The true free market is the black market. The formal economy, especially in socialist nations, is manipulated so that prices do not convey authentic demand and supply. What we see on shelves at inflated prices is a shadow of what would exist amid thriving laissez-faire capitalism.
Similar logic applies to Canada’s professional intellectuals, notably those in taxpayer-funded higher education, think tanks with charitable status, and the regime-media commentariat. While the problem is not universal, the disproportionate biases of the approved intellectuals are so ridiculous you have to laugh to keep from crying.
Postmodernism’s capture of higher education means those who resist almost inevitably find themselves out of a job—tenure be damned. Ask Frances Widdowson, formerly of Mount Royal University, since she dared challenge the aboriginal industry. Widdowson is among the few free-thinking holdouts who gather at the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship and Civitas Canada.
Canada’s thought police fund what they like and criminalize or ostracize what they do not. The tilting of the playing field is akin to how medically assisted suicide was illegal one year (2015) and then ubiquitous and taxpayer funded the next (2016)—when Ottawa got on board with deliberately putting people to death.
The problem of contaminated, skewed discourse is difficult to overstate and is becoming more obvious. The layman typically resorts to anonymity online, since he is aware of vindictiveness from federalists against secessionists and the likelihood of naked lawfare.
If you want to rise in regime media or higher education, you better avoid taboos. As longtime journalism professor David Haskell has noted, those who challenge progressivism might find work locally, “but they just don’t advance.” Those who follow the (il)Liberal party line rise and pat each other on the back.
At my first Canadian policy conference in Ottawa in 2009, I was learning the ropes of the think-tank world. Since such organizations are rare and have a low profile in New Zealand, a peer explained that right-leaning think tanks are an intellectual counterweight to universities.
It is a David-versus-Goliath fight. Millions of students and easily 100,000 researchers are in Canada’s overwhelmingly postmodern institutions of higher education. Without taxpayer funding, these institutions would swiftly downsize and serve market demand rather than diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates.
The dozen or so market-oriented think tanks across Canada often struggle to crack a million dollars for a budget and worry about folding or losing charitable status. This privileged access to foundation grants and tax exemptions is a magnet for intimidation from the Canada Revenue Agency. Consequent fear engenders onerous compliance and self-censorship. Those lacking charitable status, such as the Alberta Institute and the Haultain Research Institute, retain independence but struggle to compete financially and are crowded out.
Even right-leaning think tanks sometimes receive and advocate for direct subsidies beyond tax exemptions. It raises one’s eyebrows and shows the conflict of interest among Canada’s Conservative Inc. This was perhaps most brazen when Conrad Black wrote in the National Post how media bailouts, which turned into seemingly permanent subsidies, could be “beneficial.” At some point, such institutions become Ottawa’s controlled opposition.
One could offer countless anecdotes attesting to Canada’s slanted and manipulated intellectual discourse. However, one example this month compels a response and takes aim at the Ottawa regime’s greatest fear: a free Alberta. An Orwellian 43-page report came out, published by DisinfoWatch, as a project of five research organizations. Titled Decision Making and National Unity under Threat: Foreign Interference, Cognitive Sovereignty, and the Alberta Referendum, its findings went viral across legacy media in Canada and abroad.
DisinfoWatch is a unit of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), and the report’s lead author, Marcus Kolga, is an MLI senior fellow. His report epitomizes the problem of Ottawa-centric research and media parroting. It also comes, at least in part, from a think tank deeply embedded in Canada’s establishment conservatism.
MLI has done valuable work over the years, but this report is profoundly damaging to its own purported concerns, and it calls for Ottawa to flex its statist muscles and interfere with the Alberta independence movement. Ottawa already is, and now the imperial city must lead “a coordinated national response” and “pre-emptive inoculation.”
The report is heavy on hypocrisy and fearmongering and light on self-awareness, but regime media have gleefully spread the message far and wide. Even the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the mother of regime media, got in on the action: “Actors from Russia and the US are attempting to promote separatist ideas in what researchers behind the report described as a threat to Canada’s ‘democratic integrity.’”
One line from the report takes the cake: “The danger is that foreign governments, state-aligned media, ideological networks, and profit-driven manipulation systems are seeking to distort [the independence debate].” The chief culprits, in the authors’ minds, are “Russia, the United States, and economic opportunists.” Many Canadians have been programmed to believe these are the enemies of the day, even though the worst enemies are within.
The first irony is that Ottawa is foreign to Alberta. Albertans have a distinct nation that was annexed by Ottawa in 1905. Albertans voted neither on their entry into Canada nor on their first premier. The second irony is that those reporting this are themselves state-aligned media, and the report’s authors are in a progressive ideological network.
Third, the note about profiteering is laughable. The worst the report could identify was an apparent US$10 million in covert Russian funding to an outlet focused on the United States. While Russian media manipulation is a problem, regime outlets receive CAN$2 billion annually. For anyone who wants to make a buck, backing the regime is the path of least resistance. US-based private-equity funds openly profit by the hundreds of millions off Ottawa’s media subsidies.
Perhaps the greatest irony of the DisinfoWatch report is that it seeks to protect “Canada’s cognitive sovereignty” while failing to identify any disinformation: “The content repeatedly portrays Alberta separatism as popular, Alberta as economically exploited, and foreign support or recognition as plausible.” Truth is treason in an empire of lies.
Further, one pivotal motivation for Alberta secession is the reclamation of natural rights, notably free speech. Ask any secession supporter: there will be no government funding of media in the liberated nation. The report misses the boat on this entirely and scapegoats when attempting to explain support for secession.
Advocates know all too well that government media is a tool of the regime—right now working overtime to thwart Alberta independence—and they do not want to rebuild the same problem in Edmonton. The same should go for all the backdoor funding of think tanks and other research organizations that tow the regime line.
