Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

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.

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.

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?

The Grinch, The Hill and The Empty Briefcase

Posted: December 15, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Last week in the House of Commons, Canada’s Secretary of State for Sport, Adam van Koeverden, delivered a speech that was sharp, funny, and painfully accurate. And for everyone still defending Pierre Poilievre and the style of politics he has perfected, it was a reminder of exactly what that legacy is in the words of MP van Koeverden.

“Mr. Speaker, remember when the Grinch tried to steal Christmas? He drove all the way up to the top of Mount Crumpit because he had everything that he needed, and he was going to throw the gifts that the Whos deserved because he thought they didn’t deserve to have nice things. It’s kind of like the leader of the Conservative Party, Mr. Speaker. For 25 years, he’s had dental care because he’s had a job here in the House of Commons, so he votes against dental care for 9 million Canadians. He’s got secure housing. He lives comfortably at Stornoway in government-owned housing, so he votes against affordable housing for millions and millions of Canadians. My Christmas wish is that the leader of the Conservative Party comes back in January with a heart that’s grown three sizes and tries to help a Canadian for once in his 21 years.”

That is Poilievre’s political biography in a paragraph. He is a man who has enjoyed every structure of public stability while dedicating his career to denying those same supports to everyone else. And rather than come back after he “won” or, let’s be honest, acquired his Alberta by-election in a riding that any Conservative could win in a coma, did he return with a better attitude? A vision? A grown heart? Anything?

No. He returned with the exact same tone, and the same fixation on Justin Trudeau that his followers can’t seem to let go of, despite the fact that Trudeau isn’t even in politics anymore. It has become some kind of reflexive obsession, a default setting they can’t reset, and it would almost be funny if it weren’t so detached from the reality the rest of us are living in.

For the continued supporters of Pierre Poilievre note that in 21 years he has not produced a single original idea. Nothing substantive, nor visionary. Nothing that withstands even casual inspection. Ask his supporters to name a policy, and they can’t. They can only tell you who they dislike. The only people insisting he’s “leadership material” are perched so far on the right flank of conservatism that competent global diplomacy looks like a threat to them.

Meanwhile, the same voices who accuse the Liberal government of being “socialist” conveniently forget that Canada’s core social programs that they likely embrace, such as unemployment insurance, public healthcare, old age security, and the Canada Pension Plan are exactly the kinds of systems they claim to oppose. And let’s not forget the single biggest fiscal challenge of the past five years, COVID. I would pay good money to see the statistic showing how many small government Conservatives cashed their CERB cheques without hesitation. Canadians across every political stripe were grateful for that “socialist” support when they needed it. Funny how ideology melts when the deposit hits the account.

Because here’s the uncomfortable global truth. There is no Conservative leader right now who would receive the level of international respect Mark Carney does. Could one emerge? Possibly. But the only route to international visibility available to the current Conservative movement is alignment with Donald Trump’s authoritarian worldview and Vladimir Putin’s destabilizing ambitions. That’s the company they’ve chosen.

And that should worry all of us. Leadership in 2025 is not just about the economy. It’s about safety. Economic strength collapses without geopolitical stability. Trade dies without trusted alliances. Investment evaporates when partners can’t count on you. Safety is the foundation of everything, and right now, Conservative politics offers no path to a safer Canada.

Meanwhile, we have a Prime Minister who is respected internationally, who is navigating one of the worst tariff crises in decades, and who does understand the complexity of global economics. Mark Carney is not perfect, no leader is, but he has the credibility Canada requires at a moment when credibility is currency.

And yet, the Conservative Party marches forward behind a man whose political compass points only toward resentment and reduction. A man who has had every benefit of public life yet opposes extending those same benefits to the people who fund them. A man who believes anger is a national strategy.

But unlike the Grinch, this story doesn’t end with a heart growing three sizes. In fact, if anything, every year he sounds more like the guy standing on the hill screaming about the downfall of Whoville while offering exactly zero ideas for how to fix it. A man who wants power with all the enthusiasm of someone who’s never bothered to figure out what he’d do with it once he had it.

Perhaps, perhaps, the spell is weakening. There is growing speculation that January could bring not just a new parliamentary session but a new Conservative leadership race. And if the Conservative leadership team has any instinct for political survival, they see the writing on the wall.

But then comes the real question. If not Poilievre… then who?

Andrew Scheer? You could replace him with a lump of coal and get more heat. A rising star? From where? This caucus has hollowed itself out. Jason Kenney? No love lost there, but compared to today’s far-right chaos, he now looks moderate, (don’t worry I’m not fooled). This says everything about the state of the party.

Adam van Koeverden’s Grinch analogy landed because Canadians recognize themselves as the Whos down in Whoville. Just trying to build something together while a man on the mountaintop insists we don’t deserve it. But unlike the Grinch, this story doesn’t end with a heart that grows.

And if that’s the best the Conservative Party can offer in a moment this dangerous, then it’s not a government in waiting. It’s a loud distraction for people who’ve stopped looking for real solutions.

Sundown you better take care

Posted: December 12, 2025 in Uncategorized
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Politics across the globe feel dangerous in a way that is hard to articulate without sounding alarmist, but alarmed is exactly what we should be. The world is sitting on a fault line. Every major decision made by the global superpowers reverberates across continents, supply chains, borders, households, and families. No one is insulated. And while Canadians have a uniquely deep economic and geographical relationship with the United States, this moment isn’t just about us. It’s about the entire world and its future.

Today we learned that the head of NATO expects the alliance to be formally at war with Russia within the next five years. I’m not unpacking that intelligence or the what-ifs around it. But I am acknowledging the obvious: three of those years will unfold under Donald Trump’s second presidency. And that reality, paired with what we’re seeing in front of our eyes, has pushed me to talk about something I’ve deliberately avoided.

I have a close family member living with a memory-loss disease. I’ve never said that publicly because it hurts, because naming it out loud makes it real, and because I’ve never wanted to use their struggle as a metaphor. But over these past months, as politics have escalated into something darker, I’ve found myself unable to ignore parallels in patterns of behaviour I’ve personally witnessed and the behaviour we see, daily, globally, from the President of the United States.

To be clear, I am not making a diagnosis. I’m not a doctor. I’m not suggesting equivalency. One is a loved one who lived a good, quiet life and deserves compassion and safety and never acts from a place of cruelty or evil. The other is the most powerful person on Earth. But I am talking about recognizable human patterns, changes in speech, changes in focus, erratic storytelling, unshakeable belief in invented narratives, emotional volatility, unusual physical mannerisms, and moments that simply do not match past behaviour.

Back in Trump 1.0, we all witnessed the erratic late night tweets, the mood swings, the wild pivots, the sudden tangents, behaviour that became part of the spectacle, part of the chaos-for-show that defined his first term. It was volatile and unnerving, but it was still framed as “Trump being Trump,” an exaggerated performance wrapped in grievance and bravado.

But it wasn’t until recent months that people began using the word “sundowning” in a more serious way, pointing to his increasingly disorganized late-night Truth Social posts, sharper emotional swings, moments of confusion that couldn’t be brushed off as theatrics, and most of all, the growing certainty with which he clings to things that simply aren’t real. For those of us who have lived with someone who truly does experience certain changes in behaviour and ‘imaginings’ the parallels are impossible to ignore. The volatility, the slipping coherence, the absolute conviction in invented narratives, once you’ve seen these patterns up close, it is deeply unsettling to watch echoes of them play out on a global stage.

In my family’s case we made the heartbreaking decision to place our loved one somewhere safe, supported, respected, and protected. They hold no power, no weapons, no military chain of command and yet we knew we had to make that decision. They require care, patience, and stability. And they deserve that.

Now imagine a similar pattern of behaviour, but the individual holds the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, commands 1.3 million active-duty service members, and is treated by his closest advisors as flawless and unquestionable. Imagine that person at the centre of a geopolitical world already teetering, and imagine that no one around them is willing, or able, to intervene.

That terrifies me. And it should terrify every Canadian, every ally, every democracy. Not because we dislike his politics. Not because we preferred Biden. But because unchecked power combined with unchecked behaviour is historically catastrophic.

And yes, there were legitimate questions about Biden’s age and capacity. Some of that should have been more transparent. But Biden, for all his flaws, did not glory in cruelty. He did not fantasize about retribution. He did not weaponize the military against political enemies. The comparison is not equivalent.

As Canadians, including those of us in Alberta, we must choose leaders who will not normalize this, who will not run to Mar-a-Lago for approval, who will not bend the knee for trade favours or photo-ops. Mark Carney was never going to “manage” Donald Trump, because Trump is unmanageable. Only those closest to him can intervene. That is the point and the danger. No one is doing that.

I also know I’m not alone in this world. We are living in a time where more and more families are navigating memory-loss diseases. Millions of people understand these behavioural patterns because they live with them every single day. And yes, I know many people are waiting for the full release of the Epstein files and the Caribbean boat incident, and those disclosures absolutely matter. But just as urgent is something far closer to the present: there needs to be a full, unambiguous disclosure of this man’s cognitive and neurological assessment, not another distraction about how “perfect” his heart supposedly looked or another deflection about cankles. Transparency about his actual capacity is not a luxury; it is a global safety issue.

Something is happening, and the people around Donald Trump are doing nothing. That is what keeps me up at night. That is why I am breaking my silence about my family’s situation. Because I know what these patterns look like up close. And when I see echoes of those patterns in the Oval Office, backed by absolute power, global instability, and a circle of enablers?

Yes, it terrifies the hell out of me.

“When you blame others you give up the power to change”

Posted: December 9, 2025 in Uncategorized
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There’s an expression I’ve used for decades. I don’t know who first said it, but it has stayed with me longer than most political slogans or news cycles ever will. ‘If you blame others, you give up the power to change.’

When I first started using it, it had nothing to do with politics. It was about people I knew, family, friends, community members, who faced difficult circumstances. We’ve all known those situations where two children grow up in the same home with the same opportunities and the same challenges, and one rises despite adversity while the other drowns despite prosperity. Circumstance isn’t destiny. Choice is always part of the picture, small, incremental choices about how we react, how we cope, and how we move forward.

But somewhere along the way, this human truth got swallowed by something much larger. Blame has stopped being an individual habit and has instead become a societal norm. It’s now a default setting, a reflex, a cultural posture. It doesn’t just show up in personal relationships or family dynamics. It shows up everywhere now. In politics, in public discourse, in online communities, in the way we talk to strangers and the way we talk to ourselves. It has become the new standard, and an unhealthy one.

And nowhere is that more obvious than in the way politics is now practiced. Over the past decade, politics has increasingly become a performance of victimhood. Not genuine suffering, but strategic grievance. In the United States, Donald Trump has practically built an empire out of it. You hear his refrain daily. Joe Biden this, Crooked Joe that, on and on and on. It’s a relentless drumbeat of pointing fingers outward to avoid ever turning the mirror inward.

And here in Canada? We’re not immune. Pierre Poilievre has turned Justin Trudeau into his entire personality. Ten plus years of the same line: Trudeau broke it, Trudeau ruined it, Trudeau is the cause of every pothole, every grocery bill, every global shockwave, every structural issue that existed long before he was even an MP. There is never a solution, only a scapegoat. And if he ever stopped blaming, he’d have to start explaining, which is far more difficult.

But this isn’t just about them. The real danger is what this style of politics does to us. When leaders model blame, they normalize it. They give society permission to adopt the same posture. And suddenly we are a nation, and a generation, encouraged to externalize everything. Everything becomes someone else’s fault. Someone else’s failure. Someone else’s responsibility to fix.

It creates a kind of moral paralysis.

If everything is always someone else’s doing, then nothing is ever within our power to change. The story becomes fixed. Our agency disappears. And once agency disappears, cynicism fills the space it leaves behind.

This is not the country I grew up in. It’s not the country many of us tried to build. And it’s certainly not a healthy model for young people, because when the only thing they hear from politicians is blame, how on earth are they supposed to learn accountability? How are they supposed to believe they have influence over their own lives, let alone their communities?

If society keeps modelling the opposite, if our political culture keeps rewarding the loudest finger pointer instead of the most honest problem-solver, then we shouldn’t be surprised when the entire public starts behaving the same way.

Leadership is not about who can yell “not my fault” the loudest or who can dig up the oldest grievance. Real leadership is quieter than that. It’s steadier than that. It’s the person who wakes up and without pageantry puts one foot in front of the other and deals with the issues actually in front of them. No excuses. No endless rehashing of who messed up what ten years ago. Just the work.

That’s the kind of leadership I prefer: the kind that solves instead of performs. The kind that owns responsibility instead of outsourcing it. The kind that doesn’t need an enemy to justify its existence.

Because the alternative is exactly what we’re living through, a political landscape where deflection has replaced direction, grievance has replaced governance, and blame has become the cheapest currency in public life.

And honestly who is driving that trend? Donald Trump has built an entire political identity around never taking responsibility for anything, ever, even when the consequences are catastrophic. Pierre Poilievre has spent more than a decade scripting every sentence around Justin Trudeau as if reciting a grievance is the same thing as offering a plan. And Danielle Smith has turned deflection into an art form, blaming everyone from judges to civil servants to the federal government rather than simply governing the province she was elected to lead.

This is not strength. This is not vision. This is not leadership.

We deserve leaders who face the hard truths, not run from them. Leaders who build instead of burn. Leaders who don’t need a scapegoat to feel powerful — and who understand that their job is not performance art but public service.

And we deserve leaders who model that for our children. Because whatever behaviour we normalize at the top quickly becomes the behaviour young people believe is acceptable. They watch how we speak, how we react, how we handle conflict, how we take, or avoid, responsibility. If all they ever hear is blame, then blame becomes the cultural default.

We deserve a society that refuses that path. A society that understands that blame might feel satisfying in the moment, but it is a dead end. It does not move us forward. It does not solve a single problem. It keeps us exactly where we are, frozen in place, circling the same resentments, repeating the same grievances.

And it brings us back to the line I’ve carried through decades of my life, a line more relevant now than ever. “When we blame others, we give up the power to change!”

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