Welcome back to This Week in Canada, my weekly dispatch from the land where crime is out of control, bail is a joke, and if you defend your property, you might get arrested faster than the thief. Also this week, Trump and Carney flirt at the G7, Jordan Peterson’s government-mandated reeducation begins, Ontario schools outdo themselves in absurdity, and Canada’s largest union backs Iran. Let’s jump right in.
Canada was founded on the promise of “peace, order, and good government,” in contrast to the American ideal of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and Canadians wore a quiet smugness for decades about living in a safer, more boring, and more orderly society than their southern neighbors. That narrative is starting to crack.
Canadians are seeing a wave of soft-on-crime headlines. Here are a few examples: On June 5, 36 men were charged in Ontario in a major child-exploitation sting, yet all but two were released on bail. On June 16, police dismantled a violent extortion ring involved with the towing-truck industry, arresting 18 people, many of whom were already out on other charges. In British Columbia on June 2, a 54-year-old man caught with child sexual abuse material was sentenced to house arrest, not prison. The judge called his collection’s “relatively modest size” and weighed the man’s clean record and good character references.