Seems like everyone has a plan to save the planet from Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. Naomi Klein has her Leap Manifesto and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a Green New Deal. Justin Trudeau has a carbon tax – sorry, “price on pollution” – and Andrew Scheer has his, er, whatever. Unfortunately, all of them are economically catastrophic. Grant Brown is a climate change skeptic and borderline heretic, who nevertheless, as a public service, has developed an affordable Climate Change Survival Guide.

Ronald Reagan never wavered in his conviction that America was a great country that would prevail over enemies of democracy and freedom. His fundamental optimism and determination carried his nation to victory over the Soviet “evil empire” and his personal rags-to-riches experience breathed new life into the venerable American dream of limited government, personal liberty, and individual self-reliance. Sadly, Reagan’s current successor governs on the premise that America is no longer great, and he has no discernible, consistent convictions about anything. Mark Milke laments the loss of U.S. self-confidence, and leadership, in a review of a new book about the “Great Communicator”.

Huawei makes great smartphones with the potential to be weapons of cyberwar between China and the West. That may partly explain why Canada arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou for possible extradition to the U.S. As Mathew Preston reports, we’re being forced to take sides.

The number of Mexican visitors to Canada claiming asylum from rising criminal violence in their home country is way up since the Trudeau government dropped the visa requirement in 2016. That move may have helped Canada-Mexico relations but it puts domestic security at grave risk because it makes it easier for Mexico’s powerful drug cartels to expand their operations in Canada. As criminal violence spirals out of control in Mexico and the evidence of it spilling into Canada mounts, Greg Purdy contends a review of the visa-free policy is urgently needed.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair recently confirmed the Canada-U.S. land border will remain closed until Nov. 21 at least. Rhetoric about the inevitability of global homogeneity, Lloyd W. Robertson reminds us, can’t entirely erase stubborn cultural differences. Ultimately, writes Robertson, there is something virtuous and rational in loyalties to nation and culture.

Oh man, what a movie this is going to be. It’s got money, power, and political intrigue. The central characters include a top-rank naval commander facing de facto treason charges and a criminal defence lawyer who’s so good she even got Jian Gomeshi off. They’re up against some big dogs in the Liberal cabinet, including PMJT himself, over a scandal about procuring…a ship. And the climax is set to occur in the middle of next year’s election campaign! Paul Stanway reports.

The term “gunboat diplomacy” was coined in 1850 when Britain dispatched the Royal Navy to defend a British citizen living in Greece. Last month, Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland dispatched a tweet to defend Saudi Arabian women’s rights activists who happen to have a Canadian relative. Unlike the Greeks, the Saudis were not intimidated, and they fired back with trade and diplomatic weapons that cost Canada dearly. Gerry Bowler has some advice for Freeland, who apparently could use it: either ditch the impotent virtue signalling or hit the Saudis where it hurts by replacing their oil exports to Canada with homegrown western crude.

Canadian socialism is top-down and collectivist; s ocialism in New England is populist and individualistic. That’s why Pierre Lemieux fled Quebec for Maine….

China just cracked down on religion. But they’re not alone: see Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea……

The world needs more Canada. So How come Canada and “democracy assistance” are oxymoronic? In a blast-from-the-past from Canada's Journal of Ideas, relevant again because of Tunisia and Egypt's uprisings, Shuvaloy Majumdar and Christopher Sands argue Canada should imitate how Ronald Reagan and U.S. labour leader Lane Kirkland helped out Poland's Solidarity in the 1980s….