative charge that he was “just visiting”. Now he’s in Budapest, running a liberal university. But this time he’s not just visiting, he’s fighting for freedom and democracy against Hungary’s authoritarian nationalist ruler Viktor Orban. And having far more success than he did during his quixotic misadventure in Canadian politics. Peter Shawn Taylor reports.

Women are under-represented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math faculties at universities across Canada. Men are under-represented in all other university subject areas, high school and post-secondary graduation rates, labour force participation trends, and in jobs with defined benefit pensions. The former is a “gender crisis” requiring affirmative action by university administrators and governments. The latter is, well, not on anybody’s radar. Peter Shawn Taylor reports.

Meat-packing plants in Alberta and Ontario are shut or running reduced lines as they grapple with Covid-19 outbreaks. The livestock industry is also under siege from methane-crazed environmentalists. Peter Shawn Taylor suggests that instead of taxing cattle, Canadians should feed the world by taking the lead in responsible beef production.

Wonder why Quebec isn’t squawking about Prime Minister Trudeau’s plans to invade provincial jurisdiction with a new national carbon tax? The short answer is because residents in Quebec, as well as Ontario, may wind up paying half as much for carbon emissions as anyone in those provinces saddled with Ottawa’s looming tax. Will Trudeau insist on one carbon price for all Canadians? Don’t hold your CO2, writes Peter Shawn Taylor.

Chances are the last poem you read, and enjoyed, was written more than 50 years ago. Or longer, if your tastes run to the likes of Kipling, Carroll or Thomas. Incomprehensible post-modern wankers have owned poetry ever since. But take heart, writes Peter Shawn Taylor, formalist counter-revolutionaries are on the march. And one the funniest and pithiest of the tribe is A.M. Juster, pseudonym for a conservative ex-Washington bureaucrat and biotech executive whose personal story is as interesting as his poetry is entertaining.

In 1993 the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada disintegrated into warring tribes of right-wing populists, Quebec nationalists, religious conservatives, libertarians and Red Tories. It took 13 years to reunite the right and oust the Liberals from power. Today the Grand Old Party of the U.S. conservative movement is at least as badly fractured, creating a political vacuum now occupied by Donald J. Trump. Whether he wins or loses in November, his xenophobia and protectionism will probably deepen the divisions in the Republican Party. And if so, writes Peter Shawn Taylor, there is much the Republican Party could learn from the kind of ideological and organizational rebuild that revived conservatism in Canada.