Great column, Matt. I would add that Federal government "programs" will not address all these problems. Canadians need to do the work, including holding the appropriate levels of government responsible.
Since WW2 Canadians have enjoyed the protection of the US military might while becoming rich selling into the world's biggest and richest consumer market. Canada had billions of saved military dollars to spend on social programs, especially public health care. That era is coming to an end.
America is no longer able, or willing to guarantee protection for its Western allies, including Canada and the world is successfully competing with Canada for access to the US market. Geography and reality dictates that Canada and America will remain cooperative neighbours but we must move out of the basement and build our own house.
I agree with most of your comment with one exception. It really has been since the end of the Cold War that Canada really began to live under the protection of the US and since the FTA that Canada has been able to sell into the US unfettered. The end result is the same, though.
I have been thinking of Maslow’s hierarchy in the context of countries. With no need to worry about security, Canada has had the luxury to focus on higher level needs, such as income programs, health care programs, and so on. Even at that, we run horrible deficits. What happens when the lower levels of the hierarchy, such as national security, are no longer there for us? How do we start paying for that and the luxurious benefits we have enjoyed? Something has to give.
I am not sure that Canadians, as a whole, have woken up to that just yet. There are some encouraging signs, such as the support for walking away from the trade “deal” last month. Time will tell, of course.
Yes but to do that we need to fix our broken culture. Downstream of that will be a constitutional fix. Many of these problems (as we are seeing live in BC) are completely intractable without that.
So far, we don't have the stomach for a pipeline. Never mind fixing more deeply what ails us. I hope I am wrong.
We elected a guy who ran on electoral reform. He didnt do it. Its going to be a long time before someone runs on that again and is believed. Its also happened multiple times at the provincial level.
The people who mock the phrase, "Canada's broken" either misinterpret it's meaning or willfully ignore it. Canada isn't "broken", but far too many of our public sector-led institutions are. Hence, Toronto is filthy, in every way imaginable, and the rot is spreading out to small town Canada as well.
The pace at which "stuff", both important stuff and mundane day-today stuff happens in public-sector Canada is not just glacial it's inert. There's NOBODY willing to take responsibility or make a decision. Why? Because the bureaucracy no longer exists to deliver services, it exists to self perpetuate and feed itself.
I read an account of an individual wanting to open a produce/farm store with a relatively fancy cafe attached here in the Port Hope area. The idea was proposed in 2019, "consultations" began in 2022, and the idea died in 2025. Pathetic doesn't scratch the surface as a descriptor.
It's past time that the situation gets fixed. Local government needs to focus on supporting the development and maintenance of a healthy, safe and clean community for the people who are and want to be a positive contributor to society. That means re-balancing the rights to this-or-that arguments to favor those who just want to live a happy and productive life. Make clean and safe streets a priority as opposed to just a talking point. Allow prosperity to flourish, as opposed to snuffing it out through endless consultation with self anointed "stakeholders" and layer upon layer of bureaucratic regulatory muck.
Most of Canada’s problems are easy to fix with common sense and how did Carney put it ““Aspiration without effort is just empty rhetoric.” What Canada has is lots of empty rhetoric. What we don’t have is effort.
Change the constitution, make the people who make the rules (judges and politicians come to mind) accountable. This is especially necessary when politicians use things like a trade war (both Carney and Trump) to get voted back in, look tough or just let their egos be their guide.
Wouldn’t it be easier to change the laws that stop Canada from producing then create a new office that appears to be an organization full of aspiration and empty rhetoric. Shouldn’t our ethics committee have teeth – like getting rid of the politician for even a minor ethics violation would be a good call – one small unaccountable violation will lead to more and larger ethics violations – kinda like liars, liars, lie it’s just what they do.
And for gods sake, just quit spending our tax dollars outside of Canada until we have a plan. Canada is not in charge of saving the world, so lets just save ourselves and put virtue signalling on hold.
And finally, let’s hold the media responsible for accurate and unbiased journalism. The reason Substack is so successful is that most folks writing here know that their livelihood depends on good journalism, not government handouts.
Reading between some of your lines, this is what I also read: the folks who were happy to provide the effort, were told no so many times by the same activists, the same ideologues, and the same intellectually captured people, that the effort providers just stopped trying.
There are about ten solid additional problems Matt left out of his excellent article.
Where does one start?
Canadians can never admit they were wrong, and can never litigate the past.
Canadians are never to blame, and require a constant scapegoat.
Correct, the participants don’t agree on much. And I suspect rightly so. But having said that, Canada is a large, cold landmass with diverse regions, diverse resources and diverse cultures. Ottawa wants to maintain control without considering the differences across Canada. Ottawa cannot be fair to each province when we consider that most of Canada’s population resides in the east, and ultimately all federal governments bow to the east. This makes sense, because in a democratic country the majority rules. Nevertheless, splitting up Canada is the only way forward. Carney’s call for team Canada ended 8 hours after he called for a united Canada. Quebec refused to have a pipeline go through the province and shortly after Eby did the same. The majority can only rule if there is a very level playing field.
I love your points but I don't think its fixed with common sense at this point. I think we're too far past that.
We're here because Canada has a fundamental culture problem. It's a deep and real spiritual problem which is why it is found in almost every aspect of Canadian public and private life.
The mental health problems those of us who live in Toronto are seeing on a daily basis in the streets and on transit has been with us since the 1980's and has escalated in recent years with lethal and highly addictive street drugs. This is a deeply sad and discouraging problem that the Ontario government with major and willing support, both financial and human, from the city of Toronto . There are solutions. But they don't. Why? The city simply doesn't have the budget or even access to borrowed operating funds to solve it alone. And the province, I can only think political will is lacking. In the past the issue was street addicts with multiple mental and health issues chose to live on the street and the courts declared it to be their right to refuse treatment. This should have been dealt with and is no longer the public mood on this issue to say the least.
Once again it's a health care financing issue. The health organizations responsible are doing some great work on this but much more money for housing supports and ongoing health monitoring post rehabilitation are just the beginning. Yes we have problems to solve in Canada's largest city and this is one entirely of our own making.
Good points but why put good money after bad. The seriously mentally ill don't want housing and are highly resistant to any form of rehab. Taking the worst mental health cases off the street would make an enormous, highly visible difference to the safety and security of everyday folks.
To put it bluntly, the only thing that works is coercion. That means involuntary mental health committals, legislation to back this, investment in secure treatment facilities, post-release supports, and a strict mental health parole system that sees the subject returned to custody at the first sign of relapse (drug use, refusal to take prescribed meds).
It does mean that the worst cases will spend their entire lives incarcerated by the state. However, this is far better than a life spent causing havoc and harm on the streets before dying in a dank corner of a flophouse or while lying on the gravel of an empty parking lot.
Yes, but do we have the stomach to do what needs to be done?
"Would you say an alcoholic person is free so long as no one prevents him from walking into a bar and drinking himself under the table? What we're missing is the crucial connection between what is 'good' and what freedom actually means. Freedom isn't about being able to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. Freedom is about being able to choose and then act toward what is good. It is about the opportunity to grow towards one's telos - the Greek word which means "purpose" or "maturity" or "goal" - for which you've been created. Freedom means both a lack of external coercion that prevents you from moving towards your telos, but also a lack of internal coercion that prevents you from mowing toward your telos as well."
It is important to remember that Detroit had to really bottom out before it got its act together.
The usual suspects were rooted out of office, and the City’s finances were governed by a State Conservatory in 2013.
Being a Tigers fan, I can tell you that I feel safer going to a game at Commerica Park than I do a London Majors game in downtown London.
Never in my 64 years did I ever dream of uttering that sentence.
Canada, Toronto, London…………
We have yet to bottom out.
Also, Detroit may have gone bankrupt, and hit rock bottom. But Detroit never abandoned being American, or what that American ethos entailed. There was no talk of having twice committed genocide, land acknowledgements to peacock virtue, and no hatred or self-loathing.
I remember. My brother-in-law went to school in Windsor so I got the Detroit experience for concerts, sports, food. I was in Waterloo so it was a bit of a longer hike but not impossible. Saw Rush at Joe Louis. That was the era where my buddy and I were told by the restaurant staff to take a cab rather than walk the mile or so to the rink, which was plainly visible down the road from us. The mile wasn't safe.
But yeah, now, wife, kids and I did a short walking tour so I could show them a bit of Gurney family lore. We definitely stayed in the core, but it was clean, safe, well maintained. We parked, walked, ate, walked some more, visited a park, etc. Hands down in better condition than Toronto.
And certainly in better condition than Windsor. Windsor unfortunately depends on the US more than any other Canadian citu for it's existence. Just don't go wandering away from the curated downtown.
Finally, about time. A column about what we can do for ourselves as a nation. I would like to see our PM use the current crisis with the US to force a certain level of courage and sacrifice into the national conversation. For example, can we finally have the courage to change the way health care is delivered. Can we make the sacrifice to raise the GST, restructure our tax code to encourage investment, and drastically reduce the size of the civil service so we can afford the necessary funding of our military. Courage and sacrifice. It will not come from Canadians voluntarily. We need our leaders to lead, and I suspect Canadians will follow. The political moment is ripe.
This is the column that should be on the front page of the Globe and Mail, but is 180 degrees away from their "all panic all the time" editorial position so would never make the cut.
Donald Trump has given Canadians, and especially a certain kind of Canadian - you know the kind: smug, city dwelling, older, Liberal, still think it's 1998 - the perfect excuse to ignore all of the country's festering problems. We came so close to getting serious, even got rid of our most unserious leader, only to let an even more unserious US leader take away all our focus.
I have very little hope the focus will go back to reality any time soon. The prospect of less than perfect Canada-US free trade and some nasty rhetoric from the former host of The Apprentice has basically been fanned into Canadian Boomer 9/11. Just like real 9/11 made America focus on moral panic insanity for close to a decade, waste a trillion dollars on a war nobody can explain, re-elect an incompetent president, and ignore the domestic problems that would lead to the 2008 financial collapse, we are reacting like equal dumbasses to our own much more silly (and thankfully far less deadly) national trauma.
We lose track of this while we distract ourselves play acting La Resistance against a 6% average trade tariff and some mean tweets. Nothing changed. The young still have no hope for the future and no reason to think that will change.
Matt, thanks for writing this column, although it is months (not weeks) late in coming out.
This thought-task you laid out for Canadians ("Don’t think about the States at all. Don’t think about Trump. Just think about Canadians in Canada. What should we be doing for ourselves?") seems to be all but impossible for most Canadians.
Recently, I "lost" a long-time friend, when in a discussion over beers he was outraged to hear me say out loud that Carney has clearly lied to Canadians on multiple occasions.
To him, even noting this in passing made me a "MAGA Trumpist", and therefore "the enemy", because the only logical positions he could understand were "Trump bad, Canada good".
Such is the environment we are fostering for ourselves in our current national narrative.
But the thing is, almost none of what is "broken" in Canada has anything to do with Trump.
Trump's re-election was a VERY convenient distraction - which the Liberal Party very adeptly used to their own political advantage, to forestall certain electoral ruin, and instead turn it into a never-ending national "Two Minute Hate" playing out daily on ALL of our broadcast news, somehow focusing ALL of Canada's frustrations on Trump, and Trump alone.
Why fix the country, when you have a convenient boogeyman to externalise all blame?
Matt. Matt. you are right! however we are deeply unserious people. Fixing our problems would require us to confront the issue we have been avoiding for 50 years now. Open the constitution deal with the structural imbalance. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
Open the Constitution. There's a non-starter. Whenever we've tried that before various parts of the country start losing their minds. God knows, there is so much divisiveness in this country right now that trying to fix the Constitution would blow things wide open. For better or worse, we're stuck with a deeply imperfect document, at least for now.
But that doesn't mean that we can't make any of the changes that are so desperately needed. For example, the issue that Matt highlights i.e. the decay of our cities has nothing to do with the Constitution. Here in Toronto, it's all about a vindictive provincial government led by an ignorant bully of a premier who has a hate-on for this city; and a sclerotic, unimaginative, and timid municipal bureaucracy that moves at the pace of an arthritic sloth.
Saddled as we are with a Constitution that can't be fixed (for now), we'll just have to fall back on pragmatic inter-regional/governmental horse trading. That has worked throughout our history - this country was created in a fit of pragmatism - and there's no reason why we can't make it work again.
All we need to do is change our attitude, which is the message that I take away from Matt's column.
I am not happy with Ford but Toronto’s decay isn’t because of him. It’s City Council and the Mayor that have responsibility for this. This is a council that at one point thought the most pressing issue was to rename Dundas square.
The Mayor overseeing this decay and silliness leads in the polls by 20 points. If you aren’t going to hold people accountable, then we deserve what we get.
Agreed. Most of the blame lies with City Council, but Dougie isn’t helping matters with his vendetta against Toronto and his vanity projects. Neither government is serving us well.
At least Doug is putting in another subway line. That’s one success. It’s actually one more than what was achieved by city council.
We have the same problem in Ottawa. No accountability for the LRT. Visible decay over the past decade. Same members of council and many of retreads overseeing all of this are running for Mayor.
If we won’t fire them, things won’t get better. Ever.
Actually i was wondering if Jen and Matt were still talking: compare this reasonable article to Jen's last one which I could have sworn was written by Laura Babcock...
Agreed on most points. As always, props to The Line for calling it as it is.
Where I differ, slightly: I would argue that a lot (not all!) of the last decade's worth of 'our country is broken' rhetoric was imported + internalized from the far left and far right, whose stock-and-trade has always been to insist that imperfect open societies are terrible and must be replaced by their utopian version of purity. To an extent the 'Canada is broken' narrative has become a self-fulfilling prophesy, as elected representatives and party leaders have listened + pandered to and possibly been hijacked by the loudest and most extreme complainers in their ranks, including powerful and cryptically-funded lobby orgs on both left and right. Finally, this is amplified, initially by bots / bot farms and then also by formerly real people who simply repeat the divisive rhetoric they've internalized. The level of stupid in political discourse is ridiculous.
It seems to me that if we are to repair our country, we should start not (only) with our governments but with ourselves. We, too, are part of the problem, having absorbed so much of the most democracy-destroying rhetoric into our worldviews. I would love to see Canadians drop some of our sense of aggrieved entitlement and performative victimhood and rediscover that we have hind legs *and* spines, and actually defend our open society, the historically vital tension between its classical + liberal values, and the principles of democracy that made Canada a strong, resilient country capable of self-defense. And no: I don't mean with silly slogans.
Speaking for myself, just as a start: I want to see our federal government enable civilian defense -- or even say *anything* about it. I'd like to see civilians encouraged to take the Canadian Firearms Safety Course, and to have PAL's made as official as drivers' licenses as government ID. I want to see *volunteering* restored as a social virtue. Heck: I'd even just like to see people pick up after their dogs. Is that asking too much?
I'll see your cleaning up after dogs and raise you five people who dump garbage out their car window or in a rural ditch, or down some ravine... And I like your point about Firearms Safety. Can you imagine a mandatory course like that in high school? People would lose their minds...
There was a range in my high school, used by the resident cadet corps until at least the early 1990s! I get that there might be concern about risk and liability now, but I'd love to see Canadians encouraged to think actively about civil defense ... or even civic duty ... even identity. Fly the flag, maybe? Wear a poppy? Pick up litter?
You'd have to have a government that was okay with an armed portion of the population first. Quebec's "unique values" of serf like deferrence to authority and the Laurentian Elite being allergic to right coded vibes would never allow it.
Thank you Matt! Your thoughts and suggestions are very much appreciated!
Wish that somehow as nation we could change all that needs to be changed without our Government.
And above all, like you, be inspired to help make things better.
Inspire people to act instead of whining.
Maybe the wrong statement, but I see lovely grandparents demonstrate against Genocide in a park that is dedicated to a an amazing a Jewish poet. I have asked, very nicely to move their rightful protestations to another corner.
How about we get together and make sure our children, in my case, Grandchildren, have the life that Canada provided for decades.
This is the issue - Trump/America should be forcing us to get our act together. That's the best outcome from this fiasco. Instead, it seems to be cementing our flaccid culture.
Canada is in a disastrous place. No, we are not a third world country. But given our geography, history and proximity tot the world's most dynamic economy Canada should be the wealthiest country in the world with the wealthiest, happiest citizens. Instead, the country is fundamentally broken.
How's the Major Projects Office doing? Build Canada Homes? Defense Investment Agency? Invest in Canada?
These are all agencies setup by Carney & Co. to build like never before. And all are grossly failing, with two recent CEO's having just left for lack of progress. Our fundamental problems are not being fixed.
Sadly, the Trump fiasco is substituting fake patriotism for progress. And that, ultimately, is a culture problem.
I admit I've been becoming slowly bearish on Carney's performance, and it's for a rather contrarian reason: his poll numbers. His poll numbers have been ridiculously good, and staying there. The issue is it feels like Carney is becoming like a classic Liberal, vaulting whichever way to maintain high numbers to keep winning. Thus far, he hasn't shown particularly willing to spend that political capital to DO actual hard things.
Canada is 'united' in their anti-Trump posture, but I say that's surface-level. If Carney tomorrow came out and said he was implementing Harper's OAS changes to start at 67 because the budget deficit is at $70B and is going to continue to be high and doing so would save ~$10B annually now and $20B a year in a couple of decades, that unity would crack. If he went further and started it at 67 and lowered the earnings range at which clawbacks would start, ditto.
Similarly, the Major Projects Office. The MPO was an admission that government red tape was so bad that they needed something to bypass all of that. The MPO is needed for now, but I haven't seen any movement to actually disentangle all that red tape so that in the future an MPO isn't quired.
Great column, Matt. I would add that Federal government "programs" will not address all these problems. Canadians need to do the work, including holding the appropriate levels of government responsible.
Since WW2 Canadians have enjoyed the protection of the US military might while becoming rich selling into the world's biggest and richest consumer market. Canada had billions of saved military dollars to spend on social programs, especially public health care. That era is coming to an end.
America is no longer able, or willing to guarantee protection for its Western allies, including Canada and the world is successfully competing with Canada for access to the US market. Geography and reality dictates that Canada and America will remain cooperative neighbours but we must move out of the basement and build our own house.
I agree with most of your comment with one exception. It really has been since the end of the Cold War that Canada really began to live under the protection of the US and since the FTA that Canada has been able to sell into the US unfettered. The end result is the same, though.
I have been thinking of Maslow’s hierarchy in the context of countries. With no need to worry about security, Canada has had the luxury to focus on higher level needs, such as income programs, health care programs, and so on. Even at that, we run horrible deficits. What happens when the lower levels of the hierarchy, such as national security, are no longer there for us? How do we start paying for that and the luxurious benefits we have enjoyed? Something has to give.
I am not sure that Canadians, as a whole, have woken up to that just yet. There are some encouraging signs, such as the support for walking away from the trade “deal” last month. Time will tell, of course.
It's going to get ugly when the entitlement cuts start and the bond markets won't let us put it on the tab anymore.
Just wait until less and less is covered by "free" health care.
Yes but to do that we need to fix our broken culture. Downstream of that will be a constitutional fix. Many of these problems (as we are seeing live in BC) are completely intractable without that.
So far, we don't have the stomach for a pipeline. Never mind fixing more deeply what ails us. I hope I am wrong.
Maybe start with something easy - like VOTING. Then electoral reform.
We elected a guy who ran on electoral reform. He didnt do it. Its going to be a long time before someone runs on that again and is believed. Its also happened multiple times at the provincial level.
I also think there is no chance it solves our issues. Voting and our specific electoral system are such a small contributor to our issues.
Amen to this!
The people who mock the phrase, "Canada's broken" either misinterpret it's meaning or willfully ignore it. Canada isn't "broken", but far too many of our public sector-led institutions are. Hence, Toronto is filthy, in every way imaginable, and the rot is spreading out to small town Canada as well.
The pace at which "stuff", both important stuff and mundane day-today stuff happens in public-sector Canada is not just glacial it's inert. There's NOBODY willing to take responsibility or make a decision. Why? Because the bureaucracy no longer exists to deliver services, it exists to self perpetuate and feed itself.
I read an account of an individual wanting to open a produce/farm store with a relatively fancy cafe attached here in the Port Hope area. The idea was proposed in 2019, "consultations" began in 2022, and the idea died in 2025. Pathetic doesn't scratch the surface as a descriptor.
It's past time that the situation gets fixed. Local government needs to focus on supporting the development and maintenance of a healthy, safe and clean community for the people who are and want to be a positive contributor to society. That means re-balancing the rights to this-or-that arguments to favor those who just want to live a happy and productive life. Make clean and safe streets a priority as opposed to just a talking point. Allow prosperity to flourish, as opposed to snuffing it out through endless consultation with self anointed "stakeholders" and layer upon layer of bureaucratic regulatory muck.
Pointing out Canada's problems has become borderline treasonous behaviour. It's an incumbent politician's wet dream.
Most of Canada’s problems are easy to fix with common sense and how did Carney put it ““Aspiration without effort is just empty rhetoric.” What Canada has is lots of empty rhetoric. What we don’t have is effort.
Change the constitution, make the people who make the rules (judges and politicians come to mind) accountable. This is especially necessary when politicians use things like a trade war (both Carney and Trump) to get voted back in, look tough or just let their egos be their guide.
Wouldn’t it be easier to change the laws that stop Canada from producing then create a new office that appears to be an organization full of aspiration and empty rhetoric. Shouldn’t our ethics committee have teeth – like getting rid of the politician for even a minor ethics violation would be a good call – one small unaccountable violation will lead to more and larger ethics violations – kinda like liars, liars, lie it’s just what they do.
And for gods sake, just quit spending our tax dollars outside of Canada until we have a plan. Canada is not in charge of saving the world, so lets just save ourselves and put virtue signalling on hold.
And finally, let’s hold the media responsible for accurate and unbiased journalism. The reason Substack is so successful is that most folks writing here know that their livelihood depends on good journalism, not government handouts.
Carole, you make a lot of great points.
Reading between some of your lines, this is what I also read: the folks who were happy to provide the effort, were told no so many times by the same activists, the same ideologues, and the same intellectually captured people, that the effort providers just stopped trying.
There are about ten solid additional problems Matt left out of his excellent article.
Where does one start?
Canadians can never admit they were wrong, and can never litigate the past.
Canadians are never to blame, and require a constant scapegoat.
Donald, your last two sentences should be ' the Liberal party', not Canadians.
My point, Don, was that Canadians had many opportunities to change course.
They chose to maintain course. They chose the decline and decay.
I blame Canadians for voting for the Liberal Party four times in a row, five times if you count the by-elections.
I think that we're both correct then.
Constitutional talks are needed and the participants rarely agree on anything, I think.
Correct, the participants don’t agree on much. And I suspect rightly so. But having said that, Canada is a large, cold landmass with diverse regions, diverse resources and diverse cultures. Ottawa wants to maintain control without considering the differences across Canada. Ottawa cannot be fair to each province when we consider that most of Canada’s population resides in the east, and ultimately all federal governments bow to the east. This makes sense, because in a democratic country the majority rules. Nevertheless, splitting up Canada is the only way forward. Carney’s call for team Canada ended 8 hours after he called for a united Canada. Quebec refused to have a pipeline go through the province and shortly after Eby did the same. The majority can only rule if there is a very level playing field.
I love your points but I don't think its fixed with common sense at this point. I think we're too far past that.
We're here because Canada has a fundamental culture problem. It's a deep and real spiritual problem which is why it is found in almost every aspect of Canadian public and private life.
I don't know what you do about that.
Great comments Carole!
AGREE !!
You said it well Carol.
The only thing I think you needed to mention was who was running the country for the last 11 years.
Well done, Matt.
This is the platform to which I originally subscribed.
Imagine what we could have accomplished had we voted for a leader who promised to do exactly the things you have outlined in your fine essay.
Sounds like a leader with the wrong "tone" according to the CBC. Couldn't possibly elect someone like that.
It hurts to much to laugh, but that was a good one.
The mental health problems those of us who live in Toronto are seeing on a daily basis in the streets and on transit has been with us since the 1980's and has escalated in recent years with lethal and highly addictive street drugs. This is a deeply sad and discouraging problem that the Ontario government with major and willing support, both financial and human, from the city of Toronto . There are solutions. But they don't. Why? The city simply doesn't have the budget or even access to borrowed operating funds to solve it alone. And the province, I can only think political will is lacking. In the past the issue was street addicts with multiple mental and health issues chose to live on the street and the courts declared it to be their right to refuse treatment. This should have been dealt with and is no longer the public mood on this issue to say the least.
Once again it's a health care financing issue. The health organizations responsible are doing some great work on this but much more money for housing supports and ongoing health monitoring post rehabilitation are just the beginning. Yes we have problems to solve in Canada's largest city and this is one entirely of our own making.
Good points but why put good money after bad. The seriously mentally ill don't want housing and are highly resistant to any form of rehab. Taking the worst mental health cases off the street would make an enormous, highly visible difference to the safety and security of everyday folks.
To put it bluntly, the only thing that works is coercion. That means involuntary mental health committals, legislation to back this, investment in secure treatment facilities, post-release supports, and a strict mental health parole system that sees the subject returned to custody at the first sign of relapse (drug use, refusal to take prescribed meds).
It does mean that the worst cases will spend their entire lives incarcerated by the state. However, this is far better than a life spent causing havoc and harm on the streets before dying in a dank corner of a flophouse or while lying on the gravel of an empty parking lot.
Yes, but do we have the stomach to do what needs to be done?
"Would you say an alcoholic person is free so long as no one prevents him from walking into a bar and drinking himself under the table? What we're missing is the crucial connection between what is 'good' and what freedom actually means. Freedom isn't about being able to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. Freedom is about being able to choose and then act toward what is good. It is about the opportunity to grow towards one's telos - the Greek word which means "purpose" or "maturity" or "goal" - for which you've been created. Freedom means both a lack of external coercion that prevents you from moving towards your telos, but also a lack of internal coercion that prevents you from mowing toward your telos as well."
Yes, the Alberta model. The Ontario big city mayors have been imploring Doug Ford to act on this. Crickets from the Ontario government.
Absolutely agree.
Matt, if I may:
It is important to remember that Detroit had to really bottom out before it got its act together.
The usual suspects were rooted out of office, and the City’s finances were governed by a State Conservatory in 2013.
Being a Tigers fan, I can tell you that I feel safer going to a game at Commerica Park than I do a London Majors game in downtown London.
Never in my 64 years did I ever dream of uttering that sentence.
Canada, Toronto, London…………
We have yet to bottom out.
Also, Detroit may have gone bankrupt, and hit rock bottom. But Detroit never abandoned being American, or what that American ethos entailed. There was no talk of having twice committed genocide, land acknowledgements to peacock virtue, and no hatred or self-loathing.
Good article, lad.
I remember. My brother-in-law went to school in Windsor so I got the Detroit experience for concerts, sports, food. I was in Waterloo so it was a bit of a longer hike but not impossible. Saw Rush at Joe Louis. That was the era where my buddy and I were told by the restaurant staff to take a cab rather than walk the mile or so to the rink, which was plainly visible down the road from us. The mile wasn't safe.
But yeah, now, wife, kids and I did a short walking tour so I could show them a bit of Gurney family lore. We definitely stayed in the core, but it was clean, safe, well maintained. We parked, walked, ate, walked some more, visited a park, etc. Hands down in better condition than Toronto.
And certainly in better condition than Windsor. Windsor unfortunately depends on the US more than any other Canadian citu for it's existence. Just don't go wandering away from the curated downtown.
Even the downtown was glum. I was surprised.
That makes me sad.
That is my experience as well, Matt.
Quite right.
Finally, about time. A column about what we can do for ourselves as a nation. I would like to see our PM use the current crisis with the US to force a certain level of courage and sacrifice into the national conversation. For example, can we finally have the courage to change the way health care is delivered. Can we make the sacrifice to raise the GST, restructure our tax code to encourage investment, and drastically reduce the size of the civil service so we can afford the necessary funding of our military. Courage and sacrifice. It will not come from Canadians voluntarily. We need our leaders to lead, and I suspect Canadians will follow. The political moment is ripe.
Build Canada just came out with a survey they commissioned stating people don't even want to give up $500 for Canadian sovereignty. Pathetic.
This is the column that should be on the front page of the Globe and Mail, but is 180 degrees away from their "all panic all the time" editorial position so would never make the cut.
Donald Trump has given Canadians, and especially a certain kind of Canadian - you know the kind: smug, city dwelling, older, Liberal, still think it's 1998 - the perfect excuse to ignore all of the country's festering problems. We came so close to getting serious, even got rid of our most unserious leader, only to let an even more unserious US leader take away all our focus.
I have very little hope the focus will go back to reality any time soon. The prospect of less than perfect Canada-US free trade and some nasty rhetoric from the former host of The Apprentice has basically been fanned into Canadian Boomer 9/11. Just like real 9/11 made America focus on moral panic insanity for close to a decade, waste a trillion dollars on a war nobody can explain, re-elect an incompetent president, and ignore the domestic problems that would lead to the 2008 financial collapse, we are reacting like equal dumbasses to our own much more silly (and thankfully far less deadly) national trauma.
Meanwhile the kids want to leave Canada and leave it for the boomers. This won't end well if this continues
We lose track of this while we distract ourselves play acting La Resistance against a 6% average trade tariff and some mean tweets. Nothing changed. The young still have no hope for the future and no reason to think that will change.
Matt, thanks for writing this column, although it is months (not weeks) late in coming out.
This thought-task you laid out for Canadians ("Don’t think about the States at all. Don’t think about Trump. Just think about Canadians in Canada. What should we be doing for ourselves?") seems to be all but impossible for most Canadians.
Recently, I "lost" a long-time friend, when in a discussion over beers he was outraged to hear me say out loud that Carney has clearly lied to Canadians on multiple occasions.
To him, even noting this in passing made me a "MAGA Trumpist", and therefore "the enemy", because the only logical positions he could understand were "Trump bad, Canada good".
Such is the environment we are fostering for ourselves in our current national narrative.
But the thing is, almost none of what is "broken" in Canada has anything to do with Trump.
Trump's re-election was a VERY convenient distraction - which the Liberal Party very adeptly used to their own political advantage, to forestall certain electoral ruin, and instead turn it into a never-ending national "Two Minute Hate" playing out daily on ALL of our broadcast news, somehow focusing ALL of Canada's frustrations on Trump, and Trump alone.
Why fix the country, when you have a convenient boogeyman to externalise all blame?
Bingo! Fixing stuff is hard. blaming is easy.
Matt. Matt. you are right! however we are deeply unserious people. Fixing our problems would require us to confront the issue we have been avoiding for 50 years now. Open the constitution deal with the structural imbalance. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
Open the Constitution. There's a non-starter. Whenever we've tried that before various parts of the country start losing their minds. God knows, there is so much divisiveness in this country right now that trying to fix the Constitution would blow things wide open. For better or worse, we're stuck with a deeply imperfect document, at least for now.
But that doesn't mean that we can't make any of the changes that are so desperately needed. For example, the issue that Matt highlights i.e. the decay of our cities has nothing to do with the Constitution. Here in Toronto, it's all about a vindictive provincial government led by an ignorant bully of a premier who has a hate-on for this city; and a sclerotic, unimaginative, and timid municipal bureaucracy that moves at the pace of an arthritic sloth.
Saddled as we are with a Constitution that can't be fixed (for now), we'll just have to fall back on pragmatic inter-regional/governmental horse trading. That has worked throughout our history - this country was created in a fit of pragmatism - and there's no reason why we can't make it work again.
All we need to do is change our attitude, which is the message that I take away from Matt's column.
I am not happy with Ford but Toronto’s decay isn’t because of him. It’s City Council and the Mayor that have responsibility for this. This is a council that at one point thought the most pressing issue was to rename Dundas square.
The Mayor overseeing this decay and silliness leads in the polls by 20 points. If you aren’t going to hold people accountable, then we deserve what we get.
Agreed. Most of the blame lies with City Council, but Dougie isn’t helping matters with his vendetta against Toronto and his vanity projects. Neither government is serving us well.
At least Doug is putting in another subway line. That’s one success. It’s actually one more than what was achieved by city council.
We have the same problem in Ottawa. No accountability for the LRT. Visible decay over the past decade. Same members of council and many of retreads overseeing all of this are running for Mayor.
If we won’t fire them, things won’t get better. Ever.
Exactly what structural issues are you talking about?
This is the reason why I’ll keep renewing my subscription because Jen and Matt make me think through the issues.
Actually i was wondering if Jen and Matt were still talking: compare this reasonable article to Jen's last one which I could have sworn was written by Laura Babcock...
Different POVs = more knowledge = breaks our thought silos.
Agreed on most points. As always, props to The Line for calling it as it is.
Where I differ, slightly: I would argue that a lot (not all!) of the last decade's worth of 'our country is broken' rhetoric was imported + internalized from the far left and far right, whose stock-and-trade has always been to insist that imperfect open societies are terrible and must be replaced by their utopian version of purity. To an extent the 'Canada is broken' narrative has become a self-fulfilling prophesy, as elected representatives and party leaders have listened + pandered to and possibly been hijacked by the loudest and most extreme complainers in their ranks, including powerful and cryptically-funded lobby orgs on both left and right. Finally, this is amplified, initially by bots / bot farms and then also by formerly real people who simply repeat the divisive rhetoric they've internalized. The level of stupid in political discourse is ridiculous.
It seems to me that if we are to repair our country, we should start not (only) with our governments but with ourselves. We, too, are part of the problem, having absorbed so much of the most democracy-destroying rhetoric into our worldviews. I would love to see Canadians drop some of our sense of aggrieved entitlement and performative victimhood and rediscover that we have hind legs *and* spines, and actually defend our open society, the historically vital tension between its classical + liberal values, and the principles of democracy that made Canada a strong, resilient country capable of self-defense. And no: I don't mean with silly slogans.
Speaking for myself, just as a start: I want to see our federal government enable civilian defense -- or even say *anything* about it. I'd like to see civilians encouraged to take the Canadian Firearms Safety Course, and to have PAL's made as official as drivers' licenses as government ID. I want to see *volunteering* restored as a social virtue. Heck: I'd even just like to see people pick up after their dogs. Is that asking too much?
I'll see your cleaning up after dogs and raise you five people who dump garbage out their car window or in a rural ditch, or down some ravine... And I like your point about Firearms Safety. Can you imagine a mandatory course like that in high school? People would lose their minds...
There was a range in my high school, used by the resident cadet corps until at least the early 1990s! I get that there might be concern about risk and liability now, but I'd love to see Canadians encouraged to think actively about civil defense ... or even civic duty ... even identity. Fly the flag, maybe? Wear a poppy? Pick up litter?
With you all the way
You'd have to have a government that was okay with an armed portion of the population first. Quebec's "unique values" of serf like deferrence to authority and the Laurentian Elite being allergic to right coded vibes would never allow it.
Thank you Matt! Your thoughts and suggestions are very much appreciated!
Wish that somehow as nation we could change all that needs to be changed without our Government.
And above all, like you, be inspired to help make things better.
Inspire people to act instead of whining.
Maybe the wrong statement, but I see lovely grandparents demonstrate against Genocide in a park that is dedicated to a an amazing a Jewish poet. I have asked, very nicely to move their rightful protestations to another corner.
How about we get together and make sure our children, in my case, Grandchildren, have the life that Canada provided for decades.
Beautifully stated, friend.
I agree wholeheartedly.
An excellent column.
This is the issue - Trump/America should be forcing us to get our act together. That's the best outcome from this fiasco. Instead, it seems to be cementing our flaccid culture.
Canada is in a disastrous place. No, we are not a third world country. But given our geography, history and proximity tot the world's most dynamic economy Canada should be the wealthiest country in the world with the wealthiest, happiest citizens. Instead, the country is fundamentally broken.
How's the Major Projects Office doing? Build Canada Homes? Defense Investment Agency? Invest in Canada?
These are all agencies setup by Carney & Co. to build like never before. And all are grossly failing, with two recent CEO's having just left for lack of progress. Our fundamental problems are not being fixed.
Sadly, the Trump fiasco is substituting fake patriotism for progress. And that, ultimately, is a culture problem.
I admit I've been becoming slowly bearish on Carney's performance, and it's for a rather contrarian reason: his poll numbers. His poll numbers have been ridiculously good, and staying there. The issue is it feels like Carney is becoming like a classic Liberal, vaulting whichever way to maintain high numbers to keep winning. Thus far, he hasn't shown particularly willing to spend that political capital to DO actual hard things.
Canada is 'united' in their anti-Trump posture, but I say that's surface-level. If Carney tomorrow came out and said he was implementing Harper's OAS changes to start at 67 because the budget deficit is at $70B and is going to continue to be high and doing so would save ~$10B annually now and $20B a year in a couple of decades, that unity would crack. If he went further and started it at 67 and lowered the earnings range at which clawbacks would start, ditto.
Similarly, the Major Projects Office. The MPO was an admission that government red tape was so bad that they needed something to bypass all of that. The MPO is needed for now, but I haven't seen any movement to actually disentangle all that red tape so that in the future an MPO isn't quired.
Good observations. The majority of Canadians who vote are centrist, I think. Canada likes to be governed from the center.
Like ending all internal trade barriers, stopping the idiotic talk about separation, and working toward food independence?