Sean Speer

American commentator Matthew Yglesias wrote this week that Justin Trudeau is “low-key the most successful progressive leader of our time.” Trudeau was no doubt electorally successful. He took the Liberal Party from third place to government, won three elections, and governed for nearly a decade. But if success is measured by the durability of his ideas, then Trudeauism is more consequential as a warning to progressives elsewhere than as a political model.

Commentary 10 July 2026 Emissions flow from a factory’s smokestacks in Toronto, Jan. 8, 2025. Cole Burston/The Canadian Press. In the late medieval church, a sinner of sufficient means didn’t need to stop sinning. He could purchase an indulgence—a certificate remitting the penalty for sins already committed—and carry on with his conscience cleared and his ledger balanced. The practice so scandalized a German monk that it helped launch the Reformation.

Commentary 8 July 2026 A woman at a rally in Calgary, Alta., Saturday, April 29, 2023. Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press. Ken Boessenkool, Jared Wesley, Trevor Tombe, and Peggy Garritty have written what’s probably the strongest available defence of Canada’s Equalization system from an Alberta vantage point. Their essay deserves engagement because its best arguments are genuinely good ones.