Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

A Canadian Lens On A Dangerous Moment

Posted: December 30, 2025 in Uncategorized
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My writing almost always starts with something personal. It is how I make sense of history when it starts pressing in close. And I try to keep my ‘Canadian Lens’ front and centre.

In the span of forty-eight hours, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s aircraft touched down twice in Canada. On the way to Mar-A-Lago, he met with Prime Minister Carney in Halifax. On the way back his plane stopped in Gander, Newfoundland for refueling.

Gander has my heart. My sister and her family have been their for over half a decade. Aviation runs deep in that place, in the people, in the airport, in the history. For decades, before long-haul aircraft made nonstop crossings routine, Gander was known as the crossroads of the world. It serves as a Canadian Armed Forces base and for many decades as an American Forces base. Planes from everywhere landed there. The world passed through. And then, on September 11, 2001, when the world broke open, Gander did what Canada did best. It welcomed strangers. Thousands of Americans who were scared, stranded, and exhausted. No politics and no ideology. Just people helping people because it was the right thing to do. This latest stop is not symbolic by design. It is a natural refuelling point. Aviation logistics are practical and structural. But it is also another reminder of Canada’s unique place in the world, shaped by geography, movement, and memory.

That matters now. Because once again, the world is at a crossroads. And this time the danger is not confusion or chaos. It is moral collapse at the very top.

Yesterday, Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukraine had launched drones at his summer residence. No evidence was provided. Absolutely none! Immediately, the President of the United States accepted the claim as fact and chastised Ukraine for “not negotiating properly.” And on the timing? While those words were being spoken, Russian missiles and drones were striking Ukrainian cities. People were being killed and homes were being destroyed. This is not a frozen conflict. This is an active war of aggression.President Zelenskyy responded plainly. He said he does not trust Putin. He said Putin does not want a successful Ukraine. He was calm, direct, and anchored in reality.

What should concern everyone, regardless of political stripe, is not simply that Donald Trump repeated a Kremlin accusation without proof. It is what that act represents. The moment a president accepts an unverified claim from an aggressor, he forfeits the authority to mediate peace. This is not about being philosophically liberal or philosophically conservative. That framing is irrelevant. This is about standards. About evidence. About whether truth still matters when the stakes are global.

Successful American foreign policy has always rested on bipartisan consensus. Northern Ireland. Taiwan. NATO. Ukraine. Congress is not decorative. It is a co-equal branch of government charged with oversight. There is bipartisan support in Congress for Ukraine on the fundamental truth that Ukraine is defending its sovereignty and Russia is the aggressor.

What we are watching instead is something far more dangerous. Hope being mistaken for strategy. Hope that Trump does not pull the plug entirely. Hope that it does not get worse. Hope that appeasement somehow produces peace. BUT hope is not policy. Ukraine can win this war. Victory is definable. A secure eastern border. Freedom of navigation in the Black Sea. Integration with Europe. What is missing is not capacity. It is will.

I do not want to be distracted by the wrong question. I do not need to know why Putin has leverage over Trump (well maybe I do) however it clearly exists. What matters is behavior, visible and consistent.

What stays with me is the image of a lone aircraft sitting on the tarmac late at night in the quiet and in the dark in a place that has seen history pass through before, often when things were breaking elsewhere. Gander remembers what solidarity looks like. Canada remembers what showing up means. That is my lens, and it is why this moment feels worth paying attention to.

Canadians should remember something else too. We are not observers. We sit between Europe and the United States and Russia. Geography alone makes this our problem. Those who grew up during the Cold War learned that early. Drills in schools. Maps on classroom walls. The understanding that authoritarian expansion was real, and it was close. If you cannot see this through anything sharper than ideology, then geography alone should wake you up.

Because if there was ever any doubt about the hold Vladimir Putin has over Donald Trump, yesterday should have eliminated it. When a president repeats an unproven claim from an aggressor while bombs are falling, that is definitively submission.And at this point, we should be honest with ourselves. Do we truly believe Donald Trump is going to do anything that saves anyone except himself.

Democracies do not collapse all at once. They erode when lies are treated as opinions and power is indulged instead of challenged. Peace cannot be negotiated by someone who no longer recognizes truth. History will NOT be confused about what this was. Or who chose to look away.

The Apple Of His Eye

Posted: December 28, 2025 in Uncategorized
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I spent most of today doing what many of you did. Watching, listening, reading, waiting. Hours of coverage. A long meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky. Calls with European leaders. Percentages tossed around like breadcrumbs. 80 percent, 90 percent, 95 percent. And at the end of it all, I am left with the same question I started with. What actually changed? The short answer is not much.

Yes, the tone between the United States and Ukraine was better. That’s important. Yes, the conversations sounded serious and professional. That’s important too. And yes, Europe appears more firmly in the room than it has been before. All of that is positive.

But tone is not leverage and conversation is not consequence.
All the optimism in the world does not end wars. What stood out for me today is likely not what stood out for others. It was when Donald Trump drifted into reminiscing about how he once had been, in his own words, the apple of Vladimir Putin’s eye.

I actually laughed, and then immediately stopped. Because that phrase is not about diplomacy. It was rather about him being cherished, favoured and special. And in geopolitics, wanting to be someone’s prized apple can be dangerous, especially when the orchard is poisoned.

While Trump spoke nostalgically about lost status, Russia provided messaging that hasn’t changed throughout this war. Rejecting a ceasefire, rejecting meaningful security guarantees and continuing to bomb civilian and energy infrastructure. Kyiv left without heat in winter. That is not a negotiating partner signalling compromise. That is a regime signalling confidence.

Throughout the press conference, we heard a great deal about “progress,” but very little about pressure. Trump ultimately acknowledged that Vladimir Putin will not agree to a ceasefire, and then effectively accepted that reality. When asked what happens if talks fail, the answer was blunt. The fighting continues. People keep dying. What was missing was any indication that new consequences would follow. And that is the crux of the problem. Diplomacy without leverage is not diplomacy. It is just another working lunch followed by a press conference.

Ukraine has shown flexibility. President Zelensky has been clear and careful about what is possible and what is not. Land concessions cannot be made casually or unilaterally. Millions of Ukrainians are displaced across Europe. Any referendum requires time, infrastructure, and safety. That is not obstinacy. That is constitutional reality. Russia, meanwhile, has not moved. Not on Donbas, not on NATO, not on security guarantees and not on a ceasefire.

So when we hear “95 percent done,” we have to ask. Done with what, exactly? The hardest issues, the ones that actually determine whether peace holds, remain unresolved. And without consequences for continued aggression, there is no reason for Vladimir Putin to resolve them.

Donald Trump said something today that deserves more attention than it received. He said the war will either end soon, or it will last a long time. That was not a prediction. It was a warning. And it was also an admission that without pressure on Putin, the burden of “ending it” will inevitably be shifted onto Ukraine.

Putin rules an autocracy. Zelensky leads a democracy at war. One man can decide alone. The other cannot. That asymmetry explains exactly where blame will land if this stalls.

Canada is not the centre of this war, but Canada’s role alongside European allies does matter. Canada is a trusted partner within the broader coalition supporting Ukraine, aligned with European governments that understand deterrence, enforcement, and long-term security. That credibility counts, even if it is not always loudly acknowledged from Florida.

And for those already gearing up to rage about Canada’s latest support announcement, a reminder. A loan guarantee is not cash pulled from your pocket. It is a financial backstop, not a handout. If you are going to object, at least object to what is actually happening.

The image that stays with me from today is not the handshakes or the percentages. It is the rotten apple. Glossy on one side. Decaying on the other and sitting squarely atop Russia.

Pretty words on the surface and rot underneath. And no amount of nostalgia about being the apple of Putin’s eye is going to change that.

Calm Is Not Inaction

Posted: December 26, 2025 in Uncategorized
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For some people, it’s about shopping and deals and doing Christmas all over again at full speed. When I was growing up, it meant visiting people. We would see what gifts they’d received, sit on unfamiliar couches, and eat again. Today, in our house, it’s much simpler. Hot turkey sandwiches, as many desserts as you want because there are always more than we’ll ever finish, and absolutely no pressure to do anything at all.

And before anything else, I want to say this. Yesterday was a good day. In fact a really good day. Time with my core family. Laughter. Familiar rhythms. I felt gratitude in my whole being as much as in my head. I don’t take that for granted.

It’s from that quieter place that I finally listened to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Christmas messages this morning. Both of them. One to Canadians and one to the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces. What struck me wasn’t a soaring line or a sentimental turn of phrase. It was the tone. These were serious messages. Intentionally so. Not bleak nor alarmist. But grounded in the reality that we are living in a moment that does not reward denial or fluff. Historically, Christmas addresses tend to soften the edges, to reassure, to smooth, to wrap things gently. This one didn’t do that. There was a deep vein running through both messages, and it felt deliberate.

Carney spoke about hope and light, absolutely, but always in the context of darkness already acknowledged. He spoke of unity not as a slogan, but as a necessity. And when he addressed the Armed Forces, there was no romanticizing and no abstraction. He spoke about sovereignty and security as things that are not guaranteed but rather defended daily, by people spending this holiday far from home.

What’s been interesting to watch since is how some of the commentary has reacted to that seriousness. There’s been a lot of talk about tone, about how measured it was, how sober, how unadorned. Some have praised it and some seem unsettled by it. And that, too, tells us something.

We’ve become accustomed to leadership that either performs reassurance or manufactures outrage. Loudness is often mistaken for action. Constant visibility is confused with effectiveness. In that environment, calm can look like absence, and restraint can be misread as inertia.

I don’t think that could be further from the truth here. It’s not just that Mark Carney doesn’t suffer fools though I think that phrase fits more than people are comfortable admitting. It’s that he operates in a way many of us have forgotten how to read. We see composure and assume things must be calm. We see deliberation and assume nothing urgent is happening. We hear careful language and decide that nothing meaningful is underway.

None of that is true.

Quiet leadership is not passive leadership. Calm does not mean complacent. And seriousness delivered without theatrics does not mean inaction. In fact, it often signals the opposite. That work is being done methodically, deliberately, and without the need to narrate every step for public consumption.

Carney understands the seriousness of the global moment we’re in. He doesn’t need to name every actor or spell out every threat for that to be clear. Donald Trump’s shadow looms whether spoken or not. Vladimir Putin doesn’t require explanation. Alliances are shifting. Europe is repositioning. Power is being tested. History tells us that when predators circle one another, one eventually consumes the other.

But what I keep coming back to, especially on a day like today is that right now, I care most about us.

Canada has never been strongest when we’re loudest. We’ve been strongest when we’re steady. When we resist the urge to turn inward on one another. When we recognize that domestic turmoil is not a sign of independence or strength, but a vulnerability that others are always willing to exploit.

I staged the image I’m sharing here. My son’s very used military boots, an old Canadian flag, the Christmas tree above. What I didn’t notice until after I uploaded it was the flag outside, still flying on the pole in our front yard, visible through the window. The flag wasn’t staged and that part wasn’t a planned statement. There’s a light snow falling this morning, the kind that softens everything without erasing it. Standing there, looking out, it felt deeply emotional in a way that’s hard to explain, quiet, steady, unmistakably Canadian.

That’s why the tone of Prime Minister Carney’s messages matters so much. They weren’t designed to soothe us into complacency or to whip us into fear. They were designed to orient us, to remind us that seriousness is not something to be afraid of, but something to rise to.

And yes, Alberta more than anyone needs to hear this. Not as a rebuke, and not as a lecture, but as a reminder born of lived experience. We do not get through what lies ahead by fracturing. We get through it by recognizing seriousness when it’s offered honestly, even when it isn’t wrapped in comfort or spectacle.

This Christmas, the Prime Minister spoke to Canadians like adults. He didn’t promise ease. He didn’t perform reassurance. He acknowledged reality, and trusted us to sit with it.

On a Boxing Day that’s quiet, full of leftovers, and heavy with reflection, that feels exactly right.

A Christmas Eve Observation

Posted: December 24, 2025 in Uncategorized
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I won’t be writing on Christmas Day. And I suspect there are powers in this world, political, cultural, algorithmic, that are quietly relieved that those of us who blog, write, and try to tell the truth won’t be doing so for twenty four hours. I won’t let that deter me from taking the day as it’s meant to be taken. For myself, my family and maybe, for a moment, for everyone else too.

Yesterday afternoon, at about two o’clock, I found myself in Costco. Let’s not debate the wisdom of going to Costco the day before Christmas Eve. I needed one of their pumpkin pies, and in my world, that qualified as critically important. But this isn’t a post about Costco crowds or seasonal chaos. It’s about how it felt to be there.

I live just outside Calgary, but the Costco closest to me sits in one of the city’s most culturally diverse areas. Given the geography, the store yesterday was filled with people of many ethnicities but predominantly filled with people of South Asian descent. There families, couples, grandparents, children. I was very clearly a minority in that space.

And here’s the thing. Contrary to what JD Vance recently suggested at a Charlie Kirk event, I did not once feel like I needed to apologize for being white. No one seemed to care what colour I was at all.

What I saw were people shopping for Christmas. Food carts filled with items meant for family gatherings. Kids of many colours vibrating with excitement near the toy aisles. A South Asian woman holding up an ornament and asking for an opinion. Whether these families religiously celebrate Christmas in the Christian sense is beside the point. Most likely, many do not. But they were participating in something deeply familiar to anyone who has ever lived here. Family, food, festivity and fun. And yes, for many, faith.

This is where I struggle with the claim that newcomers “haven’t embraced our culture.” Culture isn’t a purity test. It’s lived. It’s practiced. It’s chosen, over and over again, in ordinary spaces like a Costco aisle two days before Christmas. One moment in particular stayed with me. A couple stood in the toy aisle, speaking their native language as they debated options. My cart couldn’t pass, so I waited. I wasn’t in a panic. When the woman noticed me, she turned and apologized in English with a strong accent. “We’re trying to get a Christmas present for our girl before we pick her up from school.”

I told her it was no problem at all. As they moved aside, the man looked at me, smiled, and said, “Merry Christmas.” He didn’t have to say that. He could have said Happy Holidays. Season’s Greetings. Nothing at all. It wouldn’t have mattered to me. But that small, human exchange, the instinctive shift to English, the apology, the warmth, said more about belonging than any political slogan ever could.

Christmas, at its core, is a Christian story, and for those who hold that faith, it is meant to be a reminder that Christ served the poor, the weak, the marginalized, and the stranger. Not the powerful, not the loud, nor the self-righteous. That message is worth revisiting.

And for those who experience Christmas primarily through family traditions, shared meals, laughter, and generosity, the measure still isn’t doctrine, it’s what lives in your heart and how you treat the people around you.

My own genealogy is, in many ways, unremarkable. Scottish and English. Like many Canadians, my family story is shaped by migration, but not by being the ones most visibly unwelcome. That distinction belongs historically, al least in Canada and the United States, to others. Irish, Italian, and Jewish families among them who were once told they didn’t quite belong here either.

It’s something we forget far too easily.

We also forget that humanity itself began in a cradle of civilization where people did not look like me. Over millennia, people moved, adapted, and changed with geography and climate. Migration is not an anomaly in human history, it is human history.

As I write this, I’m looking out my window at the prairie just beyond my home. Snow rests quietly on the ground. The sky is heavy with winter light. This image you see is what I see right now, in this moment, as Christmas Eve settles in. Tomorrow, my world will be smaller. It will be about my family, food on the table, familiar rituals, and deep gratitude for another year together. That’s as it should be.

I want to close with words from Arlene Dickinson, which feel especially right tonight: “… I hope that the book we are writing today, and that will be read thousands of years from now, is a story of acceptance, compassion, and love for one another.”

And I’ll add this. That is what we can all hope for. What we can wish for. What some of us will pray for. Not just at Christmas, but in the year ahead.

Greenland Is Not Some Distant Place

Posted: December 23, 2025 in Uncategorized
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There’s something I say a lot when I’m trying to get people to understand the North and particularly how vast this country actually is. I usually turn it into a question. “If you were to leave Toronto and travel in a straight line north to Alert, Nunavut, how far do you think you’d be going?” People will throw out numbers. They’ll guess. And then I ask the second part. “If you went that exact same distance south, where do you think you’d end up?”

Almost no one ever gets this right. Most people say somewhere in the United States. Maybe the middle of it. Sometimes Mexico.

The actual answer is Bogotá, Colombia. In fact, just a few kilometres south of Bogotá. Every single time I say that, people stop.

Because once you hold that in your head, you can’t pretend the North is abstract anymore. It is a massive part of our country. That distance tells you something about scale, and scale tells you something about vulnerability.

That’s why, when I hear people talk casually about Greenland, I pay attention. With the renewed conversation this week about the United States assigning a new envoy to Greenland, I once again felt very concerned. This isn’t a response to an invitation. It isn’t a request for partnership. It’s the familiar posture of I’m doing this because I want to.

Greenland is not an idea. It is not a strategic blank space. And it is not a prize waiting for a powerful country to notice it. Greenland is primarily Indigenous, specifically Inuit. It is already someone’s home. And for my fellow Canadians it is not very far away. At Canada’s northernmost point, the distance from our coast to Greenland is 26 kilometres, (16 miles) miles. That’s not an ocean separating us. That’s proximity you can almost see across.

Only about 2% of Canadians have ever been north of the 60th parallel, even though nearly half of our landmass lies above it. And even then, most trips north are to places like Whitehorse or Yellowknife, northern cities, yes, but still sub Arctic, still below the tree line.

The Arctic is different. Being above Hudson Bay, above the ice, above the assumptions we carry from the south, that changes how you understand distance, exposure, and survival. It also changes how seriously you take casual talk about “acquiring” places that are already inhabited, already governed, already culturally whole. Those of us who have spent time in the North understand this instinctively.

Remote Indigenous communities are not empty space. They are resilient, deeply rooted, and far too often spoken about as if they exist only in relation to what outsiders want from them. Greenland is no different.

Which brings me to Denmark. I have always had a particular affinity for Denmark, my sister married into a Danish family, and growing up, Denmark was simply part of our world. My brother in laws mother was our Nana Cail. Familiar. Human. Not abstract. So when people talk about Greenland as if it is a loose possession, barely tethered to anything meaningful, it tells me they do not understand the depth of relationships or the weight of history that comes with it. Greenland’s relationship with Denmark is complicated. All colonial histories are. But complexity does not equal vacancy. And it certainly does not create an invitation for others to test boundaries simply because they can. Especially when Denmark is a NATO ally.

At some point, this conversation cannot just come from Denmark or Greenland. It has to come from NATO itself, reminding the United States that when it talks about Greenland, it is talking about a NATO-affiliated territory. This is not a sandbox. These alliances exist precisely to prevent powerful countries from testing limits simply because they feel entitled to do so.

Every time I name Donald Trump in my writings I want to be precise. I am not talking about one man acting alone. I am talking about an administration, a set of enablers, billionaires and a political culture that rewards impulse, spectacle, and domination especially when geography looks exploitable.

As the ice melts and Arctic routes become viable, conversations that once sounded absurd suddenly become operational. The Northwest Passage is no longer something unknown and vague. The United States has never fully accepted Canadian sovereignty over it.

So this is where people misunderstand the danger. Greenland is not asking for partners nor protection. And it is certainly not asking to be spoken about as if it is available.

And Indigenous homelands do not become negotiable because someone powerful has grown bored. If we keep treating places like Greenland as ideas instead of homes, as strategy instead of community, we shouldn’t be surprised when others decide consent is optional.

And history is very clear about what happens when powerful countries confuse proximity with entitlement. If Greenland can be spoken about as available, Canadians would be foolish to think we’re too far away to be next.

Venezuela-The Real Story

Posted: December 22, 2025 in Uncategorized
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I’ve been wrestling for days with how to write about Venezuela.

I went down the research rabbit hole. Oil, sanctions, nationalization, corporations, authoritarianism, currency, and eventually hit an uncomfortable but honest wall: this is not a story that fits neatly into the 750–850 words I usually work within. This story can’t be flattened and things are escalating fast.

Then last night, I was given a gift. Another writer, Gordon F.D.Wilson, shared a piece that did what I was struggling to do. Through an aviation story (you know that got my attention), he captured the danger of what happens when the wrong people are in the cockpit and everyone else is strapped in as passengers. I’m not going to rewrite his work. I strongly encourage you to read it yourself. What is clear to me through my own research and his brilliant words, is that Venezuela matters far beyond Venezuela.

Let’s start with what is not up for debate. Venezuela is ruled by an autocrat. Nicolás Maduro is a corrupt, authoritarian leader who dismantled democratic institutions and presided over immense human suffering. But the story being told about Venezuela right now keeps shifting, and we need to pay attention. At first, we were told recent U.S. actions were about drugs. Fentanyl was even framed as a kind of weapon of mass destruction. Then the focus quietly moved from drug boats to oil tankers. By that point, fentanyl had vanished from the narrative altogether. We were no longer talking about drugs. We were talking about oil, shipping lanes, trade, currency, and power.

That’s the moment the explanation stopped making sense, and the behavior starts to matter more than the justification. The United States government did not lose Venezuelan oil. A U.S. corporation did. That is a distinct difference.

Venezuela’s oil sits on Venezuelan land. That doesn’t excuse corruption, mismanagement, or authoritarian rule, but it does implicate the claim that oil was “stolen” from the United States. Foreign investment does not equal permanent ownership of a country’s natural resources. If it did, sovereignty would be little more than a polite illusion.

This is where the history becomes too complex for slogans. Venezuela’s story involves decades of corporate dominance, oil nationalization, OPEC, sanctions, internal decay, and a slow, chilling slide from democracy into autocracy. If you want to see how an elected leader consolidates power over time, start with Hugo Chávez and work forward. But complexity is precisely what power prefers to erase.

Which brings us to the new U.S. National Security Strategy. This document quietly reframes America’s role in the world. Less global steward and more hemispheric enforcer. The Western Hemisphere is framed as America’s neighborhood its responsibility, its sphere.

That language should make every resource rich country in the Americas pause. The security doctrine shift, enforcement follows. And enforcement rarely arrives with clean explanations. One day it’s fentanyl. The next day it’s sanctions. Then it’s China. Then it’s oil. The story keeps changing. The actions do not.

And I can’t stop thinking about what this logic implies for Canada. I know what you’re saying “Canada is not Venezuela.” But Canada is resource rich. Our energy sector is deeply integrated with the United States. Our oil is traded in U.S. dollars. Our economy has been intertwined by design. If foreign investment quietly becomes conflated with ownership, if access starts to look like entitlement then sovereignty becomes thinner than we like to admit. The moment corporate loss is reframed as national injury, the line between partnership and pressure starts to blur. Let’s just say the phrase follow the money has never been more applicable. Your response President Trump?

This is where Wilson’s aviation metaphor lingers with me. We’re all passengers, distracted by turbulence in the cabin, while decisions are being made in the cockpit. The danger isn’t only the autocrat we can see. It’s the systems, incentives, and cronyism that decide who gets to fly the plane and whose laws apply when they become inconvenient.

I don’t have all the answers but I am seeking to understand. This situation is evolving, and the oil, currency, and enforcement implications are genuinely complex. But I do know this. Simple stories are being told about Venezuela right now, and simple stories are almost always dangerous. Especially as they relate to the United States right now. The Art of The Deal meets Follow The Money. So…if you want the deeper dive, the longer read that traces the full arc and asks the hardest questions, I strongly encourage you to read Gordon F.D. Wilson’s piece.

And this morning I need us to pay attention to what the U.S. leadership is counting on us not noticing, especially now, when people are tired, distracted, and trying to tune out the news over the holidays. But are we paying attention to who’s actually flying the plane, before the turbulence becomes something much worse.

Immigration and The Road Ahead

Posted: December 20, 2025 in Uncategorized
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A country this big doesn’t change direction suddenly. It travels there, one decision at a time.

I started my morning with population numbers for Canada in the New York Times. For the first time since 1946 our population is down. Changes that look small enough to dismiss. Is it just a fractional dip, or a a quarterly adjustment? It would be easy to scroll past. But these numbers are flagging something important.

I am fortunate to know many new Canadians. I personally know international students who came to Canada with a plan. It was not through a loophole, nor a fantasy, but with an actual plan. To study, to work and to stay and build their life here. I know people on work visas who did exactly what we told them to do, only to realize the door they were walking toward is now quietly narrowing. They come from all over the world. This isn’t about one country or one culture. It’s about what happens when policy pivots faster than lives can.

I’m not speculating here. Professionally, I know how much anxiety is sitting inside certain industries right now. Real anxiety. Not because executives are worried about optics, but because the labour math no longer works the way it used to. We can scoff at low wage jobs, but the truth is blunt. There are jobs in this country that are not being filled. Not because Canadians are lazy, but because those jobs may be unstable, seasonal, or incompatible with raising a family. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make us principled. It makes us unserious. Often those from other countries are willing to take these jobs with a goal to ultimately better theirs and their families lives.

At the same time, because reality refuses to behave, I also know domestic students who couldn’t find work. So yes, the system was strained. Yes, some promises were oversold. Two things can be true, even if our politics can’t handle that sentence.

What’s still barely being discussed is post-secondary education itself. Most Canadians don’t realize how much our colleges and universities have been financially buffered by international student tuition. Not necessarily out of greed but rather out of survival. Those large international student fees helped keep programs running, facilities open, and tuition for domestic students from climbing even faster. When that revenue drops, and it is dropping, something gives. Programs shrink, staff disappear and costs shift. That’s basic mathematics. And then there’s the demographic fantasy we seem keenly aware of. Canada is not repopulating itself through birthrates. Nothing more complicated than that. We are a vast country with an aging population, and no amount of lecturing about “family values” is going to change that. And let’s stop pretending otherwise. When some people say “we should just have more babies,” they’re usually picturing a very specific kind of Canadian family. I had two children. That replaces exactly two people. I do not expect my sons’ partners to reproduce on command to soothe someone else’s demographic anxiety.

Now I want to talk specifically about National defence. We have said, repeatedly, that Canada needs to grow its military. Global threats are increasing, not receding, and much of the current instability has been accelerated by the man south of the border. For the first time in generations, both our southern and northern borders are strategically fragile. You don’t protect a country with slogans. You protect it with skilled, trained people and in numbers that work.

As you know an industry important to me is aviation. We already face a pilot shortage both civil and military. Airlines are competing with the air force for talent, and the pipeline is thin. And aviation has always understood something politics and people sometimes forgets. An airplane has never cared about the colour or ethnicity of the pilot flying it. It only cares whether the person in the seat is trained, competent, and ready. Physics is brutally fair that way.

If we continue drawing potential military pilots into civil aviation or fail to build the pipeline at all, that’s not a cultural debate but rather a capability gap. And you don’t fill cockpits, secure borders, or respond to crises with wishful thinking.

This is why it’s so frustrating when immigration gets reduced to irritation. The Facebook drama when someone didn’t quite catch your order at a Tim Hortons drive-thru. Yes, communication matters. Yes, standards matter. But confusing momentary annoyance with national strategy is like judging an airline’s safety record based on whether you liked the coffee on your flight.

And this is where I suspect our Prime Minister’s thinking actually is. Not in slogans nor in extremes. But in the uncomfortable middle, where immigration, defence, education, labour, and global instability all collide. The real work isn’t choosing “more” or “less.” It’s designing a system that actually supplies the people we know we need, in the places we know we’re vulnerable.

This isn’t an argument for open borders. It’s an argument for adult policy.

Because Canada does need more people. But like any long journey, growth without direction is just motion. You need a route. You need capacity. And you need to know why you’re heading where you’re headed, before you find yourself miles down the road wondering how you got there.

An Xray Was Always The Point

Posted: December 18, 2025 in Uncategorized
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I’ve spent a lot of time lately writing about things that are heavy, personal, and deeply consequential, and while that’s not going to change, every now and then I need a different kind of mental exercise. Something a little lighter and a little more entertaining. Something that reminds me why I enjoy paying attention in the first place. This Vanity Fair photo series does exactly that, because underneath the outrage and the hot takes, there’s something genuinely interesting going on here about strategy, image, and what happens when political presentation is stripped down to its bones.

None of this was accidental. The photographer, Christopher Anderson, wasn’t sprung on the White House without warning. His work was pre-approved. His bio was known. His style was known. He has made a career out of shooting very close images. Close enough to remove the usual polish, and Vanity Fair’s editor described the work as an attempt to cut through what Anderson himself has called the “theater of politics.” So the shock some people are expressing now feels, at best, selective.

Listening to pundits dissect the images, what struck me wasn’t the outrage so much as the misreading. These weren’t meant to flatter, and they weren’t meant to humiliate either. They function more like scans. Almost like x-rays. Not images designed to reassure, but images designed to show what’s there once distance, lighting, and control are no longer doing the work for you.

I’ll admit something here. On a purely emotional level, this delights me. There’s something deeply satisfying about watching people who spend their lives managing image and narrative suddenly confronted with a lens that refuses to play along. Not cruelly nor theatrically but rather precisely. Anderson’s brilliance isn’t just technical; it’s strategic. He shows them not as caricatures, but as they are when the scaffolding is removed. And for someone who pays close attention to power, messaging, and performance, that kind of clarity is genuinely enjoyable to witness.

Take J.D. Vance, photographed against a wall that quietly provides visual reference points. It’s subtle, but it matters. A way of grounding scale and proportion for someone who has spent a great deal of time rhetorically inflating his own presence. The photograph doesn’t argue, doesn’t editorialize, and doesn’t correct him. It simply measures and lets the viewer connect the dots. With these references it is easy to measure his true height.

And then there’s Karoline Leavitt, which is where the conversation predictably veered off course. Yes, you can see evidence of cosmetic work. So what. That’s neither shocking nor particularly interesting. What is interesting is what Anderson didn’t do. He didn’t soften. He didn’t blur. He didn’t smooth away the human texture that appears on every face when a camera gets this close. Anyone who has ever been photographed at that distance knows that skin behaves like skin.

It’s worth noting here that the image you’re looking at has had an HDR filter applied, and you can feel the difference right away. That small change alone alters clarity and mood, which is worth keeping in mind when we talk about what a photograph is, and isn’t telling us. Even light intervention shifts how an image reads, which only underscores how deliberate Anderson’s original choices were.

The result, even so, is striking. She’s 28, but she reads older, not in years but in bearing. Almost matronly, in the sense of discipline rather than age. This isn’t a face inviting dialogue; it’s a face trained for delivery and repetition.

Which brings Donald Trump into the picture, even when he’s not in the frame. Because he has publicly praised Leavitt not just for her performance, but for her appearance, focusing obsessively on her lips and how they “move like a machine gun.” Placed next to this image, stripped of gloss and distance, that comment lands differently. Less like admiration and more like a functional assessment. Less about judgment or insight, more about output.

This isn’t a beauty image. It isn’t about youth or glamour. It’s about role. Should I bother to mention the slight orange tinge to her nose?

Politics usually depends on illusion. In photos using flattering angles, soft light and careful distance. These photographs decline to participate in that bargain. They don’t demean anyone, and they don’t exaggerate. They simply remove the padding and let the structure show. An x-ray doesn’t flatter you, and it doesn’t insult you either. It just tells you what’s going on under the surface.

And before anyone worries that I’ve gone soft or lost my edge, don’t. I’ll be back, as always, with plenty to say about politics provincially, nationally, and globally. This is simply a reminder that sometimes the most revealing political commentary doesn’t come from a speech or a press conference. Sometimes it comes from a camera, a small adjustment, and the uncomfortable realization that once you really look, you can’t unsee how the machine actually works.

I Was Just Trying To Do My Christmas Cards

Posted: December 17, 2025 in Uncategorized
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I started thinking about all of this while doing my Christmas cards. So I don’t send the same card to everyone. Some are funny and a little irreverent, because that’s who the recipient is. Some are quiet and beautiful, Thomas Kinkade like winter scenes, because they suit someone who loves stillness and tradition. And yes, some speak directly to faith, because the person I’m sending them to is deeply religious, and I want the message to meet them where they are. That’s never felt complicated to me. It’s felt respectful.

I say Merry Christmas. I always have. That’s the season I celebrate, and I mean it warmly. But I also know not everyone I’m speaking to celebrates Christmas at all. Some say Happy Hanukkah. Some prefer Season’s Greetings. Some don’t mark the season in any religious way. So I choose my words, and my cards, accordingly.

That has always felt very Canadian to me. It’s not about erasing faith. It’s about understanding that belief is personal, and that courtesy isn’t a threat.

Somewhere between addresses and stamps this year, that thought stuck with me. Because once belief starts shifting from something we honour in each other to something assumed, or enforced, by authority, the tone changes. That’s where this post began.

There’s a reason movements that want long-term power eventually turn their attention to young people. Adults are harder to move. They’ve lived a bit. They’ve made up their minds, or think they have. Young people are still figuring out who they are. They’re looking for belonging, certainty, direction. That’s not a criticism of youth, but rather the reality.

History shows this pattern again and again. Even before he fully consolidated power, Hitler understood that if you wanted to reshape a country, you didn’t start with adults. You reorganized youth life, school-adjacent clubs, uniforms, rituals, discipline, purpose. Not education but rather forced identity.

The following isn’t a one to one comparison. But patterns don’t have to repeat perfectly to be recognizable. And it would be irresponsible to pretend we don’t see familiar shapes forming today.

In the United States, Christian nationalism has moved out of the margins and into the mainstream. Not Christianity as faith, but Christianity as political structure, as a hierarchy, an identity, and ultimately as power. One of the clearest signs o f that shift in the US has been the focus on youth spaces including schools, universities, clubs, and mentorship networks and framed all framed as moral, values based, and patriotic. Organizations like Turning Point USA aren’t really about debate. They’re about direction. About telling young people who belongs, who leads, who should submit, and what a “real” citizen is supposed to look like. That should give anyone who cares about education pause.

Now bring this north. Canada isn’t immune to American political currents. We never have been. And if there’s a place where this kind of organizing has found fertile ground, it’s Alberta. I don’t say that casually. Alberta’s political ecosystem, particularly under the UCP, has become increasingly influenced by activist groups whose goals go well beyond taxes or pipelines. Groups like Take Back Alberta are open about what they want: reshape institutions, influence candidates, embed ideology, and redefine what it means to be Canadian and that’s often through a narrow religious lens.

This is not conspiratorial, it’s not abstract. It’s quite visible. When religious language starts showing up inside government messaging, not as personal belief but as shared moral authority, I pay attention. When education leaders speak as though faith is a given rather than a choice, I pay attention. When young people are talked about as something to be guided, corrected, or rescued, rather than taught how to think, I pay attention.

Because this is how movements grow, slowly and quietly with what looks like normalization.

Faith itself is not the issue. Some of the best people I know are deeply Christian. Their faith is generous, thoughtful, and lived, not imposed. That’s not what concerns me.

What concerns me is belief turned into obedience. Faith turned into hierarchy. Morality turned into political leverage. And when that mix starts organizing around young people, through schools, clubs, and identity-building, we are no longer talking about private religion. We’re talking about public power.

This is why it matters to me. I raised my kids here in Alberta and there were threads of this already growing 15 years ago. I’ve watched young people I love try to find their footing in a world that is louder, sharper, and far more manipulative than the one I grew up in. Because I know how comforting certainty can sound especially when it’s wrapped in the language of “values.”

I don’t come at this as an academic. I come at it as a parent, as a citizen, as someone who believes education should open doors, not close ranks. I say Merry Christmas. I always will. But I also want the kid who doesn’t celebrate Christmas to feel just as fully Canadian as my own children did. That matters to me. This isn’t fear mongering. It’s responsibility. Once you see how these things grow, it’s hard to unsee them.

So I’m paying attention. Not because I have special insight but because I care.

Beyond The Pale

Posted: December 16, 2025 in Uncategorized
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There are so many things happening right now that make it hard to know what truly matters, or what deserves attention. I try to keep my writing rooted in Canadian context. In our values, our humanity, and our political reality, and yet we all know that so much of our public conversation gets tugged off course by the behaviour of the President of the United States. It creates this constant state of “pending,” waiting for the next outburst, the next shockwave, the next moment that should never be normal but somehow becomes part of the daily noise.

But this time, the noise has become something else entirely. Last weekend in Los Angeles, a man and his wife were killed by their adult son, who had long struggled with addiction and mental illness. Their celebrity is not the relevant point here. This is, at its core, a human tragedy before it is anything else and it is one that cuts deeply because it speaks to something I know too well.

Very few people know this about my family, but with my husband’s permission, I will share this. In June 2020, my husband’s only sister, in fact only sibling was murdered in her own home by her adult son, who had battled mental illness and addiction for years. Cold Lake, Alberta, where this happened, is an Air Force base community. Although retired at the time, both my sister in law and her ex-husband had served their country in the Canadian Armed Forces and had remained in Cold Lake because of their deep connection to that community.

Everything that followed, the hearings, the grief, the confusion, the guilt, the hollowed out days, was its own kind of hell. Unless you’ve lived inside that nightmare, you cannot understand the full weight that lands on a family’s shoulders, or how impossible it is to reconcile love with tragedy.

So when I look at the Reiner family, I don’t see celebrity. I don’t see politics. I see human beings, stunned, grieving, horrified, ashamed, questioning themselves, replaying every moment where they wonder if something, anything, could have gone differently. That is what this kind of tragedy feels like. It is not something any family imagines they will ever have to say aloud. We certainly didn’t.

Most people, even many who support Donald Trump, seem genuinely appalled by the comments he made about Rob Reiner in the immediate aftermath of this unimaginable loss. And for good reason. When Charlie Kirk was murdered, there was strong criticism directed at anyone who even hinted that such violence was justified. And rightly so. That is the morality line a healthy society should hold.

So how can a President of the United States justify criticizing Rob Reiner’s family in their darkest hour? If cruelty was wrong then, how is it suddenly acceptable now?

“Beyond the pale” is the phrase I’ve heard repeatedly these last few days, and for once it feels accurate. It was cruelty for sport. And then he doubled down on it. Clearly there is no political ideology that excuses mocking a grieving family. Not conservative, not liberal, not anything.

Rob Reiner was known to most of us as “Meathead” on All in the Family, or as the director of films like Stand By Me, A Few Good Men, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, and Spinal Tap. Yes, his political views were strong. Many people disagreed with them. None of that matters today. A man and his wife were murdered, and their surviving family is shattered.

And yet the loudest, most powerful political voice in the United States chose, at this moment, to dehumanize them.

When people ask, “Why didn’t the family fix it?” I can only say this: you have no idea how hard families try. For years. For decades. With professionals, without professionals, with hope, without hope. Addiction and severe mental illness are not solved by parental willpower. They are battles that break families long before the worst day arrives.

Rob Reiner’s family is no different than ours was in 2020. They lived in pain, trying everything they could. And now they face a grief that will never fully heal.

This goes beyond politics. It goes beyond partisanship. It goes beyond anything a reasonable society should tolerate. Donald Trump crossed a moral line, maybe worse than any he has crossed before . And I say that as someone who has lived the reality of this kind of tragedy, who knows the shame, the confusion, the judgment, and the quiet, desperate question: What more could we have done?

There is no forgiveness for attacking a family in that moment. And I believe, truly, that this will be a defining point for many people, even among his supporters. Some moments reveal a person’s character in ways that cannot be dismissed, spun, or excused. This is one of them.

So let me finish with this:
If anyone tries to tell me that this is still about “the good things Trump is doing,” or that there is some political justification for this behaviour, then you’ve just met your match. This is the moment where I’m done entertaining those arguments. There is a line between disagreement and cruelty, and he stepped so far past it that there’s no coming back.

And if this moment doesn’t make people rethink their loyalty, then nothing will, because if cruelty toward the grieving isn’t a deal-breaker, what on earth is?

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