Peter Copeland/National Post: Conservatives would do well to learn from Carney’s willingness to regulate in domains that threaten the social fabric but require reasonable limits on unrestrained freedom. However, they appear to be stuck in the 1980s, decrying every use of state power as socialism, every attempt to regulate digital infrastructure as censorship and every concern for social cohesion as a pretext for authoritarianism. Their latest makeover is an 80s redux: affordability on repeat, jail-not-bail public safety slogans and cheap energy — as though these remedies are sufficient for what ails us.
The problems Canada, and so many other Western countries face are much deeper — organized crime, digital degeneracy and addiction, low social trust, family decline, weak common culture, collapsing state capacity, and national fragmentation and, most importantly, a God-shaped hole. They will not be solved by tax cuts and deregulation alone. They require judgment about when power should be restrained, when it must be used, and along with it, a positive cultural vision markedly distinct from what the Liberals offer…