Karly Coleman Says YES

Cyclist, cycling educator and Edmonton’s only bike traffic reporter

I started cycling in 1992, when bike lanes were but a gleam in a transportation engineer’s eye. I’ve taken and taught Cycling Canada courses on bike safety. I’ve been on cycling and active-transportation boards, advocating for cycling space on roads—any underutilized space, anywhere. I’ve cycled across Canada and written a memoir about that journey. So I have a lot of skin in the vehicular cycling game. But I was slow to appreciate bike lanes. As they’ve become more popular in North America, I’ve come to appreciate the freedom and protection they give people who ride.

Mostly I love how bike lanes show where cyclists are on the road. To be clear, we are allowed on most roads in Alberta (and are not allowed on most sidewalks), but we’re not always so visible. Given the small (but slowly growing) number of cyclists in many cities—e.g., around 19 per cent of Calgarians say they ride weekly; about 6 per cent ride daily—we’re hard to see and easy for vehicle drivers to fly by, to our potential peril. Collisions cost drivers too, so bike lanes protect everyone.

Moreover, vehicles themselves are getting bigger. Some 63 per cent of new vehicles now registered in Canada are classified as “multi-purpose” (which excludes cars and includes SUVs), compared to 42 per cent in 2017. These vehicles, which get bulkier with each iteration, make it much harder to see other users of our roads. Research published in 2024 in the journal Economics of Transportation shows that with every additional 10 cm of front-end height on a vehicle, the risk of death for pedestrians increases by 22 per cent.

Another reason we’re not always visible is that too few drivers are watching for us. They’re quelling their children’s fights, thinking about what to eat for supper, wondering if their favourite restaurant is still open—all while navigating a 4,500-pound machine on streets full of signs, signals, construction, other vehicles and pedestrians. And sometimes we cyclists are those drivers. We too know how easy it is to miss the neon jacket or flashing headlight on a cyclist’s body or bike.

Bike lanes are a game-changer especially for cyclists who belong to vulnerable populations, including women, children, seniors and differently abled people. With bike lanes, we don’t have to worry nearly as much about being unseen; there are literally concrete barriers between the oversized carapaces being driven through the streets and us.

With lower upkeep costs than roads, and year-round usability, bike lanes offer practical mobility for anyone who wants to get around—not just for those lucky enough to own a car. And bike lanes save us all money. As urban historian Lewis Mumford warned, adding highway lanes to deal with congestion is like “loosening your belt to cure obesity.” Edmonton’s Anthony Henday Drive has proved him right. Widening began on that road less than a decade after it opened. Meanwhile, former mayor Don Iveson famously referred to bike lanes as “budget dust.” He too was right. The annual maintenance and repair of Edmonton’s pathways, including bike lanes, costs about $178/km. To maintain the same length of road—and Edmonton has way more roads than bike lanes—costs $1,285/km.

 

Kayode Southwood Says NO

Senior policy analyst, Canadian Federation of Independent Business

Alberta’s municipalities should pause the expansion of bike lanes. While cycling infrastructure is important, the way bike lanes are being implemented today ignores the unique needs of the streets and communities they traverse. A one-size-fits-all approach is not only ineffective, it’s harmful. It disrupts local economies, hurts small businesses and alienates residents.

Proponents often claim that opposition to bike lanes is simply a culture war between cyclists and drivers. But that framing misses the point. Bike lanes have unfortunately become one of the most polarizing infrastructure issues in our cities not because people oppose cycling, but because cities are implementing these projects poorly. The real issue isn’t bikes vs. cars; it’s a failure to plan, consult and integrate bike lanes in ways that respect local communities and businesses.

In Calgary and Edmonton, for example, small businesses have reported significant losses due to new bike lanes installed in front of their stores that eliminate customer parking. Recent data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) shows one-quarter of Alberta’s small businesses rank traffic management infrastructure, including bike lanes, as the most harmful municipal issue they face.

This isn’t to say bike lanes are inherently bad. Protected infrastructure for cyclists is essential for safety and mobility. But when cities pursue aggressive expansion plans—installing intersecting bike lanes across nearly every downtown street—the result is confusion and underutilization.

Consider Calgary’s 15th Avenue SW bike lane. It runs west–east just one block south of an existing east–west lane, and is flanked by dual-direction lanes on both 12th Avenue SW and 11th Street SW. The latter sees an average of just 128 cyclists on weekdays according to the City’s data—a mere 0.005 per cent of the Beltline’s population of 25,880. More broadly, only 2 per cent of downtown trips in Calgary in 2024 were made by bike, half the target set in the City’s 2020 cycling strategy. Edmonton’s downtown bike lane data shows similarly low usage and unclear goals. Clearly, current bike lane investments aren’t yielding the expected modal shift, and further expansion would be wasteful.

Despite this, city officials continue to push forward without adequately consulting the people most affected. For example, Calgary’s engagement process for the 15th Avenue SW bike lane included virtual sessions attended by only two businesses. That’s not meaningful consultation. In both Calgary and Edmonton, municipal officials charge ahead with bike lanes that reduce accessibility, ignoring opposition.

 

Before adding still more bike lanes, municipalities must first commit to thorough monitoring and meaningful stakeholder engagement. Cities need to provide tangible support to businesses affected by construction—who see a 40 per cent drop in sales on average—and set clear, measurable goals for ridership with a willingness to adjust targets if they aren’t met.

Right now, bike lane strategies in Alberta feel like a race instead of a methodical plan. It’s time to slow down, listen up and build infrastructure that works for everyone.

 

karly coleman responds to kayode southwood

Kayode Southwood’s argument seems to be that while bike lanes aren’t “inherently bad,” cities haven’t asked people for permission to build them, and their implementation has been botched. Success would only be possible if bespoke lanes were created in place of the current one-size-fits-all approach. So, overall, we shouldn’t invest in bike lanes.

But bike lanes in Alberta aren’t a problem. Our cities are finally rising to the challenge of providing safer mobility infrastructure, including bike lanes. These provide more transportation choices and stronger economic resilience, not less. If anything is a problem, it’s a long-standing municipal planning system that sees automobiles as the major means of transportation. This bias has shaped our lives, guiding the placement and proliferation of streets, buildings and parking lots. For many of us, it’s the only life we know. We can see this in Southwood’s arguments. He ignores how our auto-dominant system might evolve to better serve everyone and how neighbourhood revitalization can positively impact even businesses. To hang the decline in fortunes for small businesses on bike lanes is a polarizing framework without hard evidence to back it up.

In 2025 we’ve seen what happens when provincial governments jump onto the populist anti-bike-lane bandwagon. Ontario attempted to rip out bike lanes with its Bill 212: Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act. Ontario’s Superior Court found that removing protected bike lanes violated cyclists’ Charter rights by increasing risks to life and security of the people without any lawful justification. The province relied on “weak anecdotal evidence and expert opinion… unsupported, unpersuasive and contrary to the consensus view of experts,” without data showing that bike lanes caused the congestion or harm that politicians claimed.

Bike lanes deserve the same patience and evidence-based thinking as any other transportation infrastructure.

Southwood points to CFIB survey results that bundle bike lanes together with every other “traffic management” irritant and then treats that as proof that, ipso facto, cycling infrastructure is “harmful”—precisely the kind of conflation rejected by the Ontario court: anecdote and hearsay. Every credible study on safety, mode shift, economic vitality and corridor performance points the other way.

Southwood claims municipal planners have “failed” citizens by not consulting and integrating bike lanes into communities respectfully. As proof he states the City of Calgary held virtual engagement sessions in which only two businesses participated. It’s unclear how this constitutes a lack of engagement. Regardless, people weigh their participation in municipal processes against everyday routines, such as childcare, work issues and elder care. Sometimes the engagement session loses out, despite municipal entreaties. Demanding full attendance as a precondition for change simply hands a veto to whoever has the most time to show up.

Since parking is another of Southwood’s issues, let’s look at it. According to the late professor Donald Shoup, North America has seven parking spots for every car. Research shows vehicles are parked for an average of 23 hours a day—functioning more like bollards than transportation devices. And while automobiles can carry several people at once, they seldom do. Statistics Canada reports that over 80.9 per cent of automobile trips in 2025 were taken by single-occupant drivers. One driver stops at a store on the way home, parks, goes in, shops and leaves: one stall, one customer.

Now imagine the same stall designated for 12 bikes. One spot, 12 customers, same timeframe, vastly more commercial activity. Even in winter cities, research bears this out. Nonetheless, culturally, we cyclists aren’t seen as economic drivers. Southwood reinforces this blind spot by treating the loss of car parking as a crisis while ignoring the far greater economic potential of alternatives.

He also claims bike lanes are underutilized. If only it were so simple. Until we provide continuous, better-connected routes, the number of cyclists will increase only incrementally. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t install bike lanes. It means that as people see others like them riding, they’ll be encouraged to ride too. But only if they feel physically, emotionally and socially safe enough. And if they can park outside the store.

We wouldn’t rip out a bridge because traffic is light on opening day. Cycling infrastructure deserves the same patience and evidence-based thinking as any other transportation initiative. We don’t need a moratorium on bike lanes; we need the courage to keep building them—and the honesty to admit that the only thing truly threatened here is the primacy of the private car, not the public interest.

 

 

kayode southwood responds to karly coleman

Karly Coleman makes a heartfelt case for more bike lanes, highlighting the visibility and protection they offer cyclists. As someone who completed my first triathlon this year and logged thousands of kilometres on my bike, I agree that safe cycling matters. But accelerating bike-lane expansion along retail corridors without fixing how we plan, build and measure these projects is the wrong approach. In Alberta, bike lane implementation too often undercuts small-business viability. We need to pause blanket expansion and adopt a methodical business-first strategy that earns durable public support.

Across Canada, small firms have endured an average of 508 days of construction-related disruption over the past five years, according to the CFIB report “Hard Hats and Hard Times.” It found construction causes a 22 per cent revenue decline and roughly $10,000 in cleaning and repair costs. When lane removals, concrete medians and signal changes are layered onto multi-season construction, a mom-and-pop retailer or café operating on thin margins can’t simply “wait it out.” These aren’t soft costs—they translate into shorter hours, layoffs and closures, especially on streets where parking and loading are eliminated without alternatives. For many small businesses, curbside access isn’t a luxury; it’s the difference between survival and closure.

Affordability concerns add another layer. Edmontonians face a nearly 7 per cent property tax increase in 2026, so perhaps bike-lane expansions could have been scaled back to ease pressure on businesses and residents. Back in 2022, Edmonton city council approved $100-million to build out the city’s bike-lane network. Even a fraction of that could have been redirected to reduce tax burdens during a challenging economic climate. When cities are asking businesses to absorb higher taxes and rising costs, they need to demonstrate that every dollar spent delivers measurable value—not just political optics.

If this approach isn’t boosting ridership but is harming businesses, are cities meeting their goals

Coleman argues bike lanes bring year-round usability. True—but they also bring year-round costs, even when ridership plummets in winter. Edmonton devotes nearly 45 per cent of its $67-million snow and ice budget to clearing bike lanes, multi-use paths, bus stops, stairs and pedestrian spaces. City officials acknowledge that clearing active pathways can be more expensive per kilometre than clearing roads. The standard—to clear priority bike lanes to bare pavement within 24 hours—is appropriate for safety, but it underscores why route selection must be value-driven in winter cities. When taxpayers and businesses are footing the bill for premium maintenance in corridors that see minimal winter use, it’s fair to ask whether priorities are aligned with reality.

Additionally, consultation with merchants on bike lanes is often superficial. Transit projects show the same pattern. In Edmonton’s Chinatown, for example, the City pushed ahead with a transit lane that removed all parking on 101st St NW. Area businesses voiced strong opposition and sent letters to council without response. When projects reconfigure parking, loading and delivery routes, cities must prioritize grassroots engagement—door-to-door outreach, roundtables and access audits—before finalizing designs. Online surveys and virtual sessions attended by only a handful of businesses don’t constitute meaningful consultation. If cities want buy-in, they need to meet business owners where they are—on the street, in their shops and at times that work for them.

Protected lanes do improve safety—when placed where they’re needed most. But building parallel lanes within blocks of each other without clear ridership targets or review commitments is poor stewardship of curb space. One of Calgary’s Cycling Strategy goals is to increase satisfaction with cycling. If the current approach isn’t boosting ridership and is harming businesses, is it meeting its objectives Truly we don’t know. The City stopped publishing its annual Bicycle Program Yearbook in 2013 and hasn’t posted a cycling strategy update since 2018. Our cities should regularly review ridership data and public opinion to trigger course corrections. The lack of measurement is what prompted Alberta’s transportation minister in 2025 to call for bike-lane removals.

Cities don’t need an endless tug-of-war between cyclists and shopkeepers—they need a plan for coexistence. Bike lanes can deliver safety and sustainability, but only if paired with policies that keep storefronts accessible and main streets vibrant. That means treating small businesses as partners, not afterthoughts: maintaining parking, integrating curbside loading zones, offering construction relief, and measuring success by both ridership and retail health. If we get this right, we won’t just build bike lanes—we’ll build trust, strong local economies and streets where commerce and active transportation thrive together.

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Yadira Tejeda-Saldana Says Yes

Director of responsible research & innovation, Canada, New Harvest

With the global population projected to reach 10 billion by 2050, and with natural resources finite, creating sustainable food solutions is critical. This challenge, however, presents an opportunity to innovate and enhance food production through technologies such as cellular agriculture, which uses cells from animals, plants or even microbes (like those for brewing beer) to produce food, including animal-cell-derived meat. Innovation can help feed a growing population by complementing traditional agriculture. While much attention focuses on “lab-grown meat,” cellular agriculture also produces other products, such as cocoa, coffee or vanilla. Their manufacture can be in facilities or integrated into local rural operations, making them familiar and scalable, like yogurt.

Canada’s abundant resources and strong agricultural legacy position us to have a domestic cellular agriculture sector with 86,000 jobs and worth $7.5-billion by 2030. Under certain scenarios, cellular agriculture could improve efficiency and reduce environmental pressures—for example, using less land and creating fewer GHG emissions in meat production. Cell-derived food won’t replace traditional ways but will work with conventional farming to diversify production and strengthen rural resilience. This is crucial, as climate change is already harming farmers and ranchers. A study cited by Farm Credit Canada estimates droughts, floods and storms could lead to $3-billion in agricultural losses between 2022 and 2050. While cellular agriculture still depends on farm inputs, it could help farmers adapt by creating new revenue streams, e.g., converting damaged crops into feedstock for cell-based production.

Canada strongly depends on agri-food trade. We export over 50 per cent of our agricultural production and import roughly 30 per cent of our food and beverages. Global conflicts and trade issues can disrupt this supply chain, emphasizing the urgency of strengthening national food and economic security. This is a call to action for producers, researchers, innovators and consumers to collaborate to build greater resilience. Cellular agriculture can contribute by leveraging cutting-edge technology to boost the efficiency of local food production.

Farms could integrate cellular agriculture alongside crops and livestock, transforming otherwise wasted materials into cell-based products or value-added inputs. By-products from canola or pea processing, for instance, can be repurposed to culture animal cells for meat, advancing a circular economy and reducing reliance on single export markets (e.g., 65 per cent of canola meal goes to the US). This would boost autonomy and jobs and diversify revenue across the agricultural value chain, the way craft brewing and distilling revitalize local economies.

Our choice today is whether to allow cellular agriculture to flourish here or simply observe its benefits from afar. Canada has long been known for high-quality, safe agricultural products. By embracing cellular agriculture we can maintain that reputation while putting ourselves at the forefront of sustainable change. By approving cell-derived meat, we will ensure a thriving agricultural sector for generations to come.

 

Alice Driver Says No

Author of The Life and Death of the American Worker

When I think of meat and of how invested society is in continuing to subsidize and eat meat, I think of Tender is the Flesh, by Argentinian novelist Agustina Bazterrica. In this dystopian tale, a virus has contaminated all animal meat, and so companies begin to raise humans for slaughter. While that might seem unrelated to lab-grown meat, both proposals represent a future in which societies recognize problems with conventional meat and invest immense resources in creating novel sources of meat that are troubling in their own way.

What do we mean by lab-grown meat A company extracts cells from a live animal, then grows these at scale in a stainless-steel bioreactor. As the Government of Canada puts it, “The resulting tissues are intended to be used—for example, baked, grilled etc.—like any other food ingredient.” Singapore, Israel, Australia and the US have approved some lab-grown meats for human consumption on a limited scale; Canada has not.

The same global companies that invented modern factory farming, Tyson Foods and Cargill, are now investing in the companies that are producing lab-grown meat. In other words, companies that have caused immense environmental damage and worsened labour standards across the world are now part of the new protein technologies. What companies such as Tyson and Cargill have successfully bet on in the past is that most consumers don’t care how their meat is produced, how it tastes or what harms it creates. With lab meat, these companies are making the same bet.

They are also marketing lab meat to more conscious consumers, calling it the “future of food” and environmentally friendly. This claim, however, merits skepticism. A 2023 study published in ACS Food Science & Technology, for example, suggests that lab meat’s carbon footprint is potentially much worse than that of beef, based on a life-cycle assessment of the energy used and GHGs emitted at all stages of production. The biopharmaceutical industry generally—and the “broth” in which lab meat is grown specifically—is energy-intensive.

But even if in the long term lab-grown meat proves slightly less damaging to the environment than conventional meat, will it matter Industry projects lab-grown meat will cost the consumer $6–$12 per pound. Independent studies estimate a cost of $17–$23. In this scenario, lab-grown meat, unless it’s subsidized, is unlikely to be the future of food for most of us.

To eat meat is a morally and ethically complicated choice involving animal welfare, workers’ well-being, the environment and human health. Lab-grown meat involves various nuances of these same issues. Big Tech’s solutions are dubious: a vision of a future with an abundance of meat products that do no harm. And if Canada approves lab meat, it risks replicating the factory-farm model, with its tiny number of multinationals dominating the domestic market and food supply. “If we took that money away from Big Meat,” counters food journalist Alicia Kennedy, “there’s so much we can do on smaller scales to make sure food is equitably grown and equitably accessed, and nutritional needs are met along with cultural needs.”

 

Yadira Tejeda-Saldana responds to Alice Driver

Alice Driver MAKES A compelling argument about the potential of cell-derived meat to perpetuate the flaws of factory farming, and I share her concerns. I’d argue, however, that nowadays companies can still count on most consumers not caring about how their meat is produced, how it tastes or the harm it causes. A 2025 Canadian report indicates that more than 50 per cent of Canadian consumers are concerned about health risks, nutritional value, pesticides and preservative levels in their food. It’s also well documented that rising food prices affect shopping habits. Although consumers are open to purchasing locally produced, healthier or higher quality food, budget constraints are undermining their willingness to improve their food choices. The same report shows that 77 per cent of Canadians are concerned about climate change, with a majority shifting their dietary habits to reduce their impact. Canadians also seek deeper insights into the food they buy, with more than 50 per cent reporting that they look for sustainability information through social media or traditional media.

I’d also agree with Driver that it’s debatable whether cell-derived meat can be more environmentally friendly than conventional meat. Life-cycle assessment studies show a wide range of potential outcomes, which are highly dependent on production assumptions, scale and energy sources. The main challenge is that no mass-production facility currently exists, so projections remain speculative. But the study that Driver cites was widely misrepresented by journalists. That study assumes growth-culture media inputs will be “highly refined,” similar to those used in the biopharmaceutical industry. This refinement is the primary reason why the global-warming potential of cell-derived meat was said to be substantially higher than that of conventional beef. But while highly refined inputs were typical in the early stages of research into cell-derived meat, it’s unlikely large-scale production will rely on such costly inputs. In fact, several companies and researchers are developing less refined food-grade media formulations to lower costs and improve the environmental footprint of cell-derived meat. For instance, they’re exploring agricultural by-products, such as canola meal, as affordable replacements.

We’re developing ways to lower costs and improve the environmental footprint of cell-derived meat.

And even if Driver were correct that the cost of cell-based meat is higher than that of conventional meat, this is a common pattern for new products, especially when manufactured at a small scale. Computers and cell phones were initially very expensive and inaccessible to most people. Scientific and technological advancements have now enabled most people to have them. Pineapples were once rare and expensive for many people. Thanks to ships, refrigeration, canning technology and breeding advancements, however, pineapples can now be found in supermarkets worldwide at an affordable price.

The first burger made using cell-derived technology was estimated to have cost $330,000. Driver’s referenced prices of $6–$12 and $17–$23 per pound already represent a significant decrease from the early days. The industry is focused on addressing scaling-up challenges to make the product more affordable still.

I align with Driver’s views on the moral and ethical issues surrounding meat consumption. It’s all quite nuanced. Food isn’t merely a product; it’s deeply interconnected with cultures, traditions and lifestyles. Accordingly we need to ensure that new food technologies account for this. As a food scientist and avid food lover, I believe in responsibly using technology to address pressing global challenges. Emerging technologies such as cellular agriculture shouldn’t be viewed as a silver bullet or as a trap set by Big Tech. Rather they’re tools that must be governed judiciously. In Canada the cellular agriculture industry remains small, providing ample opportunities to apply lessons from factory farming regarding labour, equity and consolidation. The ecosystem is in development, enabling broad engagement from diverse groups. Canadian researchers recognize this: a project at the University of the Fraser Valley is exploring the social impacts of cellular agriculture and developing guidelines to embed justice from the outset so that the benefits of cellular agriculture reach rural communities, workers and Indigenous stewards.

We should think globally but act locally. With current economic models faltering and the federal government encouraging middle powers such as Canada to develop resilient, homegrown supply chains, opportunities are emerging. Cellular agriculture has the potential to retool our food system without repeating past mistakes. My team at New Harvest is actively pursuing this idea, welcoming grassroots partnerships with diverse communities willing to build a fairer future from the ground up.

 

Alice Driver responds to Yadira Tejeda-Saldana

It is true that the global population is projected to reach 10 billion by 2050 and that natural resources are finite. I do, however, question why we, as a society, continue to equate sustainability with meat, which, whether factory-farmed or lab-grown, is one of the most energy-intensive foods on the planet to produce. I am interested in exploring the philosophy of meat and the implications of continuing to invest heavily in the consumption of animal flesh. The base assumption of the argument to produce lab-grown meat is that meat is the way to meet the caloric needs of the future population. In a 2025 interview, however, Stanford food and agriculture expert David Lobell said that lab-grown meat probably wouldn’t have a significant impact on food sustainability “anytime soon enough to really matter…”

While it’s true that innovation can help feed a growing population, why is innovation defined as cell-grown meat Climate change is already harming farmers and ranchers, but an honest discussion would involve acknowledging the environmental impact of all forms of meat. A 2023 UC Davis study found that “the global-warming potential of lab-based meat using these purified media is 4 to 25 times greater than the average for retail beef.” Edward Spang, an associate professor of food science and technology and one of the authors of the study, wrote, “Our findings suggest that cultured meat is not inherently better for the environment than conventional beef. It’s not a panacea.”

Canadians are already some of the most voracious meat-eaters in the world. The easiest, most cost-effective and most direct way for Canadians to address climate change and shrink their ecological footprint would be to reduce their meat consumption, not substitute one form of energy-intensive meat for another.

Scientists have shown that a plant-rich diet that includes only moderate meat consumption could prevent 40,000 early deaths per day by 2050 and cut in half the food-related emissions driving global heating. But we’d need to start right away. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, which has been shattering heat records in 2026, and where the growing number of heat deaths has been covered by The New York Times. The effects of climate change affect us all, and we need to look first to the simple changes, such as eating less meat, that could profoundly help the earth and our own health.

A more sustainable future could involve foods such as crickets, mealworms, algae and seaweed. Sure, people might recoil at the “strangeness” of such foods. But I often wonder why it’s easier for society to invest over $3-billion in meat grown in stainless steel vats than for us to seriously discuss alternative proteins, vegetarianism or veganism. And it’s not like Canadians would be starting from scratch. According to a 2025 study, 7.6 per cent of Canadians are already vegetarian, and 4.6 per cent are vegan.

We should reduce meat eating, not substitute one form of energy-intensive meat for another.

I also question to what extent cellular agriculture could help beleaguered farmers create new revenue streams, because cell culture systems are extremely sensitive. For example, damaged crops couldn’t be used in a lab environment if they had mycotoxins (from mould contamination), chemical contamination or pathogenic microbes. While Canada has abundant natural resources, the lab-grown meat industry has yet to demonstrate that it will reduce environmental pressures on even a small scale, let alone a large one.

And yet I recognize that protein is currently a cultural obsession being used to market everything from popcorn to Doritos. Global meat-packing companies, many of which are also investing in lab-grown meat, wield significant political influence, especially in the US. In 2025 The New York Times declared “Meat is back, on plates and in politics,” citing the influence of the Make America Healthy Again movement, which includes members of the Trump administration such as Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The far-right movement across the globe, including Canadian author Jordan Peterson, has embraced and promoted the carnivore diet.

There is a way to discuss cellular agriculture that recognizes its limitations. The lab-grown meat industry has proven it can attract investment, and it would certainly be a way for Canada to create jobs in a new industry. However, the industry hasn’t proven that it’s at the forefront of sustainable change, nor that it’s the food of the future. It is an expensive, energy-intensive biopharma-derived food product that, at current costs, would be unaffordable to most of the world’s population. We’d be wise to direct our energy elsewhere.

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Joanna Baron says yes

Executive director, Canadian Constitution Foundation

Der Stürmer was a German newspaper in the 1930s that published virulently anti-Semitic tirades. In Weimar Germany Der Stürmer and its publisher, Julius Streicher, were prosecuted for hate speech no fewer than 36 times. Yet each time, Streicher’s notoriety and martyrdom grew—the courts became an arena for him to display his odious views. As for the other German laws criminalizing anti-Semitic speech, history has delivered a clear verdict on their efficacy in preventing the Holocaust.

Despite this historical failure, European countries maintain strict laws against Holocaust denial, anti-Semitic hate speech and displaying Nazi symbols. Yet these same countries struggle with high rates of anti-Semitic hate crimes. Canada is now poised to follow this path: the Carney government (with its Bill C-9) proposes to criminalize “wilfully promoting hatred” by displaying specified symbols, including Nazi symbols, in public.

Holocaust survivors and Jewish communities rightly feel threatened and degraded when Nazi symbols appear in public spaces. The question is not whether such displays cause pain—they clearly do—but whether criminalization is the appropriate or effective response. I argue it is neither.

Hate and bigotry have always existed, irrespective of government attempts at suppression. And criminalizing hateful symbols doesn’t make these views disappear. It drives them underground, where they attract the allure of forbidden fruit and generate sympathy from state attempts at suppression. When hate is visible, civil society can respond with counter-protests, education and social ostracism—tools far more persuasive than government bans. Hidden from view, hate becomes harder to identify, monitor and effectively counter.

Visibility serves another crucial function: law enforcement can track connections between symbolic expression and genuinely illegal activity. Canada already properly criminalizes hate speech closely connected to violence or true incitement. Banning symbols divorced from immediate physical harm actually undermines those efforts.

Perhaps most troubling are the inevitable enforcement problems. Who decides what constitutes “wilfully promoting hatred” Criminal law can’t capture the nuances of context. Is a museum displaying Nazi symbols for education guilty What about political satire or anti-Nazi art If Nazi symbols are criminalized, why not Confederate flags, Soviet hammer-and-sickles or “F*** Trudeau” signs Speech bans depend on the state drawing arbitrary and subjective lines, chilling expression that people fear could be punished under vague categories.

Our Charter provides for reasonable limits on speech when genuine harm occurs. It addresses true threats and incitement, including provisions criminalizing the advocating of genocide, wilful promotion of hatred, uttering of threats, intimidation, harassment, mischief and unlawful assemblies. Creating special criminal categories for symbols risks politicizing enforcement and inviting inconsistent application based on whoever holds power. Sunlight and social revulsion work better than martyr-making prosecutions over a patch on a jacket.

 

Richard Robertson Says No

Director of research and advocacy, B’nai Brith Canada

Few symbols trigger as much emotion in Canada as the Hakenkreuz (“hooked cross”), commonly thought of as a swastika, or other Nazi iconography. Wherever they appear, these symbols invoke the memory of the Third Reich and the horrors of the Holocaust. In some contexts it is appropriate to use Nazi symbols for artistic, historical and educational purposes. But when such iconography is used to wilfully promote hatred, the Government has a clear imperative to act.

As a matter of principle, our democracy has no business censoring sentiments that are unpopular or even detestable. But our fundamental freedoms have reasonable limits; when rights are abused to promote hatred, an appropriate balance must be struck. This is a founding principle of our constitutional system. A limited prohibition on the public display of Nazi symbols is paramount if Canadians are to continue living together in a society of diverse opinions, cultures and faiths.

In Canada it is already accepted that our freedoms aren’t absolute. In R. v. Oakes the Supreme Court held that the federal government may impose reasonable limitations on the fundamental freedoms enumerated in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This would be the case for a prohibition on the public display of Nazi symbols, provided it is rational and measured and that the impact on freedom of expression is minimal and proportional to the harm such displays cause.

Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, proposes to criminalize the act of using Nazi symbols in a public space to wilfully promote hatred against any identifiable group. That such an amendment, if enacted, would infringe on Section 2 of the Charter, which guarantees Canadians’ right to freedom of expression, is not up for debate. It is, moreover, incontrovertible that, in our Charter system, it is permissible to create legislation that infringes on our fundamental rights, provided it is done within the parameters set out in the Oakes test (a framework for deciding whether government action that infringes a Charter right is justified). In this instance, the law would only apply to specific symbols, such as the Hakenkreuz, when used in a specific context. Courts have applied a similar limitation to other forms of expression, including obscenity.

The proliferation of Nazi symbols isn’t a theoretical dilemma. A growing number of neo-Nazi movements and other nefarious actors, exploiting societal divisions, are using Nazi iconography to promote hatred. With increasing frequency, Nazi symbols have been displayed in public spaces with hateful intent. This alarming trend demonstrates an urgent need to amend the Criminal Code to deter the use of Nazi symbols to promote hate, and to hold perpetrators of such acts accountable.

Amid the ongoing crisis of anti-Semitism and the worsening hatred plaguing our society, our government has a vested interest in restricting the public display of Nazi symbols that are being used to wilfully promote hate. The impact of the proposed legislation on individuals’ Charter rights is justifiable under Section 1 and would reflect Parliament’s sincere commitment to combating hate and protecting human rights.

 

joanna baron responds to richard robertson

Richard Robertson and I share the conviction that Nazi ideology led to the worst crime in history and is despicable. We also agree that Holocaust survivors and Jewish communities deserve protection from hatred. Where we differ is on whether Bill C-9’s criminalization of Nazi symbol displays advances legitimate government objectives while minimally impairing free expression. I argue it fails on both counts.

Robertson writes that C-9 would criminalize using Nazi symbols “to wilfully promote hatred against any identifiable group.” But Canada already criminalizes the wilful promotion of hatred, under section 319(1) of the Criminal Code. The Supreme Court upheld this provision in R. v. Keegstra, and clarified in Saskatchewan (Human Rights Commission) v. Whatcott that it captures expression that is “ardent and extreme” in its derogation of an identifiable group. If displaying Nazi symbols with intent to promote hatred already violates this law, what exactly does Bill C-9 add?

The logical inference is that C-9 targets displays that don’t currently meet the threshold for “wilful promotion of hatred.” This means it aims to criminalize either displays without intent to promote hatred, or displays that lower the bar for what constitutes such promotion. Even if a judge uses discretion and declines to convict for displays without hateful intent, the bill raises the spectre of enforcement problems, inviting police to view simple displays of symbols as criminally culpable, and chilling protected expression.

My interlocutor’s own claims undermine his case for criminalizing symbols. He writes that Nazi symbols appear “with increasing frequency” in public spaces “with hateful intent.” If these displays truly constitute wilful promotion of hatred under existing law, why aren’t they being prosecuted Crown prosecutors have discretion to lay charges under section 319(1) when they believe there’s a reasonable prospect of conviction. The perceived need for C-9 suggests these displays don’t meet the current legal threshold, which means the bill’s purpose is to criminalize speech currently considered protected.

Simple displays of symbols could be viewed as criminally culpable, chilling protected expression.

Robertson also asserts that C-9 would satisfy the Oakes test for justifiable Charter violations. The Oakes test, however, requires not just a pressing objective but also that the law be rationally connected to its objective, with minimal impairment of rights and with benefits exceeding the harms. Other democracies’ experiences suggest banning hate symbols won’t further the objective of reducing hate. It instead grants them a mystique that attracts more people to the cause. Germany’s post-war symbol bans have allowed neo-Nazi movements to flourish there despite criminal prohibitions. France’s strict laws haven’t prevented that country from suffering some of Europe’s highest anti-Semitic hate-crime rates.

The comparison to obscenity law also is irrelevant. Obscenity typically involves private material and commercial transactions, not political expression, in public spaces. Nazi symbols, however odious, are inherently ideological and political expression: at the core of what the Charter protects. Courts have consistently held that political speech, even when deeply offensive, receives heightened protection.

Robertson dismisses practical enforcement concerns by gesturing to “similar limitations” courts have applied to other forms of expression. But he provides no mechanism for making the distinctions his framework requires. Who decides whether a display promotes hatred or is educational Police at a demonstration A Crown prosecutor reviewing charges A judge at trial At what point does someone know they’re safe from prosecution?

He also ignores the potential for enforcement creep. If Nazi symbols can be banned based on historical atrocities and potential for promoting hatred, what principled basis exists for not banning other symbols Indeed, justice minister Sean Fraser indicated he is open to widening the legislation to ban other symbols associated with hate. We can speculate: the hammer and sickle represents regimes responsible for the Holodomor, the Great Purge and the gulag, killing tens of millions. The Rising Sun flag offends many Koreans and Chinese, given Japan’s wartime atrocities. What would prevent these from also attracting criminal sanctions in Canada?

Canada already has good ways to address genuinely harmful conduct such as criminal harassment, uttering threats, assault, incitement to violence and, yes, wilful promotion of hatred. These address conduct and true threats while leaving mere offensive expression to social response. It is vigilance against bad actors, and confidence in the resilience of an open society, that will keep us safe and free, not new layers of state-enforced censorship.

 

richard robertson responds to joanna baron

Joanna Baron is right to raise concerns about freedom of speech, but her analysis mischaracterizes Bill C-9, the government’s proposed Combating Hate Act, as well as its historical parallels and precedents.

What Parliament has proposed is far less extreme than Baron would have readers believe it is. The government is not contemplating a law that would criminalize hateful speech—one of the proposed amendments identifies specific Nazi symbols, including the Hakenkreuz, and only under certain circumstances. For the proscription to be applicable, the accused would have to publicly display the symbol in a way that “wilfully promotes hatred.” That is a high threshold, and it will help courts distinguish acts that are intentionally hateful from those which, although objectionable, cannot be considered criminal under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Still, Baron is no doubt expressing an instinctual skepticism shared by many Canadians. Government decisions that limit our freedoms should never be taken lightly and must always be questioned. But in this case, the law has clearly defined which symbols it proscribes and under what circumstances. Baron’s suggestion that the proposed amendments would be used to ban symbols that have not already been enumerated in Bill C-9 is unfounded. Any additional proscriptions would need to be implemented through the development of novel legislation that would be subject to the checks and balances inherent to our democratic process.

It is difficult to comprehend how Baron could describe these as “vague categories” based on “arbitrary” lines. In some instances, she’s simply wrong: she posits that Bill C-9 might prevent a museum from curating Nazi iconography, even though the legislation contains explicit exemptions for purposes that are “educational or artistic” in nature.

We will safeguard Canadians’ basic freedoms while contributing to a system of respectful discourse.

The notion that Bill C-9 or similar anti-hate laws would make policing more difficult is dubious. The legislation doesn’t prevent anyone from owning Nazi flags or materials, nor does it criminalize Nazi ideology. The law only concerns public displays of defined symbols when used to wilfully promote hatred. Our courts have already set a high threshold for what constitutes such conduct.

It’s not unreasonable for Baron to question how effective Bill C-9 would be in practice. But she misrepresents the results of similar efforts in Europe, where symbols such as the Hakenkreuz are already illegal. These laws tend to be more expansive than the reforms to Canada’s Criminal Code that Parliament has introduced. Moreover, it is logical to assume that, when a country introduces laws criminalizing anti-Semitic conduct, the documented number of anti-Semitic hate-crimes in that country will increase. Baron cites the phenomenon as proof that anti-hate laws do not work. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

Underlying Baron’s objections and misrepresentations is an apparent critical misreading of the relevant historical context. In her opening she argues that laws against anti-Semitic speech in the Weimar Republic failed to prevent the Holocaust, and that this is one reason to question the merit of similar legislation in the 21st century. This is absurd. The Holocaust happened because the Nazis overthrew the Weimar system and replaced it with a totalitarian regime. She also implies that these rules may have backfired and allowed Nazis such as Julius Streicher to depict themselves as martyrs. But this omits critical context about interwar Germany. Numerous scholars have shown that the Weimar-era anti-hate laws were too lenient to serve as a deterrent, while the authorities rarely enforced them, in part because the Republic was unstable and perceived as illegitimate, for manifold reasons.

Modern Canada, by contrast, has robust enforcement, a constitutionally entrenched Charter of Rights and Freedoms and a strong, democratic national ethos. Our society also has the benefit of hindsight: for most Canadians, the hakenkreuz is a symbol inextricably linked to the Holocaust and abuse of human rights. Banning its public display would reflect a consensus on the need for legislative reform to address the proliferation of hatred.

The effect of the legislation will not be to drive hate underground, as Baron contends, because Nazi ideology is already on the fringes of Canadian society. There is a difference between objectionable views that some individuals may hold and movements that openly use hate symbols to stir up violence against minorities and undermine democracy. Such practices endanger freedom of expression in ways that are far more pernicious and egregious than a reasonable limitation on public displays involving specific symbols. The government is being proportional and balanced, safeguarding all Canadians’ basic freedoms while contributing to a system of discourse that is respectful and peaceful for all parties involved.

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adam zivo Says Yes

National Post columnist

Good evidence suggests that TikTok manipulates its algorithms to promote China’s political interests. This is unsurprising, considering that parent company ByteDance is based in China and beholden to that country’s authoritarian laws, which permit no real private-sector independence. ByteDance denies it engages in censorship, but it refuses to grant researchers access to its algorithms for verification. And several studies have used public data to find indirect signs of manipulation.

A 2023 study by the Network Contagion Research Institute, for example, compared posts associated with certain hashtags across TikTok and Instagram. Their data strongly suggested TikTok heavily suppressed content supportive of Taiwan, Ukraine and Israel, among other subjects. Searching “#Tiananmen” yielded 70,727 posts on Instagram and only 466 on TikTok—a difference of 15,180 per cent. This chasm can’t be plausibly explained by natural differences between platform users. Tellingly, TikTok disabled hashtag searches for most politically sensitive subjects days after this study was published.

Another study from Cornell University, in 2024, which created sock-puppet TikTok accounts and measured the content they were recommended, concluded that TikTok favoured Republican content during the US presidential election.

In light of these findings, TikTok is better understood as a propaganda tool than a neutral social media platform. Combined with its considerable popularity (some 44 per cent of Canadians under age 18 are users), this is sufficient to justify a ban. We simply cannot give China the power to hijack our nation’s political discourse at its discretion.

Our government has a duty to protect its citizens from foreign interference. A fair marketplace of ideas is essential to democracy, but this forum is degraded when foreign adversaries bestow artificial advantages upon certain ideas. The solution is not to ban the associated beliefs, which would be illiberal, but to force them to compete without distortionary patronage.

When the federal government removed Russia Today from Canadian airwaves in 2022, for example, that didn’t entail a ban on pro-Russian beliefs. Similarly, TikTok users can migrate to other social media platforms and continue expressing their beliefs without the interventions of Beijing’s invisible hand. In this way, liberal values are maximized, not diminished, while national security and sovereignty are strengthened.

Although TikTok’s competitors have their own flaws, they’re often an improvement. Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) and Reddit are foreign-owned, but they’re publicly traded. Their executives are bound by fiduciary duties to a diversified set of risk-adverse shareholders. This functionally prohibits them from using overly politicized algorithms.

In contrast, X is privately owned by Elon Musk. While he allegedly tweaked his platform’s algorithms to favour Republicans and his own self-promotion, these distortions appear to be far weaker than Beijing’s censorship. Should they worsen, however, then that platform could simply be banned too. This is an ever-evolving battle, after all.

 

robert diab says no

Thompson Rivers University law professor

Roughly a third of Canadians are now on TikTok, relying on the platform for news, entertainment and connection. The platform gathers massive amounts of personal information and shapes our political conversations through its algorithm. The Chinese government has influence over TikTok through its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance Inc. Under Chinese law, authorities can demand that companies hand over data and support state intelligence or security requests, and ByteDance is believed to have done this with US journalists and protesters in Hong Kong. Concerns that China will use TikTok to interfere in our elections or carry out espionage here are real.

But a ban on TikTok in Canada would be unlawful and excessive. We can address our concerns effectively without it.

Canadians enjoy freedom of expression under the Charter. This includes both a right to speak and a right to hear what others have to say. Newspapers and social media companies also have expressive rights—to curate content. Yet no right is absolute. Free speech is subject to reasonable limits. But banning TikTok would be unreasonable.

Our Supreme Court has held that “a complete ban on a form of expression is more difficult to justify than a partial ban. The government must show that only a full prohibition will enable it to achieve its objective.” The question is whether anything short of a total ban on TikTok would address our security interests.

US lawmakers recently faced the same issue. Their response was instructive. They shared our government’s main concerns. TikTok gathers information China could use for espionage. And with 170 million Americans on the platform, the US citizenry is vulnerable to political interference through content manipulation. Congress’s simple solution: ByteDance must divest of its US subsidiary or be shut down. A conditional ban.

TikTok challenged the law at the US Supreme Court and lost. The court’s reasoning helps us see why a total ban in Canada wouldn’t likely survive Charter scrutiny. Speech advocates argued that Meta and other platforms collect similar user data and that China could easily spread disinformation through other platforms. But in the court’s view, “TikTok’s scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control” justified treating it differently. And the conditional ban didn’t limit “substantially more speech than was necessary” to address national security.

Canada’s Supreme Court would likely agree that China’s control over ByteDance raises “pressing and substantial” concerns. But, again, a total ban would be a reasonable limit on free expression only if there were no other viable way to protect security. The possibility of ordering ByteDance to divest ownership of TikTok Canada points to one such alternative.

Expressive rights are vital to a free and democratic society. Our concern isn’t with TikTok itself; it’s a platform that provides millions of Canadians a vital source of connection and a livelihood for many through sponsorships. Keeping TikTok on our own terms would allow us to regulate both the platform and the company behind it, striking the right balance between security and freedom.

 

adam zivo responds to robert diab

Robert Diab argues that, although TikTok poses a threat to Canada’s security, a total ban isn’t necessary—or indeed would be unlawful—because the federal government could simply regulate the platform instead. He cites the US as an example: Washington successfully pressured ByteDance to transfer its US operations to American corporate partners, so why not do something similar in Canada?

I actually agree with him that regulating TikTok in Canada—if possible—would be preferable to an outright ban. Where we differ, though, is on whether such regulation is realistic. When I submitted my opening argument, the Trump administration hadn’t yet negotiated a divestment deal with ByteDance, and doing so seemed unlikely. While circumstances have changed since then, I remain pessimistic about Canada’s capacity to replicate this solution.

The Trump administration’s deal requires ByteDance to create a new subsidiary to oversee US operations, to be called the TikTok US Data Security Company (“USDS”). Ownership of the USDS will be sold off to diverse American investors, with ByteDance being limited to a minority stake of below 20 per cent. TikTok’s content algorithm will then be leased to the USDS, allowing the subsidiary to produce a new copy of it from the ground up.

While the details of the arrangement remain unclear, it appears the deal will essentially create an American clone of TikTok, with its own parallel content algorithm and US-based data hosting, which will be seamlessly connected to ByteDance’s version. This should prevent China from using politicized content algorithms to directly control what American users see. Yet, as such users could still consume international TikTok content, which would still be shaped by ByteDance’s invisible hand, Beijing would likely retain other, less direct avenues of influence over American opinions.

Let’s take the Tiananmen Square massacre as a case study. While USDS discourse on the topic would be unconstrained, American users could still conclude that Tiananmen was unimportant, because international TikTok posts on the event are—thanks to ByteDance’s censorship—largely absent. ByteDance could also algorithmically nudge international users into producing more posts in support of particular views, causing those perspectives to be overrepresented to Americans even if USDS content algorithms remain politically neutral. In this way, TikTok could still be considered a security risk. While I’m agnostic on whether this risk would be tolerable—mostly because so much of this conversation is currently speculative—this is important to flag.

Could we force ByteDance to divest Could we use the US version of TikTok Both options seem unlikely.

But the more relevant issue to this dialogue is whether Canada could either replicate this solution or transition to using the USDS version of TikTok. Both options seem unlikely, although the latter seems more plausible.

The US, despite being a superpower, was able to wrangle the USDS agreement only after years of fraught negotiations and ultimatums. I can’t see how Canada, being much weaker, could secure similar concessions. Further, if Ottawa could carve out its own subsidiary from ByteDance’s global empire, this would set a precedent for other middle powers to do the same. Beijing would oppose having its prized soft-power machine divided up like this. Balkanizing TikTok into a federation of subsidiaries would also likely reduce operational stability, lowering the value of the TikTok ecosystem as a whole.

A proposal to transfer Canada’s TikTok operations to the USDS could find support in Washington, as absorbing the Canadian market would benefit US investors. Canada’s information space would be less sovereign, and would—much like Meta and Reddit today—be substantially controlled by US regulators and corporate interests. This would still represent a significant improvement over the status quo. But Beijing has no reason to voluntarily cede an international market to a US-controlled subsidiary. Perhaps the US could force such a concession, but given the relative unimportance of the Canadian market it’s hard to imagine there being an appetite for such a move. Why would Washington expend finite political capital on this?

With the information currently available to us, I don’t see how Canada could realistically regulate TikTok for the foreseeable future. That could eventually change, because the situation is dynamic and the implications of the USDS are still unclear. For now, though, the choice is between maintaining the status quo or moving towards a ban, with the former option being clearly unacceptable.

 

robert diab responds to adam zivo

The thrust of my interlocutor’s argument is that TikTok is a propaganda organ like Russia Today, and if the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was justified in banning RT in 2022, we should ban TikTok as well. TikTok, he argues, is a propaganda organ because it manipulates its algorithms in China’s interests by boosting or suppressing content in ways that Instagram or Reddit don’t. And since roughly half of young Canadians are on TikTok, anything short of a total ban would “give China the power to hijack our nation’s political discourse.”

This argument fails on three counts. Protecting democracy wasn’t why we banned RT; it was hate speech. We couldn’t have a version of RT without hate speech. There was no reasonable means of accommodation. And if Instagram and Reddit—in being more neutral platforms—are proof that TikTok is a propaganda organ, then TikTok doesn’t pose a serious threat to our democracy, since roughly the same number of Canadians are also on Instagram or other platforms where other voices can be heard.

But even if we couldn’t have had a less harmful version of Russia Today, we can with TikTok. And Tiktok poses far less of a threat to begin with.

The details matter. The CRTC’s decision called RT’s content abusive, since “it tends or is likely to expose the Ukrainian people to hatred or contempt on the basis of their race, national or ethnic origin.” RT’s content was also contrary to the policy objectives of the Broadcasting Act: “Most notably, it would not serve to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada.” So, yes, it was about sovereignty in part, but primarily about social harmony.

The CRTC conceded that a ban is a form of censorship. But it held this to be a reasonable limit on our Charter right to free speech, since Canadians can still access RT online. We never got to see whether a court would agree; no one challenged the ban. I suspect it would have survived a court challenge, because nothing short of a ban would suffice to address the harm at issue. Broadcasters could have been forced to play a “viewer advisory” when airing RT. But this wouldn’t make the content any less hateful or divisive. The choice was to take RT or leave it.

Rather than ban TikTok, we could insist that it meet conditions, e.g., make its algorithm more transparent.

The same isn’t true of TikTok. Rather than banning the platform, we could insist that it meet certain conditions. Make its algorithm more transparent. Follow rules about data collection, and keep user data in Canada. TikTok’s compliance would largely address our concerns. Unlike RT, we can have TikTok on our terms—at least in theory.

But how serious are these concerns to begin with Adam Zivo sees TikTok’s main threat as its power to manipulate algorithms so as to shape opinion at scale in Canada as China sees fit. Does it really have this power?

TikTok is no doubt popular among young Canadians, but it’s neither their exclusive nor their primary source for news and opinion. A study in 2023 of media consumption patterns in Canada found that Gen Z got its news mainly from YouTube (41 per cent), followed by Instagram (38 per cent) and TikTok (33 per cent). Some 46 per cent of all generations surveyed still reported television news as being a trusted source, and 27 per cent still rely on radio. Other studies confirm the staying power of traditional news media, even noting a trend among Gen Z to watch more broadcast news.

No single platform or channel has the power to “hijack” our media, because none of them has a captive audience. TikTok might claim 53 per cent of Canadian teens as monthly users, but Snapchat (42 per cent), Instagram (40 per cent) and Facebook (37 per cent) aren’t far behind. Gen Z and Millennials are also well aware of the power of algorithms to influence what they see, with roughly a third reporting that they fact-check what they see on social media by cross-referencing to other sources or consulting family and friends.

It’s telling that neither the Canadian nor the US government has framed its primary concern with TikTok in terms of its power to hijack our political discourse. When Canada ordered TikTok to close its offices in Vancouver and Toronto in 2024, the only rationale it gave was that allowing TikTok personnel to remain would be “injurious to national security.” The platform was fine; the offices weren’t. In the challenge at the US Supreme Court to Congress’s order for ByteDance to divest from TikTok, the government cited concerns about data collection and blackmail, not the fear of propaganda.

If a platform tries to manipulate us through its algorithms, the solution is not to ban it but to make it play by the rules.

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My maternal grandmother, my Oma, was the person I loved best in the world, and my own personal heroine. She’d been born in a German-speaking community in what we now call Ukraine, the daughter of a Lutheran schoolteacher. Passionate and beautiful, with a head of fiery red hair, she had trained and worked as a teacher herself, in Stalin’s Soviet Union. She made a somewhat unusual marriage, to a quiet, bookish Mennonite man named Jacob Dyck. They lived in a Mennonite colony called Felsenbach, where my mother and her two sisters were born.

The Second World War ripped their world apart. When the Germans marched into Ukraine, my pacifist grandfather was scooped up and forced to join the German army, where, it seems likely, he was killed on the Russian front. My Oma and her three daughters, caught in the bloodlands between Stalin and Hitler, fled west, through Czechoslovakia and finally into Germany, which was then under heavy Allied air bombardment.

My grandmother scavenged for food, found bomb shelters for her children, and somehow dragged them safely to the American zone of occupation. It was a lucky break. If they had stayed in eastern Germany, the area liberated by Russian troops, the occupying Soviets would have treated them harshly as traitors.

My Oma, a pragmatist, decided that bombed-out post-war Germany held few prospects for her and her little girls. When Mennonite relatives from her husband’s side of the family, who had immigrated to the Canadian prairies long before the war, offered to sponsor her to come to Canada, she snatched at the opportunity. She and her three children travelled by ship to Halifax, and then by train across Canada. They settled briefly in Saskatchewan, before ending up in Barrhead, Alberta, where a significant German-speaking population lived.

My sophisticated, educated, poetry-loving Oma, who spoke no English, found hard work as a housekeeper and hospital washerwoman. Their first Barrhead home was a converted chicken coop. But slowly, after years of struggle, things improved. Once her daughters grew up, my grandmother moved to Edmonton. She opened a boarding house, then started buying up rental properties, until she became a successful entrepreneur with a healthy real estate portfolio.

Growing up, I thought my grandmother’s story was a wonderful example of the Canadian dream in action: a hard-working penniless refugee takes sanctuary in Canada, learns the language, achieves economic prosperity and leaves a financial and cultural legacy that sustains her children and grandchildren.

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So imagine how shocked I was when, decades after my Oma’s death, my mother announced bitterly that she wished her mother had never come to Canada.

As a refugee child who spoke no English, my mother had spent her Canadian childhood in poverty and social isolation. She was bullied at school. She never had the chance to go to university. How much better her own life would have been, she said fiercely, if she had grown up in West Germany, surrounded by extended family, able to speak her own language, able to pursue her own educational dreams.

I felt as though I’d been slapped in the face.

My first feeling of hurt was personal. In my mother’s alternative reality, she never would have met my father, and my brother and I would never have been born. It felt like a rejection of my very existence.

My second response was a retreat into logic. My grandmother, I argued, could have had no idea that Germany would rebound as it did after the war. She was part of a huge diaspora of post-war immigrants who moved to Canada in part because they could not imagine how Europe would recover. She took a huge risk and made the best choice she could, based on available evidence.

But as I lay in bed that night and turned over my mother’s words in my head, I realized why her remarks had bothered me so much. She hadn’t just rejected me or slighted the memory of my Oma. It wasn’t just that she had rejected my timeline of the multiverse. She had rejected my myth of the Canadian dream, and the ideal of Canada that I so cherished.

I started to wonder. Was she right Had I bought into a romanticized sense of nationalism that clouded my view of what this country actually was Especially for immigrants and refugees For every newcomer who finds success, as my grandmother eventually did, how many others face poverty, bigotry, alienation and the frustration of their hopes and dreams?

Naively, perhaps, I had never questioned the notion that becoming Canadian had been, for my family, the best possible outcome.

My patriotism, no doubt, had been nurtured by the Canada in which I’d grown up. I came of age in the era of Peter Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau, when people thought seriously and debated fiercely about what Canada meant to them. I was a teenager when the first Quebec referendum happened, when the Constitution was patriated, when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms became law. My coming of age also corresponded to a coming of age of Canadian arts and culture, the era of CanCon and CanLit. As a teen I plowed through Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro and Mordecai Richler—the first true Canadian canon. (Books, in fact, that were all introduced to me by my brilliant autodidact mother.)

Later, at university, I discovered the works of the western modernists and post-modernists who showed me my own western Canadian world through fresh eyes: W.O. Mitchell, Sheila Watson, Robert Kroetsch, George Bowering. Small wonder that I grew up with an enthusiasm for Canada and a sense of its verdant possibilities. We were a country finding its voice, feeling its power, breaking free of the last legal vestiges of British colonialism and establishing a separate cultural identity from the United States.

Of course, my teens and early twenties also coincided with the economic and political turmoil of the National Energy Program, the rise of the Western Canada Concept party, the election of Gordon Kesler as Alberta’s first officially separatist MLA. Alberta had plenty of historical, economic and political reasons to feel aggrieved. But separatists then had little political power. Provincially, they were kept in check by Lougheed, a fierce champion for a stronger Alberta within a united Canada. But those 1980s separatists also lost the battle of public opinion in no small part because many of their highest-profile members, such as Doug Christie and Jim Keegstra, were virulently antisemitic Holocaust deniers, which undercut their public credibility. For me, the child of a Jewish father and a German refugee mother, there was no appeal in the vision of an independent state constructed on a matrix of hate and historical revisionism.

There still isn’t.

 

That fight with my late mother happened decades ago. But in the last few months, I have found myself revisiting our long-ago quarrel. Every time another Alberta separatist talks about quitting Canada, I feel that same sense of anger and confusion. Every time another Alberta separatist blames his perceived problems on immigrants and refugees, I shudder.

A year ago Canadians across the country, Albertans included, stood united and “elbows up” against the threats to our sovereignty made by Donald Trump. We all felt flushed with patriotic pride. Now, an angry minority of Albertans—who fear the impact that growing public concerns about climate change and Indigenous rights might have on Alberta’s energy economy—are trying to bamboozle Albertans into quitting the country, based on the false promise that a separate Alberta might somehow resist the imperative of energy transition. To add insult to injury, it appears that at least some of those separatists are funding their campaign to break up the country with American dollars. And, somehow, the powers that be in this province are giving in to this nonsense while simultaneously stirring up xenophobia and blaming immigrants for Alberta’s problems, taking a page straight from the racist Trumpian playbook.

It’s unfathomable.

We are privileged to live in a country that values peace and inclusion and the rule of law. A country that encourages entrepreneurship and economic opportunity. A country that strives to balance individual rights and freedoms with the good of the collective community. A country where healthcare and public education are rights and gun ownership is not. A country where women control their own bodies and choose their own clothing, whether that’s a niqab or a bikini.

We’re not a country of polarization, but a country that values creative compromise, because we were born out of creative compromise.

There are lots of common-sense reasons to reject the separatist argument. Why would Alberta, a landlocked province whose economy is based on exporting commodities, deny itself free access to ports and tidewater and international export markets?

It would be equally absurd for our boom-and-bust economy, which relies on periodic influxes of large pools of labour, to cut itself off from mobile Canadian workers. Alberta has a population of just five million. How many would flee the People’s Independent Republic of Alberta, taking their money, their talent and their skills with them?

Then there are the legal, constitutional and treaty realities. Alberta can’t just quit Canada unilaterally. We’re bound by the British North America Act of 1867, the Alberta Act of 1905, the Constitution Act of 1982 and the Clarity Act of 2000. More fundamentally, the political unit we call Alberta is constructed on the traditional Indigenous lands that are subject to Treaties 6, 7 and 8. Those chiefs have made it plain that their treaties are with the Crown in right of Canada, and not with the province. To them, separation is a non-starter.

The idea that we could become the 51st state is even sillier. Legally and politically, how could we function as a chunk of America embedded within Canada From a national security perspective, how could Canada allow such a thing, at a time when the US government is threatening our sovereignty Besides, if Albertans actually understood how much less power and autonomy American states and governors have than Canadian provinces and premiers do, they’d realize we would have far less self-determination and political leverage as one of 51 states than as one of 10 provinces.

As for those who say we need the threat of separation, to better our bargaining position, consider how economically ruinous it would be to frighten away investors and capital by creating political chaos and uncertainty just to prove some ill-defined point. Never mind the dangers of alienating our fellow Canadians in this time of crisis. Posturing and threatening to separate could turn other provinces against us, making it harder to do things like build pipelines or power lines—or transition to a new economy that transcends the combustion of carbon.

 

However, enumerating the downsides of separatism isn’t enough. It’s like telling someone to stay in an unhappy marriage because it would be too expensive and legally complicated to divorce. We can’t stay just because leaving would cost too much and make the rest of the family angry. If we want to make the case for Canada, we can’t just rebut the economic arguments. We have to stay for love—and the promise of something better.

I still love Canada, or the ideal, at least, that Canada at its best represents. I try to be clear-eyed about it. To acknowledge the pain and injustice of colonialism, the calculated starvation and dispossession of First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples, the centuries of intergenerational trauma.

Similarly, we need to learn and acknowledge the stories of successive waves of immigrants and refugees who faced racism and rejection on their arrival here—the stories of the Chinese head tax, the First World War internment of Ukrainians and Italians, Canada’s refusal to admit pre-war Jewish refugees, the internment of Japanese people during the Second World War, the post-war immigration policies that discriminated against applicants from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, the post 9/11 Islamophobia, and the discrimination against Black Canadians that dates from the time of slavery and persists to this day. As we begin 2026, how many new Canadians, facing economic struggle and rising xenophobia, will wonder—as my mother did—whether the sacrifice was worth it?

Happily it is the genius of Canada to accept our mistakes and learn from them.

We are a unique social experiment.

Many other countries around the world have an ethnic homogeneity that gives them unity.

Many other countries around the world have their own creation myth, an origin story that defines them.

Canada has neither.

Blood and soil ethno-nationalism doesn’t work here, because Canada has been multicultural since our very beginning, long before the first traders and colonizers and settlers arrived, home not to one single Indigenous culture but to hundreds of distinct languages and traditions.

To make the case for Canada, we can’t just rebut the economic arguments. We have to stay for love.

Our colonial roots were both French and English—not to mention Scottish and Irish and Welsh, so we’ve been multilingual since the first Europeans landed.

No other country has been as successful at creating a truly multicultural nation of tolerance and inclusion. And it’s not some elite “liberal” notion that Laurentian Canada has imposed on Alberta. Far from it. Multiculturalism as national public policy was first championed in 1971 by Harry Strom, the Social Credit premier who preceded Lougheed. Back then, multiculturalism was pushed hardest by Alberta’s Ukrainian community, who chafed under the limitations of the old “two founding nations” bicultural paradigm. You might well call official multiculturalism Alberta’s greatest gift to Canada, since it has enabled us to become a global powerhouse ideally equipped to compete in a global economy.

It’s even more miraculous because we have no unifying mythology to hold this huge nation, diverse not just in culture but in geography, together. In a country this enormous it’s natural for the “regions” to feel cut off from the economic and political power of the centre.

Alberta isn’t alone in feeling this. Ask anyone from Whitehorse to Windsor, Rimouski to Glace Bay. It is a constant struggle simply to manage a country as vast as ours, where regions have competing interests and where some of the stale structures of Confederation are no longer fit for purpose. Yet we do it all without a vapid rah-rah narrative to bind us.

So many other nation-states have their stories of revolution and their revolutionary heroes. We have, instead, the promise of peace, order and good government—hardly stuff to stir souls. As for charismatic heroes Something in the Canadian character seems allergic to them. For whatever reasons of history and culture, the dominant Canadian world view is a sardonic one. Our Indigenous mythologies, coast to coast to coast, are full of trickster gods—Raven and Coyote, Napi and Wisakedjak, Glooscap and Amaguq. I think perhaps their mischievous, irreverent spirit lingers in this land.

Canadians are anti-romantics. We take a darkly impish delight in cutting our public figures and celebrities down to size, and in quietly mocking our own icons and institutions. Maybe it has to do with weather and geography. Wherever you go in Canada, it’s hard not to be humbled by the vastness, the scale, the wildness of this place. It’s hard to nurture delusions of grandeur here, and harder still to indulge such pretensions in others. Irony is our idiom. And Alberta—which invented improv theatre sports, and produced Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, The Irrelevant Show, two-fifths of the Kids in the Hall, Andrew Phung and the best years of SCTV—certainly shares that ironic irreverence.

Canadians likewise get quietly embarrassed by performative parades of patriotism. So when we defend “Canada” against the zealotry of Alberta separatists, we often take refuge in economic and legal arguments instead of emotive ones.

 

So I’m calling on us to do something un-Canadian: to put aside our habitual self-deprecation and stand up for the country we love—and reject the idea of a sovereign Alberta whose founding principles seem to be miserliness, xenophobia and transphobia. We need to raise our voices to denounce the dark fantasy of a landlocked, petulant petrostate dedicated to hoarding wealth, denouncing immigrants, denying climate change, spurning vaccines, protecting patriarchy and endangering queer kids. Because Alberta’s current crop of separatists don’t just want to leave Canada. They seem to want to opt out of the 21st century entirely.

But Albertans aren’t quitters. So let’s not quit Canada. Let’s fight to make it better, fairer and more prosperous for everyone, Albertans included.

On Canada’s coat of arms you’ll see the Latin motto Desiderantes meliorem patriam. In English: “They desire a better country.”

To me, there could not be a better, or more Canadian, motto. Canada isn’t a perfect country. But it is made up of millions of people, like my Oma, who came here because they were looking for a better country, a place to make a new start. And it’s home to tough-minded, unsentimental millions who see Canada’s shortcomings and failings and needs, and work hard to make it a better country. Because Canada is a work in progress, a country of aspiration. We’re not looking to be “great again”—we’re striving to be a little bit better every day.

Alberta’s current crop of separatists don’t just want to leave Canada. They seem to want to opt out of the 21st century entirely.

I love Canada because it accepted my paternal Jewish grandparents as immigrants and allowed them to escape the poverty and pogroms of the Russian Pale. I love Canada because it accepted my German maternal family, despite the fact Canada had just suffered through a brutal war against Hitler’s Reich. I love Canada because it protects the rights of my queer family members, including the beloved daughter I named after my beloved Oma. I love Canada because its Charter of Rights and Freedoms has protected me throughout my career as a journalist, allowing me to report the truth even when it hurt. I love Canada because it has repeatedly found the honesty and courage to confront its faults and worked to make life here more fair.

And I love Alberta, because the Alberta I love is open, adventurous, brave, energetic and undaunted. I will not allow hatemongers and traitors and bitter quitters to speak for me. What do I want for my Alberta next For us to embrace our full potential, to charge into the future, without leashing ourselves to some false vision of the past.

In his song “Anthem,” Leonard Cohen, one of my favourite Canadians, sang:

Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

Canada has its fair share of cracks. But instead of exploiting those to tear the country apart, let’s work with our fellow Canadians to mend them. We can’t be a perfect country—or pretend to be one by papering over the cracks. We must let the light in to see our way ahead

Appointed to the Senate in 2018, independent senator Paula Simons has been an Edmonton Journal reporter and columnist and a CBC radio producer. Her podcast is Alberta Unbound.

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