I hesitated to write on this topic. Not out of reluctance, but because I thought it was so obvious that our media space would be cluttered with similar sentiments. That has not been the case.

U.S. President Donald Trump invaded Venezuela for natural resources, the personal animus of his inner circle, and expansionist imperial aims. The crimes, real or imagined, of Nicolas Maduro are not pertinent to this conversation. They are a red herring, no different than when after a police officer murders an innocent person, the media decides it’s important dig up any past criminal behaviour to frame the victim as “no angel.” It is textbook manufacturing consent.

The Trump administration does not care about the tyranny of Maduro’s government, nor the plight of the Venezuelan people. In fact, no government can claim to care about a population while supporting sanctions which undercut their capacity to survive there. Especially not when those sanctions are only applied selectively to economically unco-operative nations. Venezuela has suffered such treatment for decades.

The Trump administration has declared that they essentially own the western hemisphere. This sort of hemispheric imperialism is not new. One could spend every word of this column listing occasions when the U.S. has overthrown regimes in South America who did not bow to multinational corporate interests. Usually with the tacit, and sometimes even with the material, support of Canada, as when our soldiers helped kidnap the popular Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

I was born in Manitoba in 1984 and adopted as an infant. From that moment, my birth name, my identity, and all legal ties to my family were erased.

The adoption system decided my identity could be rewritten — that I was “better off” with strangers — not because of abuse or neglect, but because my first mother lacked the resources and support to raise me.

Growing up, I had no language for what I felt — only a persistent sense that something fundamental was missing. I struggled with anxiety, identity confusion, and periods of deep depression, and I continue to struggle with these challenges today. Like many adoptees, I am someone responding to a profound early loss. Adoption is not a single event, but a lifelong psychological journey.

Adoption is often framed as a purely benevolent act: a simple story of rescue, gratitude, and happy endings. It is described as a way to provide children with “permanency” and love.

The vandalism that took place at Congregation Shaarey Zedek on Jan. 2 and Habibiz Cafe on Jan. 4, should be unequivocally condemned as acts of hate and intimidation motivated by religion, ethnicity or racialization.

The motivations of the assailants (or assailant) are currently not known to the public. Some may assume political motivations and some may go further and say that such potential motivations are understandable. Their actions should nevertheless be condemned.

There is a critical difference between constructive political dissent, on the one hand, and hate speech or acts of intimidation on the other. Unfortunately, they are too often confused for each other. The more confusion there is, the less people are inclined to engage in constructive and necessary dissent, for fear of possible consequences. The fact that constructive political dissent is often mischaracterized as hate makes it all the more difficult to identify when actual hate is taking place.

A possible way through the confusion is to ask two questions: first, who or what is the target and second, what form has the act taken?

In a December issue of the Free Press Community Review, I wrote about a countrywide protest against Sobeys that drew attention to the retailer’s failure to honour its commitment to enact cage-free egg sourcing. As a community correspondent, I also highlighted a neighbourhood connection to more humanely-produced eggs.

Two weeks later, a letter to the editor appeared in the Community Review in response to my column, written by Roger Pelissero, the chair of Egg Farmers of Canada. Pelissero argued that, actually, “egg farmers work tirelessly to ensure the health and well-being of their hens” regardless of how they are housed.

What am I to think when the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency — as EFC is legally called — takes the time to publicly rebut the viewpoint of a grassroots animal advocate expressed in a hyperlocal weekly newspaper?

The lobby doth protest too much, methinks.

Recently, Dr. Tara Kiran made headlines when her robust national OurCare survey revealed 5.9 million Canadians still lack a primary care provider — the point-of-entry health professional, like a family doctor or nurse practitioner, who provides routine care.

Those who do have a primary care provider often wait weeks for an appointment, then get rushed through in minutes. Emergency departments overflow with patients who have nowhere else to go.

The federal government has responded to the crisis by creating 5,000 express-entry spaces to fast-track permanent residency for international doctors already working in Canada. But the problem isn’t just more doctors. We have a care-delivery problem. We need a care-delivery transformation.

While providing interprofessional leadership training in Singapore over the past three years, I’ve seen and learned about their remarkable primary care transformation. Recently, a delegation from SingHealth generously shared their approach with over 75 primary care leaders across Canada. Here’s what we learned.

That a politician would decry the use of a political gambit made during an election campaign to become a political leader, as political, is comical.

Numerous news stories have documented the ebb and flow of announcements about the Carney government’s plans to action economic change through projects of national interest, such as the Port of Churchill Plus, mine developments and other projects.

One thread running through many of these stories yet to be pulled together is the need for meaningful participation in decisions about whether and how these projects should proceed. This is perhaps typified by the reaction of the government of British Columbia and Coastal First Nations to finding out from the media that the federal and Alberta governments had signed an MOU to build a pipeline from Alberta through B.C. without consultation. In this regard, federal Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller has been quoted as saying that they must meet face to face with communities about any new pipeline.

The federal government is a party to numerous agreements meant to ensure participation in decision making, such as the Espoo and Aarhus Conventions. The foundations of these will certainly be tested as the federal government implements the Building Canada Act (Bill C-5).

This Act will accelerate development approvals but will potentially override established laws that ensure participation, such as impact assessment.

Humankind seems to be in the throes of an epidemic of hate, and we are having a hard time extricating ourselves from this outbreak.