Should residential-school denialism be illegal? My answer is no. Contentious issues should begin as cultural and societal discussions, not criminal prohibitions. People must remain free to examine evidence, challenge public claims and debate one another—even when the subject is painful.

That freedom serves a democratic purpose. Open debate helps citizens distinguish what is known from what remains uncertain, weigh competing arguments and vote thoughtfully. The law can prohibit conduct, but it cannot resolve every difficult conversation society needs to have.

My grandmother endured the residential-school system, and my family still lives with its consequences. Survivors deserve to be heard with sensitivity, kindness and respect. But listening to survivors and testing a public claim are different acts. Pursuing truth does not require disrespect, and respect should not prevent honest scrutiny.

Niki Sharma, British Columbia’s Attorney General and Deputy Premier, has supported the federal government examining criminalization. A former lawyer for residential-school survivors, she was well positioned to explain what she believes could become criminal—and whether good-faith questions about Kamloops might be captured.

What Is Actually Being Denied?

Sharma began from her experience with survivors. She argued that the wrong began when the state removed children from their parents and placed them in institutions intended to separate them from their families, cultures and communities.

“Even the separation moment of taking kids away from their parents was government action that was wrong.”

On that point, there is no disagreement. I have interviewed Frances Widdowson, Tim Thielmann and Candice Malcolm. I have not heard any of them deny that residential schools caused harm or that abuse occurred. They question the narrower claim that radar established 215 unmarked graves in the orchard at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

If people who acknowledge the system’s harms but dispute a specific claim can be labelled denialists, the term is too elastic to form the basis of a criminal offence.

For Sharma, denialism is personally difficult because it can disregard survivor testimony and the extensive historical record assembled by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“I find it very personally challenging when I hear people denying the truth of what happened after so much effort went into the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and all the courage it took for survivors to come forward and tell those stories.”

Erasing survivor experiences is cruel. But conduct can be offensive, inaccurate or harmful without belonging in the Criminal Code. The state must meet a higher standard before punishing speech.

What Do Survivors and Evidence Require?

I asked Sharma about the distinction between anomalies and confirmed remains. She left conclusions about the site to Tkemlúps te Secwépemc and returned to the national record of children who did not return home.

“People are fixated on the number and where and how, but the well-documented history—you could just look at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission—documented piles and piles of documents of kids that went to school and didn’t come home.”

The Kamloops dispute should not be used to pretend children did not die at residential schools elsewhere. Survivors should not have to prove every detail of their trauma before being treated with dignity.

But public claims require evidence. The Kamloops announcement reshaped the national conversation. Tkemlúps te Secwépemc has described the findings as anomalies, and no human remains have been confirmed. The number, location and evidence are not irrelevant details.

These are different conversations with different purposes. One asks whether survivors are heard and respected. The other asks what a particular investigation has established. Sensitivity should shape how we conduct the second conversation, but it cannot determine the factual answer.

Why Must Citizens Be Able to Debate?

Sharma emphasized that Canadians retain the right to ask difficult questions.

“We have the right of free speech. We have the right of asking questions.”

This freedom helps democratic societies reach better judgments. Citizens hear competing interpretations, assess the evidence and carry their conclusions into elections and public policy. Discomfort is not proof that debate has failed.

Sharma framed the issue as a constitutional balance between expression and speech that crosses into criminal conduct.

“I’m not saying that any of the things you talked about are in that category. I’m just saying we always are balancing out rights in our country.”

Sharma did not suggest that my interviews or questions should be criminal. But assurances from one Attorney General are not enough. An offence’s reach ultimately depends on its wording and how police, prosecutors and courts interpret it.

If the state defines the permissible conclusion before citizens examine the evidence, it short-circuits democracy. People may remain silent because they cannot know whether their questions will be treated as criminal.

Why Is Criminal Law the Wrong Tool?

Sharma raised Holocaust denial law as Parliament’s response to historical erasure. But questioning whether radar anomalies at a particular location are graves is an evidentiary dispute, not a denial that residential schools existed or caused devastating harm.

She acknowledged that drawing a legal boundary would be difficult.

“Every time you’re talking about laws in society, it always is a balancing act. And we have to find the right balance.”

I do not believe criminalization is the right balance. A vaguely defined offence could discourage journalists, researchers, survivors and citizens from correcting inaccurate claims. Criminal law may suppress a dispute, but that is not the same as resolving it.

Governments should support investigations, make records accessible and teach the documented history clearly. Society should answer contested evidence with more evidence and bad arguments with stronger arguments—not imprisonment. That requires patience, sensitivity and a willingness to hear disagreement.

A free society must be capable of holding two truths at once. Residential schools caused profound and lasting harm, and legitimate questions remain about what the radar findings at Kamloops establish. Recognizing the second truth does not erase the first.

So, should residential-school denialism be illegal? No. Protecting survivors and preserving the historical record are essential, but neither requires criminalizing questions about claims that have not been proven. Reconciliation will be more durable when it is grounded in evidence strong enough to withstand scrutiny.

Watch or listen to the full interview with Niki Sharma, and let me know: do you believe questioning the evidence at Kamloops should ever be treated as a criminal offence?

When a court decision raises questions about whether Aboriginal title can extend over privately owned land, British Columbians should be able to look to the province’s top legal officer for a clear answer: is private property still protected?

Niki Sharma is British Columbia’s Attorney General and Deputy Premier. As the province’s chief legal officer, she is responsible for confronting precisely this kind of conflict. The Cowichan decision recognized Aboriginal title over an area that includes privately held land. Her government supports reconciliation, but it is appealing aspects of the ruling because of the uncertainty it created for property owners.

I wanted to know what legal protection Sharma believes private landowners possess, what principle the province is asking higher courts to establish and whether reconciliation can advance without making innocent property owners responsible for historic wrongs committed by the Crown. Her answer was that neither set of rights should simply defeat the other. It is the Crown’s responsibility to reconcile them.

What Is the Attorney General Asking For?

The central concern arising from the Cowichan case is not abstract. The decision recognized Aboriginal title over an area that includes privately held land, creating uncertainty for people who bought property through the legal system and believed their ownership was secure.

The province supports reconciliation but is appealing aspects of the ruling. I asked Sharma what legal principle the government wants a higher court to establish. She said the province is not asking the courts to extinguish Aboriginal title, something she acknowledged the province cannot do. Instead, it is seeking a framework in which title and private ownership can coexist.

“Aboriginal title, if it was found, sits underneath private landowners so that their rights are respected.”

Sharma described the province’s position as an attempt to address serious historic wrongs against First Nations without making lawful property owners bear the consequences of decisions made by the Crown generations ago.

“The Crown has to sit in the middle there and figure out how to resolve those disputes and maintain people’s rights.”

The appeal may clarify the law, but a practical question will remain: what remedy can recognize Aboriginal title without weakening the security private ownership is supposed to provide?

Why Did DRIPA Create New Uncertainty?

British Columbia adopted DRIPA unanimously in 2019. Sharma said its purpose was to change laws and negotiate agreements with First Nations instead of leaving disputes to expensive, adversarial court proceedings. The controversy arose when the Court of Appeal interpreted DRIPA more broadly than the province says it intended.

“We feel the Court of Appeal really unfairly expanded what was intended with DRIPA.”

Sharma’s concern is that courts could assess existing laws against DRIPA before the government has reviewed them through the process it originally contemplated, creating uncertainty across public policy.

“We can’t have every law subject under DRIPA scrutiny when we haven’t actually committed to or done the work to upgrade it in the way that we need to.”

The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear the province’s appeal. The government is also considering legislative changes. The dispute is therefore not whether reconciliation should proceed, but who determines its pace and method: elected governments or the courts.

Is Reconciliation Being Done With the Public?

Legal clarity alone will not resolve the political problem. I asked Sharma what she would say to British Columbians who feel decisions are being negotiated among governments, First Nations and organized stakeholders without a meaningful way for the public to participate.

“We need to engage everybody in the work of reconciliation and for people to understand that it’s better for every British Columbian in this province when we’re finding a path forward that isn’t in the courtroom.”

Sharma also argued that political actors are spreading false claims, including suggestions that reconciliation agreements allow First Nations to take privately owned homes. Misinformation should be corrected. But not every concern about property, consultation or legal uncertainty can be dismissed as fearmongering. The province’s own appeals confirm that some uncertainty is real.

Better communication cannot simply mean explaining a decision after it is made. It may require earlier consultation and an accessible way for people to raise legitimate concerns.

What Would a Durable Path Look Like?

Sharma acknowledged that governments sometimes need to change course. What matters, she argued, is whether they do so honestly and bring people together while making the adjustment.

“You have to do it by bringing people together, understanding their perspectives, and adjusting and speaking openly and honestly with people about what the challenges are.”

That is a useful standard. Court appeals may establish legal boundaries, legislative amendments may restore certainty, and agreements may offer remedies litigation cannot. Durability will also depend on whether British Columbians believe their legitimate interests were considered.

So, is private property still protected? B.C.’s Attorney General says yes: Aboriginal title can be recognized while the rights of innocent landowners remain secure, with the Crown responsible for resolving the conflict. What remains uncertain is the precise legal mechanism, the remedy available to First Nations and how the public will participate in shaping the result.

That uncertainty does not make reconciliation impossible. It does mean that good intentions are not enough. The process must be legally clear, practically workable and trusted by the people expected to live with it.

Watch or listen to the full interview with Niki Sharma, and let me know: what would a fair balance between Aboriginal title, private property and public participation look like to you?

Naheed Nenshi does not talk about Danielle Smith like someone he first encountered across the aisle of the Alberta legislature.

He has known her for decades.

They attended the University of Calgary together in the early 1990s. They studied federalism in the same classroom during the era of the Charlottetown Accord. They moved through the same political circles at a university that was producing an extraordinary generation of Canadian political figures. Stephen Harper was around campus. Preston Manning was building the Reform Party. Ezra Levant was Nenshi’s debate partner. Danielle Smith was one of his classmates.

Years later, Smith would even turn to Nenshi for advice during one of the most damaging controversies of her early political career.

Today, Nenshi is the leader of Alberta’s Official Opposition and is trying to replace Smith as premier.

That history made me interested in a different question than whether the two simply disagree on policy.

What happened to Danielle Smith?

Nenshi’s answer was unusually personal. He described private conversations, a crisis involving Alberta’s electrical grid, a university story he says shocked him, and a pattern of culture-war politics that has left him questioning not simply Smith’s policies, but what he believes motivates her government.

These are Nenshi’s allegations and interpretations, and Smith did not have an opportunity to respond during this interview. But taken together, they offer one of the clearest explanations I have heard for why Nenshi believes the Danielle Smith he once knew is different from the premier he now faces.

Danielle Smith Once Asked Nenshi for Help

Nenshi and Smith were not best friends at university, but he told me they were firmly within the same social circle.

“I have known Danielle for many, many, many years. We went to school together. We weren’t best friends, but we were certainly in the same social circle.”

Their relationship continued well beyond university.

Nenshi recalled the 2012 Alberta election, when Smith was leading the Wildrose Party and appeared capable of becoming premier.

Late in the campaign, Wildrose candidate Allan Hunsperger became embroiled in controversy over comments about gay people and a “lake of fire.” Nenshi says Smith contacted him as she tried to figure out how to respond.

“I still have an email probably saved on my phone somewhere... of her saying, ‘What do I do about this? How should I manage this situation?’”

That is an important detail because it shows a relationship very different from the one Albertans see today.

Nenshi was someone Smith believed she could contact during a serious political problem involving LGBTQ issues.

Now he says they barely communicate.

“Since I’ve gotten into this job, I have said maybe 100 words to her in two years,” he told me. But one of those rare conversations apparently stayed with him.

The Story Smith Told Him on His First Day

On Nenshi’s first day in Alberta’s legislature, Smith came over to congratulate him and welcome him.

According to Nenshi, their conversation eventually turned back to the executive federalism class they had taken together decades earlier.

The course involved a mock First Ministers’ conference. Nenshi played the premier of Quebec. Smith, he had remembered, was on the media team, although she apparently corrected him and reminded him that she represented the federal government.

Then Smith told him something else. Nenshi hesitated before repeating it in our interview.

“I feel like I shouldn’t tell this story. Maybe I will.”

He deliberately avoided giving all the details, so it would be inappropriate for me to fill in what he left unsaid. But Nenshi said Smith described how she had approached that university course and obtained a better grade.

His characterization was extraordinary.

“You got a better grade by doing something that I would call unethical or maybe cheating.”

Nenshi said the story surprised him partly because of the setting. Smith was telling it to him on his first day as her political opponent in the legislature.

What stayed with him was how different it seemed from the person he remembered.

“That is not what I would have pegged you as when we were in university together.”

We do not have Smith’s version of that exchange, and Nenshi intentionally withheld the details necessary to evaluate exactly what happened decades ago.

So the significance of the story is not that it establishes that Danielle Smith “cheated.”

It establishes something about Nenshi’s perception of her.

A person he had known for decades told him a story that caused him to reassess what he thought he knew about her.

And that perception now colours how he interprets her government.

Is the Culture War Deliberate?

One of Nenshi’s strongest criticisms is that Smith’s government spends political energy on controversies that he believes are designed primarily to mobilize supporters.

He pointed to Alberta’s approach to flags in schools.

Nenshi described a proposal under which schools would be limited in the flags they could fly while also being required to play the national anthem regularly.

His interpretation of the motivation behind it was blunt.

“It’s because they want to ban the pride flag.”

More specifically, Nenshi alleges that the government wanted to eliminate Pride flags but was unwilling to state that objective directly.

He argued that by constructing a broader rule around which flags could be displayed, the government inadvertently created problems for Indigenous flags as well.

“They didn’t want to say that they were doing this to ban the pride flag for political reasons.”

That is Nenshi’s characterization of the government’s motives, not an established fact.

But it connects directly to his broader argument.

He believes the government is choosing symbolic cultural disputes when Albertans are confronting health-care shortages, overcrowded classrooms, affordability pressures and economic uncertainty.

Nenshi described it as “culture war stuff” designed to score political points.

His frustration is not simply that he disagrees with Smith on LGBTQ policy.

It is that he believes the public explanation and the political objective are two different things.

And for Nenshi, that gets to the fundamental question of what government is actually for.

The Electrical Crisis That Brought Nenshi Back

The most consequential story Nenshi told me happened after he had already left politics.

After 11 years as mayor of Calgary, he was enjoying private life. He was consulting, travelling and making more money while working less.

He had little reason to return.

Then Alberta experienced a brutal cold snap and its electrical grid came under enormous strain.

Nenshi received a grid alert warning Albertans that electricity consumption had to fall quickly.

His first instinct was not to attack the premier. He told me he wanted to amplify whatever Smith was telling Albertans to do.

So he checked her social media. What he says he found instead helped change the trajectory of his life.

“She was busy attacking the federal government and Steven Guilbeault and the clean energy regulation for the grid alert.”

Nenshi said temperatures in parts of Alberta had fallen to approximately -45°C and that a widespread grid collapse could take hours or days to recover from.

His reaction was immediate.

“What are you doing? We need to tell people right now to turn off their lights or people are going to die.”

Nenshi used his own social media following to urge conservation. He says Smith’s chief of staff later called and thanked him.

The following day brought another grid alert — this time on a Saturday, which Nenshi considered particularly alarming.

He contacted the premier’s chief of staff and asked how serious the situation was. According to Nenshi, the answer was that Alberta was “within inches of a total grid collapse.”

Nenshi urged them to issue an emergency cellphone alert. Minutes later, Albertans received one.

A friend overlooking Calgary subsequently told Nenshi that as soon as the emergency alert arrived, she could physically see lights switching off across the city.

For Nenshi, that was the lesson.

When people understand that their community needs them, they respond.

But he was left asking why political conflict had occupied the premier’s attention during the first moments of the emergency.

“Why were you trying to play political games at a point where people’s lives are at stake?”

Soon afterward, Nenshi found himself thinking: somebody has to do something about this.

Then came the harder question. Was he somebody?

That experience became part of his decision to leave retirement, join the Alberta NDP and try to defeat Danielle Smith.

What Does Nenshi Think Drives Her?

Nenshi told me that throughout most of his public life he resisted cynicism about politicians.

He could disagree profoundly with people and still believe that most entered public life because they genuinely wanted to make their communities better.

His experience as opposition leader has shaken that belief.

“I am sitting across from a government that I don’t understand, because everything I see about them is I feel like this is a government that has no actual interest in governing.”

His harshest assessment concerns what he believes motivates Smith’s government politically.

“For us, winning the election is the starting point to be able to do good things in the community. For them, winning the election is the whole point.”

It is difficult to make a more serious allegation about a political opponent.

And it should be read for what it is: the assessment of the man trying to defeat Smith in the next Alberta election.

There are also complications to Nenshi’s argument. When I asked him what Smith gets right, he was able to identify several things.

He praised Alberta’s film and television tax credit. Although he opposes significant parts of Smith’s addiction strategy, he praised the publicly funded recovery component and partnerships with First Nations. He also supported new medical education programs intended to train physicians in smaller Alberta communities.

So Nenshi is not arguing that every Smith policy is wrong. His criticism goes deeper. He believes the individual successes exist inside a political project increasingly driven by grievance, confrontation and calculation.

That is also how he understands Smith’s handling of separatism: not simply as a disagreement over Confederation, but as another example of political incentives pushing government toward increasingly consequential fights.

What Happened to Danielle Smith?

After speaking with Nenshi, I was struck by how much of his case against Smith is ultimately about trust.

He remembers a university classmate who existed inside a political culture where conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats could argue fiercely and still share an office.

He remembers a political leader who once contacted him for advice on how to respond to an anti-LGBTQ controversy.

Decades later, he says that same person told him a university story he considered “shockingly unethical.” He now accuses her government of disguising an effort to prohibit Pride flags inside a broader school flag policy. And he describes watching Smith attack Ottawa during the early stages of an electrical emergency when he believed the immediate priority should have been telling Albertans how to prevent the grid from collapsing.

None of that gives us an objective psychological explanation for Danielle Smith.

It gives us Naheed Nenshi’s explanation. And that distinction matters.

Smith and her supporters may view the same events completely differently. They may see a premier prepared to challenge institutions, fight Ottawa, reject progressive cultural orthodoxies and use every available political tool to advance Alberta’s interests.

Nenshi sees something else: a person he has known for decades whose politics he believes have become increasingly centred on winning the fight itself.

That may ultimately be the most revealing divide between the two leaders.

It is not simply about left and right.

It is about their competing explanations of what political power is for.

Watch or listen to my full conversation with Naheed Nenshi and let me know what you think: Has Danielle Smith changed over the years, or is Nenshi simply seeing an old acquaintance differently now that they are political opponents?

Frustration with Ottawa is hardly new in Alberta. Disputes over energy, equalization, environmental policy and federal power have shaped the province’s politics for generations. The harder question is what political leaders should do with that frustration. Should they use it to negotiate a better deal within Canada, or does continually escalating the conflict risk pushing the province somewhere most Albertans never intended to go?

That was one of the central questions I wanted to put to Naheed Nenshi, the leader of Alberta’s Official Opposition and former three-term mayor of Calgary. Nenshi has known Premier Danielle Smith since they were students at the University of Calgary, where they studied Canadian federalism during another period of intense national-unity debate.

I entered the conversation wondering whether Smith’s willingness to entertain a referendum could actually serve a political purpose without necessarily leading to separation. Perhaps allowing separatists to make their case could diffuse resentment, demonstrate the limits of their support, or give Alberta additional bargaining leverage with Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Nenshi sees the situation very differently.

Alberta Alienation Is Real

The first distinction in Nenshi’s argument is important: he does not dismiss Albertans who are frustrated with Ottawa.

In fact, he believes the frustration is much broader than the separatist movement itself.

“More than 10 to 20% of Albertans are frustrated with Ottawa. It’s like the inverse of that, 80 or 90% of Albertans are frustrated with it.”

That matters because debates about separatism can become too simplistic. Opposition to separation does not necessarily mean satisfaction with Confederation. Albertans can believe Ottawa has treated their province unfairly while still believing strongly in Canada.

Nenshi’s argument is that political leaders have historically channelled that frustration toward concrete outcomes. He pointed to former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed, who fought aggressively with Ottawa while remaining firmly committed to the country.

“The difference is that over the last several years, that frustration has been weaponized by politicians,” Nenshi said.

He later refined the point. Alberta premiers have always used conflict with Ottawa politically. What concerns him is where that strategy now leads.

According to Nenshi, Premier Smith has moved from using Alberta alienation as leverage to giving separatism institutional legitimacy.

Is the Referendum Really About Separation?

I asked Nenshi whether Smith might simply be giving a frustrated minority a democratic outlet.

He rejected that interpretation.

His argument is that previous Alberta premiers drew a clear distinction between fighting Ottawa and threatening to leave Canada. Separatists were free to organize, campaign and contest elections, but premiers did not structure the political system around satisfying them.

Nenshi accused Smith of changing that relationship.

“Rather than take a signal from that and tell the separatists, bugger off, stop distracting us, the Premier has been pandering to them continuously.”

He pointed to changes in Alberta’s referendum rules and argued that the provincial government made it easier for separatists to advance their cause.

Nenshi also emphasized the constitutional and Indigenous dimensions. First Nations treaties are with the Crown, and Alberta’s separation could raise profound questions about Treaty rights, territory and jurisdiction.

He said Indigenous opposition to separatism has produced a level of political mobilization he has rarely seen.

“The level of political activism that we’ve seen among not just chiefs and councils, but within Indigenous communities on the issue of separatism is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

For Nenshi, this is one reason the issue cannot simply be treated as an internal Alberta political exercise. The province does not exist in a constitutional vacuum, and any serious attempt at separation would involve interests that extend far beyond the provincial government.

“Separation in Slow Motion”

The most consequential part of Nenshi’s argument is that he does not believe the immediate referendum question is the entire strategy.

He pointed to other proposed referendum questions involving immigration and constitutional reform, including the Senate and appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada. In his view, some of those demands would be impossible for Alberta to achieve acting alone.

That, he argues, is precisely the problem.

“What I call them is separation in slow motion, because the strategy here is extremely clear.”

His concern is that Alberta could vote for demands Ottawa cannot or will not deliver. A provincial government could then return to voters and argue that Confederation itself is preventing Albertans from getting what they democratically demanded.

In that scenario, the grievance becomes self-reinforcing.

Nenshi compared the potential cycle to Quebec’s decades of constitutional confrontation and warned about the economic consequences of making national unity a permanent political question.

“I don’t want a future of perpetual grievance, of perpetual anger, of pitting neighbour against neighbour.”

There is an obvious counterargument. Pressure campaigns work precisely because the alternative is uncomfortable. Alberta has legitimate economic interests, particularly around energy infrastructure, and provincial governments are expected to fight for them. A referendum threat may strengthen Alberta’s negotiating position without producing separation.

The difficult question is where leverage ends and escalation begins.

Can Alberta Fight Ottawa Without Threatening Canada?

Nenshi believes it can.

He supports further pipeline development and reminded me that, as Calgary’s mayor, he advocated for the Trans Mountain expansion. His argument is not that Alberta should become less assertive. It is that the province should pursue achievable objectives rather than continually raising the stakes.

He also believes separatism distracts from issues provincial governments actually control: health care, education, economic development, unemployment and affordability.

His sharpest criticism of Smith is ultimately about priorities.

“The country is too important for these kinds of political games.”

That line captures the central disagreement.

Smith’s supporters may see her approach as strategic pressure: demonstrate that Alberta’s patience is finite and force Ottawa to respond. Nenshi sees something much more dangerous — a political strategy that requires grievance to continue because the grievance itself becomes electorally useful.

The distinction matters because Alberta alienation is not going away. The province will continue to have legitimate disagreements with Ottawa regardless of who occupies the premier’s office or the Prime Minister’s Office.

The question is what leaders do with those disagreements.

So, is Alberta separatism being weaponized?

Nenshi’s answer is clearly yes. He believes a real and longstanding frustration with Confederation is being transformed into a political mechanism that could keep escalating even if relatively few Albertans actually want independence.

The unresolved question is whether Smith’s strategy ultimately strengthens Alberta within Canada or normalizes an option that previous premiers deliberately kept at the margins.

Watch or listen to the full conversation with Naheed Nenshi and let me know what you think: Is entertaining separatism a legitimate negotiating strategy, or has Alberta politics allowed the threat to go too far?

I have come to believe that democracy is easiest to praise when it produces the answer we wanted. The real test comes when citizens may choose something political leaders, institutions or even many of their neighbours strongly oppose.

That was what I kept thinking about near the end of my conversation with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. Her government’s decision to proceed with a vote involving Alberta’s place in Canada has frightened some people and angered others. I was not arguing that Alberta should separate. I live in British Columbia, and I do not believe it is my place to tell Albertans what decision they should make about their future.

What interested me was Smith’s willingness to ask them. If citizens are capable of choosing their representatives, we must at least consider whether they can also give direction on the most consequential questions facing their province.

Why difficult questions do not scare me

Smith said Alberta’s citizen-initiative law required her government to respond after competing petitions gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures. One supported remaining in Canada. The other supported leaving. Her defence was ultimately about trusting the people who participated.

“I trust Albertans, and I need to know what they have to say. I need to know what direction they want me to go.”

I understand why people are nervous. Some Albertans may support Canada but believe that placing separation on a ballot legitimizes an idea they reject. Others may worry that a complicated constitutional question will be reduced to an emotional campaign.

Those are serious concerns. But avoiding the question does not make the frustration disappear. It may deepen the belief that institutions are prepared to listen only when the public is likely to give the approved answer.

This concern extends beyond Alberta. Canada substantially changed its immigration system without giving citizens a meaningful opportunity to participate. My objection is not to the people who legally came here, and they should not be blamed or treated cruelly. But when governments make enormous social changes without explaining them or seeking public consent, distrust and conspiracy theories fill the vacuum.

I do not understand how we can say we believe in democracy while rejecting the fruit that democracy bears.

What being a chief has taught me

As Chief of Chawathil First Nation, I do not see my role as deciding that I know what is best for everyone else. My responsibility is to listen to my community, help members understand the choices before us and then implement the direction they give.

That can be uncomfortable. Citizens may reject a proposal that leadership believes is beneficial. They may raise concerns that complicate a negotiation or slow down a project. But leadership is not ownership. The decision belongs to the people who will live with its consequences.

Smith illustrated this with a story about Tsuut’ina Nation and negotiations over a major road project near Calgary. The proposal went to the Nation’s citizens, and the first referendum failed.

“Their leadership went back and negotiated a different arrangement. And then it went to the people and it got approved.”

The point was not that leaders should repeatedly hold votes until citizens finally say yes. The first rejection changed the negotiation. It showed that the original agreement had not earned sufficient support and forced the parties to improve what was being offered.

“I think it was a better process that they had the buy-in of their own citizens.”

A no vote is not always a failure of democracy. Sometimes it is democracy doing its job.

Democracy is more than referendums

I do not believe every government decision should go to a public vote. We elect representatives because citizens cannot be expected to study every budget, regulation or infrastructure agreement. Leadership also requires making difficult decisions, explaining them and accepting responsibility for the results.

Referendums have real weaknesses. A complicated issue can be compressed into misleading wording. Campaigns can be distorted by misinformation, unequal financial resources and low turnout. Majority rule must also operate within constitutional limits.

The debate over Alberta’s pro-Canada petition demonstrates another problem. Opposition Leader Naheed Nenshi argues that many signatories wanted to support remaining in Canada, not trigger a referendum. Smith responds that the petition explicitly called for a vote. The disagreement raises a legitimate question about whether signing a petition means endorsing every consequence that follows.

Democracy therefore requires more than counting ballots. The question must be clear, citizens need reliable information, and the consequences must be explained honestly. Most importantly, the consultation must be capable of changing what the government does.

What trusting citizens actually requires

Too often, governments consult after the important decisions have already been made. People are invited to speak, but the process is designed to manage disagreement rather than respond to it. That may satisfy a procedural requirement, but it does not build public confidence.

Smith offered a more demanding standard:

“If you really care about what your people say, you need to hear them out. And if you get it wrong, then you need to find a way to either change the deal to be persuasive, to get it right, or you need to switch direction.”

That is close to my own view. Before a decision, leaders owe citizens the information required to participate meaningfully. Afterward, we must be prepared to accept that their answer may require us to renegotiate, delay or abandon a plan we personally supported.

Trusting citizens does not mean believing the majority is always wise or morally right. It means recognizing that elected leaders do not possess all wisdom either. Democracy distributes power because every institution—including government—can become insulated, overconfident or wrong.

Why do I still trust citizens? Not because I expect to agree with every decision they make. I trust them because they are the people who must live with the consequences. My job as a leader is not to protect them from every difficult choice. It is to make sure they understand the choice, that their rights are protected and that their answer genuinely matters.

Watch or listen to my full conversation with Premier Danielle Smith, and let me know: are Canadian governments giving citizens enough influence over the decisions that reshape their lives?

Danielle Smith has moved quickly across an unusually wide range of files. Her government has restructured health care, advanced a recovery-oriented addiction model, challenged federal environmental policies and expanded the role of private delivery. Supporters see decisiveness. Critics see unnecessary disruption.

Near the end of our conversation, I asked Smith a simple question that leaders are rarely eager to answer: what has her government gotten wrong? I wanted to know whether there was a policy she regretted, an approach that failed, or an issue she would handle differently if given another chance.

Smith did not identify one clear regret. Her answer was closer to a theory of leadership: governments must make decisions, measure the result and change direction when the outcome falls short. That response was revealing, but it also left a harder question unresolved. Is course correction evidence of responsive government, or can it become a substitute for acknowledging that an original decision was mistaken?

Is speed itself part of the risk?

Smith argued that indecision creates its own failures. A leader who waits for perfect information can allow every important file to become stuck. Her preference is to act, then make adjustments as new information arrives.

“The biggest challenge in leadership is you have to be able to make a decision. Because if you don’t make a decision and keep moving forward, everything gets bottlenecked.”

There is an intuitive appeal to this approach. Health systems are too large and complex to be repaired through a single announcement, and even well-designed reforms can produce unexpected consequences once implemented. The ability to admit that a policy needs modification is therefore essential.

But speed also increases the importance of clear benchmarks. Without them, almost any result can be described as one stage in an evolving plan. What I was trying to clarify was how Smith distinguishes a normal adjustment from a genuine policy failure. She said governments sometimes need to modify their approach and correct course. That explains how she governs, but not which decisions she believes should have been made differently.

What does Smith say is working?

Smith pointed first to areas of health care where she believes Alberta has made progress. She cited more doctors and nurses, nurse practitioners taking private patients, a wider scope of practice for pharmacists and paramedics, and new long-term care capacity.

Her strongest claim concerned Alberta’s approach to addiction. Smith said the province’s focus on recovery rather than safe supply and supervised consumption has produced a significant decline in deaths.

“We’ve seen a 40 per cent decrease in opioid deaths since we started down our recovery path, which is focusing on recovery rather than safe injection sites and safe supply.”

That claim will remain part of a larger national argument. A decline in deaths is meaningful, but evaluating the model also requires asking what caused the change, whether it will last and what happens to those who are not ready or able to enter recovery. Smith presented the result as evidence that her direction is working. Others will want to examine the data behind it.

The distinction is important because the success of one part of the health system does not prove that the broader restructuring is succeeding.

Where has the government fallen short?

The clearest admission in Smith’s answer concerned hospitals. Despite changes elsewhere in the system, she acknowledged that Albertans are not yet consistently experiencing faster, more reliable care when they arrive at an emergency department or wait for treatment.

“We haven’t made as much progress on improving the patient experience in the hospital environment.”

She described that as her leading priority for the coming year: getting patients assessed, treated, admitted or released more efficiently, while reducing the number who wait longer than medically recommended.

This was the most direct response to my question about shortcomings. It focused on an outcome rather than a specific decision. Smith did not say the restructuring itself was wrong; she said the changes made so far had not produced the progress she wanted.

That leaves room for competing interpretations. Her supporters can argue that systemic reform takes time and that acknowledging weak results is a necessary first step. Her critics can argue that a government responsible for major structural changes should be more specific about which choices failed and what those choices cost.

Will the next round of reforms work?

Smith outlined several new approaches: dual practice, privately purchased preventive health tests and patient-focused funding that follows an individual to the provider performing a surgery. The goal is to reward hospitals and providers that complete more procedures and give patients additional ways to identify health concerns early.

“You don’t just stop and say, ‘Oh gee, that didn’t work.’ You say, ‘Okay, well, it didn’t work perfectly. Let’s try to find something else.’”

These proposals also create new questions. Will paid testing improve early detection without weakening equitable access? Can patient-based funding increase surgical volume without drawing scarce staff away from other services? What safeguards will ensure that the pressure to do more procedures does not come at the expense of quality or less visible forms of care?

There is also a fiscal constraint. Smith rejected the idea that Alberta’s economy is too dependent on oil and gas, pointing to job creation and growth in technology and tourism. She made a narrower admission about the province’s finances.

“Our economy is great. Government revenues are still too reliant on oil and gas. And that’s a very different problem.”

Her government must therefore improve services while slowing expenditure growth and making the budget less vulnerable to oil prices. That tension will shape how much room Alberta has to keep experimenting.

So, what does Danielle Smith regret? She did not offer a conventional confession or name one policy she wishes she had never pursued. She acknowledged that hospital care has not improved enough and described governing as a continuing process of decision, measurement and correction.

Whether that answer is persuasive depends on what people expect from political accountability. Course correction can be a sign of humility, but it becomes meaningful only when governments clearly explain what failed, why it failed and how the next approach will be judged.

Watch or listen to the full interview, and let me know: did Smith answer the question, or did she explain why she prefers not to govern through regret?

Alberta separatism is often discussed as though it is either an imminent national crisis or a fringe protest that does not deserve serious attention. Both descriptions may be too simple. Even if most Albertans ultimately choose Canada, the fact that hundreds of thousands of people signed competing petitions shows that the province’s relationship with the country has become a live political question.

When I spoke with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, I wanted to understand what the referendum is actually meant to accomplish. Is it simply a legal response to citizen petitions? Is it a way to measure the province’s frustration? Or does the prospect of separation strengthen Alberta’s hand when Smith negotiates with Ottawa?

Those questions have become more important as Smith’s relationship with the federal government changes. Her confrontational approach under Justin Trudeau has given way to a more cooperative tone with Prime Minister Mark Carney. The central tension is whether that reset can produce enough tangible progress to reduce separatist sentiment—or whether Albertans have lost confidence in federal promises altogether.

Why hold a vote at all?

Smith’s first argument was procedural. Alberta has citizen-initiative legislation, and she said her government was required to respond once competing petitions crossed the necessary threshold. According to Smith, roughly 400,000 people signed a petition supporting Alberta remaining in Canada, while approximately 300,000 supported leaving.

“We had 700,000 people—400,000 signed one petition to remain and 300,000 signed a petition to leave.”

That created a difficult problem. Smith said the court had indicated that Alberta could not immediately hold a binding vote on separation without extensive Indigenous consultation. Her government therefore proposed a choice between remaining in Canada and beginning a process that could lead to a binding referendum.

The result, by her own admission, did not neatly satisfy any side.

“We’ve put forward a motion that allows people to vote to remain, option one, or to start the process to leave, which is option two. I think that approach got everybody mad.”

Those who want Alberta to remain preferred a straightforward yes-or-no question. Separatists wanted a binding decision. Others did not want the issue placed before voters at all. Smith’s defence is that ignoring the petitions would have meant ignoring the law and the people who participated in the process.

What would the result actually mean?

Naheed Nenshi, Alberta’s opposition leader, has argued that many of the people who signed the pro-Canada petition wanted to demonstrate support for Confederation, not trigger a referendum. Smith rejected that interpretation. She said the petition’s proponent explicitly called for a vote on whether Alberta should remain in Canada.

Her response raises an important democratic question: when citizens sign a petition, how literally should governments interpret it? A signature may express support for a position without endorsing every consequence that follows from it. At the same time, a petition intended to produce a referendum cannot easily be dismissed once it succeeds.

Smith put the issue this way:

“I trust Albertans, and I need to know what they have to say. I need to know what direction they want me to go.”

That is a powerful democratic principle, but it does not settle the constitutional, economic or Indigenous-rights questions that separation would create. A public vote can reveal where citizens stand. It cannot, by itself, determine what a workable separation process would require.

Is separatism giving Alberta leverage?

I asked Smith directly whether separatist sentiment gives her greater negotiating power with Ottawa. If the federal government believes national unity is at risk, it has a stronger incentive to respond to Alberta’s complaints about energy policy, regulation and access to markets.

Smith did not frame the referendum as a negotiating tactic. Instead, she described separatism as the consequence of a decade in which many Albertans believed their primary industry was deliberately constrained. She argued that no other province would accept a federal minister arriving with what felt like a mission to shut down one of its foundational industries.

The distinction matters. Smith’s case is not that Ottawa should make concessions because she is threatening to leave. It is that Ottawa must address the conditions that caused people to consider leaving in the first place.

“I told the Prime Minister, I take the separatist sentiment seriously. I told him he should take it seriously as well.”

There is still an element of leverage in that warning, whether or not Smith describes it that way. National governments rarely ignore a serious unity movement. But her public message to Albertans was notably more optimistic than separatist: Canada, she said, had not worked well for the province over the previous decade, but it was beginning to work better.

Can Mark Carney make the reset real?

Smith credited Carney with a major change in tone and pointed to federal policy reversals that she believes create room for resource development. She also emphasized that announcements are not the same as completed projects.

“It’s one thing to make an announcement. It’s another thing to do. I think I’ll feel a lot more able to answer that question when I see some shovels in the ground.”

That may be the real test of the referendum debate. If a West Coast pipeline advances, trade relationships stabilize and investment follows, Smith can argue that persistent provincial pressure produced a better arrangement within Canada. If those promises stall, separatists will be able to say that a friendlier tone from Ottawa changed very little.

Smith’s conclusion was that political alienation cannot be resolved by pretending it is not there.

“You don’t address issues by ignoring them. You address issues by validating that they are significant, they are real, and that we have to do something positive to turn things around.”

So, is Alberta really ready to leave? Smith’s answers did not sound like a premier building the case for departure. They sounded like a premier using a democratic process to measure discontent while trying to negotiate a renewed place for Alberta inside Canada. The separatist sentiment is real, but so is her belief that the relationship can still be repaired.

What remains uncertain is whether Ottawa can deliver quickly enough—and whether Albertans will view those changes as structural progress or temporary accommodation.

Watch or listen to the full interview, and let me know: is the referendum a dangerous escalation, a necessary democratic release valve, or Alberta’s best source of leverage?

Nunavut presents one of the most striking economic contradictions in Canada. The territory produces some of the country’s highest GDP-per-person figures, driven substantially by mining. Yet visit its communities, Premier and Finance Minister John Main told me, and the statistics quickly collide with overcrowded housing, food insecurity and poverty.

That contrast makes Nunavut more than a regional story. Across Canada, governments point to investment and GDP growth as evidence that the economy is working. The harder question is how much of that activity improves life where the wealth is produced.

I wanted to understand whether Nunavut is building a durable economy or remains dependent on two powerful forces largely controlled from outside the territory: federal transfers and resource extraction. Main did not pretend the territory is economically independent. He also did not accept that impressive production figures are enough.

“We have the highest GDP per capita in the entire country. But if you come to any of our communities and you speak to people, you’re going to see signs of poverty and signs of food insecurity.”

The precise territorial ranking can shift depending on the year and measure used. The larger point remains: Nunavut produces unusually high output per resident, while many residents experience nothing resembling exceptional prosperity.

What Does the GDP Number Miss?

GDP measures the value of economic activity produced within a jurisdiction. It does not tell us who owns the companies producing that value, where their workers live, where profits are spent or whether local families can afford groceries and housing.

That limitation is especially important in Nunavut. A mine can add enormous value to the territorial economy while relying heavily on equipment, capital and workers from southern Canada. The production appears in Nunavut’s GDP, but a significant share of the income can leave with the company, its suppliers and its fly-in, fly-out workforce.

When I asked Main how much of the territory’s mining wealth actually stays in Nunavut, he did not offer a complicated defence of the numbers.

“Not enough. Not enough is staying in the territory.”

This does not make the GDP figure meaningless. It makes it incomplete. Nunavut can be highly productive on paper while families remain disconnected from that productivity. Creating wealth and retaining wealth are related, but they are not the same achievement.

Who Is Getting the Work?

Main sees employment as the bridge between large economic projects and stronger households. The territory has a young and rapidly growing population, while construction, mining, hotels and other industries continue to bring in workers from elsewhere.

“We have quite a troubling reliance on imported labour.”

There are understandable reasons for that reliance. Employers need specific skills, major projects operate on tight timelines, and Nunavut’s public systems are already struggling to keep pace with population growth. Recruiting from outside may be necessary in the short term.

But when imported labour becomes the default, Nunavut can host expanding industries without developing a proportionate local workforce. Main argued that government cannot simply criticize companies from the sidelines. It has to help residents gain the education, training and support needed to compete for those jobs.

“We need those jobs. We need those jobs for our families.”

The problem is therefore more complicated than negotiating a larger royalty or requiring a hiring target. A person’s ability to take a job may depend on stable housing, health care, child care and education. Main described health, education and employment as an interconnected cycle.

“The problems are connected, but then the solutions are connected too.”

An investment in education may therefore be an economic-development policy. Housing may help retain nurses, teachers or skilled tradespeople. Better health may allow more residents to participate in training and employment. The return does not always appear under the same budget line.

Is Federal Dependence a Failure?

The other pillar of Nunavut’s economy is government itself. Main acknowledged that the territorial government depends heavily on federal transfers to fund public services and described that dependence as a vulnerability.

“For the short term, medium term, we are going to remain hugely dependent on federal funding sources to fund public services for our residents.”

It would be easy to interpret that admission as evidence that Nunavut’s economic model is failing. Main offered a different context. The territorial government has existed only since 1999 and is still building infrastructure that southern provinces accumulated over much longer periods. Its 25 communities have no intercommunity road network and face unusually high construction and service-delivery costs.

From that perspective, transfers are part of Canada’s responsibility to provide comparable public services where the cost and logistical challenge are extraordinary.

Still, federal support may be justified and necessary while long-term dependence weakens Nunavut’s control over its priorities. A change in Ottawa’s finances or attention can affect the territory far more dramatically than a province with broader revenue sources.

Can Nunavut Keep More of What It Creates?

Main’s approach is not to reject mining or wait for federal transfers to solve every problem. He wants the territorial government to become a more active partner in development, prepare residents for employment and help Inuit-controlled proponents lead major projects.

The coming transfer of responsibility for most public lands, natural resources and water from Ottawa to Nunavut could shift key decisions and create opportunities for additional revenue. Yet local authority will not guarantee local prosperity. Projects still require capital and expertise, while environmental consequences can outlast an economic boom.

The more useful test is whether development builds assets that remain: skilled workers, Inuit ownership, local businesses, infrastructure and public revenue that can be reinvested in communities. That is a higher bar than counting the value of minerals extracted in a given year.

So how can a rich territory stay poor? The contradiction becomes easier to understand once we separate economic output from household security. Nunavut is producing significant wealth, but too much of the benefit still leaves the territory, while the systems needed to connect residents to opportunity remain underdeveloped.

Main’s argument is not that resource development has failed or federal support should disappear. It is that neither mining growth nor public spending is the final result. What matters is whether more people can build stable, healthy and self-sufficient lives from that activity.

Watch or listen to my full conversation with Premier John Main, and let me know: what should governments require before calling a major resource project an economic success?

Canada is preparing to spend tens of billions of dollars strengthening its presence in the Arctic. New radar systems, operational hubs, airport upgrades and other defence investments are being presented as necessary responses to a more dangerous world and growing international interest in the region.

But there is a basic question beneath the announcements: what does it mean to defend a part of the country that still lacks much of the infrastructure Canadians elsewhere take for granted?

Nunavut comprises roughly one-fifth of Canada’s landmass and an enormous share of its coastline. Its 25 communities have no road network connecting them to each other or to southern Canada. In my conversation with Premier John Main, I wanted to understand whether Canada can make a credible claim to Arctic sovereignty through military investments alone, while many of the people who live there still face overcrowded housing, unreliable infrastructure and limited access to health care.

His answer was direct.

“They can claim what they want, but it’s going to ring hollow if communities are struggling.”

What Does Sovereignty Actually Require?

The national debate about the Arctic often begins with threats: foreign vessels, contested shipping routes, surveillance gaps and the ability of the Canadian Armed Forces to operate in extreme conditions. Main did not dismiss those concerns. His argument was that security must also include the health and stability of the communities that make Canada’s presence in the Arctic real.

People in Nunavut are not symbols on a sovereignty map. They live in the region year-round, sustain communities across an immense territory and experience the practical consequences of Canada’s northern policy. If those communities cannot reliably access housing, clean water, health care and power, a military installation nearby does not resolve the deeper weakness.

Main warned against repeating the approach taken during the Cold War, when northern investments were driven overwhelmingly by hard-security requirements and too often failed to treat Inuit communities as partners or beneficiaries.

“We’re talking about security and sovereignty, and we need to include communities and the health of communities in the conversation.”

The distinction matters. A country demonstrates sovereignty not only by detecting an aircraft or intercepting a vessel, but by maintaining communities, infrastructure and legitimate government across the territory it claims.

Can One Investment Serve Two Purposes?

Main’s preferred approach is dual-use infrastructure: projects that strengthen Canada’s defence capabilities while also improving daily life in Nunavut. A longer runway can support military aircraft and make civilian travel or medical transportation more dependable. Better power generation can serve an operational hub while reducing pressure on a community’s aging system. A drinking-water plant can strengthen emergency capacity and provide residents with a basic public service.

That sounds straightforward, but it changes how success is measured. The question is no longer simply whether Ottawa completed a defence project. It is whether the investment left the surrounding community stronger.

Main repeatedly returned to how modest many of Nunavut’s requests actually are.

“Drinking water, reliable power, adequate schools, adequate health care. We’re not asking for the things that are extra. We’re asking for the basics.”

This is also where the scale of federal ambition becomes important. Main welcomed the proposed Arctic Infrastructure Fund, but questioned whether $1 billion divided among three territories could overcome decades of underinvestment. A single round of funding may produce visible announcements without closing the underlying gap.

For Canadians elsewhere, that raises a familiar concern about government spending: are we funding isolated projects, or building a coherent system? Arctic infrastructure is exceptionally expensive, but poorly coordinated investments can be more expensive still. A runway, port, power system and communications link become more valuable when they are planned as parts of a longer national strategy.

What Would Nation-Building Look Like?

The most consequential northern projects may not look like traditional military spending at all. Main pointed to Inuit-led proposals involving ports, roads, hydroelectricity and fibre-optic connectivity. These projects could lower energy costs, improve communications, support fisheries and mining, and give Canada a more durable physical presence in the region.

The starting point is unusually stark.

“No connections to southern Canada, no power lines going to southern Canada, no fibre-optic connection to southern Canada, no roads, no railroads.”

Main stressed that several major proposals are being led by Inuit development corporations or other Inuit-controlled interests. That ownership could make a significant difference. Northern development has often generated wealth that flowed south, leaving communities with temporary construction work, environmental risk and little enduring capacity. Local control does not eliminate those risks, but it can give Inuit organizations greater influence over where benefits go and how projects are designed.

There are still legitimate questions. New corridors can disturb wildlife, increase pressure on sensitive environments or build local economies around volatile commodity markets. Main’s response was that Nunavut’s review institutions must impose enforceable conditions on major developments.

“Those conditions are binding. They’re not negotiable. Proponents can’t just take the project certificate and run.”

That is an important qualification. Calling something a nation-building project cannot exempt it from scrutiny. If these investments are meant to strengthen Canada for decades, they also need the confidence of the people who will live with their consequences.

The Arctic Needs More Than an Announcement

The political temptation is to treat the Arctic as an emergency whenever an international threat captures national attention. Money arrives, projects are announced and the focus eventually moves elsewhere. Nunavut, however, cannot build housing, train workers or connect 25 isolated communities through a brief cycle of concern.

Main summarized the problem in one line:

“The Arctic needs more than a moment. We need a long, properly planned-out investment cycle.”

Can Canada defend its own North? Main’s argument is that it can, but only if defence is understood broadly enough. Military readiness matters. So do ports, runways, communications and energy. Yet the credibility of the entire project ultimately depends on whether Inuit communities become safer, healthier and more economically secure.

That does not mean every defence dollar should become a social-program dollar, or that community infrastructure can replace military capability. It means Canada should stop treating the two as unrelated. A secure Arctic requires both an effective national presence and communities capable of sustaining that presence.

Watch or listen to my full conversation with Premier John Main, and let me know: can Canada credibly defend the Arctic without first closing its northern infrastructure gap?

For roughly 25 years, diamond mining has been one of the foundations of the Northwest Territories’ economy. That era is now approaching its end. One mine has shut down, another is in creditor protection and the remaining operation has only a few years left in its planned life. Oil production at Norman Wells, a source of economic activity for more than a century, is also ending.

This is not the territory’s first resource transition. Gold had been a backbone of the northern economy before its decline in the 1990s. Diamonds arrived as residents were asking what could come next, creating mines, jobs and investment for a generation. The danger now is assuming another industry will appear when it is needed.

The territorial government relies on federal transfers for approximately 80 per cent of its revenue, while residents face high living costs, aging infrastructure and housing shortages. Ottawa is promising billions in defence and nation-building projects, but construction spending is not the same thing as a durable private economy.

I asked Premier R.J. Simpson whether earlier governments squandered the runway provided by the diamond industry and what could realistically replace it. His answer centred on a distinction between temporary activity and enabling infrastructure: the North does not simply need another project. It needs the roads, power and regulatory capacity that make many future projects possible.

Why is the diamond era ending?

The operating mines are reaching the end of their natural lives while the global market is changing.

“Lab-grown diamonds are a tenth of the cost of natural diamonds. There have been consumer habit changes in places like China, especially, that have impacted the market.”

Tariffs added another disruption because much of the territory’s production is sent to India for cutting before entering the United States. These pressures accelerated a transition that was always going to arrive.

When I asked whether the Northwest Territories had squandered its opportunity to prepare, Simpson stopped short of accepting that description. He entered the legislature near the tail end of the industry’s strongest period, but said he would have preferred more forward planning.

His strongest example was transportation. The diamond mines have spent approximately $25 million each year building a seasonal winter road, much of it across frozen lakes.

“Imagine if we invested that money in actually building an all-season road up to that area. Even with the mines closed, we would still have an all-season road to a region where it’s one of the most resource-rich areas on the planet.”

That road could have lowered the cost of exploration and made new mines more likely before the existing ones closed. The missed opportunity was not simply failing to identify a replacement commodity. It was failing to build infrastructure that could outlive any single mine.

On the figures Simpson cited, $25 million repeated over 25 years amounts to roughly $625 million in seasonal-road spending. That is not an estimate of a permanent road’s cost: construction, financing, maintenance and terrain complicate the comparison. His point was about the legacy of recurring industrial spending. Converted into lasting public infrastructure, some of it might now support the territory’s next economic chapter.

Is federal spending enough?

The federal government has announced major military investments in Yellowknife and Inuvik, alongside support for northern corridors and hydroelectric development. Those projects arrive at an important moment and could sustain a great deal of employment. Simpson nevertheless drew a firm line between public investment and an industry capable of generating wealth over time.

“That’s still just government employment. That’s government money. And really what we need is an industry.”

Government-funded construction can prevent a sudden collapse, improve essential services and attract workers. But if the activity ends when the facilities are complete, the territory could remain dependent on the next federal announcement.

The scale of the coming work creates its own problem. Simpson said the territory does not have enough people to complete everything already required. A construction boom could produce high employment while increasing reliance on fly-in labour. Its value will depend on whether residents receive training for skilled positions and northern firms grow into larger supply-chain roles.

It must also ensure that northern residents and businesses capture the work. Simpson warned that large southern contractors could arrive with their own labour and equipment, complete the projects and take much of the economic benefit home. The territory already lacks enough workers to meet its current needs, making training, education and local procurement essential to converting investment into lasting capacity.

The proposed Indigenous procurement policy shows how difficult that can be. Simpson said Indigenous governments did not share a single definition of an Indigenous business, so the government will begin by collecting data. The larger question remains: when billions begin to move, who will be ready to participate?

What does “enabling infrastructure” enable?

Simpson’s strategy depends on infrastructure that makes private development less expensive. The Mackenzie Valley Highway would connect the territory’s southern and northern regions, while new power generation could support future mines. Regulatory reforms could reduce unnecessary delay without abandoning treaty-based co-management.

“When it comes to our infrastructure projects, they’re enabling infrastructure. They’re roads, they’re power-generating systems and connections. And so those will enable development in the future.”

An early signal came when Rio Tinto visited the Sahtu region to examine copper deposits shortly after the highway was referred to the federal Major Projects Office. The territory also holds critical minerals used in manufacturing, technology and defence.

“Critical minerals” can sound like a slogan rather than an economic plan. Different governments maintain different lists, but Simpson called them the building blocks of the modern world. They include zinc used to protect steel, tungsten needed for equipment such as icebreakers, and rare earth elements found in advanced electronics. Their value also reflects the risk of relying on a small number of foreign suppliers.

That gives the Northwest Territories a potential advantage, but a deposit is not yet an industry. Exploration must establish what is commercially viable. Developers need transportation, affordable power, regulatory certainty, financing and community support. Simpson’s argument is that government should build the shared conditions under which several projects can compete, rather than betting the territory’s future on one mine before its economics are proven.

The opportunity is substantial, but it is not automatic. A road can attract investment while also increasing pressure on wildlife, land and communities. Simpson argued that development must protect caribou habitat and preserve traditional harvesting. He also defended the territory’s regulatory structure, where boards include appointees from Indigenous, territorial and federal governments.

The economic question is therefore inseparable from consent. Infrastructure may enable development, but communities will still determine whether particular projects should proceed and under what conditions.

Simpson did not dismiss opposition to development. Concerns about caribou habitat and the ability to harvest on the land are legitimate, particularly in communities where cultural and economic life remain closely connected to the environment. At the same time, he argued that a territory with limited own-source revenue must confront the cost of choosing not to develop. Self-determination includes the authority to refuse a project, but it also requires an honest discussion about how housing, health care and other public services will be funded.

Can the North become less dependent?

Simpson was unusually direct about the limits of the current fiscal model.

“I don’t want to be on welfare from the Government of Canada for all time.”

Federal transfers are not unnecessary. Governing 45,000 people across 1.3 million square kilometres involves costs that population alone cannot explain. Simpson’s concern is that the territory lacks the own-source revenue to replace aging infrastructure and expand services.

Resource development is his proposed route toward greater fiscal capacity, but the form of that development matters. He hopes future mines open in a staggered sequence so the economy is not again exposed to several large operations closing at once. He also wants northern workers to acquire skills that remain useful after individual construction projects end.

So, what comes after the diamonds? Simpson is not proposing one direct replacement. His strategy is to use today’s federal investment to build the conditions for tomorrow’s industries: permanent transportation corridors, more reliable power, a workable regulatory system and a northern workforce able to capture the opportunity.

Whether that succeeds will depend on execution. The territory could emerge with a more diverse resource economy and greater financial independence, or it could receive a burst of construction while remaining dependent on federal transfers. The difference will be determined by today’s decisions about procurement, training, infrastructure and the sequence of development. It is a narrow window.

Watch or listen to my full conversation with Premier R.J. Simpson, and let me know: is enabling infrastructure enough to build a lasting northern economy?

Arctic sovereignty is often discussed in the language of military readiness: surveillance systems, aircraft, bases, icebreakers and the ability to respond to foreign threats. Those investments matter, but they can make the North sound like an empty frontier that Canada must secure rather than a place where people already live, work and govern.

Northwest Territories Premier R.J. Simpson offered a broader definition when I spoke with him. The territory is entering a period of significant federal investment in defence, transportation and energy infrastructure, even as many northern communities continue to face overcrowded housing, limited health-care capacity and high living costs.

I wanted to understand whether Canada can strengthen its security without repeating a familiar pattern: southern governments arrive with national priorities, build what they need, extract what they value and leave northern communities with too few lasting benefits. Simpson’s answer was optimistic, but it was also conditional. The real test will not be the size of the announcements. It will be what remains in the North.

What threat is Canada preparing for?

Simpson argued that “Arctic sovereignty” is useful shorthand, but it does not fully describe the objective.

“When we talk about Arctic sovereignty, which is the term that everyone uses, it’s really North American security. It’s the defence of the continent, the defence of Canada.”

That distinction matters. He is not warning that Russian troops are about to land in the Northwest Territories and advance south. In fact, he joked about an old northern saying that if Russians landed on the Arctic coast, Canada might first have to send a search-and-rescue mission. The immediate concern is what could travel over the Arctic, including ballistic missiles, and whether Canada can detect and respond to a threat approaching across its northern boundary.

China presents a different challenge. Simpson pointed to interest in critical minerals and attempts by Chinese companies to acquire property near the airport in Inuvik—examples of how strategic influence can be pursued through ownership and supply chains.

“We really lack infrastructure in the North, in Canada’s North.”

Simpson contrasted that shortage with infrastructure elsewhere in the circumpolar world. The comparison helps explain why he welcomes a larger federal presence. Canada is trying to close gaps that have existed for decades across a territory Simpson described as roughly the size of Alberta and Saskatchewan combined. Distance affects everything from construction costs to emergency response.

The North therefore matters not simply because conflict could occur there, but because the Arctic is the northern entrance to the continent. Canada’s limited infrastructure constrains its ability to monitor that space and respond quickly.

Can sovereignty exist without communities?

The most important distinction in Simpson’s answer was between claiming sovereignty and demonstrating it. A flag on a map establishes a position. It does not necessarily prove that a country has the presence, infrastructure or capacity to make that claim meaningful.

“By having communities that are thriving in a region, I think that’s a clear indicator that, okay, that is Canada. That’s a sovereign part of the country that Canada is making investments in. We can’t just go in there and plant a flag and claim it as our own.”

This reframes northern housing, health care, roads and municipal services as part of Canada’s national security architecture. A community that lacks adequate medical facilities or reliable transportation is not separate from the sovereignty debate. Its vulnerability reveals the limits of Canada’s presence.

Simpson described patients travelling from the High Arctic to Yellowknife and then Edmonton to receive care someone in a southern suburb might reach in 45 minutes. The health system, he said, can barely support the existing population. Any influx of military personnel will require additional capacity.

Housing presents a similar test. Simpson said a federal agreement will support 560 homes, including replacements for social housing that should have been renewed decades ago. That announcement was not framed as defence policy, but it speaks directly to whether families can build stable lives in the North. Military infrastructure may help Canada respond to an emergency; housing and health care determine whether a permanent civilian presence can be sustained between emergencies.

This raises a practical question: if national defence depends on a sustained northern presence, why should civilian infrastructure be treated as an incidental benefit rather than a core requirement?

Will the investment be done with the North?

Simpson said the initial federal defence announcements were not preceded by consultation about how Canada should expand its Arctic military capability. He nevertheless believes the relationship has become more collaborative as the territorial government, Indigenous governments, municipalities and defence officials work through implementation.

The early outreach, as he described it, was fragmented. Different parts of the military and the Department of National Defence were contacting communities, municipalities, Indigenous governments and the territorial government. The Northwest Territories offered to become a coordinating point while preserving direct government-to-government relationships with Indigenous nations. Simpson said that role has been welcomed, but coordination is a process rather than proof that local priorities will control the result.

The outcome is not yet guaranteed.

“No RFPs have gone out, no procurement has been awarded, no jobs have been created. So once that starts happening, then we’ll be able to tell: is this something where the people of the territory are benefiting and our voices are being heard, or not?”

Governments can consult extensively while allowing contracts, skilled work and profits to flow south. Simpson is especially concerned that a national contractor could bring its own workforce north and leave without developing northern capacity.

Military leaders, he said, have acknowledged that earlier projects sometimes created a divide between installations and nearby communities, with little interaction and few local benefits.

“They’ve told me proactively, ‘We don’t want to make the mistakes of the past.’”

The proposed alternative is dual-use infrastructure that serves defence requirements while improving civilian life, including medical equipment, municipal systems and the Mackenzie Valley Highway. Procurement decisions will reveal how firmly that principle is applied.

Dual use changes how a project is assessed. A road may allow the Armed Forces to move personnel and equipment while lowering freight costs and connecting residents to services. An upgraded airport can strengthen surveillance and improve civilian transportation. The strongest projects would treat national security and community development as part of the same obligation.

What would lasting sovereignty look like?

The Mackenzie Valley Highway is central to Simpson’s vision. It would improve military access, reduce living costs in isolated communities and make resource exploration more viable while creating a continuous northern corridor within the territory.

Faster construction cannot come at the expense of northern consent or environmental protection. Simpson emphasized that the territory’s regulatory system incorporates modern treaty commitments and gives Indigenous governments a formal role through co-management boards.

That structure did not appear by accident. Simpson connected it to northern resistance against earlier attempts to push major development forward without adequate Indigenous involvement. Today, boards established under federal legislation include nominees from Indigenous governments as well as territorial and federal representatives. Communities can demand information about environmental impacts and participate directly in assessments. Simpson’s confidence in major-project development rests partly on the belief that this system can slow or stop a project that fails to address legitimate concerns.

The highway itself also has unusual grassroots support. Simpson said people in the Sahtu have pursued it for generations, dating the idea back to the era of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. For fly-in communities, the appeal is not abstract geopolitics. A permanent road could reduce the cost of food and other essentials, create employment and make local business activity more practical. That does not eliminate environmental trade-offs, but it explains why development and Indigenous rights are not necessarily opposing positions in the territory.

He also insisted that development must preserve the ability of residents to remain on the land and harvest in the future. Sovereignty built by weakening the people and cultures already sustaining the North would be a contradiction.

So, what makes Arctic sovereignty real? In Simpson’s account, military capability is necessary, but not sufficient. Canada must be able to see and respond to threats. It must also build communities that people can afford to remain in, infrastructure that serves residents as well as soldiers, and an economy in which northerners do more than watch southern contractors complete northern projects. It also requires decisions made with those closest to the consequences, not only by distant institutions.

That is a more demanding definition of sovereignty because it cannot be satisfied by an announcement or a flag. It will be measured in contracts awarded, local workers trained, homes built, patients served and communities connected.

Watch or listen to my full conversation with Premier R.J. Simpson, and let me know: what would convince you that Canada is truly present in its Arctic?

Few issues expose the complexity of reconciliation more clearly than land.

In British Columbia, questions surrounding Aboriginal title increasingly intersect with a modern province built around municipalities, private ownership, taxation, utilities, zoning and other institutions that most people rarely think about until their certainty is challenged.

That is why I wanted to ask Ellis Ross about the Cowichan decision. Ross has spent years dealing with Indigenous rights, resource development and land questions from several perspectives: First Nations leadership, provincial politics and now Parliament. Rather than treating the decision as a simple victory or defeat, he focused on what could happen if different systems of land ownership and jurisdiction are required to operate alongside one another.

The central question is deceptively simple: can Aboriginal title and fee simple private property meaningfully coexist on the same land? Ross believes they can. But his answer also revealed how complicated that coexistence could become when questions move from legal recognition to actual governance.

What happens after Cowichan?

When I asked Ross whether the Cowichan decision was leading toward reconciliation, his answer began with uncertainty.

“It depends on what happens next.”

For Ross, the first issue is the appeal. He expects the legal process to take years, leaving uncertainty surrounding the affected land while courts determine what ultimately survives.

If the decision is upheld, he sees several possible directions.

One is some kind of jurisdictional framework involving the First Nation and existing governments. Another could eventually involve compensation, whether through land, money or some combination of the two.

Ross did not claim to know which outcome will prevail.

Instead, he emphasized how quickly an abstract discussion about Aboriginal title becomes a practical discussion about governance.

“You’re talking about properties, you’re talking about property taxes, you’re talking about water, sewer, electricity, you’re talking about all kinds of different zoning.”

These are mundane functions until jurisdictions overlap.

Who collects taxes? Who provides sewer service? Which zoning rules apply? Who is liable when infrastructure fails? Which government issues permits?

Those questions are less emotionally powerful than the language of rights and reconciliation, but they may ultimately determine whether overlapping interests can work in practice.

Can two forms of title coexist?

I asked Ross directly whether Aboriginal title and fee simple title can meaningfully coexist on the same parcel.

He said yes.

His example came from his own experience in Kitimat, where his community acquired three pieces of private property and decided to keep them in fee simple status.

“We kept it in fee simple status because business like certainty.”

Rather than attempting to replace existing land regulation, taxation and leasing systems, Ross said the community chose to operate through them.

At the same time, he said that did not mean abandoning the community’s understanding of its underlying rights and title.

“We never gave up our rights and title [to] that land. We never gave it up.”

This is an important distinction in his argument.

Ross is not suggesting Aboriginal title has no meaning when private property exists. He is suggesting that Indigenous governments can sometimes pursue their interests without reconstructing every legal and administrative system already attached to the land.

In Kitimat, he said, the existing processes provided the certainty businesses required while the Nation maintained its own understanding of its connection to the territory.

Whether that model can be applied elsewhere is a different question.

The Cowichan situation may involve legal circumstances, objectives and competing interests that differ significantly from Ross’s example. One First Nation’s approach cannot automatically become another’s.

Still, his experience raises an important possibility: coexistence may depend less on choosing one form of title over another than on constructing workable rules between them.

With jurisdiction comes responsibility

Ross then introduced a complication that is often missing from discussions about Indigenous jurisdiction: liability.

Greater authority can mean greater control. It can also mean assuming responsibilities currently carried by provincial, federal or municipal governments.

“Why do you want this responsibility?”

Ross was not arguing that First Nations are incapable of governing land. His question was about institutional capacity and the consequences of assuming complete control over complicated systems.

He pointed to insurance, court cases, regulatory responsibility and financial liability.

“Something happens in a chunk of land there... it’s your signature on that decision. You’re the one you got to pay for. Are you ready for that?”

That deserves serious consideration.

For generations, Indigenous communities were denied meaningful control over their own lands. It would be deeply problematic to use the consequences of jurisdiction as an argument for continuing that exclusion.

At the same time, meaningful jurisdiction requires more than recognition in principle.

Governments need policies, employees, records, enforcement capacity, technical expertise, financing and institutional continuity. Ross’s argument is that transitioning responsibility should therefore be approached deliberately rather than assuming jurisdiction automatically produces better governance.

He suggested existing provincial and federal systems can sometimes remain useful while Indigenous institutions build greater capacity.

That may frustrate those who believe reconciliation requires a more fundamental transfer of authority. Others may see Ross’s approach as a pragmatic way to reduce uncertainty.

The tension is real.

Where does DRIPA fit?

The argument becomes more complicated when Ross turns to British Columbia’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

He believes DRIPA adds another layer of uncertainty to a legal framework already shaped by decades of Canadian court decisions.

Ross prefers the reconciliation framework developed through cases requiring the Crown to consult and, where appropriate, accommodate Indigenous rights and title when government decisions may affect them.

As he put it:

“We’re not talking about a veto. We’re not talking about one side winning or losing. We’re talking about what is best for society.”

Ross argues that this framework tries to reconcile Indigenous interests with the Crown’s responsibilities to the wider public.

He worries that adding new interpretations derived from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples could make the relationship less predictable, particularly when governments, First Nations and private landowners are still determining what the legislation requires in practice.

There are strong competing arguments here.

Supporters of DRIPA would argue that existing Canadian systems have historically failed Indigenous peoples and that deeper recognition of Indigenous jurisdiction is precisely the point. From that perspective, uncertainty may be an unavoidable part of correcting a legal relationship that was itself built on unresolved Indigenous title.

Ross sees a different risk: replacing a framework developed through Canadian courts with one whose practical limits remain uncertain.

The Cowichan litigation may become one of the places where those competing understandings collide.

So can they coexist?

Ross’s answer is ultimately yes, but not automatically.

Aboriginal title and private property can coexist, in his view, where governments and First Nations develop practical arrangements around taxation, regulation, services, liability and decision-making.

The harder question is what happens when those interests cannot be reconciled so easily.

The courts may eventually provide greater clarity. Governments may negotiate compensation. First Nations may develop new jurisdictional structures. Private landowners may seek additional protections. DRIPA may influence future policy in ways that are not yet clear.

For now, uncertainty is itself part of the story.

What I took from Ross’s answer was not that Aboriginal title should override private property, or that private property should override Aboriginal title. His argument was that recognition is only the beginning. Eventually somebody has to determine how land is actually governed.

That is where the Cowichan decision becomes larger than a single case.

Can Aboriginal title and private property coexist? Ross believes they can. The unresolved question is what legal and political framework will make that coexistence stable enough for Indigenous nations, private owners and governments to know where they stand.

Watch or listen to my full conversation with Ellis Ross and let me know what you think: what would meaningful coexistence between Aboriginal title and private property actually require?

The debate surrounding the Kamloops 215 has become one of the most difficult conversations in Canada.

For some, questioning the original claims surrounding suspected unmarked graves risks minimizing the documented history of Indian Residential Schools. For others, refusing to distinguish between what has been confirmed and what remains unverified undermines public trust and makes reconciliation more difficult.

I wanted to understand how Ellis Ross approaches that tension. Ross is a former Chief Councillor of the Haisla Nation, a former B.C. MLA and now a Member of Parliament. Both of his parents attended residential schools, and throughout our conversation he repeatedly returned to the importance of truth, evidence and reconciliation.

Ross’s argument is not that the history of residential schools should be dismissed. In fact, he makes the opposite point: determining what is true about the specific claims in Kamloops does not erase everything else we know about Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples.

His position is that the uncertainty should ultimately be resolved through evidence.

What does truth require?

Earlier in our conversation, I asked Ross about the broader controversy surrounding people who challenge claims related to residential schools.

His starting point was straightforward.

“For the truth, you’ve got to talk the truth. You speak the truth. You got to know the truth. And for that, you need facts.”

That sounds simple. In practice, it has become extraordinarily complicated.

In the interview, I raised the Kamloops story specifically and the debate over whether the suspected burial sites should eventually be excavated and verified. Ross described the issue as a “flashpoint” that changed the national conversation around reconciliation.

What interested him initially was the possibility that the discovery could become a moment where Canadians confronted the past together.

“This is a great chance for Canada [to] face its past on facts and evidence.”

His preferred approach was direct: determine whether human remains are present, identify them where possible, compare findings with historical records and return any identified remains to their communities for proper burial.

Ross imagined that process as something much larger than an investigation.

He saw the possibility of governments, Indigenous communities and Canadians participating in a national act of recognition and repatriation.

“You dig up the remains, you cross-reference it with records and then bring those remains back to the Native communities for a proper burial. That would have been a huge moment in Canadian history.”

The key phrase, however, is if remains are found.

For Ross, that uncertainty should not be treated as incidental. It is the question that has to be resolved.

Does questioning the claim make someone a denier?

This is where the conversation becomes much more contentious.

Ross argues that asking whether the suspected sites contain human remains is different from denying the history of residential schools.

“Can we clarify whether or not these are human remains or not? And I think that’s the fundamental question that’s getting muddied now because as soon as you question it, you’re turned into a residential school denier.”

That distinction matters.

There is an enormous difference between arguing that residential schools did not cause tremendous harm and asking what evidence supports a particular claim about a particular site.

In our conversation, I told Ross that this distinction has bothered me as well. Establishing that one claim requires additional evidence does not necessarily undermine the broader historical record.

Ross made essentially the same point.

He said that even if excavation eventually failed to confirm what many Canadians initially believed, the history would remain.

“Let’s say you don’t find anything and it’s not confirmed. That doesn’t make the issue of residential schools go away. That doesn’t make the treatment of Aboriginal people in Canada over the last 150 years go away.”

That may be the most important distinction in his argument.

Two propositions can exist simultaneously: Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples, including through residential schools, can represent a profoundly dark period in our history, while individual claims connected to that history can still be subjected to questions and evidentiary standards.

Ross believes collapsing those two things together has made the conversation unnecessarily divisive.

Should residential school denialism be criminalized?

The controversy becomes even more difficult when the discussion shifts from public disagreement to criminal law.

I asked Ross directly whether he opposed criminalizing what is often described as Indian Residential School denialism.

He did.

“I’m against anything that actually restricts the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of expression.”

Ross’s perspective is partly shaped by Indigenous history itself.

He pointed out that previous generations of First Nations people lived under laws that restricted fundamental freedoms. Indigenous people were denied rights that Canadians now take for granted, while ceremonies such as the potlatch were prohibited and Indigenous communities faced restrictions on their ability to organize politically and pursue legal claims.

That experience makes Ross deeply skeptical about giving governments greater power over speech.

“One of the reasons why I believe so much in freedoms is because First Nations never had it.”

His argument is not that offensive speech should be celebrated.

He repeatedly emphasized tolerance — the ability to hear opinions that may be unpleasant, wrong or offensive without immediately demanding that the state prohibit them.

For Ross, the threshold for criminalizing speech should therefore be extraordinarily high.

That leaves a difficult question.

There are Canadians who believe false claims about residential schools can cause genuine harm, particularly to survivors and Indigenous families. Others worry that vaguely defined denialism laws could capture legitimate disagreement about evidence, including disputes about Kamloops itself.

Ross comes down firmly on the side of protecting the debate.

What should happen now?

Ross’s preferred solution is remarkably concrete.

Excavate.

Verify.

Identify any remains that are found.

Repatriate them where possible.

And then allow the evidence to shape the next stage of the conversation.

“Take the politics out of it and let’s go after truth with facts, and then we can start talking really about reconciliation.”

Whether excavation ultimately happens is not Ross’s decision. There are questions of community authority, cultural practice, legal jurisdiction and the wishes of families that cannot simply be brushed aside.

But his argument raises a legitimate dilemma.

The Kamloops story became a major national event. If the underlying question remains unresolved indefinitely, Canadians will continue filling that uncertainty with competing political narratives.

Those convinced the sites contain unmarked graves may treat further questions as denialism.

Those convinced the original reporting went too far may treat the absence of excavation as evidence that something is being hidden.

Neither response actually settles the factual question.

Ross believes evidence can.

Returning to the question posed in the title, what should happen with the Kamloops 215?

Ross’s answer is that Canada should seek verification without pretending that the outcome determines the entire history of residential schools.

If human remains are confirmed, he believes they should be identified where possible, returned to their communities and honoured properly.

If they are not confirmed, that finding should also be confronted openly.

Either outcome would change the context of the conversation. Neither would erase Canada’s past.

The more difficult question is whether Canadians can create enough space between historical truth and disputed claims to investigate one without appearing to deny the other.

Watch or listen to my full conversation with Ellis Ross and let me know what you think: should excavation and verification be the next step in resolving the controversy surrounding the Kamloops 215?

British Columbia is not going to receive a bankruptcy notice in the mail. A province does not go broke in the same way as a household or small business. It can borrow, raise taxes and continue rolling debt forward in ways that an individual cannot.

That distinction should not make the province’s fiscal position feel less serious. British Columbia is projecting deficits measured in the tens of billions of dollars, taxpayer-supported debt is rising rapidly, and the cost of servicing that debt will consume money that could otherwise support health care, housing, education or tax relief.

I wanted to ask Rob Shaw whether the language of a fiscal crisis was exaggerated. Shaw has covered provincial budgets through recessions, political transitions and periods of austerity. His answer was unusually direct: the province may not literally become insolvent, but its finances are in worse condition than at any point he has covered.

What does “going broke” actually mean?

When I asked whether British Columbia was going broke, Shaw replied:

“Yes. It’s hard to get around that.”

He immediately qualified the point. The province will not suddenly become unable to pay every bill. Governments have access to taxation and borrowing powers that households do not. But the practical consequences of deteriorating finances are real.

Credit-rating downgrades make borrowing more expensive. Higher interest costs reduce the revenue available for programs. New borrowing then compounds the problem, particularly when deficits are caused not by a temporary emergency but by an ongoing mismatch between revenue and spending.

Shaw described that mismatch plainly:

“It’s stuck in what we call a structural deficit where its spending has outpaced its revenue.”

A temporary deficit can be justified during a recession, natural disaster or public health emergency. A structural deficit is different. It means the government’s normal commitments cost more than the revenue it normally collects. Unless revenue rises substantially, the government must eventually increase taxes, reduce spending or accept continuing debt accumulation.

How serious is the fiscal picture?

Shaw has covered British Columbia politics for more than twenty years, including the global financial crisis and the deficits that followed. Even against that experience, he described the current outlook in stark terms.

“It’s the bleakest financial picture I’ve seen.”

The government argues that investments in infrastructure, housing, health care and economic development can strengthen the province over time. There is a legitimate case for borrowing to build assets that will serve future generations. A hospital, school or electrical project can produce value long after its original cost is incurred.

The complication is that not all borrowing is capital investment. When operating spending consistently exceeds revenue, debt is being used to sustain the current level of services and compensation. That is harder to defend as an investment in the future.

Shaw also noted that proposed economic gains from mining, liquefied natural gas and other major projects may take years to materialize. Those projects could improve the fiscal position, but they do not eliminate the immediate gap.

“I don’t know how this government gets out of it.”

Shaw was not claiming there is no solution. He was emphasizing that every available solution carries political costs. Raise taxes during an affordability crisis and households or businesses may feel further squeezed. Cut spending and services may deteriorate. Delay action and the eventual correction becomes more severe.

Who should pay?

The debate becomes more complicated when the conversation turns from the size of the deficit to who should bear the cost of fixing it.

One option is to raise taxes on high-income earners or wealthy households. That approach is popular with voters who believe the gains of recent decades have been distributed unfairly. Critics respond that higher taxes can reduce investment, discourage entrepreneurship or drive mobile capital elsewhere.

But Shaw identified a deeper conflict that extends beyond billionaires. Many older British Columbians bought homes when prices were far lower, paid down their mortgages and accumulated substantial wealth through real estate. They may be asset-rich while still viewing themselves as ordinary middle-class retirees.

Younger people face a different market. They may earn strong incomes and still be unable to purchase a modest home near their work. They are also being asked to finance public services for an aging population while carrying the future burden of today’s debt.

“I feel like that is the fight of our time that’s about to happen.”

This is not simply a dispute between rich and poor. It is a conflict over whether accumulated housing wealth should be taxed more heavily, whether inheritances should carry greater obligations and whether governments should transfer more support toward people who entered the economy later.

The politics will be difficult because few people see themselves as the appropriate target.

“People don’t consider themselves the problem.”

A family with a second property may see it as retirement security rather than speculation. A homeowner benefiting from rapid appreciation may feel they simply made a responsible decision. A young renter may see the same situation as evidence that public policy protected one generation at the expense of another.

What happens next?

Shaw’s warning was not directed only at the current NDP government. Whoever governs next will inherit the same arithmetic.

“It’s a bad hand to whoever inherits this next.”

A Conservative government promising lower taxes and fiscal discipline would still need to identify what it would cut, how quickly it would reduce the deficit and how it would protect essential services. Another NDP government would need to explain whether it intends to raise revenue, restrain spending or continue borrowing in the expectation that future growth will close the gap.

The risk is that both sides avoid the difficult choices until an election is near. Governments can produce optimistic forecasts, delay major decisions and rely on temporary revenue improvements. But a structural deficit cannot be solved permanently through presentation.

So, is British Columbia going broke?

Not in the literal sense. The province will continue collecting taxes, borrowing money and delivering services. But Shaw’s argument is that this should not reassure us. The fiscal problem is already narrowing future choices, raising borrowing costs and transferring obligations to people who had no role in creating them.

What remains uncertain is which combination of taxes, spending restraint and economic growth British Columbians will accept—and which generation will be asked to sacrifice most.

Watch or listen to the full interview with Rob Shaw, and consider the question: what would a fair plan to repair British Columbia’s finances actually look like?

The CBC is not simply another media company competing for subscriptions and advertising. It is a publicly funded national institution with a mandate to inform Canadians across an enormous and diverse country.

Tara Henley does not fit neatly into either camp in the debate over its future. She joined the CBC in 2013, worked across roughly a dozen current-affairs radio programs and left at the end of 2021 after breaking her contract a year early. Since then, she has become one of its more persistent critics while remaining supportive of public broadcasting itself.

“I support the CBC, I support a fully funded CBC, and I would like to see them live up to their mandate to serve all Canadians,” she told me.

I wanted to understand the tension in that position. If the CBC remains valuable, why has it lost the confidence of so many Canadians? And if its problems are widely recognized, why has the institution shown so little visible change?

Is the CBC Government Propaganda?

One of the strongest accusations directed at the CBC is that it has become an arm of the Liberal government. Critics argue that CBC journalists repeat Liberal assumptions, scrutinize Conservatives more aggressively and avoid attacking the government that protects the broadcaster’s funding.

Henley was careful not to endorse that claim.

She said she never experienced direct government interference during her years at the CBC. In producing roles, she often had more editorial authority than outsiders might expect, and no government official instructed her to shape coverage.

Her explanation was more subtle.

“What I encounter instead is groupthink, an echo chamber. People all having very similar views and very similar talking points to this sort of establishment view in the country.”

A newsroom does not need to receive orders from a political party to produce coverage that sounds politically uniform. Journalists may independently reach similar conclusions because they share the same education, professional culture, social networks and assumptions about which viewpoints are respectable.

Whose Perspectives Are Missing?

Henley’s central criticism is not that the CBC employs Liberal operatives. It is that the institution does not adequately reflect the country it is supposed to serve.

“The biggest thing with the CBC is that they do not reflect the range of views across the country,” she said.

She described the broader press corps as highly educated, secular, urban and mostly progressive. CBC newsrooms are also concentrated in Toronto and Montreal, with a smaller centre of gravity in Vancouver. That can leave journalists disconnected from religious Canadians, rural communities, working-class voters and moderate conservatives.

“We are very secular, we are very urban, we are highly educated. We are mostly progressive politically.”

Henley pointed to a Senate report that, in her account, concluded the CBC was failing to represent the full range of Canadian opinion, particularly moderate conservative perspectives. It recommended regular outside review of whether the broadcaster was meeting that responsibility.

A public broadcaster cannot turn every story into a mechanical debate between left and right. Some claims are better supported than others, and editorial judgment is unavoidable. But if the same kinds of people repeatedly decide which questions are legitimate, the range of acceptable debate can narrow without anyone formally choosing to narrow it.

What I was trying to clarify was whether viewpoint diversity is mainly about hiring conservatives. Henley’s answer suggested something broader: newsrooms need people with different life experiences who are willing to question the prevailing consensus.

Why Hasn’t the CBC Changed?

The CBC has faced years of criticism over declining trust, political bias and executive compensation. Yet Henley sees little evidence of a major institutional pivot.

“The incentive structure works against it, for sure,” she said.

A private outlet that loses its audience eventually loses revenue. The CBC is partially protected from that pressure by public funding. That protection can preserve valuable local and regional reporting. It can also weaken the consequences of failing to serve large parts of the public.

Size is another obstacle. Henley emphasized that the CBC is not one unified newsroom but a collection of programs, departments and regional operations.

“It’s really hard to turn a ship around when it’s that big and that bureaucratic,” she said.

Henley credited the CBC for investing more in local news and said its newer leadership has at least signalled greater interest in reflecting different viewpoints, although she has not yet seen substantial action.

What Would Accountability Look Like?

Henley does not argue that the CBC should become a conservative broadcaster. Her proposed standard is more demanding: revisit major coverage, identify where the reporting failed and explain what will change.

She pointed to the trucker convoy as one example. The CBC’s coverage frequently emphasized extremism, foreign funding and violence. Henley argued that those broad characterizations have not held up and should be reviewed. That would not require denying that the protest was disruptive or that some participants behaved badly. It would require separating those facts from claims that went further than the evidence.

The same principle applies to pandemic policy and reporting surrounding alleged graves at former residential schools. An institution asking Canadians to trust it should be capable of examining not only individual errors but also the larger narrative created by its coverage.

“They could revisit their coverage and they could decide to take a transparent look about how well they served the country during those really explosive moments.”

Why, then, has the CBC lost trust? Henley’s answer is not that it became a government propaganda operation. It is that a culturally narrow and highly centralized institution became less capable of recognizing its own assumptions. Public funding softened the pressure to respond, while bureaucracy made reform slower.

The unresolved question is whether the CBC can correct those weaknesses without abandoning the public-service role Henley still values. A national broadcaster can help create a shared set of facts, support local reporting and connect distant regions. But that role only works when Canadians believe the institution is curious about their experiences rather than suspicious of them.

Watch or listen to the full interview with Tara Henley, and let me know: can the CBC regain trust through greater viewpoint diversity and public accountability, or are its problems now too deeply embedded?

Trust in journalism is not an abstract concern. Democracies depend on citizens having access to reliable information, especially when governments are making decisions about health, civil liberties, national unity and reconciliation. When people no longer believe the press is giving them a fair account of events, they retreat into competing information systems, each with its own facts and suspicions.

That is why I wanted to speak with Tara Henley about her new book, The Trust Spiral: Why the Media Needs Objectivity. Henley has worked in Canadian journalism for 25 years, including nearly a decade at the CBC, and now hosts the independent Lean Out podcast. She has experienced both legacy and independent media from the inside.

The central question was not whether every criticism of the press is justified. It was whether journalists have been too quick to blame social media, hostile politicians and misinformation while avoiding a harder examination of their own decisions.

Buy The Trust Spiral

What Broke the Trust?

Henley begins with the scale of the problem: “We are seeing plummeting trust across the Western world in the media.”

News leaders often point to forces outside the newsroom. Social platforms reward outrage. Political figures attack reporters. False claims spread rapidly online. Henley accepts that these pressures matter, but argues they are incomplete.

“We need to look at what we in the media have done, especially in the last ten years, that has got us lower trust,” she told me.

Her account begins around Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign. Many journalists concluded that an extraordinary candidate required extraordinary measures. Traditional practices appeared inadequate for a figure who antagonized the press, made outlandish claims and benefited from enormous media attention.

The problem, in Henley’s view, was that temporary exceptions became a broader change in journalistic culture.

“Guardrails exist for a reason. And once you take them down, you can’t contain that.”

She argues that a more activist approach then spread to other major stories, including the racial reckoning, the MeToo movement and the pandemic. The concern is not that journalists should be indifferent to injustice. It is that when reporting becomes organized around a desired social outcome, facts that complicate the preferred narrative may receive less attention.

For Henley, the public’s objection is ultimately straightforward: “I think the problem that the public has most with us is our lack of accuracy.”

Objectivity Was Never the Absence of Bias

The word “objectivity” creates resistance because it can sound like a claim that journalists have no values or political preferences. Henley is making a different argument.

She traces objectivity to the development of journalism as a set of practices intended to limit personal bias. Verification, evidence, multiple sources, fair representation of competing claims and a willingness to correct the record were never supposed to make journalists perfectly neutral. They were meant to make their work more reliable.

The distinction in her answer was important. Objectivity is not a personality trait. It is a discipline.

Henley connected this history to the penny press, when newspapers moved away from acting openly as propaganda arms for political parties and toward subscription and advertising models. The resulting standards were partly a response to earlier reporting failures, political manipulation and public suspicion.

Critics of objectivity argue that traditional conventions can disguise power and privilege. Henley’s response is that removing those conventions has produced a less restrained press without creating a more trustworthy one. Her standard is not whether a story advances the correct cause. It is whether the reporting can withstand scrutiny after the political temperature falls.

How Did the Profession Become Narrower?

Henley’s argument becomes more complicated when she turns to economics.

The collapse of the traditional news business model has eliminated local jobs, centralized newsrooms and made journalism increasingly precarious. At the same time, entering the profession often requires expensive education, poorly paid internships and the ability to live in high-cost cities.

“This is now, strangely, paradoxically, an elite profession,” she said.

The result is a press corps that may be diverse in some visible ways but increasingly similar in education, geography, class and political outlook. Henley described journalists as disproportionately urban, secular, highly educated and progressive. That does not mean they coordinate their coverage or consciously promote a political party. It means they may share assumptions without recognizing them as assumptions.

I wanted to understand whether the trust crisis was primarily ideological or economic. Henley’s answer was that the two are connected. A weakened industry has fewer reporters on the ground, less mentorship and less tolerance for internal dissent. Under those conditions, errors become more likely and challenges to newsroom consensus become more costly.

Can Journalism Admit When It Was Wrong?

The strongest test of any institution is what it does after a failure.

Henley pointed to several stories she believes deserve serious review: school closures, vaccine mandates, the trucker convoy and reporting on alleged graves at former residential schools. Her argument was not that every original concern was illegitimate. It was that the media should revisit what was known, which claims were supported, which were overstated and what consequences followed.

“We need to start having some mea culpas,” she said.

That does not require replacing one sweeping narrative with another. The documented abuse of residential schools can be acknowledged while specific claims still require evidence. The disruption caused by the convoy can be recognized while the press re-examines claims about violence, extremism and foreign funding. Public-health decisions can be judged in the context of uncertainty while still asking whether dissenting evidence was dismissed too quickly.

“How do we get to more accurate information? That’s my central concern.”

So why is trust in media spiralling downward? Henley’s answer is that the press weakened its own standards while its economic foundations were deteriorating. Too many journalists became socially isolated from the people they covered, too many institutions treated criticism as hostility, and too few major outlets publicly examined stories that went wrong.

Rebuilding trust would require better business models, broader newsroom cultures, stronger reporting practices and visible accountability. It would also require the public to accept that responsible journalism will sometimes produce answers it dislikes.

Watch or listen to the full interview with Tara Henley, and let me know: is the collapse in media trust mainly the result of outside attacks, or did journalism bring much of it on itself?

British Columbia is entering a difficult political period. The provincial government faces record financial pressure, public frustration across major policy files, and the point where it can no longer blame its predecessors for the problems it faces.

That does not mean David Eby’s government is finished. But the central question is becoming harder to avoid: is this a temporary decline, or has the government begun to lose the confidence of British Columbians?

I wanted to examine that question with Rob Shaw, a journalist who has covered the B.C. legislature for more than two decades. Shaw has watched governments rise, become comfortable, lose focus and confront voters who are ready for something different. His answer was not that the NDP has already failed. It was that the government may be approaching the edge.

Is the government losing its purpose?

When I asked whether Eby’s government was failing, Shaw did not offer a comfortable answer.

“It’s close. It’s close. I think it’s on the edge.”

His assessment was not based on a single controversy. He pointed to a combination of political age, fiscal pressure and uncertainty about what the government is now trying to accomplish.

“It’s a government in challenge, enormous fiscal challenge. It’s a drift on policy. No one really understands what its agenda is anymore.”

That distinction matters. A government can survive an unpopular policy if voters still understand its larger purpose. The more serious problem emerges when the public no longer knows what the government stands for.

The NDP entered office with clear commitments: eliminate bridge tolls, expand child care and use government more actively to improve affordability and public services. Shaw argued that its current message is increasingly defensive. Instead of offering a renewed vision, the party often warns voters that the alternative is worse.

He described that as a sign a government may be “running out of oxygen.” Fear can be an effective electoral strategy, but it is different from persuading people that another term would produce meaningful progress.

When does responsiveness become drift?

One tension in Eby’s leadership is that he has shown a willingness to reverse course. Shaw credited both Eby and former premier John Horgan for responding when public opinion turned against major initiatives.

The government retreated from its original approach to drug decriminalization. It changed direction on the consumer carbon tax, electric vehicle mandates and other climate policies. It also reconsidered its approach to amendments connected to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

Political leaders should listen when policies are not working. Refusing to change can become arrogance. But constant reversal creates a different problem.

“You can only do it so many times before then people question what you stand for as well.”

What I was trying to clarify was whether these reversals demonstrate pragmatism or reveal that major policies were introduced without sufficient evidence, consultation or public support. Shaw’s answer was that both can be true. Reversing a mistake may be responsible, but it does not erase the original decision.

The drug policy debate illustrates the problem. Shaw said the government introduced significant changes without the measurements and studies needed to explain their effects. Even as toxic drug deaths began to decline, he said the province could not adequately explain why.

The absence of evidence makes accountability more difficult. Supporters and critics can attribute the same outcome to competing causes, while the public is left without a reliable way to judge either claim.

Has reconciliation become a trust problem?

The sharpest portion of our discussion concerned the government’s approach to Indigenous reconciliation and DRIPA.

The legal and moral obligations facing British Columbia do not disappear because a policy becomes unpopular. Aboriginal rights and title are constitutionally protected, court decisions continue to shape provincial responsibilities, and repealing one statute would not remove those realities.

At the same time, Shaw argued that the NDP repeatedly failed to bring the broader public into the discussion. He pointed to controversies involving proposed Land Act amendments, the Heritage Conservation Act, the Haida Gwaii agreement and other decisions that many British Columbians felt were presented too late for meaningful input.

“There’s a series of things that the government did that failed to bring the public along and contributed to the sense of public distrust that now has reached a critical mass on DRIPA.”

This raised a more difficult question for me as an Indigenous leader. When governments fail to explain reconciliation policies, Indigenous people can become the target of anger created by the government’s own process. The public may come to believe Indigenous organizations are controlling decisions behind closed doors, even when the province designed the process and retained the authority to act.

Shaw placed responsibility for that distrust directly on the government. His argument was not that reconciliation should stop. It was that durable change requires public understanding, credible consultation and a framework capable of earning both Indigenous and non-Indigenous support.

The opposition faces the same challenge. It may promise to repeal DRIPA, but Shaw argued that repeal alone is not a governing plan. The underlying legal obligations would remain. The harder question is what replaces it.

“No one has presented anything that is credible that I’ve seen.”

Can Eby recover?

Shaw believes the premier still has time, but not much.

He argued that Eby must stabilize his approval, resolve the uncertainty surrounding DRIPA, develop a clearer agenda and make a persuasive case against the Conservatives. If he cannot, pressure inside the NDP may grow for a leadership change before the next election.

“His window is shrinking to fix things, I guess is how I would put it.”

Yet Shaw was careful not to treat political decline as inevitable. Elections are comparisons, not referendums on perfection. An unpopular government can survive when voters do not trust the alternative. Unexpected events can also transform the political landscape.

That is why the answer to the title question remains unsettled. Eby’s government is struggling. It appears less certain of its purpose, more burdened by its record and increasingly dependent on warnings about its opponents. But struggling is not the same as finished.

The test is whether the government can explain what it wants to accomplish next—and whether British Columbians still believe it deserves the opportunity.

Shaw ended our conversation with a broader reminder:

“Don’t give up hope.”

Watch or listen to the full interview, and consider the central question for yourself: is David Eby’s government failing, or does it still have time to recover?

Former NDP MP Kennedy Stewart believes Avi Lewis has inherited a recognizable and valuable political brand—but unless he professionalizes the party and reconnects it with the economic concerns of working families, the NDP’s decline may continue.

Kennedy Stewart does not speak about the federal NDP as an outside observer. He served seven years as an NDP member of Parliament, was recruited by Jack Layton and later worked on a transition plan when Jagmeet Singh became leader.

His assessment of the party’s condition is therefore unusually direct: the NDP has lost touch with too many of the people it was created to represent.

Stewart remembers joining a caucus with 103 MPs after the Orange Wave under Layton. Today, he sees a diminished party that has struggled to persuade Canadians it understands their most immediate concerns.

The lesson, he argues, is visible in the election results.

“If people aren’t coming into your store, you can’t blame them,” Stewart said. “You have to blame yourself for it.”

Avi Lewis Has His Work Cut Out

Asked what he thinks of Avi Lewis, Stewart began with a blunt assessment: “He’s got his work cut out for him.”

Stewart supported Jagmeet Singh’s leadership and helped develop a transition plan that examined the party’s structure, finances and internal operations. According to Stewart, much of that work was abandoned, while the party continued to decline.

“The NDP just didn’t embrace professional kind of management, accounting, that type of thing,” he said. “I really think Avi Lewis’s main challenge will be to professionalize the NDP.”

This is an important criticism because it is not primarily ideological. Stewart is not saying the NDP’s foundational values are obsolete. He believes the party still possesses a strong and recognizable identity.

Canadians understand that the NDP is supposed to stand up for people with less power. The party has historically defended workers, low-income families and marginalized communities, often taking positions long before they became widely accepted.

That legacy still has meaning. But a political brand cannot survive on moral intention alone. It must be organized well enough to raise money, recruit credible candidates, communicate clearly and translate its principles into proposals voters believe will improve their lives.

The Layton Standard

Jack Layton understood that politics had to reach people emotionally and materially. He could speak about inequality and social justice while making voters feel that the NDP was focused on their jobs, families and communities.

Stewart’s own connection to the party began with Layton. His childhood family had fallen from a comfortable life into rural poverty after his father lost his job. The family went bankrupt, lost its home and moved into an unfinished hunting cabin in Nova Scotia.

After arriving in Vancouver, Stewart sometimes shared a one-bedroom apartment with four other people. His political outlook grew from that experience and from his belief that government programs—health care, employment insurance and student loans—had helped him rebuild his life.

“The party for me—I was recruited by Jack Layton—and then trying to have a social conscience and give it a bigger voice in Parliament is what has driven everything I do,” Stewart explained.

Layton’s success was not simply that he was likable. He connected progressive values to the practical challenges facing ordinary people. Voters did not have to agree with the NDP on every issue to understand whose side Layton believed he was on.

Stewart thinks Avi Lewis must rediscover that connection.

“The challenge for Avi Lewis is: can he pivot to a point where Canadians are nodding their head and saying, ‘That’s going to be good for me. That’s going to help my family’?” Stewart said. “That’s what the NDP used to do. Layton certainly did it.”

More Than Saying No

Stewart’s criticism extends to the substance of the NDP’s agenda. A party seeking to govern cannot merely oppose pipelines, projects, corporations or decisions made by Liberals and Conservatives. It must offer a credible vision of what it would build.

“It can’t just be no all the time,” he said. “There has to be yes.”

That principle shapes Stewart’s own complicated position on energy. Although he was arrested while opposing the Trans Mountain expansion, he says he was never categorically against pipelines. His objection was to exporting Canadian resources without capturing enough domestic value.

He wants Canada to think more seriously about energy security, refining and industrial employment. Instead of shipping raw oil to the United States and purchasing refined products back, he argues that Canada should ask whether more processing can occur here.

This is where Stewart believes the NDP has an opportunity. It can support climate action while also talking about jobs, domestic production, affordability and economic security. But climate policy cannot become so dominant that every other concern disappears behind it.

When Canadians are struggling with housing costs, groceries and economic insecurity, they need to hear how a party’s agenda will improve their daily lives. Values matter, but those values must be translated into tangible results.

A Party for the Little Guy

Stewart believes the NDP’s greatest asset is that Canadians still know what it is supposed to represent.

“I think Canadians know what the NDP is,” he said. “I think they know that it’s a party that stands up for the little guy and is willing to take on very tough challenges, unpopular positions.”

Its problem is that voters have become less certain that the party can deliver economic security. The NDP may speak powerfully about injustice while failing to answer the immediate question many families are asking: How will this help us afford our lives?

Avi Lewis therefore inherits two interconnected challenges. He must rebuild the party as a professional national organization, and he must restore its economic credibility without abandoning its social conscience.

Jack Layton showed that those objectives are not incompatible. He expanded the party by making people feel seen rather than lectured. He offered an optimistic political project rooted in the concerns of working Canadians.

The NDP does not need to abandon its identity. It needs to make that identity useful again.

That is the test Stewart has set for Avi Lewis: can he move the party from protest to possibility, from telling Canadians what it opposes to showing them what it is prepared to build?

Former Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart believes the Chinese government tried to influence the 2022 municipal election against him. His warning goes beyond his own defeat: Canada’s nomination contests may offer foreign governments an even easier route into the political system.

When Kennedy Stewart was preparing to seek re-election as mayor of Vancouver in 2022, two CSIS officials arrived at his office for an unexpected meeting.

Stewart recalled that one of the officials specialized in China. They explained how foreign interference could operate during elections, questioned Stewart and his chief of staff about what they were observing, and reviewed publicly reported activity connected to the campaign.

“They came to brief me in my office, to basically say there’s foreign interference in your election,” Stewart told me during our conversation on Nuanced.

At the time, Stewart says he did not know what to do with the information. The intelligence officials left, he looked at his chief of staff, and the campaign continued. There was no obvious mechanism available to a municipal candidate who had been warned that a foreign government might be taking an interest in the race.

Only after the election, Stewart said, did the picture become clearer.

What Stewart Says Happened

According to Stewart, journalists from The Globe and Mail later met with him and discussed information reportedly originating from intercepted communications involving the Chinese consulate in Vancouver. Stewart said he was told those communications pointed to an effort to remove him from office and support his opponent, Ken Sim.

Stewart believes his public support for Taiwan was one reason he was viewed unfavourably by Beijing-linked actors. He also recalled messaging aimed at Chinese-speaking voters that portrayed him negatively and warned against supporting him.

Asked directly whether the Chinese government tried to remove him as mayor, Stewart answered yes—but added an important qualification.

“I think, if you piece it together, it was at least somewhat coordinated by the consulate out here,” he said. “But in the end, Vancouver voters decided that election.”

That distinction matters. Stewart is not arguing that foreign interference erased the agency of Vancouver voters or single-handedly determined the outcome. He received roughly the same number of votes as he had in the previous election, but a changed field of candidates altered how the vote divided.

He also faced several domestic political challenges. Vancouver’s police union endorsed Sim and campaigned against Stewart after years of tension over policing and systemic racism. Stewart carried the political burden of governing through COVID-19, including business closures, emergency measures and public anger. His administration had accumulated opponents long before election day.

His position is that suspected Chinese government activity formed one part of a much larger political environment—but it was a part Canada should not dismiss.

The Weakest Link

Stewart’s broader warning is that foreign influence does not need to change the result of a general election to reshape Canadian politics. It may be easier to intervene much earlier, when parties select their candidates.

Nomination contests are often low-turnout events governed largely by political parties themselves. A relatively small number of newly registered members can determine who becomes a candidate. In a safe riding, winning the nomination may be nearly equivalent to winning a seat in Parliament.

Stewart described a hypothetical process in which an outside actor signs up members, helps a candidate win and then returns to collect a favour.

“You win, and then they come back and say, ‘Well, you owe us,’” he explained. That favour might involve hiring a particular person into the candidate’s political office, where they could gain access to internal communications and privileged information.

For Stewart, this is not a minor procedural concern.

“It is the weakest part of our political system—the nomination process—and it’s the most vulnerable part,” he said.

Political parties present nominations as exercises in grassroots democracy, but the rules are inconsistent and the oversight is limited. Parties control membership lists, eligibility decisions and the internal review of disputes. Candidates can be disqualified, approved or parachuted into ridings with little transparency.

Stewart has personal experience with the darker side of nominations. When he won the federal NDP nomination in Burnaby—Douglas in 2011, members of the local riding executive resigned because they had supported another candidate. He later learned that the riding president had been involved in unrelated criminal fraud.

That experience reinforced his belief that political parties should not be trusted to regulate every aspect of their own candidate-selection processes.

Democracy Before Election Day

Most public discussion about foreign interference focuses on campaign donations, misinformation, covert advertising or efforts to shift votes during an election. Those threats are real, but they may overlook where political power is first assembled.

A foreign government does not need to persuade millions of Canadians. It may only need to influence a few hundred members in a contested nomination, assist a preferred candidate, or develop a relationship with someone who later enters a minister’s office.

Once elected, that person could gain access to caucus conversations, confidential correspondence, policy development and relationships across government. The most significant benefit might not be one particular vote—it could be years of access.

Stewart believes this vulnerability is worsened by political institutions that respond slowly and place enormous personal risk on individuals who speak publicly. He has previously faced a lengthy defamation lawsuit and said he is cautious about making allegations that could expose him to another expensive legal battle.

That is why he argues elected MPs and MLAs must use the protections available to them. Parliamentary privilege allows legislators to raise serious allegations inside a legislature without facing the same defamation risks as someone speaking outside it.

Canada’s debate over foreign interference cannot begin and end with asking whether Beijing changed the result of a particular election. The more fundamental question is whether our political institutions are strong enough to identify influence before it becomes embedded.

Stewart’s account deserves careful scrutiny, corroboration and a serious official response. His central warning is difficult to ignore: by the time Canadians are handed a ballot, some of the most consequential political decisions may already have been made.

Canada’s economy became larger over the past several years. More people entered the workforce, spent money, rented homes, and created demand for goods and services. Total gross domestic product increased, and businesses gained new workers and customers.

Yet many Canadians did not feel wealthier.

Housing became less affordable. Rents rose. Productivity remained weak. Public services struggled to keep pace with population growth, and young Canadians increasingly found that working hard did not guarantee access to a stable job or a reasonable home.

This contradiction is at the heart of Canada’s immigration debate. Immigration can increase the total size of the economy without improving the economic position of the average person.

In my conversation with Tony Keller, author of Borderline Chaos, he offered a careful assessment. Immigration did not create all of Canada’s economic problems, but historically high immigration—particularly immigration concentrated in lower-wage temporary streams—made several existing weaknesses more serious.

The question is not whether immigration increased Canada’s total economic output. It almost certainly did. The more important question is whether it increased output per person and improved the standard of living of the people already here.

A Larger Economy Is Not Necessarily a Richer Country

Governments often celebrate total GDP growth because it provides a simple measure of economic expansion. If the country produces and consumes more, the economy is said to be growing.

Rapid population growth makes that outcome relatively easy to achieve. Every newcomer is both a worker and a consumer. They earn income, rent or purchase housing, buy groceries, use transportation, and support demand for other jobs.

This is one reason immigration does not automatically produce mass unemployment. New residents increase the labour supply, but they also increase demand.

However, total GDP does not tell us whether each person is becoming better off. For that, economists look at GDP per capita, which divides the size of the economy by the population.

Keller explained the distinction through a simple metaphor: the important question is not only whether the economic pie is getting larger, but whether it is growing faster than the number of forks reaching into it.

If Canada’s economy grows by three percent while its population grows by four percent, the country produces more overall but less per person. Businesses may report higher revenues and governments may collect more tax in total, while the average household still experiences stagnating or declining living standards.

Canada focused heavily on expanding the number of people participating in the economy. It did not generate enough productivity growth to ensure that the gains were shared on a per-person basis.

Immigration Did Not Cause Canada’s Economic Weakness

It would be inaccurate to blame immigration for every economic problem Canada faces.

Canada’s productivity challenges began long before the recent surge in population. Canadian firms have underinvested in equipment, technology, intellectual property, and worker productivity for years. Internal trade barriers make it harder to conduct business across provincial boundaries, while major infrastructure projects often face long delays.

The housing crisis also predates the recent rise in immigration. Restrictive zoning, slow municipal approvals, high construction costs, limited infrastructure, and political opposition to new development prevented many communities from building enough homes.

Canada also entered this period with shortages of physicians, strained hospitals, inadequate transit, and public institutions that were already struggling to serve the existing population.

Immigration did not create these conditions. It did, however, place additional pressure on systems that were already weak.

Keller compared the situation to a patient with a pre-existing condition who then develops another illness. Immigration was not the entire diagnosis, but the pace and composition of recent immigration made the condition more difficult to manage.

The distinction matters because it prevents immigration from becoming a convenient explanation for every policy failure. Canada’s problems with productivity, housing, and public administration are ultimately domestic problems that governments must address whether immigration remains high or falls significantly.

At the same time, it is unreasonable to pretend that adding a historically large number of people had no economic impact on those systems.

Who Canada Brings In Matters

Immigration is often discussed as though every form of immigration produces the same economic result. It does not.

A physician, engineer, entrepreneur, scientist, or highly specialized technician may earn a strong income, pay substantial taxes, create employment, and make other workers more productive. Their contribution may extend far beyond the value of their individual labour.

A worker earning close to minimum wage also contributes to the economy and deserves dignity and fair treatment. However, the fiscal and productivity effects are different.

A high-income worker generally pays more in taxes than they receive in public services. A lower-income worker pays less income tax while still requiring access to healthcare, roads, transit, education for their children, housing infrastructure, and other public systems.

This does not make the lower-income worker a burden as a person. It means governments must evaluate immigration policy based on more than the total number of people admitted.

Canada’s traditional points system was built around this distinction. It prioritized education, language ability, work experience, and other measures of human capital because the country wanted immigration to raise productivity and living standards.

Keller argues that Canada weakened this focus as it expanded temporary migration and responded to employer demands for lower-wage labour. The country did not simply bring in more people. It changed the economic composition of immigration.

That change is central to the debate about whether immigration made Canadians poorer.

Was There Really a Labour Shortage?

Businesses frequently argued that Canada faced a labour shortage.

In some sectors, the claim was clearly justified. Canada needs more physicians, nurses, engineers, skilled tradespeople, and other specialized workers.

The term was also used by restaurants, warehouses, delivery companies, and retailers that could not attract enough workers at existing wages and working conditions.

That raises a difficult question. Was Canada facing a shortage of workers, or a shortage of workers willing to accept the compensation being offered?

When an employer cannot recruit, the labour market normally provides several possible responses. The business can raise wages, improve scheduling, offer benefits, invest in automation, train existing workers, shorten operating hours, or redesign the position.

Expanding access to temporary workers gives employers another option. They can increase the supply of labour without substantially improving the job.

This approach may benefit businesses and consumers. Restaurants can remain open later, delivery services remain inexpensive, and employers avoid the higher costs that would come with a tighter labour market.

Keller used the example of being able to order food late at night and have it delivered slightly faster and more cheaply because a large pool of lower-wage workers is available. His point was not that convenience has no value. It was that convenience is not free.

The cost may be borne by workers whose wages do not rise, young Canadians who struggle to find entry-level employment, and newcomers who become trapped in precarious jobs because their future status may depend on remaining employed.

The Benefits and Costs Were Unevenly Distributed

Canada’s immigration expansion created clear economic winners.

Businesses gained access to workers and a larger customer base. Colleges and universities collected international tuition. Landlords benefited from stronger demand for rental housing. Governments could point to a larger total economy, and consumers gained access to relatively inexpensive labour-intensive services.

The costs were distributed differently.

Young Canadians and workers without advanced credentials faced greater competition in entry-level occupations. Renters encountered higher housing costs. Families at the bottom of the income scale were forced to compete for limited housing and public services in communities that had not expanded capacity quickly enough.

Temporary residents also carried substantial risk. Many paid high tuition, accepted difficult work, and believed the experience would lead to permanent residency. When policies changed or pathways narrowed, they discovered that Canada had admitted far more prospective immigrants than it was prepared to accept permanently.

The system therefore did not simply create tension between immigrants and people born in Canada. It often placed established Canadians and recent newcomers in direct competition while allowing institutions and employers to receive much of the financial benefit.

A higher-income professional may experience immigration through cheaper services, increased convenience, and rising property values. A lower-income worker may experience it through greater job competition and higher rent.

Both experiences can be true at the same time.

Housing Was Already Broken, but Immigration Increased the Pressure

Immigration did not cause Canada’s housing crisis. The country had already failed to build enough homes in the places where people wanted to live.

Toronto, Vancouver, and other growing cities entered the recent population surge with low vacancy rates, restrictive development rules, and inadequate rental construction. Municipal approval processes were slow, land was expensive, and infrastructure constraints limited development.

Canada then added an extraordinary number of residents in a short period.

Many temporary residents were young, had modest incomes, and entered the rental market rather than purchasing homes. They also tended to settle in cities that were already experiencing the most serious shortages.

The result was predictable. More people competed for a limited number of apartments, rooms, and basement suites. Rents increased, vacancy rates tightened, and overcrowded or inadequate living arrangements became more common.

It is wrong to blame newcomers for those conditions. They did not establish immigration targets, control zoning decisions, or determine the pace of housing construction.

It is equally wrong to claim that a rapid increase in housing demand had no effect on prices.

Immigration did not create the fire, but it added fuel to a housing market that was already burning.

Population Can Grow Faster Than Infrastructure

A study permit can be issued more quickly than an apartment can be built. A work permit can be approved faster than a physician can be trained. Population can increase much faster than governments can expand hospitals, schools, roads, transit systems, and water infrastructure.

That time lag is economically important.

Immigration can strengthen public finances when newcomers are productive, earn strong incomes, and pay substantial taxes. However, when population growth is concentrated among lower-wage workers, governments may receive less tax revenue per person while still facing the full cost of expanding public services.

Again, this is not a statement about anyone’s moral worth. Every resident requires healthcare, transportation, housing, public safety, and functioning institutions.

The question is whether governments planned for those needs before expanding the population.

In many cases, they did not. Immigration levels increased much faster than housing construction, medical training, transit expansion, or municipal infrastructure.

Canadians experienced this as longer wait times, crowded classrooms, congested roads, and public systems that felt increasingly difficult to access.

A growing population can support a stronger country, but only when investment grows alongside it.

Did Immigration Reduce Wages?

There is no simple national answer.

Immigrants do not only compete with existing workers. They also purchase goods, create demand, start businesses, employ people, and contribute skills that can raise productivity.

Highly skilled immigration can increase wages when newcomers help businesses expand or allow Canadian workers to move into more specialized roles.

The effect is different when a large number of workers enter the same lower-wage sectors.

An expanded labour supply can reduce the pressure on employers to raise compensation. Wages may not fall in absolute terms, but they may increase more slowly than they would have in a tighter labour market.

At the same time, housing and other living costs can rise quickly. A worker may earn slightly more than before but still become poorer in practical terms because rent, groceries, and transportation have increased at a faster rate.

This helps explain why official statistics can show economic growth while households feel that their position is deteriorating.

The country is producing more, but the gains are not necessarily reaching the people under the greatest pressure.

Keller therefore supports eliminating the Temporary Foreign Worker Program for most low-wage jobs that are actually permanent positions. His argument is that a restaurant, warehouse, or delivery company should not fill an ongoing Canadian job indefinitely through a program described as temporary.

If employers struggle to recruit, the labour market should place pressure on them to raise wages, improve conditions, invest in productivity, or alter their business model.

That adjustment may be inconvenient and may increase some prices, but it would also strengthen the bargaining position of workers.

Did Mass Immigration Make Canadians Poorer?

The most honest answer is that it made some Canadians worse off while failing to produce a clear improvement in average living standards.

Immigration increased the total size of the economy. It supported businesses, created demand, and brought people to Canada who contribute to their communities.

It did not cause every housing, productivity, or public-service problem the country faces.

However, Canada’s specific approach—rapid population growth, insufficient housing, weak productivity, and an immigration mix increasingly concentrated in temporary and lower-wage streams—made it less likely that the benefits of growth would reach the average person.

Renters paid more. Low-wage workers faced greater competition. Young Canadians entered a labour and housing market increasingly disconnected from their incomes. Many newcomers found themselves in precarious jobs with uncertain paths to permanent residency.

At the same time, some of the largest benefits flowed to employers, property owners, and institutions that gained financially from population growth.

Canada did not become poorer simply because more people arrived. It became poorer per person when economic output, housing, infrastructure, and public services failed to grow as quickly or productively as the population.

That is the distinction political leaders too often avoided.

Canada needs immigration. An aging population, specialized labour shortages, and the country’s long tradition of welcoming newcomers all support a strong permanent immigration system.

But more immigration is not automatically better immigration.

The economic result depends on who arrives, what skills they bring, whether their status is permanent or temporary, how quickly the population grows, and whether governments build the housing and infrastructure required to support them.

The goal should not be to maximize the size of Canada’s population.

It should be to improve the lives of the people who live here, including the newcomers Canada invites to join them.

This article is based on my conversation with Tony Keller, Globe and Mail columnist and author of Borderline Chaos. The full discussion examines GDP per capita, housing, temporary foreign workers, international students, and whether Canada’s immigration choices reduced living standards.