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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Inner city shoplifting and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew

Published

5 months ago

9 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Giesbrecht

This problem is only made worse by gullible writers and politicians who make excuses for the thieves. Their excuse is that these people are disadvantaged, so they are less than fully responsible for their criminal conduct. Some sympathetic souls go even further, and suggest that these indigenous shoplifters are simply taking back what is rightfully theirs as “reparations” because the shop owners are on “stolen land”.

Winnipeg, Manitoba is being hit with an epidemic of shoplifting that appears to be out of control. Thieves openly steal expensive items, such as frozen meat, from inner city food stores. Shelves are stripped bare in what are more accurately described as robberies than shoplifting. Victims describe brazen thefts by entitled thieves who become indignant when caught in the act. One store employee, who tried to stop a theft, was told “You are on Treaty 1 territory”. The stores that are hardest hit are often owned by immigrant families who have worked very hard to build their modest businesses. Some have had to close, as a result of the unchecked criminality, and others will follow.

Police protection is weak. Even in rare cases where culprits are caught and prosecuted, sentences are minimal.

The problem of brazen theft from Winnipeg liquor stores reached such a serious level in the recent past that customers at urban liquor stores in Manitoba are now allowed to enter the store only after lining up single file, and producing identification. Liquor prices have risen as a result, because special government employees must be hired to sit at the door to inspect ID’s. Customers must line up outside, even on the coldest winter days, because freeloaders choose to steal liquor. And everyone – including the police – are too shy to confront the robbers.

Other western cities, such as Regina, Saskatoon and Thunder Bay are having similar problems. Even small cities, such as Wetaskiwin, Alberta, are hard hit.

The common element is that all of these cities and towns have significant indigenous populations who migrated to the cities from largely dysfunctional reserves, where attitudes of dependency, entitlement and victimhood prevail. Most arrive poorly educated, with few job skills, but with an expectation that they will be provided for. They proceed to live rough lives on the mean streets of these cities. Many drift to shoplifting and other crime. The inner city thieves are disproportionately from this demographic.

This problem is only made worse by gullible writers and politicians who make excuses for the thieves. Their excuse is that these people are disadvantaged, so they are less than fully responsible for their criminal conduct. Some sympathetic souls go even further, and suggest that these indigenous shoplifters are simply taking back what is rightfully theirs as “reparations” because the shop owners are on “stolen land”. They argue that these indigenous people are victims of a system that gives them no chance to succeed, or that they are suffering from the “intergenerational trauma” presumably caused by the fact that 1 in 6 indigenous children attended residential schools in the past.

The shoplifters readily adopt these excuses, and claim to be victims of “systemic racism”.

But, wait a minute! Isn’t the Premier of Manitoba, Wab Kinew, indigenous? Isn’t he a successful, law-abiding person? And wouldn’t most indigenous Canadians laugh at the idea that they had to steal to survive? How is it that Wab Kinew, and the many other successful indigenous Canadians manage their lives just fine while the shoplifters cannot?

The answer is that Wab succeeded the way all successful people do. He went to school, worked hard, and went where the jobs are. He was fortunate to have competent, caring parents who understood the importance of education and hard work. His parents also understood that assimilation (or, if you prefer, integration) was essential for their son to succeed. Wab’s father had a rough time in residential school, but used what he learned to raise a son who has become a provincial premier.

 The fact that Kinew is fully assimilated does not prevent him from celebrating his indigenous heritage. Recently, a video of him energetically performing a prairie chicken dance went viral. It showed indigenous youth that they too can be both successful Canadians – and proudly indigenous – at the same time.

It is clear from watching him dancing so vigorously that he would have been a formidable warrior in pre-contact indigenous hunting culture. Colonialism ended that possibility. But it is equally clear that he, and the other indigenous people who were willing to learn the new ways, received a lot in return from the settlers. He is now an articulate, literate, thoroughly modern man, thanks to “settler colonialism”. Colonialism has also given him an expected lifespan more than double that of yesterday’s hunter-gatherers. Colonialism gave at least as much as it took from him.

Kinew’s memoir, “The Reason You Walk” describes someone determined to live his life not as a victim, but as a confident indigenous Canadian.

He built his own life – making mistakes along the way – but learning from those mistakes, and is now the leader of a province – and lauded as a possible future prime minister. He offers no apologies to critics who suggest that an indigenous person who is successful is somehow “selling out” indigenous people. His famous reply to that old saw is “Aboriginal success is the best form of reconciliation”.

Don’t expect to find Wab Kinew stealing frozen hamburger from a Food Fare store anytime soon.

But here’s the lesson indigenous youth can learn from the example Wab Kinew, and other successful indigenous people have set: “If they can do it, so can you”. They should also tell the apologists who want to give them tired excuses – excusing theft as “reparations” for perceived past wrongs, or “intergenerational trauma” – that they, like Wab, refuse to live their lives as “victims”.

In short, the solution to the shoplifting problem is not to condone theft. It is not to treat criminals differently because they are indigenous. It is not to offer them excuses. The solution is to create more Wab Kinews.

And that’s up to Indigenous parents. No government can do that for them. For many families, like Wab’s, that will include the difficult decision to move from dead-end reserves.  But if they have the same commitment to their children’s education and upbringing that Wab’s parents had there is no reason that they can’t raise successful children in this country.

Long before he became Manitoba’s premier, Wab Kinew, regularly entertained listeners on CBC Radio. He was a refreshing, common sense voice, and always refused to play the victim. He never failed to remind young indigenous people that Canada worked just fine for him.

And, with a bit of grit and hard work, it can work for them too.

 

Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Transition Troubles: Medical Risks and Regret Among Trans Teens

Published on November 2, 2024

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Do teens going through cross-gender hormones and surgeries know what they’re doing? A leak of internal conversations by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health shows even some doctors administering the procedures have serious doubts.

The U.S. advocacy organization Environmental Progress, led by president and founder Michael Shellenberger, made the leaks public.

“The WPATH Files show that what is called ‘gender medicine’ is neither science nor medicine,” Shellenberger said in a press release.

A short list of excerpts highlighted many telling comments.

Child psychologist Dianne Berg, who co-authored the child chapter of the 8th edition of WPATH Standards of Care, said young girls don’t understand what it means to get male hormones.

“[It is] out of their developmental range to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them. They’ll say they understand, but then they’ll say something else that makes you think, oh, they didn’t really understand that they are going to have facial hair.”

Canadian endocrinologist Dr. Daniel Metzger acknowledged, “We’re often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven’t even had biology in high school yet.”

Metzger said neither he nor his colleagues were surprised at a Dutch study that found some young post-transition adults regretted losing their fertility.

“It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year old, but I know I’m talking to a blank wall. They’d be like, ew, kids, babies, gross,” Metzger said.

“I think now that I follow a lot of kids into their mid-twenties, I’m like, ‘Oh, the dog isn’t doing it for you, is it?’ They’re like, ‘No, I just found this wonderful partner, and now want kids.’ … It doesn’t surprise me.

“Most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of a brain space to really talk about [fertility preservation] in a serious way.”

While youth keeps some from grasping the lifelong consequences of their actions, mental illness does the same for others. But that doesn’t always mean the doctors refuse to transition them.

One gender therapist administered cross-sex hormones to a patient with dissociative identity disorder. The therapist said asking the split personalities if they approved the treatment was ethical. Otherwise, a lawsuit could follow.

In one case, a nurse practitioner struggled with how to handle a patient with PTSD, major depressive disorder, observed dissociations, and schizoid typical traits who wanted to go on hormone therapy. Somehow the clear moral dilemma was lost on Dr. Dan Karasic, lead author of the mental health chapter of WPATH Standards of Care 8.

Karasic replied, “I’m missing why you are perplexed… The mere presence of psychiatric illness should not block a person’s ability to start hormones if they have persistent gender dysphoria, capacity to consent, and the benefits of starting hormones outweigh the risks…So why the internal struggle as to ‘the right thing to do?’”

Testosterone injections carry cancer risks for those born female. In one case, a doctor acknowledged a 16-year-old had two liver masses, one 11 cm by 11 cm, and another 7 cm by 7 cm, and “the oncologist and surgeon both have indicated that the likely offending agent(s) are the hormones.”

The friend and colleague of one doctor received close to ten years of male hormones, leading to hepatocarcinoma. “To the best of my knowledge, it was linked to his hormone treatment… it was so advanced that he opted for palliative care and died a couple of months later,” the doctor said.

Some female-born transitioning patients had terrible pain during orgasms, while males on estrogen complained of erections “feeling like broken glass.”

The future may be even stranger, according to one doctor.

“I think we are going to see a wave of non-binary affirming requests for surgery that will include non-standard procedures. I have worked with clients who identify as non-binary, agender, and Eunuchs who have wanted atypical surgical procedures, many of which either don’t exist in nature or represent the first of their kind and therefore probably have few examples of best practices,” the doctor said.

Unsurprisingly, some people regret their medical transitions and want to change back. Some WPATH members want to discount this altogether. WPATH President Marci Bowers admitted, “[A]cknowledgment that de-transition exists even to a minor extent is considered off limits for many in our community.”

An unnamed researcher thought it was just a matter of perspective, saying, “What is problematic is the idea of detransitioning, as it frames being cisgender as the default and reinforces transness as a pathology. It makes more sense to frame gender as something that can shift over time, and to figure out ways to support people making the choices they want to make in the moment, with the understanding that feelings around decisions [may] change over time.”

Should our physical being be substantially altered and re-altered according to our feelings? Is transitioning a matter of mental health or self-expression? At least Alberta is putting the brakes on these dubious practices for minors. Other provinces should follow.

Lee Harding is a research fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Economy

One Solution to Canada’s Housing Crisis: Move. Toronto loses nearly half million people to more affordable locations

Published on October 31, 2024

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Wendell Cox

The largest CMA, Toronto, had by far the most significant net internal migration loss at 402,600, Montreal lost 162,700, and Vancouver lost 49,700.

Canadians are fleeing overpriced cities to find more affordable housing. And restrictive urban planning policies are to blame.

Canadians may be solving the housing crisis on their own by moving away from more expensive areas to areas where housing is much more affordable. This trend is highlighted in the latest internal migration data from Statistics Canada.

The data covers 167 areas comprising the entire nation, including Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs), which have populations from 100,000 to seven million. It also includes the smaller Census Agglomerations (CAs), which have a core population of at least 10,000, as well as areas outside CMAs and CAs in each province and territory, which are referred to as “largely rural areas.”

Long-standing migration trends have been virtually reversed. Larger cities (CMAs) now see the highest loss of net internal migrants, while smaller cities (CAs) are experiencing solid gains. Between 2019 and 2023, Canada’s CMAs lost 273,800 net internal migrants to smaller areas, including CAs and largely rural areas. This contrasts sharply with the previous five-year period (2014 to 2018) when CMAs saw only a 1,000-person loss.

So, where did these people go? A significant portion – 108,100 – moved to CAs, which captured 39 per cent of the CMA losses. This is triple that of the previous five years (2014 through 2018).

However, the most notable shift occurred in largely rural areas, which gained 165,700 net internal migrants, representing 61 per cent of CMA losses. This is a dramatic increase compared to the 33,700 net loss in the previous five years.

Among the 167 areas, the migration data is stunning.

The areas experiencing the greatest net internal migration are outside CMAs and CAs. The largely rural area of Ontario saw the biggest gain, with a net increase of 78,300 people – nearly 40 times the number from the previous five years. Meanwhile, rural Quebec placed second, with a net gain of 76,200 people, more than 10 times the increase in the prior five years. The Calgary CMA ranked third (and first among CMAs) at 42,600, followed by the Ottawa Gatineau CMA (Ontario and Quebec) at 36,700 and the Oshawa CMA at 34,900.

The largest CMA, Toronto, had by far the most significant net internal migration loss at 402,600, Montreal lost 162,700, and Vancouver lost 49,700. Outside these CMAs, nearly all areas posted net gains.

People have also started moving to the Maritimes. The Halifax CMA tripled its previous gain (21,300). In New Brunswick, Moncton nearly quadrupled its gain (7,000). Modest gains were also made in Fredericton and Saint John as well as in Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island.

Meanwhile, housing affordability in Canada’s largest CMAs has become grim. Toronto’s median house price to median household income has doubled in less than two decades. Vancouver’s prices have tripled relative to incomes in five decades. Montreal’s house prices nearly doubled relative to incomes over two decades.

These CMAs (and others) have housing policies typical of the international planning orthodoxy, which seeks to make cities denser. In effect, they have declared war against “urban sprawl,” trying to stop any material expansion of urbanization. These urban containment policies, which include greenbelts, agricultural reserves, urban growth boundaries and compact city strategies, are associated with the worst housing affordability. Land prices are skewed upward throughout the market. Demand continues to increase ahead of incomes, but the supply of low-cost suburban land, so crucial to controlling costs, is frozen.

Regrettably, some areas where people have fled are also subject to urban containment and housing affordability has deteriorated rapidly. Between 2015 and 2022, prices in Ontario CMAs London, Guelph, Brantford and St. Catharines have about doubled. BC’s Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island have seen similar increases. Those moving to these areas are ahead financially, but the rapidly rising house prices are closing opportunities.

There are proposals to restore housing affordability, though none tackle the urban containment policies associated with the price increases. Indeed, we have not found a single metropolitan area where housing affordability has been restored with the market distortions of the intensity that have developed in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal (not in our Demographia International Housing Affordability report or elsewhere). Such markets have become unsustainable for most new entrant households because they cannot afford to live there.

Housing is not a commodity. Households have varying preferences, from ground-oriented housing (detached and townhomes) to high-rise condos. Indeed, a growing body of literature associates detached housing with higher total fertility rates. According to Statistics Canada, Canadians have favoured lower densities for decades, a trend that continued through the 2021 Census, a trend that continued through the 2021 Census, according to Statistics Canada.

With governments (virtually around the world) failing to maintain stable and affordable housing markets, it’s not surprising people are taking matters into their own hands. Until fundamental reforms can be implemented in the most expensive markets, those seeking a better quality of life will have no choice but to leave.

First published in the Financial Post.

Wendell Cox is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and the author of Demographia International Housing Affordability.

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