Last week, the University of Ottawa’s Task Force on National Security released its much anticipated report: A National Security Strategy for the 2020s.
 
The Task Force was directed by the recently-retired former national security and intelligence advisor to the prime minister, Vincent Rigby, and one of the most credible analysts of security and defence in this country, Thomas Juneau.
 
They were joined by a veritable who’s who of Canadian national security experts.
 
In other words, it’s hard to imagine a more qualified group to make recommendations on “How Canada can adapt to a deteriorating security environment.”
 
The majority of the report’s recommendations are entirely reasonable, in particular in terms of how Ottawa should organize the public service to analyze and counter threats to the state, to national institutions, and to individual Canadians.
 
If you are interested in these issues, the document is therefore well worth your time.
 
But I am not hopeful that it will effect transformative change in Ottawa.
 
The authors all but explain why on page 10:
 
“Collectively, we have neglected national security for decades, largely because we could afford to do so. Shielded from major threats, we generally suffered little or no cost for our complacency. Whenever we dealt with national security issues, it was largely in a reactive way, in response to events, and not through a more proactive, structured approach.”
 
They justify the need for a different approach by claiming that this time “of intense global instability, when the security of Canada and other liberal democracies is under growing threat,” is somehow different from all of the previous ones.
 
I agree that Ottawa’s traditional approach to national security has been risky, perhaps even irresponsible, but I wonder whether the strategic environment today is that much more threatening than the one we faced when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, or when Donald Trump was elected in 2016, or when Syria dropped chemical weapons on its own people in 2017, or when the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps blew up Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in 2020.
 
Nor do I detect any sense of urgency among Canadians writ large.
 
National security is hardly a focus of the current Conservative leadership campaign. It has not come up much, if at all, in Ontario’s provincial election. I don’t recall reading much about it when Jason Kenney pledged to resign as premier of Alberta. It is certainly not the reason for the ongoing political controversy in Quebec. Nor do I suspect it will have a role in the forthcoming Toronto municipal election.
 
Part of the problem is that, for decades, practitioners and analysts of Canadian national security (and defence) have all but cried wolf on a regular basis.
 
When I arrived at the Canadian Forces College in 2006, I recall hearing over and over again how the contemporary operating environment was more dangerous than it had ever been.
 
In the 16 years since, a year hasn’t gone by when I haven’t heard the same thing – from multiple speakers. Yet, as the authors of the report make clear, Canadians have yet to pay a serious price for our collective apathy.
 
Ottawa might well need “the support and trust of Canadians” to develop “a whole-of-Canada response to security threats,” but I don’t think that the report’s recommendations to increase government transparency and the engagement of practitioners with the public will suffice.
 
Barring a genuine catastrophe, the national security apparatus is unlikely to touch a sufficient number of Canadians directly, and sustainably, so as to effect the necessary change in public perception.
 
On the other hand, who hasn’t heard of someone with a problem renewing their passport, or with the status of their immigration paperwork recently? Are there any Canadians left that aren’t aware that long-term drinking water advisories are still a reality on almost 30 reserves?  
 
If public trust is key to changing Canada’s national security culture (which it might well be), perhaps Ottawa should focus on getting the little things right. Do that, and I suspect that the Canadian public will be much more amenable to tackling the big challenges down the road.
 
Hopefully, we can reach that point before it’s too late.
 
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If you do read the report, why not compare it to a similar one produced by the Centre for International Governance Innovation back in December. I’d be fascinated to learn more about any differences between the two.
 
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In other news, I originally intended to post to this blog once or twice per month. Somehow, I seem to have ended up posting weekly. While I enjoy doing so, this pace is not sustainable, especially as I prepare to return to the classroom in August. I therefore anticipate cutting back a bit going forward. If there are things you’d like me to write about, you can reach me here.
 
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Just over two weeks ago, North Korea recorded its first case of Covid-19.
 
Since then, as The Economist has noted, the virus has been “spreading like wildfire.” Already, more than 2.5 million North Koreans have come down with what the regime is calling an undiagnosed “fever.” At least 67 have died.
 
Cases of this “fever” continue to increase by close to 200,000 per day, if you trust North Korean reporting.
 
What limited coverage of the outbreak I’ve seen thus far – there has been virtually none in the Canadian press – has focused on the humanitarian catastrophe that it poses for North Koreans.
 
Since leader Kim Jong Un doesn’t trust outsiders, he has repeatedly rejected donations of vaccines from COVAX, as well as offers of support from China, Russia, the United States, and South Korea.
 
So Omicron is spreading rapidly among 25 million unvaccinated North Koreans, many of whom were not in good health in the first place.
 
What’s more, the last two years have seen the country’s food stocks shrink dramatically, so as Kim begins to lock down the country to mitigate the outbreak, he risks further compromising his people’s food supply. (Rice planting season began a few weeks ago).
 
Inasmuch as the plight of the North Koreans is tragic, I fear that the issue could easily become much graver, and I wonder whether the fact that so much of the West appears to have moved on from the pandemic is preventing us, collectively, from seeing it.
 
The science is clear that “the more the virus circulates, the greater the opportunity it has to mutate.” With millions of North Koreans likely to be infected over the next few months, it is hard to imagine that new variants won’t emerge.
 
If we’re lucky, they won’t cause symptoms that are any worse than those we are already dealing with, and the vaccines we have will continue to stave off the most deadly outcomes.
 
But if we aren’t, the fall resurgence of the pandemic that the Public Health Agency of Canada is all but promising could be far more damaging than it is anticipated it to be.
 
In other words, the situation in North Korea could easily become much more than just a humanitarian challenge – our national interests could be at stake.
 
Canada’s options right now are limited: Kim won’t accept our aid; China isn’t interested in our advice; and we are poorly-positioned to impose our will on anyone.
 
And while a recent op-ed in the Globe and Mail is absolutely right to call out the City of Toronto for its foolish decision to shut down what had been a successful outreach effort to “overcome vaccine hesitancy” in targeted neighbourhoods, no amount of vaccinating at home will be sufficient to protect us if a rogue variant emerges abroad.
 
It follows that one can only hope that Ottawa redoubles its efforts to contribute to the global recovery by supporting countries that will accept our assistance, and also by encouraging our allies and partners to do the same.
 
In sum, this is not a call for Canadian leadership – I don’t think there would be many followers – but it is a recognition of the urgent need for states like Canada to continue to do their fair share to mitigate the global impact of Covid-19 at a time when it seems all too easy to pretend that the pandemic is fully behind us.
 
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For the official account of Canada’s response to Covid-19, see here. On Canada’s global response specifically, see here, and note the difference between Ottawa’s original promise to donate at least 200 million vaccine doses to COVAX by the end of 2022 and the current wording: “Canada has also committed to donating the equivalent of at least 200 million doses to the COVAX Facility by the end of 2022.”
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​As a parent with two children enrolled in schools served by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), I am struggling with the board’s controversial plan to transform their specialized schools program.
 
For readers outside of Toronto, here’s the context:
 
Toronto is home to 40-odd specialized programs or schools that provide an enriched curriculum in some or all of the arts, athletics, sciences, and math.
 
In 2017, with data indicating that a disproportionate percentage of the students attending these programs and schools came from relatively privileged families, a TDSB Equity Task Force recommended shutting them all down.
 
As you can imagine, parents (and their kids) mutinied, and the board promised to do better.
 
Five years later, doing better seems to mean overhauling the admissions process to these programs so that students will be accepted by lottery, based only on their expressed interest, rather than because of any evidence of exceptional ability or skill.
 
As one proponent of the proposed change explains:
 
“Moving to an interest-based model will ensure that [previous formal training in specific disciplines] is no longer a barrier to students who may not have had those same opportunities, but still bring an interest, passion, and commitment to those fields.”
 
Viewed less optimistically, we could soon have a specialized school for kids with an expressed interest in athletics, but no particular athletic skill; or an enriched STEM program for students who are passionate about engineering, but barely passed math or science the previous year.
 
Inevitably, such specialized programs will become less special – until they are no longer special at all.
 
Critics have offered two alternatives to the TDSB’s plan that they claim will maintain the quality of the programs but also deincrease the inequity.
 
The Globe and Mail’s Marcus Gee urges the board to do a better job of “making sure that parents hear about [the programs] and that teachers are on the lookout for promising candidates, especially in needy neighbourhoods.”
 
Writing in the Toronto Star, Maclean’s editor Sarah Fulford (whose son attends one of the schools in question) suggests:
 
“Instead of flattening the system into sameness by bureaucratic decree, the TDSB should take a hard look at why some schools are failing to attract students. Let’s empower principals and teachers, the heart and soul of every institution, to design programs that are creative, compelling and lively.”
 
Neither solution is likely to work. Privilege will always be just that, and parents who have it will find a way to ensure that their kids have the best opportunities.
 
And while empowering schools and principals sounds great in theory, the quality of educational leadership in Toronto is uneven, and one can only allocate so much time to creativity when your students come to class hungry and exhausted, if they come at all.
 
Nevertheless, it seems to me that there is a solution that should give both sides some of what they want:
 
Why not keep the schools, and their application processes, the way they are – for 85%-90% of all admissions - but set aside 10%-15% of all the places in each program for kids from underprivileged backgrounds.
 
For this smaller group, design an even more individualized application process that emphasizes potential, and allows for greater flexibility in interpreting previously demonstrated aptitude.
 
All kids could still apply through the main process, but some would have the option of also being considered through the second stream.
 
Such consideration would ideally be kept confidential (and all acceptances would be announced at the same time), so that no one would know who was admitted separately.
 
This approach would preserve the elitist element of the schools that makes them so popular and successful, but also ensure a more equitable, inclusive, and diverse student body that no amount of parental privilege can overcome.
 
Such an approach was in place at Trent University when I studied there as an undergraduate, and seemed to work well.
 
Surely, the TDSB should give something like it a try before gutting one of the Toronto public education system’s crown jewels.
 
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For a list of Toronto’s specialized high school programs, see here. The elementary programs can be found here.
 
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Ryan Tumilty had a piece in the National Post last week that is really two stories in one.
 
The article focuses on an obscure series of details in the latest budget implementation bill that recognize that our Senate is no longer organized the way it used to be.
 
First off, since Justin Trudeau disowned all of the previously appointed Liberal senators prior to the 2015 election, there is no longer a Leader of the Government in the Senate at all.
 
And because the prime minister has appointed every new senator since 2015 as an independent, after nearly 7 years of Liberal rule, the number of partisan senators – all Conservatives – has been reduced to 16.
 
Although most of the Trudeau appointees sat together at first, the independents are now themselves divided into an Independent Senators Group (41), a Progressive Senate Group (14), and a Canadian Senators Group (12).
 
The Liberals are also – inexcusably, in my view – 15 senators behind in filling vacancies.
 
As Tumilty explains, the budget implementation bill will legitimize the existence of the independent Senate groups, and provide funding to support their leaders.
 
So the first of the two stories should be disappointing to Canadians of every political stripe.
 
Like the Conservatives before them, the Trudeau Liberals are using the budget implementation bill to deal with government business that is only tangentially linked to the budget.
 
Efforts to effect significant change in the Senate deserve the full attention of Parliament (and, by extension, Canadians); they should not be tucked into the sort of omnibus bill that the Liberals had promised to avoid during the 2015 election.
 
The second story is actually good news.
 
Setting aside the unconvincing accusations of some of the remaining Conservative senators – who refuse to accept that Senate appointees could choose to either support, or simply not oppose, government legislation on its merits – once the budget implementation bill passes, the Trudeau government will have all but permanently altered the composition of a critical element of our parliamentary system for the better.
 
The current Senate is working better than it has in years. Indeed, even the Conservatives know this implicitly, seeing as they have benefited from it.
 
Consider how many times the opposition has criticized the Liberals for failing to pass legislation in a timely manner.
 
Much of that slow-down has been caused by independent senators insisting on doing their due diligence and proposing substantive legislative amendments.
 
The increase in lobbying that has targeted independent senators’ offices also indicates that the private sector does not believe that the Senate is in the pocket of the government.
 
So the Senate is keeping the government honest, and offering meaningful, non-partisan, amendments to legislation, just as it is supposed to.
 
If you put the two stories together – the Liberals are undermining the spirit of democracy in order to make our democracy more effective – you are left with what I take to be an excellent example of one of the tragedies of contemporary Canadian politics.
 
We are currently led by a government that arrived with a well-intentioned commitment to restore Canadians’ faith in liberal democratic rule.
 
Seven years later, even this fresh, youthful, idealistic cohort of legislators has been worn down by the intensity and mercilessness of our political process.
 
I don’t have a solution to offer other than to encourage all of us to view those who take the plunge into politics with greater empathy, and to recognize and reward those who choose to treat their opponents – and all of their fellow Canadians – with a dignified civility reflective of the seriousness of their jobs.
 
We have created a system that seems to celebrate eating its own, and no one benefits from that.
 
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On the Senate, see this report by the University of Waterloo’s Emmett Macfarlane.
 
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Jack Mintz wrote an article for the Financial Post last week that left me frustrated.
 
It begins with a call to arms: “With revenues pouring into federal and provincial coffers, it’s time for Canadians to tell their governments they’ve had enough with high taxes.”
 
If governments – federal and provincial – collected the same 38.5% of GDP in taxes and non-tax revenues in 2022 as they did in 2015 (rather than the 41.2% they plan to collect this year), individual Canadians would pay $2000 less in taxes.
 
“To help beleaguered Canadians,” Mintz concludes, governments “should put tax relief on the front burner.”
 
Typically, it’s progressives who reject this sort of argument most vehemently.
 
Governments, however imperfect, fund the public goods that liberal-democratic societies need to flourish.
 
Moreover, a degree of wealth redistribution is necessary in societies that recognize that there are real differences between equality, equity, and justice.
 
I can sympathize with that view, but my primary concern with Mintz’s argument comes from a different place.
 
Ottawa alone ran deficits of over $300 billion in 2020-21 and nearly $150 billion this past year.
 
My family benefited directly from some of that money (we took, and continue to take, ‘free’ rapid tests; we got vaccinated ‘for free’; we ordered take-out from restaurants that used government subsidies to pay their workers; etc.), and I suspect that most readers’ families did, too.
 
I think that much of that spending was necessary given the challenges brought on by the pandemic.
 
But now that the economy is growing again, and unemployment is down, it seems to me it would be prudent to try to start paying back some of what we collectively borrowed.
 
That’s why I find Mintz’s calls for balanced budgets to enable new tax cuts so frustrating.
 
Balanced budgets don’t reduce the national debt, and tax cuts reduce revenue, which limits a government’s ability to pay back what it has borrowed.
 
(Sure, some tax cuts spur economic growth – and might therefore increase government revenue in the medium-to-long term - but the immediate result is less money for the state. Given the size of the national debt, we should be saving our tax cuts for when the economy is struggling.)
 
In sum, Mintz is right to identify a lack of fiscal discipline among today’s governments. But his solution – to replace them with others that promise to balance the budget and cut taxes – won’t solve the problem, and might even make it worse.
 
Surely, there is space in our political system for a party, ‘conservative’ or ‘progressive,’ that has the courage to ask us collectively – and not just the “ultra rich” – to pay more when times are relatively good so that future generations have a genuine opportunity to enjoy the same privileges of liberal democracy that we have.
 
A party that called on me to sacrifice so that my kids could have a better life would have my vote in a minute.
 
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When it comes to economic issues, I always find Trevor Tombe’s work helpful.
 
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