No matter how much abuse the Laurentian Elite has heaped upon Alberta, the province has seemed willing to just take it. Yet in this relationship, the perpetrator never even tearfully apologizes nor promises to change, but simply rolls out new outrages using new rationales. Albertans’ habitual responses – grumbling, asking for a fairer deal and working ever-harder to bear the costs of Confederation – have failed again and again, argues Leon Craig. He thinks it’s high times for a new approach. In this impassioned, open letter to Jason Kenney, Craig urges Alberta’s new Premier to get their beloved province ready to go it alone.

The aviation industry may take years to recover from the pandemic. Half the world’s airplanes are in storage, and international seating capacity has dropped by almost 80 per cent. Yet with every disaster comes an opportunity. Josh Dehaas reports on the reviving airship industry, a mode of transportation uniquely suited to Canada’s enormous geography.

It’s been said many times that one should never let facts get in the way of a good story. Let’s hope facts still can get in the way of a winning election campaign if that campaign is founded on distortion, exaggeration, tendentious claims, ruinous policies and utopian futility. Using facts from credible organizations, Gwyn Morgan takes a verbal stiletto to the fear-based federal Liberal election campaign that’s coming our way in a few weeks.

The Liberal government’s relentless assault on the West’s resource economy must have countless older Albertans (and Saskatchewanians) seething at Eastern Canada’s refusal to mature beyond its politics of envy and younger generations mystified that the careers they studied and worked hard to launch are pronounced destined for phase-out by our current prime minister. In this essay, C2C Journal pairs two veterans of the federal-provincial energy wars: oilpatch insider Dave Yager, author of a new book on Alberta’s resource sector and its immense contribution to Canada, and political scientist Barry Cooper, who reviews Yager’s From Miracle to Menace: Alberta, A Carbon Story.

The homeless are quite susceptible to the Covid-19 virus. In Winnipeg, the Main Street Project has opened a new facility for people who need to isolate. For James Percy, drugs and the addiction dynamic largely account for Canada’s homelessness epidemic. Ultimately, governments need to articulate policies which lead to greater personal accountability.

What happens when the federal government gives up on fighting Indigenous land claims in court, foots the bill for new native lawsuits and buys into the legally-toxic idea that historical treaties are not binding contracts but rather agreements to “share the land”? Nothing of benefit to Canada. Under current government “reconciliation” dogma, priceless landmarks such as Ontario’s famed Bruce Peninsula could be seized from public ownership. And the entire concept of private property in Canada may soon find itself in peril. Former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht reveals the damage being done.

The election of Donald Trump, the vote for Brexit and the eruption of the gilets jaunes movement in France exemplify the global rise of populism. It’s a phenomenon the international commentariat has condemned as a dark and dangerous political disorder arising from the far right end of the political spectrum. In the first of a special two-part series, Matthew Preston examines successful populist movements in Australia, Italy and Denmark. They are more complex and politically diverse, Preston’s reporting reveals, than can be contained in a simplistic left-versus-right, sensible-versus-extreme narrative.

Do you ever feel that “progressive” politics is mainly about denying basic realities? Cities are great economic engines, but their dynamism rests on a foundation of natural advantages that, writes James R. Coggins, we would be fools to ignore and self-destructive to deny. Vancouver’s left-leaning political establishment, however, seems hell-bent on constructing a utopia of parallel realities that, Coggins argues, spit in the eye of Vancouver’s economic drivers and, if not confronted, can only lead to a great city’s decline.

As if being denounced by his political opponents, vilified by the mainstream media and thrown under the bus by his leader weren’t enough. Now Michael Cooper, the Conservative MP who dared to be outraged at a Muslim activist’s attempts to blame violent attacks on conservatives, and call him out for it, must also endure the crocodile tears of Andrew Coyne. In purporting to coach Cooper on a better approach, Coyne confirms his spot as Canada’s most condescending commentator, writes Grant A. Brown. If we want to understand evil, argues Brown, we have to study its source code, even if that means defying the government’s and the left’s attempts to obfuscate and misdirect.

Precision of language is critical in government documents. Take the report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), which claimed “Indigenous women and girls now make up almost 25 percent of homicide victims.” Turns out the Statistics Canada report on which this claim was based indicates 25 percent of female homicide victims were Indigenous women, a much smaller number. If the MMIW report’s authors can’t even transcribe a simple government statistic, what business have they bandying about the charge of “genocide”? Hymie Rubinstein looks at historical examples of real genocides, reminding us that the abuse of language has consequences.