Some recent columns

The Council of the Federation, as the premiers have taken to styling themselves, was born on Dec. 5, 2003. On that date, according to the council's Web site, the premiers "proudly announced in Charlottetown" -- in Charlottetown, no less -- the creation of "a new institution for a new era in collaborative intergovernmental relations." It was more than just a grandiloquent title for a bunch of second-tier pols with their hands out, you understand. It was to be the vehicle for a great reshaping of the federation... -- Stephen Harper's fiendish strategy, July 26, 2006. With the environment on everyone's agenda and Canada groping for a strategy to deal with global warming, the government of Ontario has stepped up with an imaginative, far-seeing response to the challenge that confronts us all. While others are content merely to debate the issue, the McGuinty government has bet hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds on a revolutionary new form of mass transit that maybe, just maybe, holds the key to a greener future. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's called the Camaro. -- Taking taxpayers for a ride, August 23, 2006. At some point in his first or second year, the average undergraduate comes to a dreadful, shocking, thrilling, intoxicating realization: Everything I was taught to believe until now is a lie. We're not the good guys. We're the bad guys: the West, white people, my parents, whatever. Grasping this insight is the key to enlightenment, and enlightenment is the key to, among other things, pulling chicks. As time passes, most of us move on to a more balanced understanding of life. But that first rush of exhilaration at having pierced the veil, at being granted the power to see through the lies that hold others in their thrall, never really leaves us, and retains its ability to shape our thoughts throughout our lives. -- The left's new bad guy, August 26, 2006. As they prepare to engage the Taliban in a major battle for control of the Panjwaii district in southern Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers can take heart: Jack Layton's got their back. Well, in a manner of speaking. The NDP leader says the whole mission is misconceived, and they should come home at once -- by February at the latest. How's that for a pep talk? We're behind you all the way, boys. We just think what you're doing is pointless. Oh, and if you're wondering whether it's worth risking your life in the service of your country -- it isn't... -- Layton's exit to nowhere, September 2, 2006. "The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all." Thus Allan Bloom parodied the prevailing intellectual climate 20 years ago in The Closing of the American Mind. And that, without parody, appears to be the lesson George W. Bush's critics have drawn from his presidency, notably the decision to invade Iraq. -- March of Folly -- or spirit of the Blitz, September 6, 2006. This implies not only a change in the way we finance students and universities, but our whole view of the relationship between them. Previous reform models see students as consumers, who purchase an education from university providers. But in fact students are themselves the product -- or more precisely, assets to be developed. In Prof. Pardy's model, the university, as an investor in the student's education, acquires a direct stake in his future career prospects... -- Learn now, pay later, September 9, 2006. The wheel of Canadian politics turns full circle again. For most of the twentieth century, it was the Liberals who favoured free trade, the Tories who opposed. By 1985, the positions had been reversed. The Liberals, similarly, had long been the party of provincial rights against Sir John A. and his centralist descendants, before the two parties neatly switched places mid-Depression. Now that ol' debbil deux nations, which held the Conservative party in its spell for the better part of three decades, not to be expunged until the party itself had been extinguished and reconstructed, has suddenly reappeared, this time in the person of the front-running candidate for Liberal leader. Only perhaps I should say plusieurs nations, or better yet beaucoup de nations, or even centaines de nations... -- Ignatieff has disqualified himself, September 16, 2006. The parallels are not exact. There was, so far as we know, no deliberate, conscious effort to frame Maher Arar. Canadian society is not a hotbed of anti-Arab sentiment, in the way that Third Republic France was anti-Semitic. Nevertheless, in the broad strokes -- an innocent man, a member of the wrong minority in a time of national panic, is unjustly accused and left to rot in some far-flung piece of hell, while officials stall, look the other way, and cover up -- this case deserves to be known as what it is: Canada's Dreyfus Affair. -- Canada's Dreyfus Affair, September 20, 2006. This asks no more of us than that we make a choice. It does not bind us permanently, nor does it impose any barrier to entry. We can be citizens of Lebanon first and then of Canada, or of Canada and then Lebanon. The only thing we can't do is be a citizen of both countries at the same time. What's wrong with that? Nothing, if your view of nationhood is essentially service-based -- just as you can belong to two frequent-flier programs at the same time. But if you incline to a view of the nation as moral project, as a moral order we are in the process of constructing, then a higher degree of commitment is implied. -- What you can do for your country: Why dual citizens should be forced to choose, September 23, 2006. Many indictments may be laid at the feet of Joe Volpe, but the most severe I can think of is this: I think he means it. I accuse him of sincerity. I accuse him of believing his own humbug: that all those children of all those Apotex executives each individually decided to donate the maximum $5,400 to his campaign of their own free will and out of their own bank accounts, because they were excited about his "message"; that the dead people his Quebec campaign signed up as members are the kind of "anomalies" one should expect in the "hurly-burly" of politics; that he is the victim of an anti-Italian smear campaign on the part of unnamed members of the party "establishment," but that he will fight on because, after all, it's for the kids. -- He actually believes it, September 27, 2006. After Giuliano Zaccardelli's performance before the Commons security committee on Thursday, it is no longer necessary that he resign as commissioner of the RCMP. It is imperative. If he will not resign, he should be removed. If the government will not ask for his resignation, Parliament should. -- Zaccardelli must go, September 30, 2006. The three runners-up -- Bob Rae, Stephane Dion and Gerard Kennedy -- are in a correspondingly weaker position: with 15% to 20% of the first-ballot vote apiece, each can win only with the support of the other two. So the question that must be answered, before all, is this: Is there a basis on which these three candidates can coalesce? Can one of the three rally the other two to his side? If not, there is no point in continuing: Mr. Ignatieff's eventual victory is assured. But if so, then they had better agree amongst themselves that that is the case -- that is, the first thing they have to establish is that the three of them will stick together, come what may. Only if it is first agreed that one of the three will be leader is there any point in deciding which of the three it will be... -- It's anybody's game, October 4, 2006. This is hardly unique to Quebec. All over the world, people are perpetually boiling with rage at this or that insult, real or imagined: Muslim radicals, Harvard feminists, on and on. But I can think of few places on Earth where the entire political class erupts in such fury, with such unanimity, at such regular intervals, over the comments of a single individual. -- They protest too much, too often, October 7, 2006. We simply do not have the stomach for this fight. We will learn no lessons from this latest crisis, as we have learned none from those before. But be assured our adversaries will. In Iran, they are watching and learning from North Korea's example, as North Korea had learned from Iran's, each discovering in its turn that there are no checks on its ambitions, nor any world to stop it. And when, as the wisest heads advise, we abandon Afghanistan to the Taliban, and Iraq to al-Qaeda, the nuclear bazaar really will be open. -- We have allowed this to happen, October 11, 2006. The Toronto Transit Commission advertises itself as “The Better Way.” Dutiful urbanists that they are, Torontonians are taught to believe this, or certainly to say it. Indeed, a strange cult surrounds the system: there are websites devoted to it, a magazine, clubs. One particularly dedicated transit fancier spent the summer photographing every one of the city’s 69 subway stations. Their actions belie them. Transit worship may be at an all-time high, but transit ridership is still below where it was 15 years ago. What no one is allowed to say, but everyone secretly knows, is that riding the TTC is not a terribly pleasant experience: slow, crowded, slow, inconvenient, and did I mention slow? And so anyone who can avoid using the TTC generally does. -- There's a better way to run the TTC, October 16, 2006. Seven months into the Liberal leadership race, the party has at last found its voice. No longer divided and despondent, party members have rallied around a positive, optimistic vision of the country, a message of hope they will take to the Canadian public in the next election. And the message is: We forgive you. -- They haven't learned a thing, October 19, 2006.