Slavery is an outrage, pure and simple, truly one where it is accurate to say “even one is too many”. But even slavery requires context. Out of the more than 12 million Africans captured and shipped across the Atlantic, by the year 1700 precisely six were held in what would later become Quebec. So how and why did La Belle Province decide to upend the truth of its past? In this version of an essay that appeared originally in the Dorchester Review, Frédéric Bastien chronicles Quebec’s bizarre orgy of “historical correctness” and the damage it is doing to memory, truth and perspective.
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.
Barely 50 years ago a man could tire of his wife, tell her he wanted a divorce and, with a little luck in court, walk away financially intact, leaving his ex in virtual penury to start over if she could. Since then, the legal and financial pendulums have swung. And swung. And swung some more. About time, too! many will answer. But should there be no limits at all on spousal support obligations? Janice Fiamengo dissects a prominent – and, for the male party, extremely costly – divorce case to reveal the one-sidedness now baked into Canadian family law.
It is one sign of the remorseless march of the administrative state that appeals to Canada’s Constitution appear almost quaint, as well as typically toothless. The news media often frame provincial objections to federal encroachments as claims or perceptions rather than testable assertions, as if Canada’s constitutional documents comprise long-lost secret scrolls written in a dead language. It has been Canada’s judges, however, who have most decisively tipped the balance in favour of federal supremacy in more and more areas. No case has proved too small to keep the process rolling. Not even, as Grant A. Brown reports, a dispute over a simple Ontario government sticker that even the judge had to concede was factually accurate.
When Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin stepped down in 2017, she was regarded as one of the most consequential jurists in Canadian history, largely due to her court’s activist approach to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Her career arc was also widely considered a triumph of progressive feminism in the face of an entrenched legal patriarchy. That reputation is due for a re-assessment. Grant A. Brown sifts through the evidence of McLachlin’s autobiography and various post-retirement missteps, and unearths what he feels is a surprising lack of principle, objectivity and sound reasoning.
What happens when the federal government gives up on fighting Indigenous land claims in court, foots the bill for new native lawsuits and buys into the legally-toxic idea that historical treaties are not binding contracts but rather agreements to “share the land”? Nothing of benefit to Canada. Under current government “reconciliation” dogma, priceless landmarks such as Ontario’s famed Bruce Peninsula could be seized from public ownership. And the entire concept of private property in Canada may soon find itself in peril. Former Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Brian Giesbrecht reveals the damage being done.
Prime Minister Trudeau is pushing for increased immigration next year despite a poll finding only 17% of Canadians favour such a step. Bradly Betters argues that in Canada as in other Western nations, rational thinking about immigration has been clouded by a universalist hyper-moralism that conflates a nation’s interests with racism.
A recent study says the proportion of women, visible minorities, and disabled people in the RCMP remains static. Josh Dehaas argues than rather than chase after such illusory goals as “gender parity” or achieving some artificial ratio through quota hiring, the RCMP should continue to hire whoever’s best.
There was a time in “the true North strong and free” you could follow your dreams as long as you didn’t hurt other people. Then came “social licence” and suddenly, from energy pipelines to the B.C. grizzly bear hunt, things got banned for being unpopular, a.k.a. “socially unacceptable”. That ominous change sets Canada on the well-worn path to the tyranny of the majority, writes John Robson.
Only a small number of Canadian authors and thinkers publicly question the racial segregation underpinning Aboriginal law and policy. The latest to do so is northern Ontario lawyer Peter Best, in a passionate and wide-ranging book entitled There Is No Difference. In an age when the human equality lessons of Mandela, King, Lincoln and Gandhi have been turned upside-down by identity politics, Best warns that Canadian apartheid is plunging the country ever-deeper into racial division and economic paralysis. Despite its flaws, writes Brian Giesbrecht, Best has produced an important and hopeful work.