Feature

The Housing Market Isn’t Racist. Blame Your Parents Instead

Peter Shawn Taylor
March 17, 2024
Diversity may be our strength. But it is now alarmingly commonplace in Canada to blame any perceived diversity in outcomes between racial groups on vaguely-defined “systemic racism” or “white supremacy”. Case in point: the Federal Housing Advocate’s allegations of rampant racism in Canada’s housing market, and the need to address it with outlandishly disruptive policies. Delving deep into Statistics Canada’s ample supply of race-based data, Peter Shawn Taylor considers the evidence for racism in Canadian housing, education, income and poverty statistics, and finds a more convincing explanation much closer to home.
Feature
Diversity may be our strength. But it is now alarmingly commonplace in Canada to blame any perceived diversity in outcomes between racial groups on vaguely-defined “systemic racism” or “white supremacy”. Case in point: the Federal Housing Advocate’s allegations of rampant racism in Canada’s housing market, and the need to address it with outlandishly disruptive policies. Delving deep into Statistics Canada’s ample supply of race-based data, Peter Shawn Taylor considers the evidence for racism in Canadian housing, education, income and poverty statistics, and finds a more convincing explanation much closer to home.
Media and Youth

Young Offenders: Meet the Angry Socialists Poisoning Our Politics

Noah Jarvis
March 12, 2024
Criminal Justice

The Worrisome Wave of Politicized Prosecutions

Gwyn Morgan
March 7, 2024
Cultural Trends

A Likely Story: The “Diversity” Myth Consumes the Canadian Literary Scene

Bob Armstrong
March 2, 2024

Current News

Indigenous Reconciliation
An avalanche of propaganda today urges Canadians to believe their country perpetrated a genocide against Indigenous people with its residential school system. Some proponents even want to criminalize statements disagreeing with such claims. But doing so will make the search for truth impossible. Digging deep into federal archives, Greg Piasetzki uncovers the complicated and perhaps surprising history of the now-reviled schools. Piasetzki’s careful research reveals not only the deep regard many federal officials had for the wellbeing of Canada’s native children, but also how they actively sought to shut down the entire system as early as the 1940s.
Judaism and Anti-Semitism
Among history’s multiplicity of ethnicities, thousands over the millennia succeeded in carving out their own countries – while thousands more never did. Some conquered, subjugated or even annihilated their neighbours, while others managed to muddle through, and still others fell victim to their tormentors. But no people, notes David Solway, has been universally and eternally persecuted – in every century of its existence, and in every place where its members ventured. None except the Jews – with the only reprieves occurring during the brief times when the Jewish people had a place to call their own. In his review of Solway’s new book, Crossing the Jordan, Tom Flanagan encounters some magical turns of phrase, a stoutly argued case for the indispensable role of Israel, pugnacious assertions about expanding Islam and, above all, a rare prescience about the gathering global threat against the Jewish people.
Future of Science
Time was when nearly everyone – even schoolkids – understood and accepted that geologic time was measured in tens if not hundreds of millions of years, a barely-fathomable vastness that animated our awe over the Age of Dinosaurs or the mysterious arrival of intelligent, upright apes. So how to explain the small but determined scientific movement intent on winning acceptance that geology can now be measured in a comparative blink of an eye, and that humanity has entered a new geological epoch defined by…itself? Applying his professional geologist’s scientific rigour and his amateur cultural historian’s perspective, John Weissenberger urges scientists to maintain a measure of humility, to recall the bitter lessons of past pseudo-scientific fiascos, and to be wary of the pitfalls of activist science pursuing political ends.

On Point

The New Racism

The Dangers and Delusions of Critical Race Theory

Borys M. Kowalsky
September 20, 2022
Stories

Welcome to Canada, not

Hymie Rubenstein
August 30, 2018
Stories

Canada Should Push For a Retro NATO

James Bissett
June 22, 2009

Global Newsstand

Jewish Review of Books
The U.S. House of Representatives recently demanded social media platform TikTok divest itself of its Chinese ownership. But the danger goes far beyond China’s antagonism towards the United States, writes Cole S. Aronson in the Jewish Review of Books. TikTok is actually a tool of malign “political influence” in numerous global conflicts, including the Israel-Hamas war.
Law & Liberty
Bemoaning the woeful state of public higher education only goes so far, write Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane in Law & Liberty. Rather than just complaining, the authors see a welcome opportunity to return colleges to their original purpose of educating students by reining in DEI mandates, busting hidden cartels and encouraging real competition.
City Journal
In City Journal, Joel Zinberg reflects on U.S. President Joe Biden’s boastful claims about the impact of drug-price controls in his Inflation Reduction Act. Zinberg examines the real effects of clamping down on drug prices, which include fewer new life-saving products coming to market and an ever-larger federal bureaucracy stifling the pharmaceutical industry.

Keep Real News Free

Keep Real
News Free

Stories

Electoral Systems
To hear proponents tell it, proportional representation is the cure for all that ails Canadian democracy. It’s fairer, less divisive, more diverse, makes voters happier and is less prone to “strategic” voting. About the only thing it apparently can’t do is make childbirth painless. But could replacing our traditional first-past-the-post voting system really improve how Canada is governed – and how Canadians feel about their government? In his grand-prize-winning entry to the 1st Annual Patricia Trottier and Gwyn Morgan Student Essay Contest, Nolan Albert weighs the arguments for and against replacing first-past-the-post with proportional representation, and in doing so uncovers the real cause of voter dissatisfaction.
Public Finances
Ottawa’s post-pandemic $300 billion spending orgy was coupled with the pompous claim to “Build Back Better”. As it happened, most of that spending was recklessly borrowed – stoking inflation – while Build Back Better was a dud, was discarded in embarrassment and, if recalled at all today, is told as a sick joke. Far too many planned projects now sink into a quicksand of political haggling, regulatory overkill, mission creep, design complexity and, if built at all, bungled execution. Looking at specific examples, Gwyn Morgan presents the lamentable results: far less is actually getting built across Canada, nearly everything takes forever and – worst of all – costs routinely soar to ludicrous levels. Added to that, Morgan notes, are woke-based criteria being imposed by the Trudeau government that are worsening the vicious cycle.
Markets or Monopolies?
That Canada’s health care system is ailing is no longer news. That it is not only victim but perpetrator – killing patients through indifference and neglect – is also increasingly understood. But is Canada’s publicly funded and operated monopoly health care system an economy of sorts, a set of relationships that can be understood in economic terms, and one that might lend itself to reform by applying economic principles? In the second of three prize-winning entries from the 1st Annual Patricia Trottier and Gwyn Morgan Student Essay Contest to be published by C2C Journal, Alicia Kardos answers a resounding “Yes”. Drawing on key ideas and principles of the genius from Kirkcaldy, Scotland, Kardos envisions an overhauled health care system in which incentives are rational, self-interest is rewarded and the consumer – the patient – is king.
Politicized Culture
The shocking eruptions of Jew-hatred following the Hamas atrocity against Israel in October swept through streets, squares and universities, threatening individuals, businesses and communities in dozens of countries including Canada. That the evil phenomenon might soon fall upon the cultural scene seemed inevitable. The responses of cultural organizations weren’t inevitable, however, but a series of choices. And so with a pair of West Coast theatres recently facing the choice of proceeding with a long-scheduled, highly acclaimed play in which Jews are not portrayed as villains, or submitting to the bullying of pro-Hamas activists and a tendentious Palestinian graffiti artist. Examining the situation, Michael Posner finds one work dedicated to uncovering universal truths and shared humanity, the other employing untruth to advance a particularist political agenda.
Future of Media
Yes, social media companies have succeeded in grabbing the vast bulk of advertising dollars that once supported Canada’s legacy news industry. But is offering a better product to eager consumers really “stealing”, as media companies and politicians now allege? And should new media titans Meta/Facebook and Google be forced to compensate their old-school competitors for failing to adapt to changing realities? In the first of three prize-winning entries from the 1st Annual Patricia Trottier and Gwyn Morgan Student Essay Contest to be published by C2C Journal, Clayton DeMaine examines the Justin Trudeau government’s much-fought-over Online News Act, its devastating impact on Canada’s news business and how the imbroglio is affecting his own dreams of becoming a journalist.
Government control
Low prices and high volumes can be a successful business model in the right hands. Just think Costco or Walmart. But should anyone trust government to pull off such a strategy? As the early returns on the Trudeau Liberals’ $10-a-day childcare program reveal, Ottawa is utterly incapable of delivering on such a promise. While offering childcare at a fraction of its true cost has led to a massive increase in demand, the country is now beset by disastrous childcare shortages and ever-lengthening waiting lists. In fact, more parents are looking after their own kids at home now than was the case in 2019. As Matthew Lau reports, there’s a solution to Canada’s childcare supply woes, but the Liberals refuse to consider it.
Origins of Covid-19
The idea that the virus that caused Covid-19 leaked out of a laboratory in Wuhan, China rather than being passed from an animal to a person at a Chinese market has gained more and more support. Remarkable as that is, more worrisome is evidence that the secretive lab was designed to develop and tinker with dangerous viruses to make them more virulent and contagious — ostensibly in the name of medical research. Still more disturbing are the links between the Chinese facility and American scientists, government agencies and NGOs, and the possibility that the road to the pandemic actually began decades ago with efforts to weaponize medicine. Margret Kopala unpacks this tawdry tale and notes warnings from those at the centre of the story that another and possibly even worse pandemic is likely.
Opioid Crisis
Almost as many Canadians have been lost to drug overdoses in the last seven years as were killed in combat throughout the Second World War. Yet governments, health care professionals and addiction experts continue to quarrel over virtually every aspect of the opioid crisis – its causes, possible remedies and even whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents. And amidst this dithering and experimentation, the horrific death toll mounts. In search of hope, veteran researcher Susan Martinuk takes a close look at life in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside and compares it to the decidedly different approach taken by Alberta’s UCP government.
Value of Leisure
As mid-winter takes hold, millions of Canadians are planning a getaway to someplace warm or mapping out a bucket-list trip for next summer. Travel has long provided both an escape from everyday life and a way to experience different cultures. Now it’s under attack from the “ethical tourism” movement that sees travel as shallow and destructive. It wants tourism curtailed in the name of social justice, postcolonial redress and ecological mindfulness. Some environmental think-tanks and at least one “ethical” tour operator even advocate “carbon passports” that would minimize the amount of travel people are allowed each year. Drawing on his personal journeys in Southeast Asia, Brock Eldon takes apart this phenomenon and makes the case for the beauty, tradition and economic value brought to the world through the mutual engagement enabled by tourism. Wanderlust is a deep human impulse, Eldon observes, part of what sustains us, carrying the promise of enlightenment and the spark of joy.
Surging Population
It is arguably forgivable for a government long in office to allow one problem to deteriorate into a crisis. Waving off two or three crises at once would require a voter of rare goodwill – or perhaps naïveté or indifference. But four? Especially after said government ignored ample warning signs, years of deteriorating numbers and no shortage of sound external policy advice. That is where Canada finds itself today, governed by a party fixated on riding out the political fallout while Canadians endure the economic hardship and at-times literally deadly effects. Gwyn Morgan examines the entwined crises in housing affordability, health care, immigration and economic productivity, a vicious cycle that the Justin Trudeau government shows few signs of understanding and none at all of resolving.
Freedom to Read
Libraries have served as storehouses of diverse knowledge since ancient times and over the centuries blossomed into bastions of intellectual freedom. So why did one of Canada’s largest school boards recently decide to remove most of the books from its own libraries? Children’s book author and retired schoolteacher Marjorie Gann examines the discreditable politics behind the Peel District School Board’s plan to send books written before 2008 to the landfill, and the literary carnage caused by this shocking decision. With Canada’s entire children’s book industry – publishers, librarians and writers’ groups – now apparently in the thrall of wokism, it has fallen to a small group of outraged parents and teachers to defend students’ freedom to read.
National Narrative
“I never set out to be a patriot or a popular historian. I just liked storytelling.” So said Pierre Berton, Canada’s most successful popular historian, two years before his death in 2004. Today, Canadian popular history appears to have little to do with honest storytelling and even less with patriotism. Rather than a “National Dream” – the title of Berton’s most famous book – the telling of Canada’s story has descended into a “National Nightmare” full of accusations of genocide and evil characters who must be purged from public view. Stephen R. Bown, one of the country’s few remaining practitioners of the craft, charts the recent trajectory of popular history, the many fascinating tales it has to tell, and its importance to creating Canada’s national narrative.
Indigenous Reconciliation
The most dangerous myths are those everyone claims to be true. Set in motion by the evidence-free “discovery” of 215 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, Canada’s myth of the missing children has come to dominate native discourse at home and abroad. And anyone who asks for proof of this tale of officially-sanctioned mass murder is now labelled a “denialist.” Seeking to bust this myth is the important new book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools). In an exclusive preview, co-editor Tom Flanagan explains how the “missing children” narrative first took shape and how this book sets things straight.
Education
Universities in Canada rely almost entirely on high school transcripts to decide who gets in and who doesn’t. Yet the marks on those transcripts are often unreliable. A single, standardized test – like most developed countries use – would make the process fairer and more accurate. But Canadian schools (as well as more and more American colleges) see them as elitist and even racist. Gordon Lee looks at the history and the evidence and finds standardized tests help lower-income and marginalized students, working against racial and economic discrimination. And they could form a bulwark against emerging “holistic” admissions policies that would further embed woke ideology in our education system.
Pandemic Aftermath
Despite the wreckage wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic – social disintegration, ruined lives, physical and economic tolls – the governments and public officials who “managed” the emergency have been decidedly uninterested in assessing their performance. Except in Alberta, where a government-appointed panel just released its Final Report. Though predictably attacked by politicians, media and “experts” who can abide no dissent, the report makes many sensible recommendations, Barry Cooper finds. The report calls for emergency management experts – not doctors or health care bureaucrats – to be in charge when such disasters strike, with politicians who are accountable to the people making the key decisions. Most important, the report demands much stronger protection for the individual freedoms that panic-stricken governments and overbearing professional organizations so readily quashed.

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