“If our government were really a representative government, it would certainly not be a meddlesome government.”
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News Nov. 15, 1924 quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #3 (Jan.-Feb. 2024)

In my latest Loonie Politics column I say Mark Carney’s jet-setting quest for European Union “associate membership”, which doesn’t even exist anyway, is classic Carney blarney, all maze and no cheese.

In my latest National Post column I say Mark Carney’s “Investment Summit” was classic Carney blarney, windy and impractical.

“For the British the war was a practical necessity, a sentiment captured by the slogan ‘business as usual.’ As one soldier put it in a letter to his parents on October 1, 1914: ‘We are just at the beginning of the struggle I’m afraid, and every hour we should remind ourselves that it is our great privilege to save the traditions of all centuries behind us. It’s a grand opportunity, and we must spare no effort to use it, for if we fail we shall curse ourselves in bitterness every year that we live, and our children will despise our memory.’ For the Germans this was a war to change the world; for the British this was a war to preserve a world. The Germans were propelled by a vision, the British by a legacy. For the average British soldier there was no question of who was responsible for the war.”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era

“This is a paradox of democracy, that though men can be as paltry as their own most paltry aims, they can also be as heroic as their own most heroic aims.”

G.K. Chesterton in Morning Leader 24/2/1904 quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #3 (Jan.-Feb. 2024)

“In foreign policy, as in many other areas, you must not allow the answer you intuit to the followup ‘What can we do?’ to interfere with clear analysis of the first question ‘Is there a problem and if so, what is it?’”

One of mine, from July 2002, re Iraq.

In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that despite his recent byelection wins and high standing in the polls, Mark Carney is in fact already a failure because across the board his policies are achieving feeble or disastrous results, and even in Canadian politics reality matters eventually.

“Reading accounts of the CPR’s history today can make you laugh at how much more ambitious the builders of that age were. Small groups of surveyors trekked through mountainous passes, relied on Indigenous guides, worked far from any familiar settlements, and made decisions that, by modern standards, were acted on with astonishing speed. I write these words from Peterborough, Ont., which is supposed to be a stop on a future high-speed rail line linking Toronto to Quebec City. For decades, governments have talked about building this corridor. In different forms, Pierre Trudeau promised it, as did Jean Chrétien. Stephen Harper vacillated, and then Justin Trudeau assured us it would be built. The younger Trudeau even established Crown corporations to plan and study it. One of his last actions in February 2025 was to announce that the line was now definitely going to happen. How did he prove this? By announcing funding to study and plan the route — not to build it. As of now, the proposal, still without construction funding, is to begin building in 2029. That’s a lot of promises: zero building. Or consider Toronto’s now-infamous Eglinton Crosstown. First imagined as a subway expansion in the 1970s, construction even began before being cancelled. The plan was later resurrected as a light-rail line, interrupted during the Rob Ford era, and construction finally began in 2011. It was supposed to open in 2020. As of early January 2026, it still isn’t open. In other words, Toronto has taken longer to build and open a 19-kilometre light-rail line than Macdonald’s Canada took to build nearly 3,500 kilometres of transcontinental railway across rugged terrain and mountains. Build Canada indeed.”

Christopher Dummitt in National Post Jan. 11, 2026