Mark Milke had a ringside seat in the Alberta election as the lead architect of the United Conservative Party platform. What he saw was a startling disconnect between media coverage and the issues that mattered most to Albertans. The economic focus of UCP policy earned the party a million votes and a huge majority. Through bias, ignorance, or both, the media often missed the story.

During his decades of involvement in Canada’s conservative movement, Gerry Nicholls has seen the right lose cultural influence and suffer more electoral losses than wins. Yet even as leftist smear-and-fear campaigns reach new heights of slander, Nicholls is heartened by this month’s big victory for the united right in Alberta, and hopeful for a larger conservative political and cultural renaissance in Canada and beyond.

As billions of people in developing countries demand more of everything, especially cheap energy, Canada can help meet the need and improve the global environment by exporting liquefied natural gas. So why are some Canadians trying to thwart the idea, insisting we fight climate change all by ourselves? Not only would this further hobble our economy but, Steve Larke and Adam LeDain contend, exporting LNG represents the much stronger environmental and moral case.

In the early hours of November 10, 1938, Nazis attacked Jewish people and their property throughout Germany. “Kristallnacht” was a direct prelude to the Holocaust. Barbara Kay reminds us that how a nation treats its Jewish minority is a signal of the wellbeing of the broader polity, and warns against what she calls the “third wave of anti-Semitism.”

Tom Flanagan’s new book The Wealth of First Nations comes at a time when more and more Indigenous leaders and communities are embracing the market economy, resource development, and entrepreneurship. Across every social and economic metric, the Makers are outperforming the Takers, which points the way to less dependence, more integration, and even, perhaps, true reconciliation.

The federal carbon tax came into effect this week in Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan. It may soon be imposed in Alberta, depending on the outcome of this month’s election. Starting with Saskatchewan, the provinces are taking Ottawa to court over who has the right to regulate greenhouse gases under Canada’s constitution. The much larger question is how the case will affect the balance of powers within the federation.

Slowly Canadians are awakening to the fact that their country’s oil and gas industry, an essential part of the national economy, has been targeted for destruction by an alliance of American money and Canadian eco-activists. Together they have blocked pipelines, swung elections, and installed their agents in positions of power, including the office of the prime minister. B.C. researcher Vivian Krause, who exposed this decade-long campaign and the tens of millions of U.S. dollars that financed it, deserves to be recognized as a “true Canadian patriot.”

For those who seek to divide and conquer Western culture, the ends always justify the means. Hence the rise of “hate crime hoaxes,” exaggerated or invented incidents of racism. Recent fake villains include the Covington high school kids in the U.S., and, here in Canada, a Fort McMurray minor hockey team. There are fake victims too, notably actor Jussie Smollett in his worst performance yet. Making up stories to ignite race war takes a special kind of evil. Believing those stories, as so many in the media and positions of authority are wont to do, abets it.

2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the election of Prime Minister Joe Clark. “Joe Who?” millions will ask. Don’t worry. That’s what he was called in 1979 too. There is a modest effort underway to try burnish his legacy by Central Canada’s few remaining Red Tories. It includes a play which portrays Clark as more honest than Brian Mulroney, much nicer than Stephen Harper, and less vulgar than Pierre Trudeau. 1979 had a Clark-like run – i.e. short – on a Toronto stage in January. Neil Hrab attended and found the play marred by earnest overreach, rather like the man.

Most of the media coverage of the SNC-Lavalin affair followed the same script: Jody Wilson-Raybould tried to uphold the rule of law and Justin Trudeau fired her for doing so. This story was one of very few to challenge the conventional wisdom about Wilson-Raybould’s motives and objectives. Judging from the traffic and feedback Brian Giesbrecht’s piece is getting, a lot of Canadians share the concern that the former Attorney-General had another agenda, and it put the advancement of Indigenous rights, claims and sovereignty ahead of the rule of law.