AUBUT: The divergent paths of liberty and loyalty, comparing America and Canada

https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/aubut-the-divergent-paths-of-liberty-and-loyalty-comparing-america-and-canada/69949 

 How Canada chose order over freedom and became a nation of subjects while America became a republic.

 

Published on: 04 Jan 2026

The year 1629 marks the quiet divide that determined the fates of two nations. In the south, the English colonies that became the United States were founded by literate settlers who sought not comfort but freedom. They brought with them the conviction that faith and conscience were their own, that government was to be distrusted and restrained, and that their destiny depended on their own labour and judgment. 

North of that line, what would become Canada was conceived in commerce, not conviction. It existed first as a marketplace for fur, fish, and timber — chartered, regulated, and owned by monarchs and monopolies. The difference was moral before it was political. One society was founded by independent minds; the other by indentured hands.

The Hudson’s Bay Company, granted its royal charter in 1670, made Rupert’s Land a commercial empire under a single corporate crown. Its men were employees, not citizens. Theirs was a world of ledgers, not legislatures. The French voyageurs and coureurs de bois who roamed the interior were hardy and self-reliant, yet politically neutered — subjects of the clergy and traders alike. 

Education, debate, and self-government were not their concerns. Their independence was physical, not philosophical. The contrast with New England could not have been greater. By 1636, Harvard College was already training a new generation of Puritans in theology, logic, and self-rule. The seeds of a republic were sown in classrooms; Canada’s future was measured in pelts and cargo.

This divide finds its philosophical reflection in the English thinkers who framed the modern West. Thomas Hobbes, writing in 1651, envisioned the state as a Leviathan — a necessary monster that protected men from chaos at the cost of their liberty. Order required submission; survival demanded obedience. John Locke answered him a generation later with a vision of natural rights: life, liberty, and property as gifts not of the state but of the Creator, and therefore beyond repeal. Adam Smith completed the trinity by explaining how the invisible hand of voluntary exchange could order society more justly than any government decree. 

The American colonies internalized Locke and Smith; Canada absorbed Hobbes. The result was predictable. The United States built a constitutional republic where power flowed from the people upward. Canada built a managed colony where authority flowed from the Crown down.

The American Revolution was not simply a tax revolt. It was the political expression of literacy and faith in self-government. When the colonists declared independence in 1776, they invoked Locke’s philosophy almost verbatim: that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Canadians, by contrast, remained bound to the idea that legitimacy flowed from monarchy, not from men. The Quebec Act of 1774, which allowed the Catholic clergy to retain its authority in exchange for loyalty to the British crown, sealed that bargain. While Americans fought for liberty, French Canada traded obedience for stability. When the loyalists fled north after the war, they reinforced the habit of deference. The fusion of French clerical control and English loyalism became Canada’s political DNA — a society that prized order, conformity, and politeness above individual conviction.

This heritage shaped not only politics but culture. Where the American mythos celebrated the rebel and the pioneer, Canada’s national symbols praised diligence and virtue within bounds. The beaver became the emblem of a people industrious, compliant, and cooperative. The Mountie — epitomized by the cartoon figure Dudley Do-Right — embodied honesty, kindness, and service to authority. 

These were admirable qualities, but they were the virtues of servants, not citizens. Canadians once took pride in them, seeing in such characters their own decency. Only later did it become clear that these traits, left unbalanced by a spirit of liberty, form the psychological foundation of a managed state.

Over time, both nations drifted from their origins. The United States, despite its revolutionary birth, allowed the creeping advance of bureaucracy and collectivism. Canada, never having known a revolution, mistook government management for moral progress.

Socialism took root by redefining compassion as compulsion. It promised a classless society but delivered a uniform one — equal only in dependence. Canada embraced this earlier and more completely than its southern neighbour, dressing the old Crown paternalism in modern bureaucratic language. Free enterprise survived, but only as a licenced privilege. The state decided who could build, who could sell, and who could speak.

The pattern is as old as Hobbes’s Leviathan and as predictable as Smith’s invisible hand. When power centralizes, the hand disappears, and coercion replaces consent. The socialist ideal claims to elevate the collective, but it merely replaces the priest with the planner and the monarch with the minister. The moral inversion is complete when labour itself becomes property of the state. Canadians are told they “own” their labour, yet nearly half of its fruit is confiscated before it reaches their hands. Property ownership, too, is an illusion: under Crown law, all land is held in “fee simple,” a perpetual lease from the sovereign. The Magna Carta promised that even the king was subject to the law, but in Canada that principle stops at Parliament’s door. Legislators stand above the rules they impose. The law binds the governed, not the governors.

This condition is not fascism in the cinematic sense — there are no jackboots in Ottawa — but it meets Mussolini’s definition precisely: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism, because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” That merger defines modern Canada. Its banks, media, and energy sectors function as extensions of government policy. Its universities echo official ideology. Its elections change the faces but never the fundamentals. The parties differ in slogans but share a conviction that the citizen exists to be managed. Canadians mistake civility for freedom because they have never had to fight for either.

Ayn Rand, writing from the vantage point of exile, warned that socialism is the politics of envy disguised as virtue — the systematic sharing of misery. Her prophecy has been realised not only in the obvious failures of Marxist states but in the slow suffocation of societies that thought themselves immune. Canada’s bureaucratic socialism is more polite than Soviet communism but no less corrosive. It rewards conformity, punishes excellence, and flatters dependency. The bureaucrat becomes the new aristocrat, immune from consequence and rich in moral pretence. The citizen, conditioned to gratitude, confuses servitude for security.

The United States, for all its flaws, still contains remnants of its Lockean soul — a reflexive suspicion of authority and a belief that rights are inherent, not granted. Yet even there the infection spreads. The welfare state, born of compassion, now breeds resentment. The Leviathan that Hobbes envisioned to keep men safe from each other has re-emerged in digital form, watching, measuring, and managing in the name of safety. Both societies now stand at a crossroads where freedom survives only in rhetoric. Canadians have reached that point first because their political structure was designed for it. When you begin as subjects, you end as managed assets.

A truly democratic society requires more than ballots. It requires that those who vote bear the cost and consequence of their decisions. Locke’s concept of property was not merely material — it was moral. Ownership confers responsibility; responsibility produces restraint. When those without stake outnumber those with, democracy becomes an auction of stolen goods. Adam Smith’s invisible hand ceases to function because the market is no longer voluntary; it is coerced through taxation and regulation. 

Socialism thrives in that soil because it promises equality through the redistribution of responsibility. The result is predictable: the capable withdraw, the incapable demand more, and the state expands to mediate the misery it created.

Canada illustrates this with clinical precision. Its citizens, convinced of their moral superiority to the brash Americans, have allowed the state to absorb every function once left to families, churches, and associations. The promise of universal welfare has produced universal dependency. The child is raised by bureaucrats, the elder sustained by subsidies, and the worker trapped by taxes. The reward for honesty and diligence — the very traits once celebrated in the national character — is to subsidize the indolence of others. The invisible hand has been shackled, and the Leviathan smiles.

Yet none of this was inevitable. The same human capacity for self-government that built one half of the continent exists in the other. The difference lies in what each society chose to believe about itself. Americans, at least at their founding, believed they were free men capable of governing themselves. Canadians believed they were good men who needed to be governed. That single assumption still defines the boundary between liberty and loyalty.

Today both nations stand in moral debt to their own origins. The American experiment survives only so long as its people remember that freedom is not granted by law but limited by it. Canada will remain trapped in the Crown’s shadow until its citizens reclaim the spirit of Magna Carta and apply it not to kings but to their modern equivalents in government, media, and bureaucracy. The lesson is eternal: when authority ceases to be answerable to those it governs, it becomes tyranny — whether draped in robes, uniforms, or business suits.

The hope, faint but real, is that enough Canadians will rediscover what freedom actually means. It is not the right to obey different masters every four years, but the refusal to be mastered at all. The path back begins where it always has — with truth spoken plainly, property defended fiercely, and government restrained ruthlessly. Anything less is submission by another name.

Alan Aubut is a retired geologist, based in Nipigon.

 

 

AUBUT: Trudeau, Freeland, and Carney turned credentials, identity, and symbolism into substitutes for governing competence

https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/aubut-trudeau-freeland-and-carney-turned-credentials-identity-and-symbolism-into-substitutes-for-governing-competence/69817

 The death of merit and how Canada lost its compass.

 

Published on: 26 Dec 2025

  

The decline of merit is the story of modern Canada. It began as a slow corrosion under Justin Trudeau, whose rise was fuelled by name recognition and emotional politics rather than achievement. It deepened under Chrystia Freeland, who turned fiscal management into performance art. And it has continued under Mark Carney, whose credentials might suggest competence but whose actions have proven the opposite. These are not isolated examples; they are milestones on a national journey away from merit and toward mediocrity.

Meritocracy is not a privilege but a safeguard. It ensures that those entrusted with power can understand and manage the systems that sustain a country. In the private sector, failure leads to replacement; the incompetent are fired, not re-elected. In politics, failure now often leads to promotion. A government cabinet should resemble a company’s board of directors — people with relevant skills able to provide the guidance needed for success, not failure. A functioning democracy depends on one principle above all: that responsibility should be earned, not gifted, and that credentials without competence are as dangerous as charisma without integrity.

Trudeau’s tenure marked the point where Canada began to confuse representation with qualification. His vision of a cabinet “that looks like Canada” was framed as progressive but in truth marked a rejection of merit as the standard for leadership. Diversity of identity replaced diversity of thought. In practice, appointments were made not to balance skill but to project inclusivity. The results were predictable: ministers unable to defend their portfolios, unprepared to handle crises, and uninterested in learning. Policy was replaced by messaging; economics by emotion. Canada’s productivity stagnated, debt ballooned, and the federal bureaucracy expanded without direction. Trudeau’s personal background — thin, theatrical, and devoid of economic or managerial experience — set the tone for an administration that treated governance as an extension of performance.

Chrystia Freeland’s rise within that system symbolised the triumph of narrative over knowledge. A journalist by training, with no formal education in economics or finance, she inherited the most demanding portfolio in government. Her experience in storytelling became a substitute for technical skill. A nation’s budget was treated as a moral tale rather than a balance sheet. Deficits were reframed as “investments,” and fiscal restraint as cruelty. The result was a sustained pattern of overspending that eroded competitiveness and tied the central bank’s hands. During the pandemic, Freeland’s ministry blurred the line between fiscal and monetary policy to the point that the Bank of Canada became a financier of government priorities. Inflation — predictable and predicted — followed.

Freeland’s defenders argue that she is intelligent and articulate, which may be true. But intelligence is not expertise, and articulation is not understanding. Her tenure revealed the cost of political appointments untethered from meritocratic principles. The Finance Minister’s job demands analytical rigour, quantitative discipline, and a grasp of trade, credit, and capital markets. It is not an internship in storytelling. Freeland’s decisions reflected ideological alignment with Trudeau, not economic competence. Canada’s debt load, productivity decline, and regulatory paralysis were symptoms of a government that did not understand how economies grow.

Mark Carney’s ascent was supposed to be the correction — the moment when expertise returned to Ottawa. On paper, he is the ideal candidate: a Ph.D. in economics, former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, and a veteran of international finance. In practice, his leadership has been technocratic, insulated, and disappointingly familiar. He inherited the Trudeau playbook and followed it faithfully. His government continues to expand spending beyond revenue, entrench overregulation, and subordinate private enterprise to ideological compliance. For all his credentials, Carney has governed like a bureaucrat, not a reformer. His approach to trade, particularly with the United States, has been reactive and ineffectual. His handling of Canada’s fiscal imbalance shows the same disregard for market reality that defined his predecessor’s tenure.

The irony is sharp: a man trained in economics appears not to grasp its simplest law — that prosperity cannot be decreed. Regulation without productivity, spending without growth, and taxation without restraint lead inevitably to decline. Carney’s government has doubled down on the regulatory burdens strangling Canada’s resource sectors, from forestry to energy to mining. These industries once anchored the national economy. Now they are treated as environmental liabilities rather than strategic assets, killing the golden geese that sustained prosperity. The result is visible in stagnating investment, job losses, and regional alienation. An economist who understood comparative advantage would work to restore competitiveness, not bury it under red tape.

What unites Trudeau, Freeland, and Carney is not ideology but detachment from consequence. None have been required to live by the results of their decisions. Trudeau was insulated by privilege, Freeland by narrative, Carney by institutional pedigree. Each rose through systems that rewarded image, loyalty, or credentialism — not performance. Their governance reflects that insulation. Canada is ruled by people who have never had to run a business, balance a budget, or endure the market consequences of failure. Without that grounding, abstract ideals replace empirical judgment.

A true meritocracy selects for competence, not conformity. It does not ask what a person looks like or believes but what they can do. Its test is objective: performance. Canada once upheld that standard. Its civil service, universities, and industries were led by people who earned authority through results. That ethos produced both prosperity and stability. But over the past generation, merit has been redefined as privilege, and excellence treated as exclusion. The result is a governing class that apologizes for success while mismanaging the very institutions that once embodied it.

Reversing this decline requires more than new leaders; it requires new rules. Merit must be measurable. Cabinet appointments should be subject to objective qualification reviews, including professional and academic assessments relevant to their portfolios — much like the rigorous vetting process required for US cabinet nominees. Public accountability must shift from rhetoric to results, with clear, quantifiable performance metrics for ministers and departments. Parliament must reclaim legislative authority from the courts by defining, in law, the boundaries of judicial interpretation. The bureaucracy must be downsized—not for ideology’s sake but to restore responsiveness and competence.

The private sector can no longer be treated as an enemy. Economic sustainability depends on productive capacity, not moral posturing. Canada’s resource industries, once the foundation of its wealth, have been throttled by regulation justified under the guise of “sustainability.” In practice, this has meant exporting opportunity while importing energy, moralizing at home while investing abroad. A government grounded in merit would distinguish environmental stewardship from ideological paralysis. It would recognize that only prosperous societies can afford to protect nature, and that growth and conservation are not enemies but partners when governed by reason.

The re-establishment of merit also requires cultural change. Citizens must again expect competence, not charisma, from those who seek power. Elections must become contests of ability, not contests of identity. That will not happen until voters themselves value knowledge and discipline as civic virtues. The decay of political literacy has enabled the rise of leaders who cannot lead. Rebuilding a culture of meritocracy means rebuilding a public that demands it.

Some may point to Canada’s courts or indigenous policy as separate examples of the same drift. Judicial activism has expanded constitutional principles like “the Honour of the Crown” beyond their legal origins, creating parallel systems of entitlement unmoored from accountability. These are not isolated judicial errors but symptoms of the same failure of governance. When legislatures abdicate their duties to define policy clearly, judges fill the vacuum. The result is the same: power without accountability, decisions without measurable success.

Meritocracy is not elitism. It is fairness in its truest form — the assurance that opportunity follows ability, and that leadership is earned, not inherited or imposed. It is the antidote to both the tyranny of ideology and the chaos of populism. Canada cannot rebuild its economy, its institutions, or its unity without rediscovering that truth.

Just as the Leviathan in myth was meant to guard the depths but eventually turned on them, so too has the modern state grown from protector to predator. Hobbes’s artificial man was built for security, yet through its swelling power it now resembles the dragon from which it once promised shelter. The creature that once guarded order now devours it.

But dragons can be slain, or at least tamed, by citizens who remember that government is their servant, not their master. Restoring merit is the first step in reclaiming that order. Canada’s decline is reversible, but only if its people insist that competence once again be the measure of authority.

When nations forget that principle, decline is inevitable. When they remember it, renewal begins. Canada still has that choice. It is time to make it.

Alan Aubut is a retired geologist, based in Nipigon.

AUBUT: Why affordable energy matters more than ever

https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/aubut-why-affordable-energy-matters-more-than-ever/69847

For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, politics — not technology — is making energy scarcer, pricier, and less fair.

 

Published on: 20 Dec 2025

I recently spoke with Dan Sutton, CEO of Syntholene Energy Corp. He had read my earlier article Oil Is Not What You Think It Is and reached out right away. Our conversation showed me how synthetic fuels fit into the long history of energy and how each shift in energy technology has changed the world in ways most people never notice.

His company is working on synthetic kerosene, the type of fuel modern aircraft use. The work is still early, but the potential is real. Because synthetic fuel contains no sulphur or other contaminants, it has a higher energy density than kerosene refined from petroleum. It behaves the same way synthetic motor oil does in cold weather: cleaner, more stable, and better performing. Canadians understand why that matters.

Our discussion then moved into the long story of how new energy sources have shaped civilization. When petroleum became widely available, whale oil collapsed almost immediately. At the time, whales were being hunted so aggressively that many species were close to extinction. Cheap and abundant kerosene replaced whale oil and saved those species just in time. It also made it possible for poverty to fall at a pace never seen before.

Almost four years ago, I wrote about this and referred to Martin Ravallion’s book The Economics of Poverty. Around the year 1800, roughly 80% of the world lived in poverty. Today, that number is under 20%. This dramatic shift was not an accident. It came from the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, which itself was powered by inexpensive, portable energy. Oil lubricated machines, fuelled engines, and made it possible to run large factories. Capitalism allowed buyers and sellers to meet in open and competitive markets, which meant prices reflected real supply and demand. As goods became cheaper, more people could buy them. Workers earned wages, spent those wages, and helped expand the entire economy. The cycle of growth fed on itself because energy was affordable.

Wood was the first widely used portable fuel, but it has a low energy density. As the chart shows, green wood provides only about 2.5 kWh per kilogram, and even dry wood gives just 4.4. Coal, especially coking coal, contains far more energy per kilogram, which is why it replaced wood so quickly once mining methods improved. Coal was easier to transport, cheaper to produce, and delivered over twice the usable energy of wood. That jump in energy density helped launch the Industrial Revolution and made large-scale industry possible.

Cheap energy was the foundation. England had large and accessible coal deposits. New steelmaking methods reduced the cost of fuel even further. Coal replaced wood for heat, which helped poorer families stay warm and healthy enough to work. Coal gas, once a dangerous waste product in mines, became a new energy source when people learned to capture it. City streets lit by coal gas allowed businesses to stay open after dark. All of this came from finding ways to lower the cost of energy.

The pattern is clear. Human progress speeds up when energy becomes cheaper, easier to move, and more concentrated. Wood stores little energy per kilogram. Coal stores more. Petroleum stores even more and is far easier to transport because it is a liquid. That single advantage transformed transportation, manufacturing, and daily life. Liquids do not require the bulky storage that coal does, and they do not lose their volume through breaking or crushing. When large oil fields were discovered, civilization leapt ahead again.

The decline in poverty over the last two centuries reflects this shift. People whom we call “poor” today commonly own vehicles, televisions, and mobile phones. These were once luxuries available only to the wealthy. This change happened because energy became cheaper and more abundant.

Today we are experiencing the first major reversal of that trend. Policies pushed from the left side of the political spectrum, both in Canada and elsewhere, are raising the price of energy. Higher fuel costs increase transportation costs. Higher transportation costs raise the price of imported food. Heating costs rise. Manufacturing becomes more expensive and less competitive, which reduces jobs. As jobs decline, opportunity declines. Poverty begins to rise again.

Governments are also pressuring people to replace low-cost vehicles with electric vehicles that many cannot afford. This may suit the wealthy, but it harms those who live paycheque to paycheque. It forces people into choices they cannot realistically make. This is not progress. It is a step backward that erases the conditions which lifted billions of people out of poverty.

For the first time in two hundred years, we are on a course that could undo everything gained from cheap and accessible energy. If this continues, poverty will increase. There is no other possible outcome.

The core issue is not energy. It is government. When a government grows beyond its proper limits, it weighs down the entire economy. When it becomes Hobbesian in nature, meaning a state that exists mainly to preserve its own power and expects citizens to obey without question, it begins to govern for itself rather than for the people it serves. In that kind of system, the public becomes secondary. A society cannot thrive if drained by the institutions meant to protect it. A host cannot survive if its own protector becomes a parasite.

The answer is simple and peaceful. Elect leaders who serve citizens instead of ideology and who understand the critical role that affordable energy plays in national prosperity. The alternative is the kind of upheaval seen in the past, which no reasonable person supports. The better path is renewal through informed democratic choice, rooted in facts rather than fear.

Alan Aubut is a retired geologist, based in Nipigon.

AUBUT: How Canada broke its own economy

https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/aubut-how-canada-broke-its-own-economy/69526

Published on: 

04 Dec 2025, 12:30 pm

 

 Economically, how did Canada get to where it is, where investors either sit on what money they have left or have fled to friendlier countries, leaving behind a stagnant economy and an ever more expensive welfare state? The answer lies in the long arc of Canada’s political economy from Confederation to the present. It is a story that began with nation builders who understood the link between sovereignty, growth and disciplined ambition, then shifted toward a governing class that mistook ideology for insight and lost sight of the limits of its own knowledge.

Canada’s early economic strength rested on a simple principle. Government existed to create the physical and legal foundations that private risk-takers could build upon. The National Policy of the late nineteenth century, whatever its flaws, reflected that belief. Tariffs funded the state because there was no income tax. Ottawa’s central mission was straightforward: open the land, build the railways, secure trade routes and make settlement possible. The Canadian Pacific Railway and the later transcontinental lines formed the backbone of national development because government provided the guarantees, the land grants and the political will, while private companies took on the capital and operational risks. This was not central planning. It was the state acting where markets could not yet reach and then stepping aside.

By the 1930s the limits of tariffs and external borrowing were obvious. The Depression made capital scarce, private borrowing expensive and foreign lenders reluctant. Canada needed a domestic institution that could provide liquidity during crisis and long-term capital for national projects. The Bank of Canada, created in 1935 and nationalised in 1938, became that instrument. From the late 1930s to the early 1970s the Bank frequently purchased government debt using money it created. Any interest paid on those bonds flowed back to Ottawa as Bank profits, which meant the borrowing was effectively interest free. This was sovereign credit in the plain meaning of the term. It did not eliminate market discipline. It allowed the state to finance long-lived public works at minimal cost while private markets continued to operate in every other sphere.

This era produced the most sustained expansion in Canadian history. War mobilisation was financed without crippling the country. Post-war reconstruction created roads, ports, power systems, a modern military and a continental industrial base. Projects included the TransCanada Pipeline, the St. Lawrence Seaway and the opening of the vast resource of iron ore in the Labrador Trough as just several examples. All key elements of a modern self-sufficient industry-based economy with the surpluses exported. Unemployment remained low. Inflation was modest except for brief bouts linked to global commodity cycles. Debt, contrary to modern myth, fell as a share of GDP through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. It was not coincidence that these were the decades in which Canada became a fully developed nation. In the 1960’s Canada was well on the way of becoming a fully self-sufficient powerhouse.

The turning point came in the 1970s. There was no single law in 1973 or 1974 that barred the use of the Bank of Canada for public financing. The shift was ideological and procedural, not statutory. Central banks worldwide embraced a new orthodoxy: fight inflation through tight money, treat markets as the sole legitimate source of public finance and distance monetary policy from elected influence. Canada followed suit. The Bank reduced its share of federal debt holdings. Ottawa turned increasingly to private bond markets. Deficit financing continued, but now interest flowed to financial institutions rather than cycling back through the central bank.

The timing proved disastrous. Two global oil shocks, first in 1973 and again in 1979, pushed fuel prices to historic highs. Inflation surged through cost pressures, not through excess money creation. Energy permeates every sector of a modern economy. When oil quadruples in price, transport, food, manufacturing and construction all absorb the shock. Wage demands follow. Businesses raise prices to stay afloat. Inflation expectations hardened. Central banks, unwilling to distinguish between cost-push and demand-driven inflation, raised interest rates sharply. Mortgage rates in Canada rose above twenty percent. Borrowing became punitive. Companies shed workers. Investment stalled.

Through the 1980s Canada continued to run deficits while interest rates remained high. That combination guaranteed a rising debt burden. Federal debt climbed steadily and peaked in the early 1990s at levels that threatened fiscal stability. The damage was not the result of the absence of competent Finance Ministers. Many were serious operators by the standards of the time. The damage came from a regime change in Ottawa and at the Bank of Canada. Sovereign credit was abandoned. Markets were treated as the sole funding channel. The state kept its hand on the throttle through spending and regulation while refusing to use the monetary tools that had once kept borrowing sustainable. The economy became more difficult to manage yet governments became more confident in their ability to steer it.

The 1990s saw a partial correction. Paul Martin imposed fiscal discipline, balanced the budget and shrank the federal debt ratio. Yet the country remained inside the post-1970s framework. The Bank of Canada operated as an inflation-targeting institution. The state no longer used its central bank to finance nation-building projects directly. Growth stabilised, but the structural shift remained unaddressed.

After 2006 Ottawa continued to treat monetary sovereignty as taboo. The final sale of Canada’s gold reserves under the Harper government confirmed this mindset. In a fiat system gold was not required for operational monetary policy, but the symbolic consequence could not be ignored. A country that once held substantial reserves now held none. It reflected a governing class that viewed sovereignty through a narrow financial lens and saw no reason to maintain the tools that had once underpinned national strategy. This symbolic erosion became substantive in the decade that followed.

The real rupture came after 2015. The long erosion of merit became unmistakable. A Prime Minister with no grounding in economics, trade or finance handed the most consequential portfolio to a journalist with no training in monetary policy, capital markets or national accounting. Senior bureaucratic ranks became dominated by political loyalty, ideological alignment and fashionable academic thinking. Expertise was replaced by messaging. Prudence was replaced by activism. Policy portfolios once run by professionals became instruments of political identity.

The result followed with grim predictability. Canada entered the 2020s with an energy strategy grounded not in engineering or economics but in climate narratives and regulatory zeal. Carbon taxes and pipeline constraints raised the cost of fuel not through scarcity but through deliberate policy choices. A modern economy cannot escape the mathematics of input costs. When energy policy forces fuel prices upward, every other price follows. Inflation rose even before global shocks arrived. Deficit spending surged during the pandemic. The Bank of Canada resumed large-scale purchases of government bonds but not as part of a national development strategy. Instead it was a crisis reflex that underwrote consumption rather than investment. When inflation accelerated, the Bank again raised interest rates, repeating the dynamic of the early 1980s but without the industrial strength Canada once possessed.

Investors responded rationally. Capital left for jurisdictions with stable regulatory frameworks and predictable policy paths. Domestic firms hesitated to expand. Foreign companies scaled back operations or withdrew entirely. Productivity declined because investment collapsed. Meanwhile the welfare state grew costlier because demographic pressures mounted while the tax base stagnated. The consequence was not ideological. It was arithmetic. A country that undermines its productive sectors while expanding its dependent sectors will run deficits, accumulate debt and lose competitiveness.

This brings us back to the question that opened this essay. Canada’s economic deterioration was not mysterious. It was the long-term consequence of abandoning sovereign credit, embracing a regulatory culture that treated markets as subordinate to ideology and filling the machinery of government with people who lacked the knowledge and humility required to manage complex systems. When merit declines, confidence often rises. This is the Dunning–Kruger effect in national form. Leaders who know least believe they know most. Leaders who know most understand the limits of their knowledge and tread carefully.

Canada once understood those limits. It built railways and ports when private capital could not. It used the Bank of Canada to finance growth efficiently. It kept regulation within the bounds of practicality. It relied on people with real experience to run portfolios that required expertise. In later decades it did the opposite. It regulated at every turn, spent without discipline, taxed energy out of ideological conviction and placed heavy responsibilities in the hands of those who did not understand their own tools.

The outcome is the economy Canadians now face. Investment has fled. Productivity has fallen. The cost of living is rising. Debt is growing. The welfare state has expanded faster than national income. None of this was inevitable. It is the product of choices, institutions and leaders. Canada can recover what it lost, but not until it recovers the one thing that sustained its greatest successes: a governing class chosen for competence rather than conformity.

 Alan Aubut is a retired geologist, based in Nipigon.

AUBUT: Oil is not what you think it is

https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/aubut-oil-is-not-what-you-think-it-is/69069

The real science of hydrocarbons upends a century of political mythology — and opens the door to limitless synthetic fuel.

 

 

Published on: 22 Nov 2025, 2:30 pm

 

Hydrocarbons are among the simplest compounds in chemistry yet among the most versatile in application. They are chains of carbon and hydrogen that occur in nature in every physical state: gases like methane and ethane, liquids like octane and kerosene, and solids like paraffin wax. For more than a century, the dominant narrative has been that petroleum — the primary source of hydrocarbons used by industry — originated exclusively from ancient life compressed in sedimentary basins. The term “fossil fuel” has carried both scientific weight and political baggage. Yet the evidence is not so one-sided. Hydrocarbons also form abiotically (without the involvement of living organisms) in volcanic environments, at hydrothermal vents, and in Archean black shales that predate life itself.

The fact that hydrocarbons occur both biogenically and abiotically matters. It demonstrates that they are not rare substances tied solely to the decay of past ecosystems, but natural products of the Earth’s geochemical processes. In other words, hydrocarbons belong to the planet as fundamentally as iron or quartz. This recognition is critical because it reframes hydrocarbons not as pollutants or dwindling relics of prehistory, but as building blocks of modern society that can be manufactured, recycled, and sustained.

The stability of hydrocarbons explains why they dominate natural reserves. Alkanes, with only single carbon-carbon bonds, resist chemical breakdown under heat and pressure. 

That is why petroleum is composed largely of these stable molecules. Alkenes and alkynes, with double and triple bonds, are more reactive and thus less common in geological deposits. Yet the fact that they exist at all, both in biological systems and in high-energy abiotic environments, demonstrates the diversity of hydrocarbon chemistry available to nature.

It is also worth noting that hydrocarbons appear beyond Earth. Methane lakes on Titan, plumes on Enceladus, and simple hydrocarbons detected in interstellar clouds prove their formation is not limited to biology. If hydrocarbons are a natural product of the cosmos, there is no reason to see them as finite curiosities on Earth. The real limitation is not their existence but our imagination and capacity to produce them efficiently.

History repeatedly shows that assumptions of scarcity are poor guides to the future. In the late nineteenth century, the scientific establishment largely agreed that heavier-than-air flight was impossible. Lord Kelvin himself declared in 1895 that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” Yet within a decade, the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, and by the First World War, aircraft had changed the nature of war and commerce.

Similarly, within a single generation, the horse and wagon — once the backbone of transport — had been displaced by the automobile.

This lesson should not be forgotten. Today’s pessimists warn of dwindling petroleum reserves, climate catastrophe, and the urgent need to abandon hydrocarbons altogether. These Malthusian voices dominate the media and shape government policy. They see limits where innovation sees opportunity. 

Just as balloons and kites hinted at the possibility of powered flight, so too do the natural processes of hydrocarbon formation and the proven chemistry of synthesis point toward a future where hydrocarbons can be produced on demand.

The chemistry of synthetic hydrocarbons is not speculative. It has been understood for nearly a century. In the 1920s, German chemists Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch developed a process that converts carbon monoxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons using metal catalysts. Known as Fischer–Tropsch synthesis, the method was scaled during the Second World War to produce synthetic fuel when Germany faced blockades. South Africa later relied on it during apartheid when oil imports were restricted, with plants still producing hundreds of thousands of barrels per day.

Fischer–Tropsch is only one of several pathways. Methanol-to-gasoline processes can convert syngas into high-octane fuel. 

Biomass gasification can turn agricultural residues, forestry waste, or even sewage into hydrocarbons. More recently, renewable electricity allows for electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen, which can then combine with captured carbon dioxide to form synthetic hydrocarbons. This is the basis of e-fuels, already being piloted in places like Chile, where wind power drives the conversion of atmospheric carbon into liquid fuels for transport.

These technologies prove that hydrocarbons are not bound to geological timescales. They can be produced in factories, tailored for use, and scaled with demand. The bottlenecks are cost, efficiency, and infrastructure, all of which improve with innovation and investment. The suggestion that we have found all economically viable petroleum reserves is no more realistic than saying all diamonds or all gold have been discovered. 

Even if natural reservoirs are ultimately finite, the chemistry to recycle and reproduce hydrocarbons ensures their future is open-ended.

This has immediate relevance to modern society. 

Industrialization and agriculture both depend heavily on hydrocarbons. Tractors, fertilizers, transport networks, plastics, and energy storage all rely on them. Far from trapping humanity in poverty, hydrocarbons have been central to lifting billions out of it. In the past fifty years, the global population has grown rapidly, yet this is not because people are reproducing at wildly higher rates. It is because survival has improved. Infant mortality has declined, lifespans have lengthened, and societies once mired in subsistence farming now enjoy the productivity of mechanized agriculture and global supply chains.

Hydrocarbons made this possible by fueling industry, enabling fertilizer production, and driving transport.

Advanced societies are already adjusting to stable populations, with birth rates in many countries falling to replacement or below. This is not evidence of decline but of adaptation. As more people live long, secure lives, reproduction naturally balances. The challenge ahead is not runaway growth but ensuring that developing regions have the same chance to rise out of poverty. Hydrocarbons — natural, synthetic, and recycled — are indispensable to that task.

The greatest obstacle is not technical but ideological. For decades, Malthusian narratives have warned of overpopulation, resource exhaustion, and environmental collapse. These views consistently underestimate human ingenuity. In the 1960s and 1970s, predictions of mass starvation due to limited agricultural yields failed to account for the Green Revolution. In the 1970s, dire warnings of peak oil missed the coming revolution in exploration and unconventional extraction. Today’s forecasts of hydrocarbon scarcity or inevitable climate disaster risk making the same error.

The way forward is not denial of environmental challenges but refusal to accept despair as policy. Synthetic hydrocarbons offer a path that meets energy needs while reducing reliance on natural reserves. They allow for recycling of carbon, integration with renewable power, and compatibility with existing engines and infrastructure. In short, they provide hope where Malthusianism offers only austerity.

The analogy to heavier-than-air flight is not casual. At the turn of the twentieth century, even after controlled flight had been demonstrated, many experts dismissed its utility. They could not imagine a future where aircraft would become routine. 

Today, a similar blindness afflicts debates about hydrocarbons. Critics see only pollution and decline. They cannot imagine hydrocarbons as a renewable resource, manufactured as easily as steel or concrete.

Yet the chemistry is settled. The technology is proven. The economics improve with each advance. What is required is the recognition that hydrocarbons are not a curse but a gift — one that humanity can manage wisely and reproduce sustainably. 

The future of hydrocarbons is not about running out but about learning to recycle and reuse. Just as metals are melted and recast, so too can hydrocarbons be broken down and remade. 

Far from being a dead end, hydrocarbons are the foundation of a brighter, more prosperous future.

Hydrocarbons are natural products of Earth’s geochemistry, not aberrations. They occur both from ancient life and from abiotic processes that continue today. Their stability makes them abundant in nature, and their chemistry makes them amenable to synthesis. History shows that what is dismissed as impossible can become commonplace in a generation. Just as the Wright brothers disproved the skeptics of flight, synthetic hydrocarbons will disprove those who insist we must abandon them.

For Canada, the opportunity is clear. With its resources, energy, and expertise, it could become self-sufficient in hydrocarbon production. Doing so would ensure energy independence, economic resilience, and a hopeful path forward. Malthusian pessimism has held sway for too long. It is time to reject policies that handicap innovation and instead encourage bold thinking.

Canada has always faced grim realities. Much of the country spends half the year below freezing. We adapted by finding new ways to stay warm, extend the growing season, and build thriving communities despite the climate. Innovation was once our hallmark, and it can be again.

The future belongs to those who see hydrocarbons not as a problem to escape but as a foundation to build upon. By treating hydrocarbons as natural, recyclable, and renewable through synthesis — unlike batteries, which falter in colder climates — Canada can lead the way in ensuring prosperity for future generations. Like the Wright brothers who turned doubt into flight, we too can rise to the challenge and build a brighter, self-sufficient future.

Alan Aubut is a retired geologist, based in Nipigon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AUBUT: From rocks to rights: A life shaped by Canada’s divide

 https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/aubut-from-rocks-to-rights-a-life-shaped-by-canadas-divide/68033

Rocks may have built my career, but it was Ottawa’s bureaucracy that forged my politics. 

 

 Published on: 05 Oct 2025

Many of you may wonder why someone from Ontario has anything to say to a Western Standard audience. I must agree with you. My story illustrates how we too often paint with far too broad a brush. Ontario is the third largest province by area and the largest by population. Yet most of that population is in a relatively small area centred on Toronto. I live far from the city that considers itself the centre of the Canadian universe, yet too often I am painted with that brush.

Northwestern Ontario differs sharply from Southern Ontario, in climate, geography, and outlook. Yet much is shared with broad swaths of western Canada. Just because I live in Ontario does not mean I share the same views as those in Southern Ontario, nor do they share mine. My life experiences, the ones that shaped me, were lived in Western Canada.

I went to university in Thunder Bay, not far from where I grew up beside the Trans-Canada Highway in a rural area surrounded by Boreal Forest and underlain by the Canadian Shield. I loved being outdoors and still do. Growing up miles from neighbours shaped my independence and resilience. I once considered engineering, but lacking confidence in math, I turned instead to fields that meshed with my love of the outdoors. Science and geography appealed to me, but I could not see myself in forestry. Rocks, however, fascinated me. They told the story of how landforms were created and provided the building blocks of society. As a result, I registered in the geology program at Lakehead University. Time has shown me that unlike most geologists who stumbled into the field by accident, I chose it deliberately.

University was an eye-opener for a country boy. In a twist of fate, that is where I met my wife. We had attended the same high school but never really connected until then. We were married in 1975, during my third year at university.

It was at Lakehead that I stumbled into my first act of activism. In my final year, one required course, Physics of the Earth, was taught by a semi-retired physics professor. The assignments were very difficult, including calculating how fast the moon is moving away from Earth. There were only five of us in the class, and after each lecture, we pooled our efforts, but always failed when the problems were reviewed. Near the end of the term, the professor noted that one classmate who had skipped first-year physics might not pass. I blurted out that I had taken first-year physics and still doubted I would pass. I pointed out that the problems assigned were well beyond our training and that it was unfair since this was a mandatory course for graduation. The professor was stunned but began reviewing the problems with us. One appeared on the final exam. We all passed, and all graduated.

When I graduated in 1979, jobs for geologists were scarce. One option was further study, and my marks were strong enough for graduate school with a teaching assistantship. I applied to three universities, all out West, since that was where the work was. We chose Edmonton, where I began studies at the University of Alberta. We packed all our belongings into a Ryder truck and moved.

After a year and a half, before formally finishing, I was offered a full-time job with Pacific Petroleum in Calgary, not long after it had been acquired by Petro-Canada. Our move to Calgary was another turning point. Alberta was booming, and though I was trained in hard-rock geology, petroleum demanded a different skillset. I was thrust into a world of sedimentary basins, drill cuttings, and seismic data. At first, I felt adrift, yet this discomfort forced me to learn quickly. I discovered that geology is as much about problem-solving as it is about theory, and that adaptation is often the most valuable skill. Calgary also gave me a window into Western culture and industry, broadening my perspective beyond Northern Ontario.

Not long after, I was offered a job with Inco, then the dominant player in nickel. Although its main operations were in Sudbury and Thompson, it had a small mine an hour west of Thunder Bay that needed an underground geologist. For my wife and me, the decision was easy. We could be near family again, and I could return to my core training. The negatives were a pay cut and a struggling nickel market. I started work at the Shebandowan mine in May 1980. Joining Inco brought new challenges. At Shebandowan, the realities of underground geology demanded discipline. 

Not long after, Inco was bleeding money and ordered cost cuts. I was the most junior geologist in Ontario, but my work was solid enough that I was transferred rather than laid off. The exploration department was busy and needed people, though a hiring freeze was in place. Since I was already on staff, I was moved to exploration. I opened a Thunder Bay office and at first worked alone. Over time, it grew, and by the late 1980s, I supervised close to 20 people and managed the largest exploration budget in Ontario. Those were heady days. The optimism was captured by the Timbuk 3 song “The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades.”

By the 1990s, the industry was evolving quickly. I was transferred to Thompson, Manitoba, to lead the exploration team for Central Canada. Then, exploration budgets shrank, and my career pivoted toward resource estimation. Computers were reshaping the field, and I seized the chance to master them. From building models to analysing data sets, I became one of the early adopters who could bridge geological insight with emerging software and applied them in ways that few others attempted at the time. It was demanding but also deeply rewarding, and it positioned me for later international work. That willingness to adapt and innovate became defining threads of my career.

The company policy was that one could retire with a full pension after 30 years of service. Toward the end, I was counting the days, but I cannot complain about the opportunities. After Vale acquired Inco in 2006, bureaucracy only worsened. Still, I was able to work abroad in Western Australia and Indonesia as an internal consultant on resource estimation.

I retired in 2010 but took up consulting, specializing in resource estimation. The discovery of chromite in Northern Ontario in 2008 should have been transformative. These deposits in what became known as the Ring of Fire hold world-class potential, and I was quickly involved. Yet instead of rapid development, we faced an ever-thickening wall of bureaucracy. Governments layered regulation upon regulation, slowing progress to a crawl.

For me, it was a bitter lesson in how opportunity can be squandered when politics overwhelms practical industry. It also planted the seed of political engagement, as I could no longer ignore how decisions made far from the North stifled growth. 

With COVID-19, consulting dried up at the same time my enthusiasm for geology was fading. I turned increasingly to writing about issues I once took for granted. Freedom was being chipped away.

In 2021, I ran as a candidate for the People’s Party of Canada, the only party aligned with my moral and ethical compass. I finished a distant fourth but earned about 2,500 votes in a riding where the Liberals, NDP, and Conservatives traditionally dominate. The system favours the big three, but I learned much about what it takes for small upstarts. Since late 2021, I have been editor and primary author of an online newsletter, first called The Purple Wave and now rebranded as The Amethyst Trail.

I may be getting along in years, but my desire is to leave this world better than I found it. The optimism of the 1980s may be gone, but it does not mean we cannot recover it. History has shown that cycles of decline are followed by cycles of renewal. 

The warnings in George Orwell’s 1984 feel less like fiction and more like instruction for those in power, but they also serve as a reminder. Canadians still have the means and the duty to stand against creeping control. What matters is whether we are willing to actively exercise the freedoms we still have rather than surrender them through silence and submission.

 I want my two surviving sons, and by extension all Canadians, to inherit a country that reclaims its spirit of independence, innovation, enterprise, and fairness. The path will not be easy, but neither was the work of previous generations who built this country from wilderness and rock. If they could forge prosperity under harsh conditions, so can we. I intend to continue to explore how we can push back against a narrowing horizon and instead look outward with confidence. The battle may be daunting, but we must stand together and declare, “not on my watch.” My future writings will continue exploring how Canada can reclaim its freedom and purpose, and I hope you will join me on that path.

Alan Aubut is a retired geologist, based in Nipigon.

 

 

 

 

AUBUT: Trust betrayed, duty denied

 https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/aubut-trust-betrayed-duty-denied/67844

When law becomes plunder: How Canada’s rulers exempt themselves from the standards they impose.

 

Published on: 27 Sep 2025

 

At the heart of any free society is a fragile compact: those entrusted with authority must exercise it with duty to the people they serve. Without trust, duty becomes hollow. Without duty, law degenerates into coercion. Civilization depends on the alignment of law, ethics, and morality. When politicians exempt themselves from that alignment, citizens are left with rules that punish the weak while shielding the powerful. That is not justice. It is betrayal.

Canada today suffers from exactly that betrayal. Politicians at every level — municipal, provincial, and federal — appear accountable but in practice live with impunity. Citizens are bound by codes of conduct, contracts, and professional standards that demand honesty, diligence, and fairness under penalty of losing careers and reputations. Professionals like doctors, engineers, and geoscientists face suspension or loss of licence if they act dishonourably. Politicians, whose decisions affect millions, face almost no such risk. Their “codes of conduct” are little more than window dressing, enforced by commissioners who answer to the same councils or legislatures they are supposed to police.

This double standard leaves politicians insulated from consequences that would end the career of any ordinary professional. Cabinet ministers preside over billions of dollars disappearing without explanation. Mayors and councillors hold in-camera meetings to appoint their allies. Integrity commissioners submit reports to the very bodies they are supposed to scrutinize. In every case, accountability is treated as optional.

I experienced this firsthand in Nipigon, where the council imposed a Municipal Accommodation Tax that conscripts small businesses into unpaid government service. By-law 1940 forces accommodation providers to calculate, collect, remit, and account for a tax under threat of penalty, with no compensation. When I challenged this in court, I argued that to compel labour without fair pay is no different in principle than indentured servitude. The judge dismissed that claim because the Municipal Act was silent on compensation. But silence cuts both ways: nothing in the law prohibited fair compensation either. The court preferred to interpret absence as denial. In so doing, it sanctioned coercion not on the basis of justice, but on the basis of omission.

This is where law without ethics becomes indistinguishable from tyranny. Frédéric Bastiat warned of “legal plunder,” when the law is twisted into an instrument of theft rather than protection. Friedrich Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom that once government uses law to direct labour and resources without consent, freedom begins to erode. Both men understood that when law departs from morality, freedom collapses. That is the path Canada is on.

The injustice is magnified by the imbalance of risk. As a professional geoscientist, I lived under a code of conduct that held me personally accountable for honesty and integrity. A breach could cost me my licence and livelihood. The same is true for doctors, lawyers, engineers, and countless other professions. Citizens live with real penalties for real misconduct. 

Politicians, however, are insulated. Cabinet ministers preside over billions of dollars vanishing. Parliament is prorogued to avoid scrutiny. Mayors and councillors make appointments behind closed doors. Conflict of Interest Acts are so narrow that they institutionalize conflicts instead of preventing them. Integrity commissioners submit reports to the very councils they are supposed to police. There is no independent enforcement, no binding penalty, no real accountability.

This is not merely a technical flaw. It is a moral one. Trust is not optional in public service. It is the bedrock upon which authority must stand. When politicians violate that trust, when they refuse to uphold their duty to the people, they attack the very legitimacy of law. Citizens see one set of rules for themselves and another for those in power. That is how respect for institutions dies. And without respect, compliance becomes fear-based rather than voluntary. The law ceases to be law and becomes only rule by force.

Critics sometimes respond that “we all pay taxes,” as though the burden of taxation justifies any burden imposed by government. But that misses the point. Paying taxes is not the same as being conscripted into unpaid service. There is a profound moral difference between parting with money and surrendering labour. One is a transaction while the other is servitude. That distinction was invisible to the court in my case, which lumped my claim into the same category as objecting to income tax. But it is precisely that blindness — treating fairness as irrelevant — that demonstrates how far law has drifted from its ethical foundation.

The problem extends beyond taxation. Across the country, we see law weaponized as a tool of political punishment. Consider the ongoing prosecution of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, leaders of the 2022 Ottawa protests. Charged with mischief, their trial has dragged on for more than a year, reportedly the longest in Canadian history for such an offence. Even before a verdict, they have endured the punishment of process: restrictions, stress, and endless expense. The Ontario government pours taxpayer money into prosecuting them, while citizens watch the spectacle of state power deployed against dissenters. This is lawfare: punishment by procedure. The message is clear — resist, and the state will grind you down.

When combined with the lack of accountability for politicians themselves, the picture is grim. Lawfare punishes the weak, while immunity shields the strong. Together, they create a two-tiered system where justice is no longer blind but rigged. It is not conspiracy. It is systemic design. Politicians have built rules that protect themselves and punish others, all while cloaking the imbalance in the language of law.

Why do people accept this? Fear, resignation, and habit. Most citizens comply because penalties are harsh, and resistance feels futile. Judges defer to statutes rather than principles. Media outlets, many subsidized by the governments they are supposed to scrutinize, distract the public with trivialities while burying scandals. A culture of resignation takes hold: unfairness becomes normal, and dissenters are dismissed as cranks. Yet history shows that civilizations cannot survive when law is stripped of morality. Rome fell when corruption rotted its institutions. Democracies collapse when citizens lose faith that the law serves them. Canada is not immune.

The remedy is not more laws. We already have enough statutes, codes, and regulations to drown in. The remedy is a restoration of trust and duty. Politicians must be held to at least the same ethical standards as professionals. If a geoscientist can lose his licence for dishonesty, why should a minister keep her office after losing billions of public dollars? If a doctor can be barred from practice for misconduct, why should a mayor remain in office after violating fiduciary duty? The imbalance must end. Trust without accountability is not trust at all. It is fraud. Duty without consequence is not duty. It is theatre.

The law must be more than a mask for power. It must embody justice, fairness, and morality. Bastiat, Hayek, and others warned what happens when law becomes detached from ethics: liberty dies, and coercion fills the void. My case in Nipigon may be small in scale, but it is a symptom of a much larger disease. When small businesses are conscripted into unpaid service, when citizens are punished for resisting, and when politicians live above the rules they impose, the law ceases to protect. It becomes plunder.

Civilizations live or die on the strength of their laws. But laws must be rooted in trust and duty, not just power. If Canada continues down the path of legal plunder and political impunity, if our leaders continue to betray trust and deny duty, the outcome is certain. The people will cease to respect the law, and the law will cease to deserve respect. That is the road to serfdom. That is the betrayal we face.

So, what can we do? We cannot turn away when others fight for fairness. Each of us must begin by living with honour ourselves. If we are not willing to hold ourselves accountable, how can we expect to elect honourable people? I believe in doing the right thing, fearlessly. When Americans like Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and, most recently, Charlie Kirk, spoke out against injustice and sought peaceful conversation, they were murdered for their courage. 

Their sacrifice should remind us that doing the right thing carries risk, but doing nothing is also a risk to our identity. 

Canada used to mean courage, honesty, and fairness. We need to reclaim that. Speak up. Look for candidates who believe in honour and duty, not self-interest, and only vote for them. Join in community action. Talk to neighbours, and even to strangers. 

If we allow injustice to become routine, we will lose more than laws. We will lose what it means to be Canadian.