The response of governments was heavy-handed, lead-footed, wrong-headed and inept
2020 forever will be associated with the coronavirus sweeping Canada and the world. However, its impact on the economy was much greater than on our health. Far fewer people were stricken by the virus than the initial apocalyptic warnings from health care experts, while its impact on incomes, jobs and government deficits was larger and…
If Singh is the problem, who is there on the meagre parliamentary bench to replace him?
For the past 90 years, Canadian politics has been influenced by a genuinely left-wing political party. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) emerged in 1933. It demanded nationalization of essential industries, universal public pensions, health care, family allowances, unemployment insurance and workmen’s compensation. Its Regina Manifesto boldly asserted, “No CCF Government will rest content until it…
The Nazi approach rested on three pillars: popularity, tradition and coercion
The question of what Germans really thought of Adolf Hitler has been kicking around for as long as I can remember. Were Germans hoodwinked, intimidated or broadly supportive? Or was it perhaps some combination of all three? Robert Gellately is a Canadian historian who has written extensively on Nazi Germany. And his latest book, Hitler’s…
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…
Reuther had his finger in everything from labour negotiations to legislation to civil rights to election campaigns
Amity Shlaes’ Great Society is a chronicle of the United States in the mid-20th century. And reading it reminded me of Walter Reuther, a once famous name I’d almost forgotten. Reuther was a hugely influential player in organized labour and Democratic politics. With the United Auto Workers (UAW) as his power base, he had his…
Two troubling questions lurk behind the results of the Fraser Institute’s 2020 Economic Freedom of the World report, released Sept. 10. This year’s report is based on 2018 data (the most recent available). By 2018, global economic freedom had recovered from the 2008 financial crisis and was at its highest level ever, albeit by just…
When people believe it’s the government’s job to help someone, they stop doing it themselves
“God giveth and the government taketh away,” goes the old, wry saying. God aside, it’s people who won’t or can’t give when the government takes away. A recent survey of generosity in the United States and Canada gives proof. The more centralist and socialist a society becomes, the less voluntary giving occurs. Socialism doesn't help…
Its downfall as Latin America’s freest economy will be next if socialist activists have their way and rewrite the constitution
By Paz Gómez Research associate Frontier Centre for Public Policy When Hong Kong pro-democracy protests stalled a U..S-China deal last year, they showed how sensitive trade is to domestic political unrest. Few observers noticed, however, that Chilean demonstrations forced the cancellation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit. U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese Communist Party…
My opinion on American presidential politics and $3 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Then again, you can dispense with my opinion and just spend the $3 to get the coffee. But if you want my opinion. … The Iowa caucuses are upon us – the first major moment in the United…
History shows plenty of radicals who pushed too hard. We have plenty on today’s world stage
In the summer and autumn of 1789, the French National Assembly overturned 1,000 years of law and custom to produce a modern constitutional democracy. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen spelled out all the new conditions of civil life: the abolition of feudalism and aristocratic titles, freedom from arbitrary arrest,…