Tag Archives: history

Does Rosemary Barton Know Where the Line Is? Journalism, Punditry, and the Authority Problem at CBC

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In recent weeks, two moments involving Rosemary Barton have sharpened a long-simmering concern about the state of Canadian political journalism. Taken together, they invite a serious question about boundary discipline, not at the margins of commentary, but at the very centre of institutional authority. When the senior political correspondent at a public broadcaster appears uncertain about where journalism ends and punditry begins, the issue is no longer personal style. It is structural.

The most telling example came during Barton’s criticism of Mark Carney for publicly pushing back against Donald Trump. Carney’s assertion that Canadians are strong was met not with a question about strategy or consequences, but with a rebuke. Barton suggested that he should not “talk like that” while negotiations with the United States were ongoing. This was not interrogation. It was correction. The distinction matters. Journalism tests claims and identifies risks. Punditry adjudicates what ought to be said and enforces preferred norms of behaviour. In this case, the journalist stepped into the role of strategic adviser.

That intervention rested on an unstated, but powerful assumption. It treated rhetorical restraint toward the United States as the only responsible posture and framed public assertiveness as diplomatically naïve or reckless. Yet this is not a settled fact. It is a contested theory of power. For many Canadians, public expressions of confidence and sovereignty are not obstacles to negotiation, but instruments of democratic legitimacy. By presenting elite caution as self-evident realism, Barton transformed a debatable worldview into an implied journalistic standard.

This moment did not stand alone. It echoed a broader pattern in which certain political choices are framed as inherently reasonable while others are treated as violations of an unwritten rulebook. Barton’s interviews frequently embed normative assumptions inside ostensibly neutral questions. The effect is subtle, but cumulative. Political actors who align with institutional orthodoxy are invited to explain. Those who depart from it are warned, corrected, or disciplined. Over time, skepticism becomes asymmetrical, and audiences begin to sense that the field of legitimate debate is being quietly narrowed.

The problem is compounded by Barton’s position. A senior political correspondent does not merely report events. The role carries symbolic weight. It signals what seriousness looks like, what competence sounds like, and which instincts are deemed responsible. When that authority is used to police tone or enforce elite etiquette, it reads not as opinion, but as instruction. Viewers are not encountering a commentator among many. They are encountering the voice of the institution.

This is particularly consequential at a public broadcaster. CBC’s democratic legitimacy depends on its ability to distinguish clearly between explanation and advocacy. When journalists appear more concerned with managing political risk on behalf of elites than with illuminating choices for the public, trust erodes. Citizens do not feel informed. They feel managed. That erosion rarely arrives as a scandal. It accumulates through moments that feel small, instinctive, even well intentioned, yet consistently tilt in the same direction.

The Carney episode also revealed a deeper misalignment of priorities. Carney’s remarks were aimed at Canadians, not at Trump. They functioned as reassurance and civic affirmation in a moment of external pressure. Barton’s response implicitly subordinated domestic democratic speech to foreign sensibilities. That is a value judgment about whose audience matters most. It may be a defensible argument in a column. It is not a neutral premise for an interview.

None of this requires imputing bad faith or crude partisanship. The issue is not ideology so much as role confusion. Contemporary political media increasingly collapses reporting, analysis, and commentary into a single on-air persona. The incentives reward strong takes and strategic framing. Over time, journalists can begin to experience elite consensus as common sense and dissent as irresponsibility. The line does not disappear all at once. It fades.

At the senior level, however, that line must be actively maintained. Journalism asks why choices are made and what consequences follow. Punditry advises, corrects, and enforces norms. When a journalist tells a political actor what should or should not be said, the boundary has been crossed. When that crossing becomes habitual, it reshapes the institution’s relationship with the public.

The question, then, is not whether Rosemary Barton is tough enough or fair enough in any single exchange. It is whether she still recognizes the limits of her authority. A senior political correspondent is not a shadow negotiator, a risk manager, or a guardian of elite comfort. The role is to clarify politics, not to perform it.

If that distinction is lost at the top, the consequences cascade downward. Journalism becomes strategy. Explanation becomes correction. And the public broadcaster, slowly and without declaration, ceases to act as a referee and begins to play the game itself.

Patriarchy, Matriarchy, and the Question of Social Design

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In the long sweep of human history, few structures have shaped daily life as thoroughly as systems of gendered power. Patriarchy and matriarchy are often presented as opposites, but this framing obscures more than it reveals. One is a historically dominant system of centralized authority. The other is a set of social arrangements that redistribute power, responsibility, and meaning in fundamentally different ways. Understanding the distinction is less about reversing hierarchy and more about examining which values a society chooses to place at its core.

Patriarchy is best understood not simply as male leadership, but as a worldview. Authority is concentrated, legitimacy flows downward, and social order is maintained through hierarchy. Political power, economic control, inheritance, and cultural narratives tend to align around masculine-coded traits such as dominance, competition, and control. Caregiving and relational labor are treated as secondary, often invisible, despite being essential to social survival. Even when patriarchal systems soften over time, their underlying logic remains intact. Power is something to be held, defended, and exercised over others.

Matriarchy, by contrast, is frequently misunderstood as a mirror image of patriarchy. Anthropological evidence suggests otherwise. Societies described as matriarchal or matrilineal rarely exclude men or invert domination. Instead, they organize authority around kinship, continuity, and shared responsibility. Descent and inheritance often pass through the maternal line, anchoring identity in stable social bonds. Decision-making tends to be collective, with influence distributed across elders, family networks, and community councils rather than vested in singular rulers.

The most compelling argument for matriarchal systems lies not in claims of moral superiority, but in outcomes. Where patriarchy centralizes power, matriarchy diffuses it. This structural difference reduces the risk of authoritarian drift and limits the social damage caused by individual ambition. Authority becomes situational rather than absolute, exercised in service of group continuity rather than personal dominance.

Care occupies a radically different position in these systems. In patriarchal cultures, care is often framed as a private obligation or charitable act. In matriarchal societies, care functions as infrastructure. Child-rearing, elder support, emotional labor, and social repair are recognized as essential to collective resilience. Policies and customs evolve to protect long-term wellbeing rather than prioritize short-term extraction, whether economic or political.

Violence, too, is treated differently. Patriarchal systems have historically rewarded aggression, conquest, and coercion with status and legitimacy. Militarization becomes a cultural ideal rather than a last resort. Matriarchal societies, while not free of conflict, tend to favor mediation, kinship accountability, and reconciliation. Social cohesion is preserved by repairing relationships rather than punishing transgression alone.

Identity formation reveals another contrast. Patriarchy emphasizes individual achievement and competitive success. Worth is measured by rank, wealth, or dominance. Matriarchal systems emphasize relational identity. Individuals are defined by their roles within a web of mutual dependence. This orientation fosters cooperation and shared accountability, particularly during periods of crisis or scarcity.

Gender roles themselves often prove more flexible in matriarchal contexts. Patriarchy enforces rigid norms while presenting them as natural or universal. Matriarchal systems decouple masculinity from rule and femininity from subservience. Men retain agency and dignity without being positioned as default authorities. Leadership becomes contextual rather than gender-mandated.

It is important to note that few contemporary thinkers advocate for a pure matriarchy imposed upon modern states. The more serious project is post-patriarchal rather than anti-male. It asks whether societies organized around care, continuity, and distributed authority are better equipped to face complex global challenges than those organized around dominance and extraction.

From a cultural perspective, the question is not which gender should rule. It is which values should shape the structures that govern collective life. History suggests that systems prioritizing care, shared power, and relational responsibility produce more stable and humane outcomes. In an era defined by ecological strain, demographic shifts, and social fragmentation, these lessons are less ideological than practical.

It has long been argued that culture is not destiny, but design. Patriarchy is one design among many, not an inevitability. Matriarchal principles offer an alternative blueprint, not for reversing oppression, but for dismantling it altogether.

Community Wealth Building and the Reassertion of Local Economic Power

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Scotland’s proposed Community Wealth Building legislation should be read not as a technical reform of local government practice, but as a quiet intervention in the geopolitical and economic settlement that has shaped the North Atlantic world since the late twentieth century. It arrives at a moment when assumptions about globalisation, capital mobility, and the neutrality of markets are being reassessed across Europe and beyond. In this context, the Bill represents an attempt to recover economic agency at the level of the state and the community without retreating into protectionism or nostalgia.

For several decades, economic development across the United Kingdom and much of the West followed a broadly convergent logic. Growth was expected to flow from attracting external capital, integrating into global supply chains, and minimising friction for mobile firms. Local institutions were repositioned as facilitators rather than shapers of economic life. The consequences of this model are now widely acknowledged: hollowed-out local economies, fragile supply chains, stagnant wages, and deepening territorial inequality. Community Wealth Building emerges as a response to this structural failure, not as a rejection of markets, but as a refusal to treat them as self-justifying.

The Scottish Bill formalises this response by embedding Community Wealth Building into the routine machinery of governance. It does so through process rather than command. Ministers would be required to articulate a national strategy, while local authorities and designated public bodies would be tasked with producing coordinated action plans. This architecture reflects an understanding that economic power is already widely distributed across public institutions, but rarely aligned. Procurement, employment, land management, and investment decisions are typically made in isolation. The legislation seeks to bring these decisions into a shared strategic frame.

The Five Pillars as Instruments of Sovereignty

At the centre of this frame are the five pillars of Community Wealth Building: spending, workforce, land and property, inclusive ownership, and finance. These pillars correspond directly to the points at which wealth either embeds itself locally or leaks outward. Public spending can anchor local supply chains or reinforce distant monopolies. Employment can stabilise communities or entrench precarity. Land can function as a productive commons or a speculative asset. Ownership can concentrate power or distribute it. Finance can circulate locally or exit at the first sign of volatility.

The Bill’s significance lies in treating these domains not as discrete policy areas, but as interdependent levers of economic sovereignty. This is a departure from the fragmented governance model that characterised late neoliberal public administration, in which efficiency was prized over coherence and coordination.

The Preston Model as Proof of Concept

This approach has a clear and often-cited precedent in the Preston Model developed in Lancashire. Following the collapse of a major inward investment project, Preston City Council and a group of anchor institutions reoriented their procurement and economic strategy toward local suppliers and inclusive ownership models. By coordinating spending decisions and nurturing local capacity, Preston demonstrated that local economies retain more agency than is commonly assumed.

The results were incremental rather than transformative, but they were measurable and durable. Procurement spend retained within the local and regional economy increased substantially, job quality improved, and confidence in local economic stewardship was restored. The lesson of Preston was not ideological but institutional: resilience is often built through aligned, routine decisions rather than grand economic interventions.

From Voluntary Practice to Statutory Expectation

Scotland’s proposed legislation draws on this experience while addressing one of its principal limitations. The Preston Model depended heavily on political continuity and local leadership. By placing Community Wealth Building on a statutory footing, the Scottish Government seeks to ensure durability beyond electoral cycles. This reflects a broader European trend toward embedding economic governance within legal and institutional frameworks rather than relying on discretion and goodwill.

In this respect, the Bill aligns more closely with continental traditions of social market governance than with the United Kingdom’s recent reliance on deregulated competition and capital mobility. It represents a subtle but meaningful shift in how economic legitimacy is constructed.

Geopolitics, Resilience, and Strategic Autonomy

The geopolitical implications of this shift should not be underestimated. In an era defined by fractured supply chains, sanctions regimes, and strategic competition, economic resilience has become inseparable from national and regional security. Shorter supply chains, diversified ownership, and locally rooted finance reduce exposure to external shocks. Community Wealth Building thus complements wider debates about strategic autonomy unfolding across Europe and among middle powers navigating an increasingly unstable global order.

Although sub-state in form, Scotland’s legislation participates in this reorientation by strengthening the internal foundations of economic resilience. It does not promise insulation from global forces, but it does offer a means of engagement that is less extractive and more adaptive.

Cultural Memory and Economic Stewardship

Culturally, the Bill resonates with long-standing Scottish debates over land, ownership, and democratic control. From land reform movements to community buyouts, there exists a deep political memory of extraction and dispossession. Community Wealth Building translates these concerns into contemporary administrative language. It offers a way to address structural imbalance without framing the issue as a moral repudiation of global capitalism.

Instead, the economy is treated as a system that can be shaped through institutional design and stewardship. This framing avoids both nostalgia and utopianism, positioning reform as a matter of governance rather than ideology.

A Quiet Recalibration

Critics argue that the legislation lacks enforcement mechanisms and risks becoming aspirational. Such critiques assume that economic change only follows dramatic intervention. Historical experience suggests otherwise. Durable change more often arises from the cumulative effect of aligned institutions acting consistently over time. By normalising local economic stewardship across public bodies, the Bill establishes the conditions for gradual but compounding transformation.

Seen in this light, Scotland’s Community Wealth Building law forms part of a broader recalibration underway across the Western political economy. It signals a move away from the assumption that prosperity must be imported, and toward the idea that it can be cultivated. In a period marked by uncertainty and realignment, this modest ambition may prove to be its most consequential feature.

Sources

Sovereignty Requires Ships, Not Statements

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There is a certain comforting myth Canadians like to tell themselves about the North. That sovereignty is something you declare, map, and defend with the occasional patrol and a strongly worded statement. It is a tidy story. It is also no longer true.

The Arctic is changing faster than our habits of thought. Ice patterns are less predictable, shipping seasons are longer, and great powers are no longer treating the polar regions as distant margins. They are treating them as operating environments. In that context, the Royal Canadian Navy’s quiet exploration of heavy, ice-capable amphibious landing ships deserves far more public attention than it has received.

These would not be symbols. They would be tools.

The idea is straightforward. Build Polar Class 2 amphibious ships capable of breaking ice, carrying troops and vehicles, and landing them directly onto undeveloped shorelines. In other words, floating bases that can operate independently across the Arctic archipelago, where ports are rare, airfields are limited, and weather regularly laughs at planning assumptions made in Ottawa.

This matters because Canada’s Arctic problem has never been about law. It has always been about logistics.

We claim a vast northern territory, but our ability to operate there is thin, seasonal, and fragile. We fly in when we can, sail in when ice allows, and leave when winter asserts itself. Presence is episodic. Capability is constrained. Persistence is mostly aspirational.

Russia, by contrast, has spent decades building the unglamorous machinery of Arctic power. Ice-strengthened amphibious ships. Heavy logistics vessels. A fleet designed not to visit the Arctic but to live in it. This is not about imminent conflict. It is about what serious states do when they intend to control their operating environment.

A Canadian Arctic mobile base would change the conversation. It would allow the movement of troops, Rangers, equipment, and supplies without waiting for ports that do not exist. It would support disaster response, search and rescue, medical care, and environmental protection in regions where help currently arrives late or not at all. It would give commanders options that do not depend on fragile airlift chains or ideal weather windows.

Just as importantly, it would allow Canada to stay.

Polar Class 2 capability is the dividing line between symbolism and seriousness. These ships could operate year-round in heavy ice, not just skirt the edges of the season. That is what credibility looks like in the Arctic. Not constant activity, but the unquestioned ability to act when required.

There is also a domestic dimension that should not be dismissed. Designing and building these vessels in Canadian shipyards would deepen national expertise in Arctic naval architecture and ice operations. It would anchor the National Shipbuilding Strategy in future capability rather than replacement alone. Sovereignty is reinforced when a country can design, build, crew, and sustain the tools it needs for its own geography.

None of this is cheap or easy. Crewing will be difficult. Sustainment will be demanding. Political patience will be tested the first time costs rise or timelines slip. That is always the case with real capability, which is why symbolic alternatives are so tempting.

But the alternative path is well worn and well known. Light patrol ships. Seasonal deployments. Carefully photographed exercises. Earnest speeches about the North delivered from comfortable distances.

At some point, a country has to decide whether its Arctic is a talking point or a responsibility.

Amphibious, ice-capable ships are not about militarizing the North. They are about acknowledging reality. The Arctic is not becoming less important. It is becoming more accessible, more contested, and more consequential. Sovereignty, in that world, is not what you say. It is what you can do, consistently, in all seasons.

The North does not need grand gestures. It needs presence that endures.

From Evidence to Exemption: How Bill 5 Rewrites Ontario’s Relationship with the Past

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For more than four decades, Ontario’s archaeological system has rested on a quiet but essential bargain. Cultural heritage, once disturbed, cannot be reassembled. In exchange for allowing land to be developed, altered, and intensively used, the province embedded a requirement that trained professionals, operating at arm’s length from political power, would determine what lay beneath the surface and how it should be treated. This arrangement did not make archaeology anti-development. It made development accountable to history.

The recent amendments to the Ontario Heritage Act under Bill 5 weaken that bargain. They replace a system grounded in professional judgment and transparent process with one increasingly shaped by political discretion. The shift is not merely administrative. It strikes at the epistemological foundation of heritage protection by moving decisions about archaeological value away from evidence-based assessment and toward executive authority exercised behind closed doors.

Archaeology functions differently from most heritage disciplines because its subject matter is frequently unknown until it is destroyed. Unlike a heritage building or a designated landscape, an archaeological site often announces its existence only when machinery is already at work. The pre-Bill 5 framework recognized this reality by requiring assessment in areas of archaeological potential before development proceeded. That precautionary logic treated uncertainty as a reason for care, not as a justification for exemption. Bill 5 inverts that logic by allowing unknown sites to be bypassed if they are not already identified, a circular standard that guarantees loss precisely where knowledge is thinnest.

The damage here is cumulative rather than dramatic. Each unassessed site removed from the record narrows the historical archive permanently. Archaeology does not merely recover objects. It reconstructs patterns of land use, migration, trade, conflict, and environmental adaptation across thousands of years. When sites are destroyed without study, those patterns become fragmented, distorted, or irretrievable. Over time, this produces a thinner, more selective account of Ontario’s past, one shaped less by evidence than by what happened to survive political timelines.

The implications for Indigenous heritage are particularly severe. Many archaeological sites represent ancestral places that remain culturally and spiritually significant, regardless of whether they are formally registered or visible on the landscape. A system that allows cabinet or ministerial exemptions without robust, mandatory Indigenous consultation risks repeating older colonial patterns, where Indigenous history is treated as an obstacle to progress rather than a foundational layer of the land itself. When decisions are centralized and expedited, relationships grounded in consent, stewardship, and shared authority are the first casualties.

There is also an institutional cost. Professional archaeology in Ontario has long operated as a regulated field with ethical obligations, peer accountability, and methodological standards. When political actors gain the ability to override or pre-empt that process, expertise becomes advisory rather than determinative. Over time, this erodes the authority of professional judgment and encourages a culture where heritage protection is viewed as discretionary, negotiable, or expendable in the face of economic pressure.

Transparency suffers as well. Archaeological assessments, reports, and registers create a public record. They allow decisions to be scrutinized, challenged, and improved. Executive exemptions, by contrast, concentrate power while reducing visibility. Even when exercised legally, such authority diminishes public trust by removing heritage decisions from open processes and situating them within cabinet deliberations that are structurally insulated from external review.

The broader cultural consequence is a subtle recalibration of values. Heritage protection becomes framed not as a public good but as a regulatory burden to be managed or avoided. The past is no longer something held in trust for future generations, but something weighed against short-term policy objectives. That framing does not abolish archaeology outright. It renders it fragile, contingent, and politically vulnerable.

Ontario’s archaeological record is finite. Every exemption that allows development to proceed without assessment trades long-term knowledge for short-term convenience. Once made, that trade cannot be reversed. Bill 5 thus does not merely streamline process. It alters the moral economy of heritage protection by shifting authority away from evidence, expertise, and public accountability toward discretion exercised in the name of urgency.

History rarely announces its loss in the moment it occurs. The damage becomes visible only later, when questions can no longer be answered, when gaps appear where continuity should exist, and when future scholars inherit a record shaped less by what once was than by what was allowed to disappear.

Why Canada Should Make Voting Compulsory: Lessons from Australia

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Canada prides itself on being a democratic nation, yet voter turnout tells a different story. In the 2021 federal election, just over 62% of eligible Canadians cast a ballot. Compare that with Australia, where voting has been mandatory since 1924, and turnout regularly exceeds 90%. The contrast is striking, and instructive. If Canada is truly committed to representative democracy, it should make voting compulsory.

Australia’s experience shows how dramatically voting laws can reshape political engagement. When the country introduced compulsory voting in 1924, turnout jumped from under 60% to over 91% in just one election. This wasn’t just a statistical change; it was a transformation of civic culture. Elections became more representative, and policy debates began to reflect a broader range of voter concerns. In Australia, “a parliament elected by a compulsory vote more accurately reflects the will of the electorate,” notes the Australian Election Commission. Canada could reap the same benefits.

One of the most compelling arguments for compulsory voting is the way it strengthens democratic legitimacy. When turnout is low, election results can be skewed by the interests of a narrow, often more affluent and ideologically extreme segment of the population. This leads to policies that favour the vocal few rather than the silent majority. By contrast, when everyone must vote, politicians must listen to everyone, including the marginalized and the poor. As historian Judith Brett puts it, “Now that means that politicians, when they’re touting for votes, know that all of the groups, including the poor, are going to have a vote. And I think that makes for a more egalitarian public policy.”

Critics argue that compulsory voting infringes on personal freedom. But Australians have lived with the system for a century, and public support for it remains strong, hovering around 70% since 1967. In fact, in 2022, 77% of Australians said they would still vote even if it weren’t mandatory. This suggests that making voting compulsory doesn’t stifle freedom; it cultivates civic responsibility.

Furthermore, compulsory voting could help counter political polarization in Canada. In voluntary systems, political parties often cater to their most radical base to energize turnout. But in Australia, where turnout is nearly universal, parties are forced to appeal to the political centre. This moderating influence is desperately needed in Canada’s increasingly divided political landscape.

Canada’s current voter turnout rates are simply not good enough. A democracy where one-third of citizens routinely sit out elections is a democracy with a legitimacy problem. If we want politics that are more representative, inclusive, and moderate, then it’s time to follow Australia’s lead. Voting is not just a right, it’s a duty. And like jury service or paying taxes, it should be expected of every citizen.

Source:
• BBC News (2022). “Why Australia makes voting mandatory.” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-61505771
• Australian Electoral Commission. “Compulsory voting.” https://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/Compulsory_Voting/
• Elections Canada (2021). Voter Turnout. https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=ele&dir=turn&document=index&lang=e

Ottawa at 25: The Amalgamation That Never Delivered

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As Ottawa approaches the 25th anniversary of amalgamation this January, the moment invites a frank assessment. In 2001 the provincial government promised that merging 13 municipalities into a single-tier City of Ottawa would streamline governance, cut waste, improve services and stabilize taxes. Amalgamation was sold as modern, efficient and inevitable, a rational response to the untidy patchwork of local governments that once defined the region.

Two and a half decades later the record is far more complicated. Some benefits were real. Many others were aspirational. And for large portions of the city, especially rural and semi-rural communities, amalgamation has been a system that works to them, not for them. Bigger, it turns out, was not better.

The Promise of Better Services – The Reality of Uneven Delivery
The early pitch for amalgamation was simple: unify services and everyone wins. In practice, the outcome has been uneven across geography and income.

Urban residents gained the most. They saw expanded recreation programming, new library access and coordinated planning. Rural areas, by contrast, experienced reduced responsiveness in road maintenance, snow clearing, bylaw enforcement and transit. Communities like West Carleton, Rideau-Goulbourn and Osgoode have spent two decades reminding City Hall that “one size fits all” is not a service model; it is a compromise imposed on communities with profoundly different needs.

The city’s signature public-transit investment – the O-Train LRT system – was supposed to embody the advantages of centralization. Instead it has become a case study in the limits of mega-city governance: severe construction delays, cost overruns, and a nationally publicized public inquiry detailing systemic failures in oversight, transparency and project management. The LRT problems are not merely technical. They illustrate the deeper strain of running a sprawling municipality where accountability is diffused across layers of bureaucracy rather than rooted in local leadership.

The Financial Question: Where Were the Savings?
The financial rationale for amalgamation rested on scale. A bigger city would deliver efficiencies; efficiencies would reduce costs; reduced costs would protect taxpayers.

This never materialized.

Transition costs reached an estimated $189 million. Savings projections were optimistic, not guaranteed. The Transition Board did not promise tax cuts, and indeed taxes did not fall. In many rural and suburban areas they increased sharply, partly due to uniform tax policies that replaced diverse local rates.

Cost pressures accumulated in other ways:
• The city’s share of funding for provincial property-assessment operations has outpaced inflation every year since amalgamation.
• Capital projects, particularly transit, have grown more expensive while their benefits remain unevenly distributed.
• Ottawa now faces an annual transit operating shortfall approaching $140 million, straining a tax base already stretched by road, infrastructure and policing costs.

The efficiencies that were supposed to stabilize municipal finances largely failed to appear. In their place came the financial stresses of a city whose physical footprint rivals Toronto’s but without the provincial funding model Toronto enjoys.

Lost Local Control – And Lost Trust
Perhaps the most significant cost of amalgamation has been the erosion of local governance. Prior to 2001 communities had councils attuned to their unique needs and accountable to residents they lived beside. Today many rural and semi-rural residents feel politically peripheral; listened to, but not heard.

Ward representation cannot replicate local councils. Nor can city-wide policies reflect the distinct rhythms of a village like Manotick, the agricultural economy of Osgoode, or the infrastructure realities of West Carleton. The result has been a steady accumulation of resentment: a sense that rural areas subsidize urban priorities while their own needs remain secondary.

The weakening of local identity has democratic implications. Decision-making concentrated at the centre becomes less transparent, less responsive and harder for residents to influence. The LRT inquiry offered a stark reminder of what can happen when oversight drifts too far from citizens and too far from the specific communities most affected.

A Quarter Century Later: What Has Ottawa Gained – And What Has It Lost?
It would be simplistic to call Ottawa’s amalgamation a failure. Some benefits are undeniable: unified planning, expanded programming, strengthened economic-development strategies and early years of reasonably controlled citywide spending.

But at a structural level, amalgamation has not delivered its central promises. Taxes did not fall. Services did not equalize. Financial pressures did not ease. The governance system is more centralized but not more accountable. And the diversity of Ottawa’s communities – rural, suburban and urban – often exceeds the capacity of a single administrative structure to manage well.

The lesson is not that amalgamation should be reversed. The lesson is that centralized government must be paired with robust local power, transparent decision-making and an honest recognition that “efficiency” cannot override community identity or regional diversity.

As the 25-year mark approaches, Ottawa has an opportunity to look clearly at what was promised, what was delivered and what must change to make this city work fairly for everyone. Amalgamation may be permanent, but its shortcomings do not have to be.

Sources: 
en.wikipedia.org
todayinottawashistory.wordpress.com
app06.ottawa.ca (Rural Affairs Committee reports)
ottawa.ca (Long-Range Financial Plan II and III)
spcottawa.on.ca (WOCRC rural community report)
imfg.org (Single-tier municipal governance studies)
globalnews.ca (Ottawa LRT Public Inquiry)
ottawa.citynews.ca (Transit financial shortfall)
obj.ca (De-amalgamation commentary)

The Ferry That Would Not Settle: Wolfe Island and the Cost of Getting It Wrong

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For generations, the Wolfe Island ferry was a quiet, functional piece of public infrastructure. It was not glamorous, and it did not promise innovation. It simply worked often enough that island life could organize itself around its rhythms. That unspoken reliability ended not with a single breakdown, but with a cascade of decisions that treated a critical transportation link as a technology showcase rather than a lifeline.

The roots of the current crisis reach back to the decision to replace the Wolfe Islander III, a vessel launched in 1976 that, despite its age, delivered consistent service. In 2017, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation committed to a new, larger hybrid-electric ferry, the Wolfe Islander IV, built overseas and marketed as a modern, higher-capacity, lower-emissions solution. On paper, it was progress. In practice, it was a project that outran its own ecosystem.

The new vessel arrived in Ontario in 2021, years before the docks, charging infrastructure, and staffing capacity required to operate it were fully in place. This mismatch created an immediate limbo. A ferry designed to function as part of an integrated electric system instead sat idle while shore-side systems lagged behind. Training shortages and labour constraints compounded the delay, turning what should have been a transitional period into a prolonged absence from service.

When the Wolfe Islander IV finally entered full-time operation in August 2024, expectations were high and patience already thin. Those expectations were quickly tested. Within months, the vessel suffered a grounding incident that damaged its hull and propulsion components. What was initially described as minor damage resulted in the ferry being removed from service for an extended period and sent to a Hamilton shipyard for repairs. The older Wolfe Islander III was pressed back into duty, once again carrying the weight of continuity.

The mechanical troubles did not end with that incident. The hybrid-electric design depended on shore-based charging infrastructure that was still incomplete, forcing the vessel to rely heavily on onboard diesel generators. Those generators, never intended for sustained primary operation, became a point of failure. By mid-2025, generator problems again sidelined the ferry. Brief returns to service were followed by further outages, including power system failures that left residents relying on temporary passenger shuttles and improvised arrangements.

These technical failures had predictable human consequences. The Wolfe Islander IV operates on a longer round-trip schedule than its predecessor, reducing the number of daily crossings. For island residents, this change reshaped daily life. Commutes grew longer and less predictable. Medical appointments, school schedules, supply deliveries, and emergency response planning all became more fragile. What had once been an inconvenience during rare outages became a chronic uncertainty.

Concerns around emergency access have been particularly acute. Wolfe Island relies on ferry access for ambulance transport to mainland hospitals. Longer crossing times and unreliable service are not abstract inconveniences in that context. They are measurable risks. Community petitions and advocacy groups emerged not out of nostalgia for the old ferry, but out of a clear understanding that transportation reliability is a public safety issue, not merely a service quality metric.

The deeper problem is not that a new ferry experienced teething issues. Complex infrastructure projects often do. The problem lies in the sequencing of decisions. The vessel was delivered before its supporting systems were ready. Operational assumptions were made about staffing and training capacity that did not hold. A technology-forward design was deployed into an environment that could not yet support it. Each of these choices transferred risk from the project plan onto the community it was meant to serve.

What has unfolded at Wolfe Island is a familiar Canadian infrastructure story. Ambition was not matched by coordination. Procurement timelines were allowed to drift out of alignment with construction and commissioning realities. Accountability became diffuse as responsibility spread across contractors, ministries, and timelines. Meanwhile, residents were left to absorb the consequences of decisions made far from the dock.

The Wolfe Island ferry saga is not primarily about electric propulsion or shipbuilding quality. It is about governance. It is about whether essential public services are designed around the lived realities of the communities that depend on them, or around abstract models of innovation and efficiency. Reliability, once lost, is difficult to regain. Trust follows the same rule.

Until the ferry system is treated first as critical infrastructure and only second as a demonstration project, Wolfe Island will continue to pay the price for a transition that was promised as an improvement and delivered as a disruption. The lesson is not that modernization is a mistake. The lesson is that modernization without readiness is not progress at all.

Sources

U.S. Border Rules: Security Theater at the Expense of the Economy

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The United States is poised to implement border-crossing rules that threaten to strangle tourism and business travel under the guise of national security. Under a proposal from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, travelers from Visa Waiver Program countries could soon be required to disclose five years of social media activity, all phone numbers and email addresses used in the past decade, family details, and an array of biometric data including fingerprints, facial scans, iris scans, and potentially DNA. The stated purpose is to prevent threats before travelers set foot on American soil. The practical effect, however, is more likely to be economic self-sabotage than enhanced security.

Officials argue that social media monitoring can identify links to extremist networks and that biometric verification prevents identity fraud. Yet in reality, these measures are deeply flawed. Social media is ambiguous, easily manipulated, and prone to false positives. Connections to flagged accounts are not proof of malicious intent, and online behavior is rarely a reliable predictor of future actions. Biometric data can confirm identity, but it cannot reveal intent, and DNA collection provides little actionable intelligence for border security. What is billed as a comprehensive safety net is, in practice, security theater: a show of vigilance with limited ability to prevent genuine threats.

The economic consequences are far more immediate and measurable. Tourism generates hundreds of billions of dollars annually in the United States, and even modest deterrence can ripple across hotels, restaurants, retail, and transportation. Business travel and conferences may shift overseas to avoid intrusive vetting, while students and skilled professionals may choose alternative destinations for study and employment. The timing is particularly ill-advised: the 2026 FIFA World Cup, expected to bring millions of international visitors, risks diminished attendance and reduced economic activity due to privacy-invading entry requirements.

Beyond lost revenue, the proposal risks damaging the U.S.’s international reputation. Heavy-handed border rules signal that openness and hospitality are subordinate to bureaucratic procedures, potentially discouraging cultural exchange, foreign investment, and global collaboration. In balancing national security and economic vitality, policymakers appear to have prioritized symbolism over substance.

Ultimately, the proposed rules expose a stark imbalance: symbolic security at the expense of tangible economic and diplomatic costs. Public commentary over the next 60 days is the last line of defense against a policy that could chill travel, weaken industries reliant on foreign visitors, and tarnish America’s global image. National security is crucial, but when it comes at the cost of economic self-harm, it ceases to be protection and becomes self-inflicted damage.

Enough Already: Greenland, American Strategy, and an Envoy That Makes No Sense

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In December 2025, President Donald Trump announced that he would appoint Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry as the United States special envoy to Greenland. The announcement came with Trump’s customary social-media flourish, framing Greenland as “essential to our national security” and praising Landry’s willingness to advance U.S. interests in the Arctic. Landry himself declared that it was an “honor … to make Greenland a part of the U.S.” even as he would remain governor of Louisiana concurrently. Reuters

1. It’s a Diplomatic Stunt, Not Strategy

Appointing a U.S. special envoy to a territory that is not a U.S. partner or diplomatic interlocutor is, by definition, an odd choice. Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, and sovereignty over Greenland rests with Copenhagen under international law. Even if Greenland exercises home rule over many internal matters, Denmark retains foreign-affairs authority. Euronews

Denmark reacted accordingly. Its foreign minister denounced the move and summoned the U.S. ambassador in protest, asserting that territorial integrity must be respected. Danish and Greenlandic leaders jointly declared that “you cannot annex another country,” and reinforced that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.” Euronews

2. The People of Greenland Have Spoken—Loudly

Trump and his allies have repeatedly hinted that Greenlanders might welcome U.S. affiliation or even statehood. Yet public opinion data tell a different story: 85% of Greenlanders oppose becoming part of the United States, with only about 6% in favor. A News AMERICAS poll

Ignoring the expressed will of the local population while proclaiming sovereign ambitions isn’t strategic leadership. It’s symbolic posturing that weakens U.S. credibility with the very audiences that Washington claims to want on its side.

3. National Security Strategy vs. Tactical Execution

To be fair, Greenland does matter in the Arctic geostrategic environment. Its geographic position gives control over approaches to North America, and U.S. military assets like Pituffik Space Base have long been elements of continental defense. There is also growing global competition in the Arctic amid climate change and resource access. These realities are consistent with core themes in the U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS): maintaining technological edge, reinforcing alliance structures, and securing critical supply chains. Associated Press

But that strategic framework does not justify appointing a governor as envoy with public remarks about making another country part of the United States. That is a conflation of long-term objectives (strengthening U.S. strategic position in the Arctic) with short-term theatrics that have real diplomatic and legal consequences.

4. Why This Matters Beyond Headlines

A smart Arctic strategy might include genuine cooperative defense partnerships with Greenland and Denmark, investment in shared security infrastructure, climate resilience, and economic collaboration that respects sovereignty. Instead, the current approach:

  • Undermines alliance trust with a NATO member whose cooperation is critical in Europe and the Arctic.
  • Misreads local sentiment, dismissing Greenlanders’ clear preference to determine their own future.
  • Reduces U.S. policy to rhetorical brinkmanship, distracting from substantive cooperation where it matters.

If the NSS is a roadmap for how the U.S. secures its interests in an increasingly competitive world, this envoy appointment reads like a sideshow detour driven by personality rather than policy.

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