Commentary
Over and over again, Canadians have watched the following spectacle: a self-evidently absurd policy is dreamt up by ideologues, implemented by bureaucrats or legislators with predictably disastrous consequences, and then subsequently repealed.
The public breathes a sigh of relief, only to hear the announcement of a new ridiculous policy the very next day. As Rudyard Kipling wrote, “The Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.” This cycle of absurdity will continue until Canadians put their foot down and stop tolerating it.
In January 2023, British Columbia decriminalized the “possession of small amounts of certain illegal drugs, such as opioids and cocaine.” While advocates argue that drug decriminalization reduces stigma for addicts, the negative consequences were soon obvious in communities across the province.
Public drug use ramped up in B.C. parks, playgrounds, hospitals, and streets—and police had little recourse to stop it. As a councillor in the small town of Smithers put it, “You can’t crack open a beer at the library, but you can smoke drugs or shoot up.” By April 2024, the B.C. government caved to public backlash, and moved to “make illicit drug use illegal in all public spaces, including inside hospitals, on transit and in parks.”
A similarly abrupt U-turn occurred with Ottawa’s immigration policy. In 2017, the federal government’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth recommended raising the annual rate of new permanent residents to 450,000.
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Following the COVID pandemic, the feds pressed down on the immigration gas pedal even harder, particularly in regard to international students and foreign workers. In 2023, Canada’s population grew by nearly 1.3 million—97.6 percent of that growth was from immigration. Before COVID, the last time Canada’s population grew by more than 600,000 in a single year was 1949, and that’s only because Newfoundland joined Confederation!
The consequences of such high immigration levels in recent years were immediate and devastating: overwhelmed housing, health care, schools, roads, public services, food banks, and shelters. The federal government is now attempting to reverse course and “pause population growth.”
The U-turns reveal a deficit in common sense in the adoption of these polices. If ideas such as decriminalizing cocaine use in parks or opening the door to 1.3 million newcomers a year had been pitched to ordinary Canadians sitting in a diner or coffee shop, they would have laughed heartily at them.
Some ideas, such as “defunding the police,” are so divorced from reality that policymakers could have pitched them to a classroom of schoolchildren and discovered the policy’s flaw: “But if you take away the policemen, who will stop the bad guys?” Calls to defund police departments were strong in Canada during and after the widespread Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, but have since been checked by the reality of rising crime. City councils are now going in the opposite direction, announcing new hiring drives like Toronto’s ambitious five-year plan to hire hundreds more police officers.
These U-turns have not come close to correcting all of the ongoing absurdity on display in Canada. Take drag queen story time in public libraries. The vast majority of Canadians would think grown men dressing in sexualized costumes complete with wigs and makeup that exaggerate feminine stereotypes belong in private settings like nightclubs, like all erotic shows, not on full display for children.
When some Canadians held demonstrations against drag queen story times in Calgary, the city council passed a bylaw prohibiting protests “objecting to an idea or action related to human rights” within 100 metres of libraries.
While the ideologies that lead to such absurdities are increasingly unpopular among the general public, they remain deeply entrenched in our institutions. A recent study by the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy studied 489 job advertisements for positions in Canadian universities and found that 98 percent of them “directly or indirectly discriminated against non-minorities” by employing some kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirement or strategy.
The stranglehold absurd ideologies have on Canadian institutions is perhaps most evident in our school boards. Last year, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) distributed a teaching resource handbook which argued that “white supremacy is a structural reality” that “must be discussed and dismantled in classrooms.”
On Jan. 27, TDSB staff recommended that three schools whose names commemorate Henry Dundas, Egerton Dundas, and Sir John A. Macdonald be renamed “based on the potential impact that these names may have on students and staff based on colonial history, anti-indigenous racism and their connection to systems of oppression.”
On another front, shoppers at a mall or show-goers attending a concert may find themselves having to use mixed-gender washrooms, just as children are forced to in many schools across the country.
The absurdity on display in Canada’s institutions will continue unchecked until concerned Canadians put a stop to it by engaging in the democratic process. This can come in the form of contacting your elected representatives, circulating petitions, running for school board or mayor, or forming a grassroots movement with your neighbours. These individual actions will add up, and coalesce into a powerful force to restore common sense.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
