Peter Copeland

Chris Dummitt at his finest here.

"The Indian Act is indeed a racist document rooted in 19th-century paternalism. But what most Canadians misunderstand is why it’s still here. The problem isn’t the Canadian government. Every government since Trudeau’s would have been happy to be rid of it. We still have the Indian Act because Indigenous leadership has refused to let it go."

Politicians of federal and provincial governments deserve plenty of criticism for inaction on indigenous issues, but so too do the First nations governments and national and regional bodies - full of left-wing grievance mindset - who often do not reflect the wishes of their constituents.

I would take a very different perspective on the idea of cultural neutrality that Chris puts forward.

There is nothing neutral about multiculturalism, or the small-l liberal approach to 'privatize' belief and cultural practices.

Western societies benefited from much thicker cultural assumptions and practices rooted in our philosophical and religious inheritance that liberal societies took for granted and which was largely broken by the 60's culture of transgressiveness, and the boomer generation's break with the past.

They have passed on little, other than that the next generation 'do their own thing.' Humans are not like that. Civilizational inheritance contains a great deal of wisdom, and it needs to be passed down.

Younger Canadians understand this very well, and won't take the same neutral approach to cultural policy going forward. @MLInstitute

Canadians tend to think of international organized crime as something that originates elsewhere: Mexican cartels, Asian criminal networks, European organized crime, foreign trafficking routes. This is partly rooted in Canada’s self-image as a nice country that no one would want to harm. Yet this very sentiment is something organized crime and foreign state actors have started to exploit, as evidenced in recent reports like the Cullen Commission into money laundering in British Columbia.

Canada’s openness, expansive trading relationships, stable institutions, sophisticated financial system, extensive transportation infrastructure, and close access to the United States and Mexico are enormous advantages for legitimate commerce. Those same features can be exploited by criminal networks.

Laura Dawson of the @FBC_USCAN and a @MLInstitute senior fellow with an insightful piece on how we should rethink border security for the present era.

macdonaldlaurier.ca/beyond-the-bor…

@ryan_p_alford concludes our @MLInstitute series evaluating the impact of the Charter on Canadian law, as documented in the Charter Revolution and the Court Party.

As a historian of law, he looks back to look forward, tracing the expansion of human rights from limited protections rooted in an objective concept of human flourishing to claims to a slippery concept of equity that courts today now gladly fulfill.

“While guaranteeing the pursuit of happiness was once deemed a goal beyond the aims of the Canadian Constitution, the judiciary’s interpretation of the Charter now seems to be guided by the notion that it promises universal bliss; if it hasn’t arrived in one’s life, please come and inquire at the courthouse.

In order both to expand rights to hyperbolic proportions and to preserve the state’s power to restrict traditional civil liberties, the courts have elevated the open-ended proportionality analysis under section 1 of the Charter into the only stage that truly matters when freedom of speech, assembly, or related civil rights are at stake. The so-called balancing test is actually an invitation to prioritize government policies over civil rights, which courts generally accept when the litigation is brought by someone who doesn’t pay dues to the Court Party.”

macdonaldlaurier.ca/the-meaning-of…

Scientific illiteracy is often most pronounced amongst scientists and progressives.

Stephen Hawking famously introduced his book 'Brief Answers to the Big Questions' with the claim that philosophy is dead and that 'science' can answer all questions. The irony is too much to bear, as his argument for this conclusion was a philosophical, not a scientific one.

Thankfully, it seems that younger generations are better aware of the hierarchy of knowledge. A PhD in any scientific field is to be a doctor in philosophy after all. For @MLInstitute, @brosbrawls takes the misuse and misapplication to questions of public policy to task.

From yesterday's covid hysteria and climate fanaticism, 20th century enthusiasm for eugenics among the progressive movement, including the abortionist and founder of Planned Parenthood and the NDP's very own Tommy Douglas, intellectuals have always been adept at applying narrow descriptive findings in a field to erroneously justify sweeping social changes.

In Canada, during COVID, governments imposed sweeping restrictions on everyday life, from curfews and vaccine passports to keeping children out of schools and playgrounds, often invoking ginned up scientific authority to dismiss legitimate questions about the proportionality and consequences of their policies.

Meanwhile, environmental zealotry has seen governments block major energy and infrastructure projects, including LNG Saguenay and Northern Gateway, elevating particular environmental considerations above economic prosperity, energy security, and other legitimate public goods.

"Science can certainly inform policy, but to implement, we need politicians with sound judgment to work with experts from many relevant fields to make the right choices and trade-offs."

macdonaldlaurier.ca/when-it-comes-…

Tax reform is on everyone's mind, inviting a slew of sound and detailed proposals in @globeandmail, @TheHubCanada and elsewhere.

In this piece, we wanted to take a different tack, and zoom out on the issue. Rather than get into the weeds of a long list of specific proposals, we thought it wise to look at our tax system as a whole, and articulate a vision for what it should look like. As ad hoc measures have been introduced over time, the system today looks less like a coherent embodiment of clear principles, and more like a hodgepodge collection of distortions that undermine our prosperity.

Kenneth McKenzie puts forward a principle-based approach to tax reform to help guide the government's efforts through Budget 2026 and beyond. At its heart is the principle of tax neutrality: the system should raise revenue while interfering as little as possible by biasing selection of decisions about investment, organizational structure, and other things pertaining to economic activity.

He argues for restructuring corporate income taxes to target economic rents (profits above the normal return on investment), shifting the tax mix toward less economically distortionary consumption taxes, and eliminating the preferential treatment of certain assets and sectors, and financing arrangements.

The federal government's new productivity mega deduction is a welcome step toward improving investment incentives, but it leaves many of these underlying distortions intact.

The objective should be to stop tinkering around the margins with ad hoc interventions, and to make it more coherent as a whole. @MLInstitute

macdonaldlaurier.ca/mega-deduction…