China

Nonfiction Novella
The purpose of great art and literature is to nourish the human spirit on an individual level. Or so Brock Eldon saw it. What he encountered in graduate school at an elite Canadian university was literature warped into a political tool of intimidation and compulsion, debauching even Shakespeare and destroying nearly everything in its path. Eldon watched the descent of PhD students into angry shouting nihilists and the incipient disintegration of a literature department. He descended a long way himself, fearing for his sanity and for civilization. In the second instalment of his nonfiction novella – published here for the first time – Eldon melds his years spent in East Asia, where he found greater intellectual freedom than in Canada, into a penetrating and original take on the Vietnam War’s centrality to the postmodern/neo-Marxist capture of Western culture and institutions. Part I is here.
Challenging “Net Zero”
In Germany, coal-fired electricity plants are being recommissioned and floating liquefied natural gas import facilities are being connected to pipelines. The UK recently even decided to construct a new coal-fired electricity plant. Meanwhile, nuclear energy is experiencing a worldwide renaissance, with dozens of facilities under construction or approved. In country after country, the cold realities of energy supply and national need are reasserting themselves and even decidedly left-wing governments are acting with pragmatism. Every government, that is, except Canada’s, points out Gwyn Morgan. Here the Liberal-fuelled frenzy to impose the technically impossible and economically ruinous “net zero” energy regime continues to gather momentum. Canada must be edged off this path, Morgan warns, before it is too late.
Democracy or Dictatorship?
The world’s nations have endured and discarded dictators and despots of virtually every shape, size and ruling style since the dawn of organized society – only to have them reappear in new form. In the early 1990s it briefly seemed that the era of the dictator had ended for good. That dream proved tragically illusory, as country after country has found out. Might not even Canada be immune? Was our nation recently saved by the bell, or was this just a brief reprieve? Dictators take many forms, after all, including the visage of grinning buffoon who seems happiest dressed in ludicrous costumes. How could such a thing occur during a pandemic through which we were “all in this together”? Gwyn Morgan employs the droll form of the traditional folk tale to remind us of what has come to pass and to issue an all-too serious warning.
China Policy
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.
Trudeau’s Foreign Policy
Canada’s diplomatic, corporate and legal establishments have worked to deepen ties with China for nearly 50 years, greatly abetting the Communist state’s historic drive for international normalization. Any pushback against such a policy of ingratiation has been fragmented, weak and usually portrayed as naïve or futile. Now this half-century of appeasement has come to a head in the most surprising way. Fin dePencier examines the legal affair of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, its profound impact on Canada-China and Canada-U.S. relations, the shifting tide of public opinion and our prime minister’s often-sorry role in the ongoing drama.
China and Industrial Policy
What does conservatism do, above all? It works. In the great debate about whether Canada’s federal Conservative Party should be defined by libertarians, populists, free traders, Harperites or Red Tories (new or old-style), it bears keeping in mind that Conservatives above all need to craft a party that, if elected, can make the country work. Sean Speer and Sam Duncan argue that the world has changed beneath our feet, so much that the post-Cold War order itself is fading into history. If Canada is to thrive and grow, our nation must adapt, and if they are to lead the way, Conservatives must eschew dogma and see the world as it really is.
Canada & The Rule of Law
When Justin Trudeau pined for autocracy in 2013 he was thinking of China and climate change. He has a far more pressing reason to wish for it today, writes Paul Stanway, as the pesky rule of law keeps interfering with his government’s best-laid plans in the SNC-Lavalin affair. The distinctly unhelpful election-year allegation is that first they bent the rule to spare the Montreal firm prosecution for corruption; when that failed they tried to break it. But former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould got in the way, and another Quebec Liberal scandale was born.

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