In China, minor security infractions are routinely punished with lengthy jail terms in dreadful conditions. In Canada, it’s just the opposite. Clear evidence of espionage is rewarded with a free pass back home after the mission is complete. Neglecting our national security in this way may suit the Justin Trudeau government, but it is doing great harm to Canada’s relationship with its most important allies. In the concluding instalment of his two-part series, Peter Shawn Taylor examines the many ways in which the spy scandal at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg has damaged Canada’s international standing and contributed to the growing perception that Canada is a foreign agent’s happy place. (Part I is here.)

Citizenship is a two-way street. Belonging to a nation-state entails certain rights and benefits as well as concomitant responsibilities, including an obligation of loyalty. It is not something to be handed out on a whim. Yet that’s precisely what Canada’s Supreme Court has done with its recent Desautel ruling – granting the advantages of Canadian citizenship to American Indigenous people with no connection or loyalty to this country. Lawyer Peter Best traces the origin of this bizarre judicial fabulation and its potentially disastrous consequences for all Canadians, including the Aboriginal community.

Going along to get along is an all-too-common human impulse. When the issue involves the world’s largest country wielding its standard foreign policy combination of limitless economic opportunity and menacing physical intimidation, that impulse can become irresistible. Some even attempt to elevate accommodation into a virtue. Not Michael Chong. His parents experienced the horrors of both fascism and communism first-hand. Today, Chong is not about to bow down to a new variant on an old tyranny: China’s Communist regime. Veteran journalist Doug Firby recently interviewed Chong, and below are the best portions of their conversation.

“The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought”, George Orwell wrote in his famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. “In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” Orwell understood that whoever controls language controls political thought. And such an insight is as applicable to Myanmar in 2021 as it was to Oceania in 1984. Using Orwell as his guide, and relying on his extensive personal contacts throughout the country, C2C Journal associate editor Patrick Keeney takes a close look at reality and meaning in the recent coup in Myanmar.

Influence-peddling. Self-dealing. Nepotism. Junketeering. The ways politicians can betray the public trust are legion. But should this list include behaviour that not only abides by the law, but offers a welcome example of independent thought and self-care? Politicians from diverse parties across Canada have been excoriated and, in some instances, dramatically punished for going abroad for personal reasons during the holiday season. While this may contravene government “recommendations” to stay home, C2C Journal editor George Koch argues passionately that all Canadians – including those whom we elected – should be allowed to act as the law permits. And that includes international travel.

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.

Carbon dioxide emissions are a globe-girdling phenomenon driven by industrialization, and atmospheric gases obviously don’t care about national boundaries. So it’s distinctly weird that some left-leaning governments, Canada’s Liberals among them, insist that recognized emissions reductions must take place right here at home! Isn’t the goal “saving the planet”? In fact Canada has a clean-burning energy resource that’s voluminously abundant and economically accessible with current technology – and which the world can’t get enough of. As Gwyn Morgan writes, jobs, wealth-creation, tax-revenue and environmental improvement on a global scale all await, if only governments dropped their ideological blinkers.

The barriers to travelling for personal reasons certainly appear daunting. They range from shifting government restrictions to the moral pressure from risk-averse peers to the slight but real probability of contracting the virus. Plus the prospect of getting stranded overseas. Daunting they are. But insurmountable? Or merely not worth the benefits in pleasure, renewed personal connections, emotional wellbeing and horizon-broadening? C2C Editor-in Chief George Koch decided to find out for himself, venturing to Europe in mid-September for three weeks. He returns with a take that we hope helps demystify the process and encourages people to keep an open mind.

We are living in an “unprecedented reality” according to the recent Speech from the Throne. Certainly the effects of Covid-19 have been serious and far-reaching. But unprecedented? Hardly. As difficult as our current situation may seem, it doesn’t hold a candle to the situation 100 years ago when a vastly more terrifying global epidemic struck a far less prepared world. With a second wave of Covid-19 on the horizon, Lynne Cohen takes a close look at the Spanish flu of 1918-20 and finds many stark and revealing differences – as well as some unsettling echoes that suggest while times may change, our fundamental fears do not.

Talk, as they say, is cheap. But the right kind of talk can be priceless. Higher education began as a conversation between a tutor and a single student or a small group. It has been this way from the time of Plato onwards. Only in our era has higher education become a mass-market phenomenon. And while some regard online or remote learning as education’s apotheosis − bringing access to advanced degrees within anyone’s reach − others worry it’s accelerating the decline of thoughtful pedagogy. Drawing on his own professional background, deep love of the Western Canon and cheerful optimism, Patrick Keeney reflects on the timeless value of a real, in-depth conversation.