Canada’s Strength Lies in Realism, Not Rhetoric

January 22, 2026

Mark Carney’s soaring nationalism and moral appeals play well abroad — but at home, they drift from Canada’s real challenges.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s address at the Citadelle of Quebec was crafted for history books a tapestry of symbolism, pride, and unity. Standing on ground once soaked with the blood of empire, he invited Canadians to see themselves as heirs to cooperation and moral courage. In his telling, Canada is not merely a country but an idea a living counterpoint to populism, nationalism, and authoritarianism.

Inspiring, yes. But history, economics, and reality tell a more complicated story. What Carney delivered in Quebec was less a policy vision than a political sermon one that glosses over nuance, inflates virtue, and misjudges the geopolitical ground beneath our feet.

Myths of Harmony

Carney’s retelling of the 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham as a turning point toward “coexistence” between French and English Canada reads like mythology. Cooperation was not a choice peacefully arrived at but the outcome of centuries of friction, negotiation, and political calculation. The path from conquest to Confederation was marked by deep divisions linguistic, religious, and cultural, from the Durham Report to the Conscription Crises. Canada’s unity was hard-earned and uneven, not the inevitable flowering of mutual goodwill.

By rewriting conflict as cooperation, Carney romanticizes the past at the expense of historical truth. Canada’s greatness has come not from harmony, but from the determination to maintain unity despite constant tension. It is a more difficult and more honest story.

The U.S. and the Illusion of Detachment

Carney’s most defiant moment came in his pointed message to Donald Trump: “Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadians.” It’s an applause line that resonates emotionally but economically, it strains belief.

For better or worse, Canada’s prosperity is built on interdependence, not independence. Roughly three-quarters of our exports flow south. Our energy grid, manufacturing supply chains, and financial systems are tightly integrated with the U.S. economy. Our defense strategy relies on binational cooperation through NORAD and NATO. This is not dependence, but partnership one that has underpinned our stability and prosperity for over a century.

Pretending otherwise weakens credibility. Leaders strengthen alliances intelligently; they don’t undermine them theatrically. When Carney casts Canada as morally superior to its most vital ally, it plays well on international stages but risks sounding performative at home.

Noble Ideals, Tangible Shortfalls

Carney’s rhetoric about inclusivity, fairness, and sustainability aligns with Canada’s self-image but ideals cannot substitute for execution. Canadians today face worsening affordability, housing scarcity, and growing productivity gaps. The moral vocabulary of leadership must eventually yield to the mechanics of policy: how to build, hire, innovate, and invest.

Canadians don’t need more “values-based leadership.” They need a government that can translate values into measurable progress that turns slogans into solutions.

The Rules-Based Order and Quiet Power

Carney’s lament for the “death” of the rules-based international order may sound principled, but it ignores Canada’s historic role as a beneficiary of that very system. The postwar order, forged largely by the United States gave Canada safe passage to prosperity, secure markets, and diplomatic influence disproportionate to its size. If that system is crumbling, Canada’s response must be strategic, not rhetorical.

Middle powers exert influence through alliances and competence, not grandstanding. If Carney wants to redefine Canada’s place in the world, he must start by answering the practical question: with what leverage?

A Fortress Without Foundation

Choosing the Quebec Citadelle, a fortress built to defend against an American invasion that never came, as the site of a “Cabinet Planning Forum” was no accident. The symbolism is clear: Canada as independent citadel, morally steadfast against external pressure. But the enduring challenge of leadership is not to reimagine ancient battles, it is to win the present ones. And those battles are economic, institutional, and social, not rhetorical.

Canadians need more than moral clarity. They need functional governance, policies that restore productivity, strengthen public services, and ensure national unity through competence, not ceremony.

The Measure of Leadership

Carney’s speech may have drawn ovations abroad, but at home it exposed a familiar pattern: Canada’s political class mistaking eloquence for effectiveness. A country defined by humility and pragmatism now finds itself led by spectacle and symbolism. There is nothing unpatriotic about expecting more.

True leadership faces reality head-on, it builds trust not through lectures but through delivery. Patriotism, after all, is not performance; it’s perseverance.

 

Nothing Is Free: Kingston’s “Fare-Free” Transit Fantasy Is a Permanent Tax on Permanent Residents

 January 22, 2026

There is no such thing as free public transit. There never has been. What is being marketed to Kingston residents as “fare-free” transit is, in reality, a permanent and expanding tax transfer from homeowners, renters, and local businesses to selected user groups, many of whom are not permanent residents of the city.

The City of Kingston already subsidizes transit heavily. In 2025, transit operating costs sit at approximately $35.8 million, while fares recover only about $10.7 million, or roughly 30% of costs. The remaining $19 million is already paid by taxpayers through property taxes and provincial transfer. Kingston residents are not debating whether to subsidize transit, they already do. The debate is whether to eliminate fares entirely and replace them with a permanent tax increase.

Eliminating fares does not eliminate costs. It eliminates accountability.

The Real Price Tag of “Free”

According to the city’s own financial projections, going fare-free would remove $10.7 million in annual fare revenue. Higher ridership would then drive operating costs up by an estimated 10–30%, pushing the net annual shortfall to $12–18 million every single year, indefinitely.

With Kingston’s total tax levy at approximately $289.5 million, covering even a mid-range $15 million gap would require a 5% tax increase. For the average household, that translates to $100–150 more per year and for many, more once inflation and service expansion are factored in.

And that’s before overcrowding, security costs, fleet expansion, or capital strain are considered.

Students Already Pay Far Less and Not Year-Round

Proponents of fare-free transit frequently point to student ridership, but omit a critical fact: students already receive deeply discounted transit and only pay for part of the year.

For the 2025–26 academic year:

• Queen’s University students pay $165 per year
• St. Lawrence College students pay about $190 per year

These fees buy unlimited transit access, but only while students are enrolled typically 5 to 6 months of actual residency in Kingston.

By contrast, permanent Kingston residents pay full fares 12 months a year, regardless of income, residency duration, or usage. A working adult purchasing a monthly pass pays $83 per month, or nearly $500 for six months, more than double what most students contribute for the same period.

This is not a minor imbalance. It is a structural subsidy from permanent residents to temporary populations.

The Ridership Myth

Advocates often claim fare-free systems produce 20–60% ridership increases. That argument does not hold in Kingston.

Why? Because Kingston already has:

• Free transit for children under 14
• Free high-school passes
• Subsidized low-income passes
• Deeply discounted university and college bulk programs

The “low-hanging fruit” has already been picked. Even city modeling shows that eliminating fares would not produce transformative gains without significant new service expansion, which itself drives costs higher.

A City Already Facing a Transit Shortfall

Kingston Transit is already short $600,000 in projected revenue for 2025, largely due to declining international student enrollment. Despite this, the operating budget was increased to $19.6 million, routes were expanded, and provincial gas-tax reserves were tapped to keep pilots afloat.

In other words, the system is not over-funded. It is already fragile.

Moving to a fare-free model at this moment is not progressive, it is fiscally reckless.

Who Really Pays

When fares disappear, costs do not. They simply migrate:

• Into higher property taxes
• Into business levies
• Into hidden charges embedded elsewhere in the budget

Homeowners cannot opt out. Renters pay through higher rents. Small businesses absorb higher fixed costs. And once fares are gone, they never return.

Temporary users come and go. Permanent residents stay, and pay.

A Smarter Path Forward

Kingston’s targeted programs work precisely because they are limited, measured, and funded:

• Youth and high-school passes deliver strong social returns
• Low-income programs improve access without blowing the budget
• Student bulk agreements are transparent and contractual

Expanding these programs where evidence supports them is responsible governance. Eliminating fares entirely is not.

Conclusion

“Free transit” is a slogan, not a solution. In Kingston, it would mean higher taxes, reduced transparency, and permanent cost transfers onto those who already pay the most.

Nothing is free. Someone always pays.

The only honest question is: who, and for how long?

And in Kingston’s case, the answer is clear: Permanent residents would pay, forever.

Let me be clear: removing fares does not make transit free, it makes it unaccountable. It shifts permanent, escalating costs onto homeowners, renters, and local businesses who already subsidize the system, while many beneficiaries contribute little, temporarily, or not at all. Once fares are eliminated, they will never return, but the taxes will.

Council is not voting on generosity today; it is voting on whether to impose a permanent tax increase disguised as compassion. Kingston residents deserve honesty, not slogans, because in public finance, nothing is free, and pretending otherwise is not leadership.

Political Debanking in Canada: A 150-Year Pattern of Protection Without Accountability

When Power Decides Who May Bank

For many Canadians, the term “political debanking” sounds like something new,  a troubling by-product of modern polarization or digital financial control. It is neither. What has changed is not the behaviour, but the visibility.

For more than a century and demonstrably for at least the past 40 to 50 years, access to banking power in Canada has been shaped not merely by risk, law, or market forces, but by political alignment, elite consensus, and regulatory discretion exercised without consequence. When financial exclusion occurs for political, ideological, or identity-based reasons, no one is charged. No one is sanctioned. And no one at the top is held accountable.

This is not a theory. It is a pattern — documented, repeated, and protected.

Canada’s Original Banking Compact

Canada’s banking system was never designed as a neutral marketplace. From its inception, it was a centralized, politically managed instrument of stability, one that explicitly favoured concentration over competition.

The Bank Act of 1871 granted the federal government exclusive authority over banking, ensuring a small number of large chartered banks would dominate the financial landscape. This centralization was justified as a safeguard against instability. In practice, it created institutional intimacy between political power and financial power.

Long before Confederation, this dynamic was already visible in Upper Canada. The Bank of Upper Canada, closely aligned with the colonial elite known as the Family Compact, functioned as a financial arm of political authority. Loans, credit, and access flowed disproportionately to allies. Reformers and outsiders were excluded. When the bank collapsed in 1866 amid mismanagement and favouritism, no senior figures were charged. They controlled the system that would have judged them.

The precedent was set early: political banking without political consequences.

The Campeau Affair: A Modern Exposure (1980)

If one moment crystallizes modern Canadian political banking, it is Robert Campeau’s 1980 hostile bid for Royal Trustco, then Canada’s largest trust company.

Campeau, an Ottawa-based real estate developer, launched a $413 million bid, later raised, in what should have been a straightforward market contest. Instead, it exposed how power actually operates.

Royal Trustco’s leadership, alarmed not by illegality but by who was bidding, mobilized what became known as “the friends” — a coordinated group of major Canadian corporations that quietly accumulated shares to block the takeover. The establishment justification was couched in public-interest language: a trust company should not be controlled by one individual; a real estate developer posed conflicts.

Yet market behaviour told a different story. Roughly 60 percent of Royal Trustco shares traded during the bid period, many below Campeau’s offer price, an economic irrationality unless market dynamics were being distorted. Campeau demanded a full investigation into unusual trading, openly questioning whether securities laws had been abused.

The Ontario Securities Commission investigated.

No charges were laid.

No executives were sanctioned.
No coordinated action was penalized.
No political actors were questioned.

Campeau was not Jewish, but he was an outsider — French-Canadian, non-Bay Street, insufficiently networked. The lesson was unmistakable: control is permitted only with elite consent.

Legislative Normalization, Not Accountability

Rather than scrutinizing conduct, Ontario’s political system moved swiftly to normalize corporate restructuring through legislation.

In 1980, Bill Pr7 (Montreal Trust Company of Canada Act) was introduced to formalize substitutions between trust entities, ensuring continuity of business and liability on paper. These private statutes were legal housekeeping, but they reflected a deeper instinct: to stabilize institutions, not question power.

Over time, Montreal Trust itself would be absorbed by Scotiabank. The market consolidated. The moment passed. Accountability never arrived.

The Pattern Repeats: Income Trusts and Market Interference

Fast-forward to 2005, when income trusts, a structure allowing companies to distribute earnings tax-efficiently, came under sudden political scrutiny.

Hints of policy change triggered violent market swings. Accusations of political leakage followed. The RCMP investigated. Once again:

No charges.

Critics noted that income trusts competed directly with large banks for investment capital. Whether the motive was fiscal prudence or protectionism, the result was the same: political signalling reshaped markets, and no one paid a price.

From Interference to Exclusion: The Modern Debanking Era

In the 2010s, the language changed. The mechanism did not.

Banks began closing or freezing accounts under the banner of “risk-based compliance,” citing anti-money-laundering laws, reputational risk, or opaque internal policies. Customers were rarely given reasons. Appeals were limited. Transparency vanished.

Complaints to the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments rose sharply. Still, accountability remained elusive.

The 2022 invocation of the Emergencies Act, resulting in the freezing of dozens of accounts linked to protest activity, brought the issue into public view. In 2024, a federal court ruled the invocation unconstitutional.

Yet again:

• No political leader charged

• No senior official sanctioned

• No systemic reform was enacted

The state acted. The courts rebuked. The system moved on.

Where Antisemitism Fits and Why It Rarely Appears as a Charge

Canada’s banking history includes documented antisemitism, particularly in hiring, promotion, and professional exclusion, through much of the 20th century. Jewish Canadians were systematically underrepresented in financial institutions long after legal equality existed.

What is striking is not merely that discrimination occurred, but that it rarely produced criminal accountability. Bias was cultural, institutional, and therefore legally diffuse. The system did not see it or chose not to.

Today, antisemitism manifests less openly, but concerns persist that ideological or identity-based judgments are quietly folded into “risk” assessments. Because decisions are private and shielded by compliance language, discrimination becomes unprovable — and therefore unpunishable.

Why No One Is Ever Charged

Across eras, a consistent accountability vacuum emerges:

1. Diffuse Responsibility
   Decisions are spread across boards, regulators, and ministers, no single hand to indict.

2. Regulatory Discretion
   Agencies are empowered to interpret “public interest” broadly, insulating outcomes from legal challenge.

3. Political Deference
   Prosecutorial and investigative bodies operate within the same political ecosystem.

4. Stability Doctrine
   The preservation of institutional confidence is prioritized over individual justice.

In short, the system protects itself first.

Conclusion: Power Without Consequence

Political debanking in Canada is not a left-right issue, nor a transient excess of modern governance. It is a structural feature of a system that merged financial power with political authority and never meaningfully separated them.

Outsiders are resisted.
Insiders are protected.
Investigations are conducted.
Charges are not.

Until transparency, due process, and genuine accountability are imposed on financial-political decision-making, Canadians will continue to live under a quiet truth:

Access to banking is not merely economic — it is political.

And politics, in Canada’s financial history, has rarely faced justice.

What Canadians are witnessing is not a failure of banking, but the success of a system designed to protect itself. When financial access can be denied without explanation, when investigations produce no charges, and when political authority merges seamlessly with regulatory silence, the result is not stability; it is unaccountable power. 

A society that allows banks to punish first, explain never, and face no consequence is not safeguarding democracy; it is outsourcing coercion. Until financial exclusion is subjected to the same standards of due process as any other deprivation of rights, political debanking will remain exactly what it has always been in Canada: a quiet instrument of control, wielded without fear of justice.

When Courts Begin Governing: A Quiet Democratic Drift in Canada

January 13, 2026

Canada prides itself on being a stable parliamentary democracy governed by the rule of law. Courts are respected, judges are independent, and constitutional rights are protected. All of this is true and essential.

But there is a question Canadians are increasingly failing to ask, even as its consequences grow more visible:

At what point does judicial review become judicial rule?

This is not a partisan concern, nor an attack on judges. It is a structural question about democratic accountability in a system where lawmakers are elected, governments are responsible to Parliament, and courts are deliberately unelected.

Yet in recent years, Canadian courts have moved beyond interpreting law toward shaping policy outcomes, often with real fiscal, administrative, and social consequences. This shift has occurred quietly, incrementally, and largely without sustained public debate.

That silence is the real danger.

What Courts Are Meant to Do in Canada

Canada is not a constitutional republic with elected judges. It is a parliamentary democracy rooted in legislative supremacy, constrained but not governed by constitutional limits.

Courts exist to:

1. Interpret legislation passed by Parliament and provincial legislatures
2. Review laws for constitutional compliance, particularly under the Charter
3. Protect individuals from unlawful or arbitrary state action

Judicial independence is essential to these functions. But independence does not confer policy authority.

Courts are not designed to:

• balance national or provincial budgets amid inflation and rising debt
• allocate scarce public resources across healthcare, infrastructure, and immigration systems
• manage regulatory backlogs or settlement capacity
• weigh competing policy priorities with long-term fiscal consequences

Those are inherently political judgments. In a democracy, such trade-offs must be made by those who answer to voters.

From Constitutional Review to Policy Direction

The line is crossed when courts do more than determine whether a law is permissible and begin directing how governments must govern.

This drift often appears in subtle but powerful ways:

• Laws are invalidated and suspended, leaving governments in legal limbo
• Legislatures are given court-imposed timelines to redesign complex policy frameworks
• Acceptable policy options are narrowed by judicial reasoning
• Administrative decisions are repeatedly sent back for reconsideration

At that point, the court is no longer merely reviewing constitutionality. It is reshaping policy space without electoral accountability and without responsibility for outcomes.

A Recent Illustration: The Durmus Refugee Case

This democratic drift is not theoretical. It is unfolding in real time.

In the Durmus refugee case, the Refugee Protection Division (RPD) ruled that the claimant’s refugee status had ceased due to “reavailment” of protection from their country of origin. The Federal Court later quashed that decision—not on constitutional grounds, but on the basis that the RPD’s reasoning was inadequate.

On its face, the ruling appears narrow and procedural. Its consequences are not.

By ordering a fresh review, the court compelled the federal government to reallocate administrative resources, reopen the case, and potentially alter an immigration outcome—without the court bearing any responsibility for the fiscal, operational, or downstream settlement impacts of that decision.

Here, the court did not merely assess legality. It directed a redo, intervening in how immigration policy is applied and prioritized. As reported in the National Post on January 13, 2026, such remands are increasingly common, contributing to backlogs, uncertainty, and inconsistent outcomes in a system already under strain.

While rulings like Durmus undeniably promote procedural fairness, especially vital for vulnerable refugee claimants, they also illustrate the broader tension. Judicial correction, case by case, can compel governments to focus on court-driven fixes rather than on clear legislative standards that would provide predictability and accountability across the system.

This is authority exercised without accountability: courts shape outcomes and priorities, while elected governments absorb the cost, capacity strain, and political consequences.

Real-World Illustrations of a Broader Pattern

The Durmus case is not isolated.

In 2025, an Ontario court blocked the province from removing designated bike lanes, effectively intervening in municipal infrastructure and transportation policy. Regardless of one’s view on bike lanes, the ruling narrowed policy options and imposed administrative constraints traditionally reserved for elected officials.

In 2023, the Supreme Court struck down large portions of the federal Impact Assessment Act as unconstitutional overreach. While welcomed by some on federalism grounds, critics noted the irony: in defining how Ottawa must redesign its regulatory framework, the Court itself ventured deeply into policy architecture, again exercising authority without accountability.

Earlier still, in Carter v. Canada (2015), the Supreme Court not only invalidated the Criminal Code prohibition on assisted dying but imposed a specific timeline for Parliament to enact new legislation. This moved the Court beyond constitutional judgment into active policy direction on one of the most sensitive moral issues in Canadian life.

Different cases. Same structural effect.

The Democratic Accountability Gap

Democracy depends on a simple principle: those who make decisions must answer to the people affected by them.

In Canada:

• MPs can be voted out
• Ministers can be questioned or dismissed
• Governments can fall

Judges cannot and should not be subject to political retaliation. But when courts assume policy-shaping roles, they wield power without reciprocal accountability.

The effects ripple outward. Immigration decisions, for example, do not end in Ottawa. Provinces like Ontario bear responsibility for settlement services, housing pressures, healthcare access, and social integration. Court-ordered remands can strain local systems that had no role in the original decision and no ability to influence the judicial outcome.

Charter Rights and the Expansion of Mandates

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms was designed primarily to protect negative rights—freedom from unjust state interference. Increasingly, Charter interpretation has expanded toward positive entitlements, requiring governments to act, fund, regulate, or redesign systems.

Supporters argue this protects vulnerable groups when politics fails. That concern is legitimate.

But positive rights are not cost-free. They require spending choices, prioritization decisions, and trade-offs between equally compelling needs. When courts constitutionalize these choices, they risk prioritizing judicial mandates over electoral ones, quietly reshaping policy without public consent.

The Long-Term Risks

If left unexamined, this drift carries serious consequences:

1. Erosion of Parliamentary Sovereignty — not by law, but by practice
2. Policy Paralysis — governments legislate defensively, for courts rather than citizens
3. Public Distrust — courts begin to appear ideological rather than neutral
4. Democratic Hollowing-Out — elections matter less when decisions migrate to courtrooms

Restoring Democratic Lane Discipline

Canada does not need weaker courts. It needs properly bounded courts.

That means:

• Courts interpret and enforce constitutional limits
• Legislatures write clear laws
• Governments govern within those laws
• Voters judge the results

Parliament is not powerless. In response to cases like Durmus, it could clarify reavailment and cessation standards in legislation, reducing ambiguity that invites judicial micromanagement and restoring predictability for applicants, administrators, and provinces alike.

This would reaffirm the proper democratic sequence: law first, policy next, courts last.

The Question Canadians Must Finally Ask

Who governs Canada?

If the answer is Parliament, then Parliament must be allowed to govern subject to constitutional limits, but free from judicial micromanagement.

If the answer is courts, then Canadians deserve an honest debate about democratic legitimacy.

Silence is not neutrality. Silence is consent.

And consent, in a democracy, should never be assumed.

Timeline Graphic Text

The Durmus Refugee Case — From Decision to Remand

Stage 1 — Refugee Status Granted: Claimant recognized as a refugee under Canadian law.

Stage 2 — RPD Cessation Decision: Refugee Protection Division rules status has ceased due to “reavailment” of protection from the country of origin.

Stage 3 — Federal Court Review: Court finds RPD reasoning inadequate (procedural flaw, not constitutional breach).

Stage 4 — Decision Quashed: RPD ruling set aside.

Stage 5 — Court-Ordered Redo: Government required to reopen the case, reassign resources, and conduct a fresh review.

Stage 6 — Systemic Impact: Administrative delay, increased backlog, fiscal and settlement implications borne by governments—not courts.