Wab Kinew’s victory over Heather Stefanson in the recent Manitoba provincial election is a moment of progressive hope in what has become a dispiritingly conservative Canadian political landscape. The win was the result of Kinew’s NDP campaign focusing resolutely on Stefanson’s health care record while leaving very limited lines of attack for the governing PCs.

To build the NDP wall that will block Pierre Poilievre, dental and pharma care isn’t enough. New concessions from the Liberals to reduce the tax burden on working class families is a good start. But if social democracy means anything, it means leaning in to a plan of radical economic empowerment that will really benefit working class people.

Throughout the 2022 Ontario general election, the Ford PCs threw a wet blanket over their campaign, starving reporters of high-level conflict to cover. With Horwath unable to create conflict and Ford withdrawing from it, the only remaining campaign dynamic was the dispiriting battle between Horwath and Liberal leader Stephen Del Duca, which was presented as “the fight for second place.”

Only 26 percent of Canadians would be happy with an election this fall, according to a recent Nanos poll. But at the end of the first week of August, Justin Trudeau may visit Governor General Mary Simon, asking her to dissolve parliament and hold a summer election. That the governor general will very likely grant Trudeau’s wish is one more sign that Canadian democracy needs a rethink.

Conversion therapy is premised on the noxious idea that gay people are broken. Jurisdictions around the world have outlawed these pseudoscientific “therapies,” and similar legislation is long past due in Canada—so it is utterly despicable that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delayed his long-promised ban on the practice to put the interests of the Liberal Party ahead of those being victimized today.