Learning Disabled: How Charlatans and Conformists Have Undermined Canadian Education

With Alberta headed for a vote on having a vote on independence, many Canadians may think the threat of separation has evaporated. Or that it’s a long way off. Or that, in any case, Ottawa’s Clarity Act will shut it down and protect the federation. But in the concluding instalment of their series (read Part I here and Part II here), George Koch and Jim Mason explode that delusion. The Act is more likely to increase the “Yes” vote which, they predict, will trigger more political wrangling, more bad faith and bitterness, possible civil unrest and even the province’s annexation by the U.S. The consequences, in other words, are dire no matter which side you’re on.

The House of Commons once had an effective law in front of it that laid out clear steps to assure that any provincial referendum on independence would be democratic and any negotiations after a “Yes” vote would be fair. But it wasn’t the current Clarity Act – it was a bill put forward by the Opposition Reform Party in 1996, and the Liberal government chose to ignore it. Instead, it passed its own legislation designed to crush support for any subsequent secession movement. In Part II of their series on what the Clarity Act means to today’s debate over Alberta’s future, George Koch and Jim Mason delve into the Act’s origin story and explain why it’s so blatantly stacked in favour of Ottawa – and how that could inflame separatist sentiment and undermine the federalist cause.

Multi-factor verification. Customer surveys. SMS alerts. Endless online check-ins. Technology was supposed to free up our time for better things. Instead, it has created endless obstacles to getting anything done. Plus there’s the constant impact of government regulations and questionable safety measures that further rob us of our valuable time. Peter Shawn Taylor looks at the absurd and annoying ways that 21^st-century life ties us up and grinds us down. While some examples seem faintly comical, taken together they comprise what Taylor argues is a micro-productivity crisis of national proportions that is no laughing matter.

Proponents of independence for Alberta seem to believe the federal Clarity Act provides a sure pathway to secession should they win a referendum vote. But as Jim Mason and George Koch explain, the Act is less pathway than political minefield. It demands a clear question with a clear majority vote – but offers no criteria for either. It provides no instructions on how separation negotiations should proceed, but it does allow other provinces, Indigenous groups and others to intervene. And it assigns virtually all decision-making to Ottawa. It is, Mason and Koch find in the first of this two-part series, a formula not for resolution but deadlock, virtually certain to frustrate any constitutional effort to secede. Almost like it was designed that way.

Why were our forebears more adventurous than we are today? Was it just that they had more empty space to explore, no GPS or instant communications to keep them safe, no social welfare state to protect them? It’s all that and more, writes Murray Lytle. The derring-do of days past, he argues, sprang from a value system that admired courage and saw risk-taking as a social virtue – even a duty – that could expand knowledge and build a better world as well as protect the nation. Lytle urges our society to shake off its smothering safety culture and rediscover a sense of adventure.

Artists once understood they were serving something greater than themselves – truth, beauty, memory – things universal and transcendent. No longer. In a culture where imagination is cast as “cultural appropriation” and exploitation, what matters is not art but the artist. Ego, self-regard and “lived experience” are paramount. In this searing critique, T.G. Kelemen uses recent examples of cancellation in the arts to explain how “progressive” pieties have inverted the very foundation of the arts, fuelling not just a culture war, but a war on culture.

You may not be much interested in politics, but politics – to borrow from the famous dictum on war by Leon Trotsky – is most definitely interested in you. With land acknowledgements to stand up for, rainbow-coloured sidewalks to stride over, garbage to sort and slogans like “Elbows up!” to recite, politics in today’s world is virtually inescapable. But is there any point in even trying? David Solway argues that the answer is an emphatic “Yes”. In a transcendent essay that ranges from idyllic Aegean islands to crumbling 19th-century communes, Solway paints a vivid portrait of the nature and meaning of apolitical life in its full sense, charting its evolution and blind alleys in literature, art and real-world attempts – and issuing a rallying cry for its centrality in building and, he still hopes, saving the greatest civilization the world has ever known.

As if the mayhem created by the 2025 Cowichan decision regarding property rights wasn’t enough, the B.C. court system has now declared its readiness to undermine legal contracts as well. As Peter Best reveals, a January 2026 decision to allow a contentious Indigenous lawsuit to proceed threatens to upend centuries of contract law. At issue is a small B.C. First Nation’s claim it has an aboriginal title right to export propane on an industrial scale, one that should overrule a signed, legal contract between the port of Prince Rupert and a billion-dollar energy project that itself is providing major aboriginal benefits. Acceding to such an outrageous demand, Best warns, will plunge relations between natives and the rest of Canada further into chaos and mistrust.

Canada’s immigration system was once the envy of the world. Based on the notion that those who get into the country are those who determine its future, the system chose people best able to contribute. Then the Trudeau Liberals blew it up, opening the gates to just about anyone – including literal terrorists – wreaking economic havoc and breaking Canadians’ faith in the value of citizenship. John Weissenberger, who served as chief of staff to the federal immigration minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, has watched it happen with growing dismay, and argues for a return to sanity – centred on the sensible “points” system that served Canada so well for decades.

Waiting lists stretching years. Plummeting quality. Outraged parents. Providers slowly strangled by red tape. The federal Liberals’ vaunted $10-a-day childcare program has proved an expensive disaster. Five years in, Matthew Lau digs into the many problems and inequities this landmark social policy has delivered. Lau finds B.C., which had a three-year head start on the rest of the country and an enthusiastic NDP government leading the way, in the worst straits of all. With an irretrievably flawed system clearly failing Canadian families, Lau argues that Prime Minister Mark Carney should pivot to a fairer, cheaper and more effective alternative.

After decades spent pursuing net-zero dreams at great cost to their economies and social fabric, most of the world’s industrialized nations are waking back up. War with Iran and the threat of tanker blockades have everyone worried about oil and natural gas supplies and clamouring for energy security. Or nearly everyone. Not Mark Carney, though. Canada’s prime minister keeps pushing industrial carbon taxes higher and insists on wasting taxpayers’ money on windmills that make no difference. Gwyn Morgan recalls his own observation of the global warming movement’s original rise, its morphing into the radical “net zero” cult – and its spectacular global disintegration. It is high time, Morgan writes, that Canadians demand Carney also drop his delusions.

You drag yourself out of bed for your morning coffee, but the faucet’s dry. And the toilet won’t flush. It’s going to be a really bad day. Beneath our cities lie massive webs of pipes delivering water and removing sewage. They are crucial to our daily lives. But as Greg Wilson reveals, they have been scandalously overlooked and underfunded across Canada. The City of Calgary, C2C Journal found out, has even skimmed more than $1 billion from its ratepayer-funded water utility to spend on other programs. With a spate of recent failures bringing attention to the condition of our local water services, Wilson argues for a dramatic change in priorities at city hall: drop the social engineering and put real engineers in charge.

Indigenous land acknowledgements have become so common that many Canadians no longer give them a second thought – simply accepting a kind of tuneless new national anthem before events of all sorts. And that’s why they’re so dangerous. The enforced conformity and compelled speech they depend on are not just threats to individual freedom, writes George Ramsay, they also create a divisive moral hierarchy based on race. In this originally reported story, Ramsay delves into the dangers posed by Canada’s broader shift to enforced verbal compliance, reveals the inspiring stories of a few brave souls who have dared to challenge this social tyranny and offers practical tips on how the rest of us can fight back too.

Generation Z should know better than anyone the risk that technology poses to personal privacy. They are after all the first generation to grow up entirely in the digital age. Jessica Nwaefidoh knows from personal experience how vulnerable your most intimate information can be. With companies anxious to profit from everyone’s personal data, politicians happy to play along for their own selfish reasons and most people willing to sacrifice their own privacy for convenience, amusement or just to get by, Nwaefidoh argues that it’s time to fight back. The right to be left alone, she finds, requires constant vigilance – and she offers some practical tactics to reclaim that right.

Older generations often roll their eyes when young people seek to blame them for their woes. But if Canada’s Gen Zers feel betrayed by the Boomers, they are right to do so, argues Gwyn Morgan. Years of irresponsible fiscal and regulatory policies have hamstrung the Canadian economy and left younger generations facing a bleak future of stagnant wages, rising taxes and shrinking opportunities. A former business leader who created more than his share of jobs and prosperity during his long corporate career, Morgan casts a worried eye over the next generation – and offers sympathy for the situation they’re inheriting.