Feeling somewhat fresh, optimistic after washing off the stench of 2025

First, a confession.

Last week, I filed my version of the year-end column in which I declared 2025 the “year of the xenophobe.” I was left decidedly dissatisfied by my choice.

Not because my argument was tenuous.

Nations all over the world have been punishing immigrants of all kinds, from those seeking asylum to those recruited to fill important holes in our labour market. We’ve come to believe that bringing fewer people from away will somehow right our wobbly economy.

I won’t go deep into all of the the reasons why that’s not true. Except to say that Canada just experienced its largest population drop in more than 50 years. In case you were wondering, a shrinking population is very bad for the economy.

That said, I was dissatisfied with my xenophobe column because it lacked any semblance of hope for the year ahead. So, for my first column of 2026, I’d like to offer a few thoughts on what I hope this upcoming year will bring.

(Warning: the following contains unbridled optimism that our better selves will miraculously reappear.)

First off, I hope that in the next 12 months, a measure of genuine integrity and intellectual honesty returns to politics at all levels in Canada.

Like so many countries, Canadian politics has become very polarized. Although some political leaders do better than others, we are burdened with a system that prioritizes verbal bullying and deeply personal lines of attack over fact and reason.

We had a federal election in 2025 that featured a Conservative opposition asking to be elected to save the country from the Liberals, and Liberals warning voters that a vote for a Tory would trigger our ruination.

Beware politicians who tell you that the only way to “save” Canada is to vote against the other guys. No party in Canada has the capacity to blow up the country. Thus, my hope is that faced with an existential threat from south of the border, we learn that fighting each other with baseless allegations only creates more uncertainty, while fighting alongside each other gives us a chance to prevail.

That first hope leads effortlessly to my second great wish for 2026: that something profound happens in the United States to stop the “slow-moving coup” — a term coined by comic Bill Maher — that President Donald Trump and his MAGA soldiers are trying to engineer.

And just to be totally clear, by “profound” I do not mean an act of violence.

American democratic institutions — Congress and the courts, in particular — need to remember that they were created as a check and balance on giving any one leader limitless power. Thankfully, after a year of ignoring the courts and Congress, there seems to be some pushback on Trump’s toxic agenda.

It is not necessarily ideal that the pushback was triggered by anger over Trump’s unwillingness to release investigatory files on sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.

You would think that unleashing masked, government-sponsored vigilantes on the streets of America’s biggest cities, gutting the federal civil service without authority, pardoning heinous criminals who donate money to Republicans or adopting the perverse desires of racists to allow white nationalists to rule the country would have helped legislators rediscover their spines.

No matter. Pushback is pushback and Congress — led by a growing number of Republicans — is showing that it may have reached the limits of its tolerance for authoritarian bullying.

I really hope this trend continues because — and I’ve predicted this several times in other columns — I believe Trump and his people will try to suspend midterm elections next year by categorizing the protests going on right now against authoritarian tactics to raise the false flag of insurrection.

I have never wanted to be so wrong in all my life.

I should add that my hope that someone brings Trump to heel is not just about preserving the concept and principles of democracy; as long as Trump enjoys unchecked power, he will inflict untold damage on the economies of Canada and other nations. We have zero chance of enjoying a stronger, more productive economy while MAGA rules the White House.

Last, but not least, I hope we remember that to help the vulnerable, we have to put their interests ahead of our own.

People in society can only be helped if that society puts the interests of the vulnerable ahead of our own selfish interests.

Homelessness, addictions and mental-health crises will be among the greatest challenges of the new year, and likely for many years to come. It’s time now to do something about them; the problems got as big as they are now by ignoring them, hoping they would go away.

Well, they’re not going away. We need concerted efforts to build housing for the homeless and treatment for people with addiction and mental-health challenges.

Some of those efforts will bring the issues close to our homes and businesses. Do not resist these efforts by trying to push them into someone else’s neighbourhood. Embrace the reality that helping the most vulnerable will, ultimately, make everyone safer.

Oh, and one more hope: that against all odds, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Winnipeg Jets meet in this year’s Stanley Cup final.

A long shot, I know. But once you embrace hope, anything is possible.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca