Hi folks,

With 10 days to go, Brigitte and I are asking for your help to get her "Not Just for Kicks" project across the finish line. I know a lot of you have supported our bigger projects, for which we're very grateful. And we'll have another one in the spring that I hope you'll think is worthwhile. And a number of you are supporting us with monthly donations that are also much appreciated.

So now I'm asking people who enjoy our work but haven't yet backed it to put something into Brigitte's project. She's over 2/3 of the way to her $1,500 target to help her make a book and video about her and our daughter's journey to the WKC world karate championships in Dublin, Ireland, about the hard work, the sense of achievement and the victories over fatigue and fear. But we still need $400.

Can 80 people kick in $5 each in the next week and a half and make it happen?

Thanks.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, our fundraising partner on the True North and Free documentary project on fixing our Constitution, has just announced the 2016 version of its Essay Contest for Canadian college and university students. Their website gives the full terms and conditions. But basically if you were a college or university student in Canada last year or will be one this year, you're invited to write 2,500 words or less on:

Should the government and government bodies, through law and policy, force voluntary associations (charitable, political, cultural, ethnic, religious, social, recreational, educational, etc.) to be inclusive and welcoming of everyone?

Why or why not?

There are cash prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.

Later this month Brigitte and I will be in Edmonton to take part in the "Essentials of Freedom" conference organized by our friend Danny Hozack. You can find more information about the event, and the other fine speakers, here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9jZPPbP3Uo If only life’s problems had simple solutions, we sigh. But often they do. Not easy ones, but simple ones, as Ronald Reagan liked to say. And nowhere is it more true than in economics, where we really do know what works and, more importantly, what doesn’t. 

There’s even a simple way to get on top of it that actually is easy: Read Henry Hazlitt’s classic, plain-language, common sense Economics in One Lesson. It’s 70 years old now but still absolutely timely because we keep making the same simple mistakes. 

Not to worry, if we give up that bad habit we’ll still have plenty to bicker about in foreign and social policy. But in economics, there are simple solutions. Read Hazlitt and you’ll know what they are.

Here's one university administrator willing to stand up to political correctness, and to keep standing up when challenged. I'm pleased to say he seems to be getting some pretty favourable coverage for it too.

My latest National Post column takes aim at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for buying into a false historical account that undermines its otherwise commendable effort to get from truth to reconciliation. My criticisms of unrealism in aboriginal policy have opened me to predictable accusations of bigotry. But the reverse is true. Nowhere is frank talk more desperately needed because nowhere in Canada is policy a worse mess and it is aboriginals who suffer most even from well-meaning nonsense.

In my latest National Post column, I tell the government waiter I didn't order this patronizing rubbish.

In the National Post I ask why so many Canadian museums seem to belong in a museum. Where's our enthusiasm for our history?