Connect with us
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=12]

Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Canada Fulfills the Dystopian Vision

Published

7 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

The country our ancestors built is being torn down. The welfare state runs on massive deficits, increasing our public fiscal slavery. Cancel culture kills free speech. The government funds the Anti-Hate Network to oppose religious conservatives,  which negatively  stereotypes them.

Poet T.S. Elliot once wrote, “This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” Canada has fallen but has all the illusion of being what it always was. Many Canadians fail to see a dystopian future foretold decades ago has arrived. Our institutions are failing us.

In Orwellian fashion, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms has transformed Canadian values in the pretense of upholding them. They eliminated federal laws that made Sunday a day of rest, forced the provision of abortion and euthanasia in the name of the security of the person, and banned prayer from city hall meetings in the name of religious freedom.

The pandemic cranked the judges’ distorted amp right up to 11. In B.C., Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson struck down public health orders banning protests, but quizzically maintained the ban on religious assembly. Elsewhere, the hypocrisy just continued, laws or no laws.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could bow the knee at Black Lives Matter protests that exceeded gathering limits, while those who did so for church services or rallies against mandates were prosecuted–or even persecuted. The Walmarts and Superstores were packed, while the churches and small businesses sat empty.

Doctors who prescribed ivermectin, one of the safest and widely effective drugs of all time, faced medical censure–even if their actions saved lives. Medical colleges became bodies that betray the profession’s values by banning medical opinions and the off-label use of drugs when it contradicts poor policies based on weak evidence.

The media, which should have been pushing back at this nonsense, went along with the charade as if it was the right thing to do. Any perspective that could foment doubt against the recommendations and policies of those in power was banned. Such is the practice of authoritarian countries, which is what Canada became.

As law professor Bruce Pardy has noted, Canada has shifted from the rule of law to the rule by laws. Here, legal systems manage the public and the law and courts fail to call the governments to account. A rally that’s permitted one minute can be trampled by the Emergencies Act the next, while  donors to a protest see their bank accounts seized. Did you lose your job for refusing a vaccine? Too bad. Oh, and you don’t get EI either.

The pandemic and its fear subsided, but neither sober reflection nor an adequate reckoning arrived. People kept getting COVID after the vaccinations, yet some are getting booster shots to this day. Analysts such as Denis Rancourt, credit public responses, including vaccines, for worldwide excess mortality of 17 million. Yet, the bombshell falls like a dud, either ignored or diffused by dismissive “fact-checkers.”  The life expectancy of Canadians dropped two full years and barely a shoulder was shrugged.

Even our elections fail to inspire confidence. In many municipalities, programmable computers count the votes and no one checks or scrutinizes the paper ballots. In other cases, paper ballots don’t exist–it’s all done on screen. A computer gets the trust a single individual would never receive.

The country our ancestors built is being torn down. The welfare state runs on massive deficits, increasing our public fiscal slavery. Cancel culture kills free speech. The government funds the Anti-Hate Network to oppose religious conservatives,  which negatively  stereotypes them.

Gender ideology, now entrenched in law and schools, is facilitating a wedge between traditional values and woke values and between parents and their children. It even challenges the objective truth of biological reality. Truth has become what we feel, overriding rational norms, facts, and our inherited society.

Like George Orwell’s 1984, if the government says 2 + 2 = 5, then that’s what it is, and anyone who fails to accept it becomes an enemy of the state. Orwell’s novel envisioned a time when false propaganda like “war is peace” and “freedom is slavery” would prevail. The dystopia has arrived. Anyone who refers to someone by their biological sex is accused of misgendering hate.

Unfortunately,the dark vision of Aldous Huxley is also unfolding. In 1958, the author of Brave New World Revisited predicted,

“By means of ever more effective methods of mind manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms – elections, parliaments, supreme courts, and all the rest – will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the shows as they see fit.”

It’s especially sad to watch our elderly maintain trust in government and mainstream media narratives when the days they deserved it have left us. Like petrified wood, the forms of our institutions remain but their composition has entirely changed. Our democratic, legal, and media institutions, our schools and hospitals, are failing us badly.

Canada has fallen, but many Canadians can’t see it because there’s no rubble.

Lee Harding is a Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Education

Our Kids Are Struggling To Read. Phonics Is The Easy Fix

Published on

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Michael Zwaagstra

One Manitoba school division is proving phonics works

If students don’t learn how to read in school, not much else that happens there is going to matter.

This might be a harsh way of putting it, but it’s the truth. Being unable to read makes it nearly impossible to function in society. Reading is foundational to everything, even mathematics.

That’s why Canadians across the country should be paying attention to what’s happening in Manitoba’s Evergreen School Division. Located in the Interlake region, including communities like Gimli, Arborg and Winnipeg Beach, Evergreen has completely overhauled its approach to reading instruction—and the early results are promising.

Instead of continuing with costly and ineffective methods like Reading Recovery and balanced literacy, Evergreen has adopted a structured literacy approach, putting phonics back at the centre of reading instruction.

Direct and explicit phonics instruction teaches students how to sound out the letters in words. Rather than guessing words from pictures or context, children are taught to decode the language itself. It’s simple, evidence-based, and long overdue.

In just one year, Evergreen schools saw measurable gains. A research firm evaluating the program found that five per cent more kindergarten to Grade 6 students were reading at grade level than the previous year. For a single year of change, that’s a significant improvement.

This should not be surprising. The science behind phonics instruction has been clear for decades. In the 1960s, Dr. Jeanne Chall, director of the Harvard Reading Laboratory, conducted extensive research into reading methods and concluded that systematic phonics instruction produces the strongest results.

Today, this evidence-based method is often referred to as the “science of reading” because the evidence overwhelmingly supports its effectiveness. While debates continue in many areas of education, this one is largely settled. Students need to be explicitly taught how to read using phonics—and the earlier, the better.

Yet Evergreen stands nearly alone. Manitoba’s Department of Education does not mandate phonics in its public schools. In fact, it largely avoids taking a stance on the issue at all. This silence is a disservice to students—and it’s a missed opportunity for genuine reform.

At the recent Manitoba School Boards Association convention, Evergreen trustees succeeded in passing an emergency motion calling on the association to lobby education faculties to ensure that new teachers are trained in systematic phonics instruction. It’s a critical first step—and one that should be replicated in every province.

It’s a travesty that the most effective reading method isn’t even taught in many teacher education programs. If new teachers aren’t trained in phonics, they’ll struggle to teach their students how to read—and the cycle of failure will continue.

Imagine what could happen if every province implemented structured literacy from the start of Grade 1. Students would become strong readers earlier, be better equipped for all other subjects, and experience greater success throughout school. Early literacy is a foundation for lifelong learning.

Evergreen School Division deserves credit for following the evidence and prioritizing real results over educational trends. But it shouldn’t be alone in this.

If provinces across Canada want to raise literacy rates and give every child a fair shot at academic success, they need to follow Evergreen’s lead—and they need to do it now.

All students deserve to learn how to read.

Michael Zwaagstra is a public high school teacher and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Continue Reading

Economy

Support For National Pipelines And LNG Projects Gain Momentum, Even In Quebec

Published on

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Joseph Quesnel

Public opinion on pipelines has shifted. Will Ottawa seize the moment for energy security or let politics stall progress?

The ongoing threats posed by U.S. tariffs on the Canadian economy have caused many Canadians to reconsider the need for national oil pipelines and other major resource projects.

The United States is Canada’s most significant trading partner, and the two countries have enjoyed over a century of peaceful commerce and good relations. However, the onset of tariffs and increasingly hostile rhetoric has made Canadians realize they should not be taking these good relations for granted.

Traditional opposition to energy development has given way to a renewed focus on energy security and domestic self-reliance. Over the last decade, Canadian energy producers have sought to build pipelines to move oil from landlocked Alberta to tidewater, aiming to reduce reliance on U.S. markets and expand exports internationally. Canada’s dependence on the U.S. for energy exports has long affected the prices it can obtain.

One province where this shift is becoming evident is Quebec. Historically, Quebec politicians and environmental interests have vehemently opposed oil and gas development. With an abundance of hydroelectric power, imported oil and gas, and little fossil fuel production, the province has had fewer economic incentives to support the industry.

However, recent polling suggests attitudes are changing. A SOM-La Presse poll from late February found that about 60 per cent of Quebec residents support reviving the Energy East pipeline project, while 61 per cent favour restarting the GNL Quebec natural gas pipeline project, a proposed LNG facility near Saguenay that would export liquefied natural gas to global markets. While support for these projects remains stronger in other parts of the country, this represents a substantial shift in Quebec.

Yet, despite this change, Quebec politicians at both the provincial and federal levels remain out of step with public opinion. The Montreal Economic Institute, a non-partisan think tank, has documented this disconnect for years. There are two key reasons for it: Quebec politicians tend to reflect the perspectives of a Montreal-based Laurentian elite rather than broader provincial sentiment, and entrenched interests such as Hydro-Québec benefit from limiting competition under the guise of environmental concerns.

Not only have Quebec politicians misrepresented public opinion, but they have also claimed to speak for the entire province on energy issues. Premier François Legault and Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet have argued that pipeline projects lack “social licence” from Quebecers.

However, the reality is that the federal government does not need any special license to build oil and gas infrastructure that crosses provincial borders. Under the Constitution, only the federal Parliament has jurisdiction over national pipeline and energy projects.

Despite this authority, no federal government has been willing to impose such a project on a province. Quebec’s history of resisting federal intervention makes this a politically delicate issue. There is also a broader electoral consideration: while it is possible to form a federal government without winning Quebec, its many seats make it a crucial battleground. In a bilingual country, a government that claims to speak for all Canadians benefits from having a presence in Quebec.

Ottawa could impose a national pipeline, but it doesn’t have to. New polling data from Quebec and across Canada suggest Canadians increasingly support projects that enhance energy security and reduce reliance on the United States. The federal government needs to stop speaking only to politicians—especially in Quebec—and take its case directly to the people.

With a federal election on the horizon, politicians of all parties should put national pipelines and natural gas projects on the ballot.

Joseph Quesnel is a senior research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Continue Reading

Trending

X