In my latest Loonie Politics column I explain why the upcoming Canadian federal “growth and competition” budget will be an even worse intellectual and fiscal mess than the “austerity and investment” debacle of 2025.
“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
This week on Forum Daily News with Hal Roberts, I discussed the JCCF petition against Bill C22 that I personally delivered to the Prime Minister’s Office in the admittedly remote hope that they’ll reconsider this Draconian and mistargeted bill.
Today on behalf of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms I delivered a petition to the Prime Minister’s office urging him not to proceed with this aggressive infringement on our digital privacy. Watch the video here: https://vimeo.com/1194808661
On Forum Daily News with Hal Roberts I talk about how not to react to Alberta’s separatist movement.
In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that the dominant feature of federal policy nowadays isn’t Carney’s ill-concealed radical leftism, it’s unconcealed but widely overlooked massive incompetence. Almost nothing’s actually working, good or bad, and the soothing spin just makes it worse.
In my latest National Post column I ponder the gulf between the economic deregulation Canada needs and the inexplicably popular wordy but vacuous dirigisme of the Carney administration.
In my latest National Post column I say the Canadian state has become so profoundly incapable that when politicians and bureaucrats don’t do something they claimed they were going to, it’s nearly impossible to tell whether they didn’t want to, couldn’t, or both.