Taking back the right to backpacks

It’s tough being a high-school student in Canada in 2026.

Some of them entered high school in the shadow of COVID-19, where the typical norms of secondary education radically changed out of necessity. Post-pandemic, the very-online, social-media-driven world of teens has been overrun with liars, grifters, scammers and extortion artists.

Not only do you have to take care not to snap and share intimate photos of yourself, lest they break containment onto the wider internet, you now have to wonder if someone will take your more innocuous photos and use them to generate sexually explicit material with an AI chatbot.

And then, for some reason, your school decides you shouldn’t be allowed to carry your backpack around with you to class, even though you may have been doing it for years.

Small movement on U.S. tariffs only the beginning

It’s a long road with no turns, but plenty of potholes. On Wednesday, there was a glimmer of hope up ahead — but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Remembering history to move ahead

With his party’s long-anticipated leadership review squarely in the rear-view mirror and armed with a resounding endorsement from its membership, Pierre Poilievre can set his focus on setting the future direction of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Free speech used to justify corporate profit

Why was “free-speech absolutist” Musk so upset about the idea that the owners of sites could be criminally charged for using improper control of site algorithms to tilt comment in one political direction or another, impacting everything from public opinion to voting?

Critical incidents are supposed to lead to action

The failure to recognize and intervene when a patient’s health has deteriorated remains one of the most troubling and persistent causes of death and serious injury in Manitoba’s health-care system.

A needed pivot on Canadian EV policy

Prime Minister Mark Carney has put a charge — pun intended —into Canada’s beleaguered auto industry. His timing could not be better.

Buying expensive fighters from unfriendly neighbours

It is long past time for Canada to put an end to the interminable saga of the F-35 purchase.

Especially considering the correct decision only becomes more obvious with time.

Set in motion during the reign of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government nearly 16 years ago, the purchase of dozens of advanced F-35 Lightning II fighters from the United States has been an albatross around the neck of subsequent governments, none of which has yet been able to settle for good on whether to buy the jets in order to replace Canada’s aging fleet.

The deal seemed to be sewn up in January 2023, when the federal government announced it had finalized an agreement with the U.S. government, defence company Lockheed Martin and its partner Pratt & Whitney to purchase 88 of the jets. Yet three years later, Canada finds itself reconsidering again.

Danielle Smith plays separation carrot-and-stick

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is beginning to look like something of a separation arsonist.

Bracing for a future global water shortage

Declaring bankruptcy is by all accounts a painful, traumatic and perhaps even humiliating process.

Spain joins nations imposing limits on social media

It’s the sound of another shoe dropping. There are likely to be many, many more.

Australia was the first, bringing in legislation to ban anyone under 16 from using social media, and requiring social media companies to exclude anyone under that age.

Denmark has banned access to social media for people under the age of 15 (13, with parental permission). France has also required age verification for social media sites, setting the age at 15 as well — and French authorities reportedly raided the French offices of Elon Musk’s X on Tuesday as part of a preliminary investigation into spreading child pornography.

Now, Spain has gone a step further.

The time for fax machines is past

Manitoba’s health-care system is plagued by long waits, crowded emergency rooms and chronic staffing shortages. But it is also bogged down by something less dramatic and far more absurd.

Fax machines.

Yes, fax machines. In 2026.

Doctors Manitoba’s new report, bluntly titled Axe the Fax, should be required reading at the legislature and in every health authority boardroom. Not because it contains some radical reinvention of medicine, but because it shines a harsh light on the daily inefficiencies that quietly sabotage patient care and waste physician time.

Restrained protesting — difficult, but necessary

There is something truly remarkable happening on the streets of Minneapolis, as protesters continue to frustrate the extrajudicial arrests, detainments and fatal shootings orchestrated by U.S. President Donald Trump’s fearsome ICE army.

Over his first year in office, Trump poured billions of dollars into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, creating what is in effect an army that operates outside the oversight of congress, and in many instances, outside legal due process. More importantly, the ICE army is Trump’s preferred tool of provocation.

The process goes something like this: the president disparages “blue” cities, urban centres that have traditionally supported the Democratic Party. Then, Trump dispatches the FBI, Homeland Security, National Guard or ICE officers to patrol the streets and perform random sweeps for illegal migrants. In some instances, like Washington D.C., these federal officers also arrest people suspected of minor criminal offences. It’s all done in quick and brutal fashion.

However, it’s become obvious now that Trump is not really concerned about unearthing illegal migrants or combating street crime. The president wants to provoke the city into violent protests. With enough video and photos of looted stores, burning cars and violent confrontations with federal agents, Trump can contemplate the activation of various federal laws aimed at quashing insurrection.

Cutting back on food safety has risks

There are some things you just can’t — or shouldn’t — cheap out on.

Unfortunately, governments often fail to feel the same way.

The Agriculture Union is voicing its concerns following news that staff at the Canada Food Inspection Agency have been told 1,371 agency jobs — about one-fifth of its workforce — are about to be cut, as part of a federal cost-cutting initiative. Ottawa is looking to cut approximately $60 billion in programs and administrative costs over the next five years, which includes cutting public service jobs by 40,000.

Some of these cuts are not so disagreeable; for example, a 20 per cent cut in spending on “management and consulting services” per the Canadian Press, can probably be managed without much pain.

More than just slipping through the cracks

There are cases that fall through the cracks in any bureaucracy. We hear about them in health care, in policing, in other parts of the justice system, in municipal government — basically, anywhere where many hands manage people navigating many different and often unique situations.

Crown Royal dust-up a story of tariffs and tempers

“We’re a big family,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared on Monday. “Sometimes, brothers and sisters may disagree, but at the end of the day, make no mistake about it: we are one country. We’re Team Canada.”