Seven months since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, against evidence and common sense, media, elected officials and health experts continue peddling the panic that gripped them in March. Almost daily, headlines announce new records in the number of COVID-19 cases. The federal health minister, the chief medical officer and the prime minister are ringing bells…
Federal government’s ongoing refusal to deliver a full budget another example of it avoiding accountability
By Jason Clemens and Jake Fuss The Fraser Institute According to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, on Monday the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will provide an update on its 2020 spending. But the government hasn’t delivered a full federal budget since March 2019, more than 20 months ago. That demonstrates little regard for democratic…
Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl made many trips to the United States. He appreciated the sense of freedom experienced by Americans, but added, “I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” Freedom and responsibility seem to mean different things to…
Perhaps it’s not democracy that has been corrupted, nor the democratic process, but rather the electorate itself
If the majority of the electorate is not already disillusioned and alienated by the extreme partisanship of politics, the upcoming United States elections will likely push another generation of voters into the void of disillusionment, apathy and abdication of franchise. The U.S. is the so-called beacon of democracy. Yet the two political extremes have become…
It’s time to reflect not just on what politics is doing to our democracy but what it’s doing to us
Let’s begin by wishing U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump a full and speedy recovery following their positive COVID-19 testing. The text below was drafted before this diagnosis was known and reflects on the toxicity of public discourse for which the president is partly culpable. Some of the social media response to…
When a leader suggests he will subvert the democratic process, voters have recourse. We’ve seen it in the Philippines and elsewhere
An apocryphal story circulated in the Philippines in the early 1980s of a dinner party conversation between President Ferdinand Marcos and Catholic Bishop Jaime Sin. Marcos reportedly said, “I really admire those Americans. They know the results of their presidential elections the day of the election.” In response, Sin reportedly said, “Well how about us…
What message do we send dictators and the people who live under their tyranny if we don’t have the courage to live up to our own ideals?
It’s very rare to hear Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and scholar Noam Chomsky agree on anything but a largely underreported topic brings both ends of the political spectrum together: the Julian Assange affair. In a recent interview, Carlson’s guest Glenn Greenwald pointed out that efforts to silence Assange go back to the administration of…
The world’s problems are many, and the solutions require abrupt shifts and great sacrifice. But change is essential
The world is in crisis. After touching on some of the problems, I’ll list possible policy responses and suggest why humanity so far has failed to implement them. Time is short but I believe that at root, our obstacles are political, not lack of scientific knowledge. Problems Global warming and related extreme weather events, rising…
In a pandemic, the fundamentals of electioneering and voting can get some of us sick – and make some of us die
There isn’t going to be a federal election in Canada. Not anytime soon, anyway. Blame COVID-19. For a while, it looked like there could be. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberals had surged ahead of the leaderless Conservatives in the polls. His lead was big – big enough to suggest a parliamentary majority was likely.…
Referendums have been the source of high anxiety and popular uprisings in recent years. Whether they’re a truly democratic way to make vital decisions that best serve the public interest is a matter of great debate. However, there really should be no debate – nine times out of 10, they’re a bad idea. Alberta Premier…