Author: Jason VandenBeukel

The last bastion of liberalism, the Economist recently said of Canada. While the rest of the world was embracing reactionary populism, we were a progressive light in the growing darkness. What they missed, though, was a YouTube video by a University of Toronto professor declaiming new laws banning old words in the name of transgender rights. Millions of hits later, Jordan Peterson looks like the vanguard of a counterattack on political correctness and the spark that reignited the culture wars in Canada. Jason VandenBeukel pokes the fire for C2C.

Delegates at last weekend’s Conservative Party of Canada national convention in Vancouver voted nearly two-to-one in favour scrapping the party’s traditional opposition to gay marriage. It was just the latest of many losses for the social conservative wing of the party. They will probably get over this one too, writes Jason VandenBeukel, but the next leader of the party had better come up with something to keep them in the big blue tent, or risk its collapse.

The Supreme Court told the Harper government in 2014 that its plans for Senate reform would so fundamentally change how Canada is governed that it could not proceed without a constitutional amendment. Now the Trudeau government wants to do something even more radical – change how we elect the House of Commons. This doesn’t require a constitutional change but surely something so elemental to our democracy at least requires a national referendum. Jason VandenBeukel explains…