There is a particular kind of frustration that comes from watching a parliamentary committee hearing. Ministers arrive with prepared remarks. Opposition members get five minutes each. Staff whisper from behind. The minister answers the question they wished they had been asked. Nothing happens. The cycle repeats next week with a different topic and the same…
After a decade of provincial governments demanding more from Ottawa — more transfers, more flexibility, more respect — Modern Mutualism’s Unclaimed Constitution series arrived at an uncomfortable conclusion: the provinces do not need Ottawa’s permission for most of what they say they want. They already have the constitutional authority. They have simply chosen not to…
Every year, the federal government announces how many people Canada will welcome. The number is presented as a target, an ambition, a sign of confidence in the country’s future. What is almost never presented alongside it is a plan — a published, concrete accounting of the homes, primary care physicians, hospital capacity, teachers, and classroom…
There is a version of federal overreach that shows up in court challenges and constitutional debates. Canadians have learned to watch for that version. There is another version that almost nobody watches — the quiet expansion of federal authority through compliance regimes, omnibus legislation, and regulatory instruments that conscript ordinary institutions as agents of state…
Somewhere in Canada right now, a person is deciding whether to report a crime. They are weighing whether anything will happen, whether the system will take them seriously, and whether the law that is supposed to protect them actually reaches where they live. They have no way to answer those questions with data, because the…
Canada’s federal tax code runs to thousands of pages. It contains dozens of credits, scores of deductions, multiple brackets, and enough fine print to guarantee that almost no Canadian can tell you, from memory, what percentage of their income actually goes to Ottawa. This is presented as an unavoidable feature of a modern economy. Working…
This summer, the floor of the House of Commons moved again. Representatives switched parties, alliances shifted, and a government maintained power through arrangements its voters never sanctioned. No law was broken. That is precisely the problem. The machinery that allows it is working exactly as the current system intends. WP022, the second paper in Modern…
One year ago, four Members of Parliament crossed the floor of the House of Commons and converted a minority Liberal government into a working majority. No election was called. No byelection was held. The Canadians who sent those four representatives to Ottawa were not consulted. Under Canadian law, none of that was required. The floor…
If you have sat in an emergency waiting room for eight hours, waited fourteen months for a specialist referral, or watched a family member cycle through a system that seems designed to lose people, you have probably heard the same explanation: healthcare is underfunded. It is a comforting story for the people running the system….
Walk through any small Canadian town and you can see it. The volunteer fire hall that struggles to find members. The recreation board that cannot get a quorum. The council seat that went uncontested for the third election in a row. Civic life is contracting, and the people who notice it tend to blame themselves…