C2C Journal

The Federal Court of Appeal has confirmed: the use of the Emergencies Act to crush the Freedom Convoy was unconstitutional. 🇨🇦 A massive congratulations to Christine Van Geyn and the Canadian Constitution Foundation (@CDNConstFound). You have rendered an immense service to the people of Canada by leading this legal fight! ⚖️ Our analysis of the original Federal Court ruling: c2cjournal.ca/2023/04/the-la…

Some of the loudest criticism of Prime Minister Mark Carney now comes from people who once cheered him on. In his 19 months in office, Carney has pitched himself as a builder of big projects. He scrapped the consumer carbon tax (yet he kept the industrial carbon tax). He also ended the electric vehicle mandate, which would have made it all but impossible to manufacture or market new gasoline- or diesel-powered cars and light trucks after 2035. His government has also extended timelines for or watered down the oil and natural gas emissions cap and the Clean Electricity Regulations, measures that had fallen hardest on Alberta and Saskatchewan. The Building Canada Strong Act, now being debated in Parliament, is intended to streamline federal approvals for designated infrastructure projects, including oil and gas pipelines. Conservative voices, including Alberta’s premier, have praised the shift. Climate groups have not. Environmental Defence accused the government of “taking a wrecking ball to Canada’s environmental safeguards and climate progress.” The sharpest break came from a former federal environment minister, who left the Liberal caucus in May 2026 and resigned as an MP the following September. The practical impact of these rollbacks remains to be seen, but they will shape how fast pipelines and power plants get built in Canada. Is this a lasting change of direction, or a pause? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/new-ma…

Nearly 60 percent of Ontario high school students do not meet the provincial standard for attendance, which requires being at school 90 percent of the time. And according to the OECD, Canada leads the world in truancy among children of university-educated parents. This is a national crisis. Absenteeism skyrocketed in the wake of Covid-19. Before the pandemic, a majority of high schoolers met their attendance benchmarks. But the pandemic has given many kids (and their parents) the sense that showing up for class is either irrelevant or optional. Ontario is finally taking action. Education Minister Paul Calandra's new policy links attendance to grades. In grades 9 and 10, 15 percent of a student’s final mark is based on attendance; in grades 11 and 12, it’s 10 percent. This brings to an end a previous policy that essentially ignored attendance and class participation. Attendance and performance are closely linked. A 2026 OECD report covering 45 countries found that students who skipped at least one day out of 10 scored substantially below average on international math tests. Attendance is also crucial for equity, as the impact of missing school is far more significant for disadvantaged students. While many critics have complained about the implementation of Ontario's new policy, a key fact remains: none of myriad problems with Canada’s school system can be fixed if students don't show up. If you aren’t present, you can’t learn. Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/absent…

To many Canadians, Mark Carney’s apparent transition from climate-change zealot to build-baby-build capitalist has been a surprising though welcome change. But is it real? Recent evidence suggests the prime minister has not abandoned his longstanding fixation with growth-killing net-zero commitments. Exhibit A is his government’s sustainable investment guidelines. Also known as the “green taxonomy”, this little-known effort seeks to label every development project in the country according to its perceived environmental impact, with the goal of directing where banks and investors are allowed to put their money – and punishing industries deemed unworthy. If not abandoned or watered-down soon, warns industry expert Gina Pappano, the green taxonomy will crush economic growth and cripple the current resurgence in Canada’s vital natural resources sector. Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/new-ma…

A Daily Telegraph columnist summed up the West’s approach to jihadism in one uncomfortable sentence. Some argue that Western governments’ willingness to take in migrants en masse, even at the cost of straining social services and budgets, reflects the generosity and compassion of democracies. A 2025 paper by two cognitive scientists found that people raised in democracies showed more benevolent traits and greater well-being, while those raised in autocracies were more likely to be narcissistic, Machiavellian and psychopathic. That kind of benevolence helps explain why a humanitarian impulse plays such a strong role in Western immigration policy. But critics warn that, left unchecked, it can spiral into a self-destructive and almost suicidal mindset. Writing about jihadists, the columnist put it this way: “While they wish the most gruesome deaths on us, we continue to think the best of them.” For Canadians, the challenge is how to keep a generous immigration system from being exploited by those who wish Canadians harm. Where should Canada draw the line between compassion and caution in its immigration system? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

Tensions in a Spanish enclave on the North African coast have grown to the point where aid groups are changing how they appear in public. Spain is taking a different course on migration from much of Europe. Its socialist prime minister has recently moved to legalize almost half a million migrants, a step critics argue would allow those migrants to travel throughout the EU. In July, 70,000 Moroccans illegally crossed into Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa. Meanwhile, public anger is growing, and a recent rape case is at its centre. A columnist for Britain’s Spectator magazine reported that police arrested two Moroccan men after a 17-year-old girl was found semi-conscious and injured. The same columnist reported that “some aid organizations have removed their logos from vehicles and staff conceal their identification when they are not working.” In Canada, some observers question why the nation would seek closer ties with the EU whose migration policies are evidently calamitous. Should Canada look to European countries as models for its immigration policy? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

An idea two American sociologists proposed in 1966 has resurfaced in the debate over high immigration levels. Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven proposed deliberately overloading a country’s social-support system to create a political crisis. They believed such a crisis could pressure the government into guaranteeing everyone a minimum income, with the ultimate goal of establishing a socialist society. Today, critics list the Cloward-Piven Strategy as one of several forces behind high immigration. They note that while mass immigration is often touted as contributing to economic growth, it has also proved costly. Mass immigration, which inevitably puts ever-growing pressure on social-support systems, housing and infrastructure, could produce exactly the kind of overload Cloward and Piven described. Canadians fund their social programs through taxes, so how immigration levels affect those programs is a fair question for voters. Are Canada’s social programs equipped to handle current immigration levels? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

A Canadian professor says Western countries now share a condition he describes as the “sweet spot” for internal conflict. David Betz, a Canadian scholar of war studies at King’s College London, argues that Western countries are courting instability and decay and are even flirting with civil war. In a recent podcast, he said, “Things like social trust have collapsed, institutional legitimacy is in freefall.” One may ask, why is this happening? Betz places responsibility on political leadership: “The feckless post-nationalist elites leading our countries no longer prioritize our physical safety, equal application of the law, national borders nor even our cultural continuity.” The West’s current migration policy is one example of such a reckless approach, contributing to destabilization and internal conflict in a society that has become “anocratic” — neither fully democratic nor fully authoritarian. If Betz is right, social trust and confidence in institutions are worth watching closely in Canada. How much do you trust Canada’s public institutions today compared with 10 years ago? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

Germany’s most popular national party started out with a very different cause from the one that made it a political force. Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now by far the country’s most popular national party. Last month it won two of three state elections in Germany’s formerly communist East. Some observers say Germany could be on the cusp of major change. The turning point came on New Year’s Eve 2015, when women in several major German cities were surrounded and raped by gangs of Arab and North African men. Some 1,200 sexual assaults were reported from that night alone. In the aftermath, AfD reoriented around mass migration, beginning its rapid rise. When the party was founded in 2013, its main cause was fiscal responsibility. Today, its central cause is reducing immigration. For Canadians, AfD’s rise shows how quickly a party can grow when voters believe mainstream leaders are failing to respond to migrant crime or protect women and children. Could a single event shift Canada’s immigration debate the way that New Year’s Eve shifted Germany’s? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

Two of Europe’s largest countries have taken very different approaches to migration, with very different results. Last year in Germany, the chancellor finally admitted that the behaviour of migrants had greatly damaged the country’s “Stadtbild” — the overall state and feel of its public places. Polls show 75 percent of Germans feel the same way, yet critics say the chancellor has failed to act to reverse the destructive trend. Italy, by contrast, elected parties favouring secure borders. Since 2022, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has overseen a historic reduction in illegal migration, stepped up the deportation of lawbreakers and increased legal immigration tailored to Italy’s economic needs. So far, Italy has escaped the kind of unrest seen elsewhere in Europe. The country's current focus on tying legal immigration to economic needs appears similar in spirit to the points-based system that once served Canada well. Should Canada follow Italy’s example by tying its immigration levels more closely to labour-market needs? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

Migrants seeking a better life in the West can receive help from several sources. Well-organized human-smuggling rings assist them in reaching affluent Western countries. Once they arrive, generous local social benefits can be used to fund remittances to family members abroad and extortion payments to those same smugglers. Many of these migrants apply for asylum once they arrive, though some argue most do not actually qualify. Yet lengthy processing of their claims can give them an often unshakeable foothold in the country where they apply. Many governments and much of the global elite have also backed a long-running push to proclaim migration a human right. Critics point to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, along with charities, the Red Cross and other well-funded NGOs, and argue they work in tandem with smugglers to break down border controls. Some contend that Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms grants asylum-seekers automatic admission and leaves the country open to the same pressures. How much influence should international organizations have over Canada’s border policy? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

Alberta voters will soon decide on measures that some believe could help Canada avoid the path Europe and the UK have taken. On October 19, 2026, Albertans will cast ballots on a slate of referendum questions, five of which concern immigration. A majority "yes" vote on those five questions would mean favouring immigrants who can make a genuine contribution to the economy and tightening conditions for non-permanent residents, including removing their eligibility for welfare and charging them health-care user fees. Supporters of tighter rules say there is still time to “flatten the curve” of rising migrant crime before Canada faces the kind of socio-political upheaval now under way in Europe. Several European countries, including Germany and France, along with the UK have been experiencing a continual increase in gang-related crime and terrorist attacks. Supporters see the Alberta vote as the first real step in that direction, and polling suggests all the proposed measures have strong public support. The results could show how Albertans want non-permanent residents treated and may influence how other provinces approach the issue. Do you think that Canada's non-permanent residents should pay user fees for health care, or should they receive health benefits on par with Canadian citizens? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

Protests against migrant arrivals in the UK have moved to a new location over the past year. Ordinary citizens are now showing up at English ports almost daily to block migrants from disembarking. They range from a grandmother in a kayak to quickly organized crowds of locals, and they often defy or bypass hundreds of police and Border Force officers assigned to protect the migrants. Critics say the British government has failed to clamp down on boats illegally crossing the English Channel and has instead focused on policing the speech of law-abiding citizens who raise legitimate concerns over growing migrant crime. Just two months ago, British men who protested outside an Essex asylum hotel were reported to have received much harsher sentences than the migrant whose sexual assaults on a 14-year-old girl and a woman had triggered the demonstrations. As one writer for Britain’s Spectator magazine put it: “Last year, people organised protests in response to migrant hotels opening. Today, people are starting to intervene before a landing even takes place.” Some warn that Canada is heading down the same path, with high immigration levels and lenient treatment of migrant offenders. But the country is not yet as far along, so there is still time to change course. What should governments do when citizens feel compelled to take border enforcement into their own hands? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

A British inquiry, paid for by public donations, reached a conclusion that a government-commissioned report had rejected just six years earlier. Since the early 2000s, numerous reports have surfaced in northern England of young, mostly white girls being groomed and raped by organized gangs of men, most often in cities with a high proportion of Pakistani immigrants. In early 2025, Rupert Lowe, an MP with the new party Restore Britain, launched the independent Rape Gang Inquiry, crowd-funding the required Cdn$1.1 million and holding hearings for the victims to tell their stories. The inquiry’s 219-page final report, released in June 2026, states that perpetrators from “Pakistani Muslim and other Muslim backgrounds” treated non-Muslim girls “as property available for sexual use.” It estimates that “at the very least, 250,000 young white girls have been subjected to repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking, torture [and] pregnancy" across 149 cities, towns and local districts, with assaults dating back to at least 1955. The report says 87 percent of known perpetrators had Muslim names and that victims were as young as 11. While critics call the 250,000 figure a gross exaggeration, the scandal is ongoing, having pressured the current Labour government to initiate its own independent inquiry into the grooming gang phenomenon. The results of this official inquiry are yet to be reported. Some observers argue that British institutions have consistently failed to protect women and children partly out of fear of being called racist or losing votes — a cautionary tale for Canadian institutions handling similar data. Should Canadian governments publish crime statistics that include immigration status? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

Two of Britain’s rising political parties are making a promise that would take the country out of a major European human rights treaty. Migrant-packed inflatable boats continue to cross the English Channel, and critics say Britain’s Labour government has doubled down on its approach instead of reversing course. Reform UK, an opposition party led by Nigel Farage, is now leading in the polls on a promise to remove the rich incentives that attract migrants in the first place. If elected, Reform promises to have the Royal Navy turn back migrant boats. Restore Britain, another right-wing party with even stronger views on immigration, is promising to carry out millions of deportations. Both parties have pledged to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects asylum-claiming migrants against deportation. Critics argue that, with some caveats, Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms gives asylum seekers protections similar to those provided by the European Convention. Britain’s debate could therefore foreshadow a similar one here. Should Canada review how the Charter applies to asylum claims? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

One night of violence in German city centres marked a turning point in the country’s politics. Its effects are still playing out a decade later. On New Year’s Eve 2015, celebrations in pedestrian zones across several major German cities, most notoriously Cologne, were overrun by roving gangs of men who surrounded and preyed on women. The attackers were described as Arab and North African men, and 1,200 sexual assaults were reported from that night alone. In the wake of that night, Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party founded in 2013 with a key focus on fiscal responsibility, reoriented around mass migration. Last year, Germany’s chancellor admitted that the behaviour of migrants had damaged the country’s “Stadtbild”, the overall state and feel of its public places. Current polls show 75 percent of Germans feel the same way. Today the AfD is by far Germany’s most popular party nationwide, and last month it won two of three state elections in the country’s former East Germany. Recent events in Germany illustrate how quickly concern over migrant crime can reshape a country’s politics when voters feel their government is failing to take appropriate action and defend its citizens. Are Canadian political parties paying enough attention to their voters' views on crime and immigration? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

In Africa’s conflict zones, rape is far from a random act of war, one human rights researcher argues. Children and young women face a very high risk of sexual assault in war-torn parts of Africa and other regions where rape is used as a weapon of humiliation, domination and destruction. Writing for the Global Campus of Human Rights, the researcher says that across these conflict zones, the bodies of women and girls “are not only collateral in war, they are its battleground.” Human rights organizations tend to treat this violence as largely circumstantial, a product of war and strife. Others argue, however, that it is rooted in misogynistic and tribalistic cultures that use rape and sexual assault as a way to assert control and displace opposing communities. As the researcher puts it: “Rape in these contexts is not incidental. It is strategic, systemic and deliberate.” Critics of Western immigration policy align with this second view when explaining the pattern of sexual assaults committed by some migrant men from Africa, Asia and the Middle East across Western countries. Critics warn that if this violence is rooted in culture and not just war, Canada needs to vet newcomers more carefully. How should Canada balance protecting refugees who flee violence with screening out those who took part in it? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

A newspaper column from October 1990 recorded the argument Canada's federal cabinet minister made in favour of increasing the country's immigration levels. According to The Globe and Mail column, Barbara McDougall, minister of employment and immigration in Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government, won a cabinet debate over how many newcomers Canada should admit. The plan raised the annual target to 250,000 people, up from the then-current target of 175,000, and even more from a low of 84,000 in 1984. The minister’s reported case for the increase came down to the ballot box: “They will vote for us.” Critics argue that keeping the voter base growing has since become an unspoken policy for various political parties across the world. Yet conservatives have often failed to benefit from this approach, as newcomers tend to favour parties on the left. Under Justin Trudeau's Liberal government, total intake, including students and temporary foreign workers, topped 1 million in a single year. Critics further argue that such government-imposed decisions have strained social services and fiscal budgets. Should the reasoning behind Canada’s annual immigration targets be made public? Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

The level of sexual violence around the world is shocking. A 2024 report from UNICEF found 79 million girls and young women were sexually assaulted in sub-Saharan Africa alone, 22 percent of the region's total population. Executive Director Catherine Russell said, “We are witnessing horrific sexual violence in conflict zones.” In many western countries, mass migration of young, military-age men has facilitated an explosion in sexual assaults and violence. Some migrants treat western society with extreme contempt. According to Lebanese-born academic Gad Saad, an immigrant once told him “The West…is a woman to be mounted,” Pakistani writer Kunwar Khuldune Shahid warns the West against importing a “gory mix…of Islamic supremacism, primitive tribalism and violent misogyny” via mass migration from his homeland. Shahid notes that such beliefs have led to “a rape culture that in recent decades has seen young British girls being mercilessly violated.” The UK's 2025 Rape Gang Inquiry Final Report calculated “250,000 young white girls have been subjected to repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking, torture” since 1955. Eighty-seven percent of known perpetrators in these cases had Muslim names; some of the victims were as young as 11-years old. In Germany, 1,200 sexual assaults were reported on New Year's Eve 2016 across multiple cities, including Cologne. The perpetrators were described as gangs of Arab and North African men. Public concern about the behaviour of recent migrants has been a boon to the political fortunes of anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD). Canada’s lax immigration policy has encouraged many of the same problems associated with mass migration in Europe, although on a somewhat smaller scale. Only recently has Ottawa curtailed the flow of migrants. On October 19, Alberta voters will vote on a series of referendum proposals regarding tighter conditions for non-permanent residents Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/from-r…

While Prime Minister Mark Carney talks up his efforts to get major resource projects off the ground, his government continues to advance a “green taxonomy” that will have a devastating impact on the entire resource sector. A green taxonomy ranks potential investments based on their perceived impact on the environment. It is meant to dissuade investors from backing major oil and natural gas projects. The first state-wide green taxonomy was the China Green Bond Endorsed Project Catalogue developed by the People’s Bank of China in 2015. Despite recent complaints from environmentalists that “New Carney” is ignoring climate change, this is not the case. Throughout his entire career as a Wall Street, executive, central banker, pundit and politician, he has consistently promoted the use of global financial networks to impose a net-zero future on the world. The current green taxonomy is part of that plan. Carney has recently supported greater ties between Canada and the EU. Europe is a pioneer of aggressive net-zero policies and the use of a green taxonomy to redirect investment away from the traditional energy sector. The result has been cripplingly high energy costs and “accelerating deindustrialization”. Following through on Canada’s net-zero commitments, including a green taxonomy, would replicate Europe’s economic decline here. If Canada want to have a prosperous future, the prime minister must abandon his net-zero plans and immediately scrap the green taxonomy. Carney should focus on partnerships with nations that prioritize economic growth, not those that seek to stifle it. Read the full story: c2cjournal.ca/2026/10/new-ma…

A British village of 600 residents may soon be asked to house twice that number of asylum-seekers. Thousands of asylum-seekers have crossed the English Channel by small boat in recent years, mostly from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan and Somalia. Unlike the roughly 1.2 million Ukrainians Britain took in, who arrived mainly as families, a disproportionate number of Channel arrivals are single men of military age. Critics say the Labour government has made no effort to prevent or discourage the crossings. Asylum-seekers now housed in hotels will soon be spread across cities, towns and villages; there is even a plan to place 1,200 single men in a village of 600. Should local UK residents have a say in where asylum-seekers are housed and how many of them are being brought into their communities? Read more at: c2cjournal.ca/2026/09/monste…