Inside Policy Talks

Canada’s judges have become “completely divorced from reality” in the reasoning they use to bat down mandatory minimum sentences for serious crimes, says Christine Van Geyn, interim executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation. Tension around this issue reached a breaking point in October 2025 when the Supreme Court of Canada issued its ruling in the Senneville case. The court struck...

Some of the boldest predictions about Artificial Intelligence have forecast that white-collar workers are soon to become obsolete. This comes as rapidly advancing AI appears more and more in our day-to-day lives — reshaping classrooms, the workplace, and how we interact with each other. But we’ve seen these transformations before. As with major past major technological upheavals—like the Industria...

Liberalism is clearly on the ropes.   To many, the threats originate from what they consider the outside: populism, authoritarianism, misinformation, and polarization.   But to others, the wounds appear self-inflicted: arising from tensions within liberalism itself.   For decades, liberal societies promised a host of goods: most notably, individual freedom. But many now look around and see lonelin...

We are in a moment of heightened focus on Canadian national identity. Ever since Donald Trump threatened to annex Canada, many Canadians have responded with the assertion that Canadian identity is unique from the United States. But this national mood comes only a few years after a campaign of tearing down statues of Canada’s seminal historic figures, and then-prime minister Justin Trudeau calling...

This week, we present a special bonus episode: a live conversation between author Rob Henderson, who famously coined the term luxury beliefs, and MLI Managing Director Brian Lee Crowley. The event was recorded in April 2026 before a live audience in Vancouver, as part of MLI's Voices That Inspire speaker series. In their conversation, Crowley and Henderson discuss the formative childhood experienc...

The West offers the “ideal environment” for an organization like the Muslim Brotherhood to carry out its operations “because we are extremely tolerant,” says Lorenzo Vidino, an expert on the Islamist organization. The Muslim Brotherhood has inspired or spawned some of the world's most dangerous terrorist organizations. Yet its goals, strategy, structure, and financing remain poorly understood – ev...

Courts have become central players in some of Canada’s biggest political and moral debates – especially since the advent of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms . That’s raised hard questions about their role, what accountability mechanisms exist, and how Canadians understand the place of the judicial branch within their system of government. Like any other institution, courts depend on public trust...

Our culture tells parents that “you can do it all” – but that's “a very dangerous narrative” and “a narcissistic trope,” says social worker and parenting coach Erica Komisar. Is it time for our culture to grapple with a hard truth: life requires setting priorities and making trade-offs between items like career and family, rather than trying to have it all at once? Modern societies invest a great...

Sports betting, online gambling, and now prediction markets are becoming harder to avoid. What was once confined to casinos or occasional wagers is now built into our phones, advertised on sports broadcasts, and increasingly our wider digital economy. This raises bigger questions about the impact of markets. Should markets always follow demand, even when it involves a social harm, letting choice p...

“The whole of the West views Islam … through a Western cultural prism,” and that’s a problem, says British author and commentator Melanie Phillips. With terrorism, extremism, and antisemitism surging throughout the West, people are looking for answers. They’re trying to understand why our leaders and institutions are failing to stand up to this threat. Phillips, one of the clearest voices sounding...

Last month, a major constitutional showdown took place before the Supreme Court of Canada. Over four days of hearings, the court heard from a record number of interveners in quite possibly the biggest and most consequential case since the Charter was adopted in 1982. In the wake of these hearings, the justices will now deliberate on Hak v Quebec . It's a case that addresses the scope of rights and...

As Canada continues its decade-long slide in the UN’s global happiness rankings, there’s growing questions about whether policymakers are even using the right metrics to measure the indicators of living a good life. Across the developed world, there’s a similar, troubling pattern. The 2026 UN World Happiness Report , released earlier this month, suggests pronounced declines, particularly in Anglos...

Across the country, law and medical schools have adopted identity-based admissions criteria in the name of equity. But very little data has been available on how those policies work. New research from MLI is changing that. In a new paper on DEI and admissions in Canadian law and medical schools, researcher David Wand requested admissions data from 18 law schools and 14 medical schools. Only six la...

As the second week of war in Iran continues, there’s growing questions about whether regime change is possible, and what the end game looks like. The United States and Israel have taken out the long-time leader of Iran’s Islamic regime, Ali Khamenei. But with his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, now installed as the new supreme leader, the regime appears to have dug in for a long fight to retain power. Are...

In the wake of the United States and Israel’s military actions against the Islamic regime in Iran, nations around the world rushed to stake out their positions on the strikes. While some voices condemned the attacks as a violation of international law, Canada issued a statement that drew some measure of surprise across the political spectrum — overhead of it being more supportive of the military a...

As the United States tightens its blockade to cut off oil from Cuba’s communist regime, some are calling for Canada to step in with aid. These events come at a moment of rapidly shifting geopolitics around the world. Yet Canada’s approach to Cuba remains strikingly unchanged. For decades, Ottawa has treated Cuba with kid gloves, applying a softer touch than it does with other authoritarian regimes...

There’s a growing debate in Canada about balancing the relationship between courts and legislatures. For nearly four decades, one Supreme Court ruling has loomed large in shaping an aspect of this debate: how conflicts between rights – and their limitations – are determined in Canada. That case – R v Oakes , decided in 1986 – gave Canadian jurisprudence the famous “ Oakes test,” which courts still...

A series of global shocks is testing the character and resilience of the West. In recent weeks, debate has intensified over whether the rules-based international order is fraying. Tariff threats, talk of annexing sovereign territory, and reports of a new “strategic partnership” between Canada and China have all fuelled concern. At the same time, Western elites and the media class seem to be losing...

Canada is at a turning point in how it governs the digital economy and artificial intelligence. It must do so in the face of rapidly changing technology – a challenge that’s compounded by geopolitical tensions and economic stress. Over the past few years, Ottawa has attempted to moved quickly on competition law, online harms, and AI. This comes after previous measures on online harms and AI faced...

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent high-profile international trip included a visit to China where he announced a new “strategic partnership” with Beijing. In the aftermath, attention has focused on the canola and electric vehicle deals that emerged, while far less has been said about the “guardrails” Carney previously stated are necessary for dealing with Beijing. But those promised guardrails d...

Every year, thousands of women and children in Canada and the United States are drawn into human trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, and online abuses. These victims are often hidden in plain sight, but the harms they endure ripple out across families and communities. It's a gut-wrenching issue, but there's some signs of hope. Our culture is becoming more aware of how vulnerable people ar...

Reversing declining birthrates will require “a pro-natal culture stronger than you've ever had,” says researcher Daniel Hess. Across the world, births are falling – with many countries are now below replacement levels. It’s a shift could have far reaching impacts – reshaping economic growth and pensions, family life, housing markets, and the future of communities. To talk about this problem – and...

Immigration has long been described as simply a net positive, and debated solely in economic terms – like jobs, wages, and GDP. But after decades of immigration from different parts of the world – with newcomers now making up increasingly large shares of the population in Canada, the United States, and other Western countries – people are starting to ask different questions. How does migration sha...

Canada’s economic future increasingly hinges on a deceptively simple question: how free is trade within Canada itself? For decades, economists and policymakers have warned that Canada’s internal market—fragmented by duplicative rules, sector-specific carve-outs, and a thicket of provincial exceptions—acts as a drag on growth and competitiveness. Even the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, heralded as...

Across Canada, some of the most heated disputes – from housing restrictions to Indigenous land claims – turn on this question: how secure are Canadians’ property rights? The answer may surprise you. Canada is one of the only developed democracies where property rights have no constitutional protection . That gap has real consequences. It can lead to family farms shuttered by regulation, homeowners...