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Opinion

The Great Reset doesn’t care if you believe it exists and Canada is on the front line

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22 minute read

If you’re among the many people (can is possibly be the majority?) who still believe The Great Reset is an unfounded conspiracy theory, this article is for you.

The Great Reset ‘conspiracy theory’ has been around for years. If you don’t know what it is, here’s a brief explanation.  It basically submits that some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people are using some of the world’s largest companies (which they own) as well as many of the world’s richest nations (which they run) to execute a plan to completely change the way our society works (which they don’t like very much).  The theory is, these people who refer to themselves as “the elite” are planning to cripple the power of nation states and concentrate that power in a world governing body (like the World Economic Forum). This new powerful “elite” would exercise control over everyone, everywhere. They will completely change our supply chains, our economic systems and our energy systems in an effort to unite the world to protect the environment. There’s more to it, but that gets in most of the main points.

So this is the “theory”.  But is there a “conspiracy” around this?

According the the Merriam-Webster Dictionary ‘conspiracy’ means simply “The act of conspiring together”.  The Oxford dictionary spices that up a little.  According to Oxford, ‘conspiracy’ means “A secret plan by a group of people to do something harmful or illegal”.  Seems like it’s going to be easier to prove the Merriam-Webster version, but by the end of this article you’ll see how the Oxford definition might just work as well.

When it comes to all of the people who are not actively conspiring to change the world, there are roughly four categories of understanding The Great Reset.  Either you:

  1. Have no idea there is a Great Reset
  2. Accept there is a Great Reset, but doubt the ability and the organization of the people conspiring.
  3. Accept there is a Great Reset, accept the ability of the conspirators, but either agree with their intentions, or at least not oppose their intentions due to your concern for a more fair economic system and an impending world devastating environmental disaster.
  4. Accept there is a Great Reset, and oppose the intentions of the conspirators because you personally value individual freedoms above everything else.

Group 1 is huge. Recent US polling shows half of Americans aren’t even aware of the Great Reset. It’s not like the people behind the reset aren’t writing and talking about it.  It’s just that at least half of Americans haven’t seen them do it.  That means we need to establish how it is possible in this age of information, that information of this magnitude is not being distributed to everyone.  This part of my explanation is critical to understanding how very intelligent people can be completely unaware of information other people take for-granted.

It all comes down to this. We’ve all experienced the vast chasm of division and hatred in society of late. In this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, there is really only one one thing in the entire world that absolutely everyone can believe in.  President Donald Trump is a capital A a-hole.  Even the “Don” would likely agree with that, right?  But here’s the thing. When the rude TV star began his stunning run through the primaries, the world quickly divided between those who backed Trump and those who absolutely despised the orange tsunami.

How did this happen?  Well a very large number of people, many of them living in ‘middle’ America had had it with the quality of the people running, to run America.  When a second Clinton announced a Presidential bid they collectively shouted NOOOO.  Then they set out in search of the exact opposite of the establishment. They found it in an orange sun rise of vitriol, emerging over the high rises of Manhattan.  When Donald Trump threw his hair, ehem.. his hat into the ring, they had their guy.  It wasn’t because of his experience, or that they believed he was ultimately qualified for the job.  Trump’s crowning quality was the exact thing most people hate about him.  You see it was that massive, bulbous, all encompassing ego that was the key.  Only someone with an ego this out of control would be capable of resisting and even going on the attack against the oncoming onslaught of opposition from the embedded establishment and the mainstream media who despise him with a passion.

Trump will likely claim differently, but he didn’t invent divisiveness.  The world was already moving in this direction. But like every huge event in history, it all starts with one bullet, one border crossing, and sometimes one very unusual Orange head of hair. Camps divided around Trump’s blinding ego. Guess which side the establishment was on? Guess which side the media was on? Guess what this would mean to the distribution of information?

Personally, when the orange glow emerged from Manhattan I tuned out. Not understanding what was happening, I dismissed the orange storm as a weather system that would fizzle out when people got sick of it. I tuned out of mainstream media because I only had so much time for the gong show that was (and remains) the media coverage of the orange blowhard. This is what saved me. I had to go looking elsewhere for information.  I would soon find there was more information here, and different takes on the information everyone ‘knows’.

If you still depend on mainstream media you may not know or have time for an entire new world of information that has developed on the internet over the last few years.  Comedians who used to turn to late night TV to analyze the daily news through humour (I understand they are still there), have turned to long form and as it turns out, extremely informing conversations in a series of compelling podcasts.  They are joined by former media types and some pretty sharp up and coming minds.  While their late night and daytime TV competition unite in their humorous hatred of all things Donald, these longer form conversations have tended to go deeper, due simply to the length of the presentation.  Conversations often run past two and three hours, and “sound bites” are more like 5 to 15 or even 30 minute explanations of single issues.  Yes it is wise to avoid a number of them, just like you would avoid a number of TV programs, but you dismiss many others at your own expense.

You don’t need to agree with them to find them compelling. They are talking about events, people, and issues (including The Great Reset) you will not even find on regular mainstream media.  It is not uncommon for these podcaster / interviewers to be covering topics that my friends who rely on mainstream media won’t hear about for months, or even years.  A great example of this is the Hunter Biden laptop.  If you’ve been paying attention to this new online media, you’d have known about this since the fall of 2020.  For those who rely on regular media, they only discovered the exact same information when it was finally confirmed by the New York Times in March of 2022.  The fact they call this breaking news is hilarious (and disturbing) for those who read the original articles from the New York Post, about 20 months ago!  Here’s a link to a retrospective look at Biden laptop news from The NY Post from December 2020!

Now on to The Great Reset.  If you haven’t already clicked on the link in the fist sentence of this article here’s another opportunity.

OK now at least you know The Great Reset is a real thing.  So we move on to people who find themselves in group 2 which doubts that the Reset will ever amount to any actual resetting.  This group would say these ‘elites’ live really far away, and they’re probably harmless to us because it’s not like they have any control over us.  Not in our country.  Well. That all depends on how far away you live from people like Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. Canada’s Deputy PM is also on the Board of Trustees of the WEF. If that’s not a conflict of interest, they probably need to redefine conflict of interest.  Don’t take it from me.  Take it from the founder of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab. (You mean the Klaus Schwab who researched, wrote, and published the book COVID-19: The Great Reset, less than 6 months after Covid-19 was a thing?.. Yes. that’s the guy.) In this short video from way back in 2017 Schwab brags about the success of a WEF program called Young Global Leaders. In Schwab’s own words, the WEF has “penetrated” Canada’s federal cabinet. Sounds kind of conspiratorial.. and a little bit less like a theory when he says it.

If we want to know if this should be disturbing to us we need to know what Earth’s elites are planning for us.  Well the WEF was kind enough to tell us exactly what The Great Reset will mean to.. well.. the rest of us. This (in)famous video reveals just how different life will be for the average person by 2030.  It doesn’t say how “the elite” will live, though we can expect they’ll have slightly different rules. Alas, I’m getting ahead of myself.  Here’s a list of the 8 things the WEF has been kind enough to let us know we need to prepare for by 2030.  I understand this video originally came out in 2016.  I first saw it in 2020.  In five years it’s been circulated widely.  Though it’s no longer featured on the WEF website, there are copies all over the internet.

Recap:

1) We’ll own nothing.  Ouch.  (Obviously the elite will own everything and since they’re smarter than us we’ll be very happy to know they’re taking care of us so well).  It’s being said by opponents of this idea that people who own a bit of land are perhaps the greatest risk to this environmental movement.  It’s bad for the environment for us to own property or even your own home. Especially because we decide what happens there.  Do we keep animals?  Do we cut down trees or burn around on recreation vehicles or inefficient farm machinery?  All bad for the environment. All that will change.

2) The US will no longer be the world’s superpower. (Hmmm… Don’t these things often change after brutal wars?)  Regardless instead of one superpower, there will be a few important nations.  Wonder if that will make the world more secure, or less secure?

3) They plan to use 3D printers to make human organs (lucky for us).

4) We will not be allowed to eat meat very much anymore (cows and pigs and sheep are bad for the environment).  Hey, speaking of conspiracies, I mean series of seemingly related facts that are probably just random.. Did you know Bill Gates is the largest private owner of ‘farmland’ in the United States?  Not sure when the software magnate and WEF “Agenda Contributor” took up farming.  I’m sure none of this is related to what Mr. Gates is going to allow us to eat in the future (nervous smile).  Although Gates also happens to be a big investor in synthetic meat.  Did I mention he’s an ‘agenda contributor’ with the WEF?

5) One billion people in the world will have to move due to climate change (Not sure if that applies to the beach homes of the elite). (Also not sure why scientists and engineers will stop doing what they’ve always done and help us cope and adapt if conditions are changing quickly and significantly.)

6) Polluters will have to pay to emit carbon dioxide. We already know how this feels in Canada.

7) We will be prepared to travel in space (I’m ready to go now).  The logic here is that the earth will be so ruined by us, that we better be prepared to go destroy an entirely different planet.  What could go wrong?

Finally and maybe most disturbing of all..

8) Western Values will have been tested to the breaking point.  Some probably like the sound of that. But in the history books I’ve read, when a society’s values are tested “to the breaking point” that tends to look incredibly violent and warlike.  (In my opinion number 8 is going to be really challenging to accomplish at the same time as the everybody will be happy part in number 1.  Maybe that’s why they put them so far apart in their list.).  By the way, you have to wonder what they mean by “western values”?  Is this finally being enlightened enough to turf Christianity and those silly laws that western societies adopted from those traditional religious beliefs.  Can’t wait to find out what the new traditions will be!  This outta go over well (Imagine Jerry Seinfeld saying that.)

OK.  If you don’t find this a tad disturbing that might mean you are personally in favour of The Great Reset.  It’s still a free country so that’s just fine with the rest of us.  However the introduction video above is very much prior to the official launch of The Great Reset.  That took place in the opening months of the Covid-19 pandemic.  It would be better to judge how this is actually going to work by looking at how this New World Order (that’s what they’re calling it now) is unfolding. Now that the resetters have been resetting for about two years, how’s it going so far?  Here’s a report from Glenn Beck.  Glenn is a conservative pundit and broadcaster. If you follow the mainstream media you will know him as a radical far right conservative (and maybe a lunatic). If you don’t see Beck through that filter you will acknowledge that he sometimes says very interesting things.  Things like this.  By the way, pay attention to the background behind the speakers at this “world government” conference.  Then ask yourself if this group might be planning a new world order.

 

It’s puzzling that the Canadian media doesn’t give this any coverage. I guess there are simply more important things to talk about than whether our own federal cabinet is working in our interest or in the interests of really rich people who plan to OWN EVERYTHING in just a few short years.  Oh this is probably nothing but you may have heard about the federal NDP party making a deal to secure the federal government right up to 2025.  That party is lead by the guy who now is Co-Prime Minister Jagmeet Singh.  Guess what?

Speaking of Canada.  You may find this conversation between the British podcast sensation Russel Brand and Nick Corbishley interesting.  Nick is the author of Scanned: Why Vaccine Passports and Digital IDs Will Mean the End of Privacy and Personal Freedom. As Canadians it is interesting to hear how people in other countries are seeing The Great Reset, and how Canadians are “world leaders”.  Yippee?

If you’ve managed to find your way through the longest article ever, you will certainly now be able to acknowledge The Great Reset or New World Order exists.  The question now is, do you believe this is a good thing or do you think we should resist it as things were working pretty well before they launched this? We can get into that later.  At the very least the massive number of people who dismissed the “conspiracy theorists” as slightly insane will see there is a reason many people are concerned.  In the end, as all philosophers know we need to establish the facts, before we can decide whether we agree with them or not.

Finally my wise friend Garett reminded about the joke that’s been circulating for many months now on social media.  Every time it turns out another conspiracy theory was actually a conspiratorial fact, someone passes it around again.  If you haven’t seen it yet it might help with your outlook in the future.  Goes like this.  “What is the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth?  — About 6 months!”

 

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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Health

Tens of thousands are dying on waiting lists following decades of media reluctance to debate healthcare

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Better thousands of us die prematurely, apparently, than risk a grownup conversation

About the same time as William Watson’s outstanding book Globalization and the Meaning of Canadian Life was being published in the late 1990s, the newspaper I worked for was sending a journalist to Europe to research a series of articles on how health care systems work in some of those countries.

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I mention Bill’s book, which was runner-up for a public policy Donner Prize, because it exquisitely details many of the things Canadians believe about themselves that simply aren’t true. Which was the same reason why the Calgary Herald sent its health reporter (yes, there used to be such a thing), Robert Walker, to Europe – to expose its readers to the fact that there are more than two health care systems: our “defining” one and America’s, both of which are extremes. To the best of my knowledge, that remains the only time a Canadian news organization has taken on that task.

In every country examined in Walker’s reports, as is the case with almost every country in the world, public and private health care and insurance systems maintained a peaceful coexistence and the public’s needs were being met. Almost 30 years later, that remains the case. Also almost 30 years later, neither Bill’s book nor the Herald’s reporting has had the slightest impact on the prevailing media narrative in Canada. It remains determined to perpetuate the fear that any move to increase the role of private health providers or even allow doctors to work in both systems (as was proposed this week by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith) is the first step on the slippery slope to “American-style” health care. This line has been successfully used for decades – often hyperbolically and occasionally hysterically – by public monopoly advocates for Canada’s increasingly expensive and difficult to access systems. We have known for 40 years that once Baby Boomers like your faithful servant turned bald and grey that the system would be unsustainable. But that single, terrifying “American-style” slur has halted reform at every turn.

The Tyee responded with a “Danielle Smith’s secret plan to Destroy Public Health Care” column while the Globe and Mail’s Gary Mason, a Boomer, challenged my thesis here by suggesting it was time for open minds because “the reality is, the health care system in Canada is a mess.”

It is. And at least some of the blame – a lot, in my view – belongs at the door of Canadian news organizations that for decades have failed to fully inform readers by making them aware that there are a great many alternatives to just “ours” and “US-style.”

I was reminded of this in a recent Postmedia story concerning the perils of private health care provision. Referencing a study on MRIs, the story, right on cue, quotes the part of a study that states “It’s a quiet but rapid march toward U.S.-style health care.”

One would not want to suggest that those clinging to that parochial view should be denied a platform. But at the same time, readers have every right to demand that journalists push back and ask advocates for state monopolies simple questions such as “Why do you say that? Could it not be the first step towards UK-, German-, Dutch-, French-, Portugese- or Swedish-style health care?” and open the debate.

But, as it was 30 years ago and likely ever shall be, there is nothing to suggest that approach even crossed the reporter’s mind. Canadians deserve to be fully informed on major public policy matters and the record shows that when it comes to health care, media have largely failed to do so. Stuck in the fetid trench of an us and them narrative that compares two systems at extreme ends of the spectrum, the public is largely unaware that moderate alternatives exist, ensuring that no meaningful reforms will ever take place and tens of thousands of Canadians will continue to die on waiting lists – a story that continues to be of little interest within the mainstream. Better thousands of us die prematurely, apparently, than risk a grownup conversation that could challenge our national mythology and lead us down the path to “European-style” healthcare.


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Postmedia’s Brian Lilley has written a defence of the use by journalists of anonymous sources. Lilley’s introduction describes him as coming down on both sides of the issue and that “Using anonymous sources is completely justified, if done right.” Well of course it is, but in my view it’s frequently and increasingly not being done right and its abuse is being exploited by government comms people to control the narrative.

An example of that occurred last week when the Globe and Mail, in a story concerning Prime Minister Mark Carney’s sojourn to the United Arab Emirates, declined to reveal the identity of a source offering very standard information. To wit:

“The (senior government) official, whom The Globe and Mail is not identifying because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said this visit matters because the UAE economy is very much driven by personal relationships – the kind that benefit from face-to-face meetings.”

This story had three bylines – from a senior parliamentary reporter, an institutional investing reporter and an economics reporter. It is inconceivable to me that, between them, they couldn’t find an on the record source who could explain how important it is, culturally, to have face to face meetings, particularly in that part of the world. Doing so would have added some needed thump to a “sources say” story and helped mute criticisms by others in the industry such as John Robson and Holly Doan, the latter stating in a Tweet that “Anon sources are gov’t propagandists.” Others have privately expressed their dismay.

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Meanwhile, I expect Lilley’s piece is worth a read and it’s important to hear all sides but as it is behind a paywall I haven’t got to it myself. It’s also worth pointing out that a recent Reuters Institute survey put Lilley in Canada’s top 10 social media influencers and creators.


Sadly, we have more this week on unnecessary online smartassery by journalists.

First up is Global News’s Sean O’Shea who managed to allow himself to look like a member of Carney’s comms team when he Tweeted his disapproval of some fans’ behaviour at the Grey Cup.

Then came The Hill Times’s Stu Benson, who blasted his alarm from a loudspeaker before deleting.

Honestly, folks, to paraphrase grandpa’s advice and as I have to remind myself from time to time, just because something pops into your head doesn’t mean it has to pop onto your social media feed.


Last week’s column for The Hub on how Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives remain alive and enforced in the nation’s newsrooms is available here. And don’t forget to watch out for the Full Press podcast with myself, Harrison Lowman and Tara Henley on Thursday.


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(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)

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Business

Budget 2025: Ottawa Fakes a Pivot and Still Spends Like Trudeau

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Marco Navarro-Génie's avatar Marco Navarro-Génie

It finally happened. Canada received a federal budget earlier this month, after more than a year without one. It’s far from a budget that’s great. It’s far from what many expected and distant from what the country needs. But it still passed.

With the budget vote drama now behind us, there may be space for some general observations beyond the details of the concerning deficits and debt. What kind of budget did Canada get?

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For a government that built its political identity on social-program expansion and moralized spending, Budget 2025 arrives wearing borrowed clothing. It speaks in the language of productivity, infrastructure, and capital formation, the diction of grown-up economics, yet keeps the full spending reflex of the Trudeau era. The result feels like a cabinet trying to change its fiscal costume without changing the character inside it. Time will tell, to be fair, but it feels like more rhetoric, and we have seen this same rhetoric before lead to nothing. So, I remain skeptical of what they say and how they say it.

The government insists it has found a new path, one where public investment leads private growth. That sounds bold. However, it is more a rebranding than a reform. It is a shift in vocabulary, not in discipline.

A comparison with past eras makes this clear.

Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin did not flirt with restraint; they executed it. Their budgets were cut deeply, restored credibility, and revived Canada’s fiscal health when it was most needed. The Chrétien years were unsentimental. Political capital was spent so financial capital could return. Ottawa shrank so the country could grow. Budget 2025 tries to invoke their spirit but not their actions. Nothing in this plan resembles the structural surgery of the mid 1990s.

Stephen Harper, by contrast, treated balanced budgets as policy and principle. Even during the global financial crisis, his government used stimulus as a bridge, not a way of life. It cut taxes widely and consistently, limited public service growth, and placed the long-term burden on restraint rather than rhetoric. Budget 2025 nods toward Harper’s focus on productivity and capital assets, yet it rejects the tax relief and spending controls that made his budgets coherent.

Then there is Justin Trudeau, the high tide of redistribution, vacuous identity politics, and deficit-as-virtue posturing. Ottawa expanded into an ideological planner for everything, including housing, climate, childcare, inclusion portfolios, and every new identity category. Much of that ideological scaffolding consisted of mere words, weakening the principle of equality under the law and encouraging the government to referee culture rather than administer policy.

Budget 2025 is the first hint of retreat from that style. The identity program fireworks are dimmer, though they have not disappeared. The social policy boosterism is quieter. Perhaps fiscal gravity has begun to whisper in the prime minister’s ear.

However, one cannot confuse tone for transformation.

Spending is still vast. Deficits grew. The new fiscal anchor, balancing only the operating budget, is weaker than the one it replaced. The budget relies on the hopeful assumption that Ottawa’s capital spending will attract private investment on a scale that economists politely describe as ambitious.

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The housing file illustrates the contradiction. The budget announces new funding for the construction of purpose-built rentals and a larger federal role in modular and subsidized housing builds. These are presented as productivity measures, yet they continue the Trudeau-era instinct to centralize housing policy rather than fix the levers that matter. Permitting delays, zoning rigidity, municipal approvals, and labour shortages continue to slow actual construction. Ottawa spends, but the foundations still cure at the same pace.

Defence spending tells the same story. Budget 2025 offers incremental funding and some procurement gestures, but it avoids the core problem: Canada’s procurement system is broken. Delays stretch across decades. Projects become obsolete before contracts are signed. The system cannot buy a ship, an aircraft, or an armoured vehicle without cost overruns and missed timelines. Spending more through this machinery will waste time and money. It adds motion, not capability.

Most importantly, the structural problems remain untouched: no regulatory reform for major projects, no tax competitiveness agenda, no strategy for shrinking a federal bureaucracy that has grown faster than the economy it governs. Ottawa presides over a low-productivity country but insists that a new accounting framework will solve what decades of overregulation and policy clutter have created. More bluster.

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From an Alberta vantage, the pivot is welcome but inadequate. The economy that pays for Confederation, energy, mining, agriculture, and transportation receives more rhetorical respect in Budget 2025, yet the same regulatory thicket that blocks pipelines and mines remains intact. The government praises capital formation but still undermines the key sectors that generate it.

Budget 2025 tries to walk like Chrétien and talk like Harper while spending like Trudeau. That is not a transformation; it is a costume change. The country needed a budget that prioritized growth rooted in tangible assets and real productivity. What it got instead is a rhetorical turn without the courage to cut, streamline, or reform.

Canada does not require a new budgeting vocabulary. It requires a government willing to govern in the best interest of the country.

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