I created this site in 2020 as a place to share ideas and perspectives shaped by a long career in public policy, strategic planning, communications, association management, government, and politics.
When I launched it, I did not fully appreciate how constraining to self-expression it could be to work within Ottawa’s mainstream policy and institutional ecosystem.
Writing carefully, moderating tone and always colouring within the lines may be necessary, even appropriate, but over time it is also limiting. That is why this site did not become the safe place for unvarnished expression I had hoped it would be.
As I write this, I’m in a different place, I’ve left full-time association management and have moved to a different stage of my professional life: One where I can choose, who I work with, what projects I lend my time to and the causes I advocate for.
And with that, I’m reclaiming my own voice — the ability to write and think freely, without the need for perpetual moderation and compromise. This site now reflects that intention more clearly.
I still expect to post the occasional quick take on breaking news, but the emphasis will remain on more considered opinion and longer-form analysis, written honestly and in my own voice.
While the news cycle will shape some of what appears here, my focus will increasingly be on a smaller number of issues of particular concern to me: governance and leadership, mental health and wellbeing in institutional settings, public policy and democratic practice, and the human consequences of how we design and manage our institutions.
And from time to time, I may still share thoughts on a book or two that have little — or nothing at all — to do with public policy.
This site is, at its core, a place to think out loud — freely, honestly, and for me, in a reclaimed voice.
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Two days later, in New Delhi, standing in for the prime minister — who had made himself unavailable to the media — Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand struck a noticeably different tone. She spoke of diplomacy, avoided the question of the legality of the strikes, and emphasized that Canada would not participate in military operations.
How quickly the shine has come off the Davos doctrine.
Only weeks ago, Mr. Carney’s speech in Davos was widely praised as a bold attempt to redefine Canada’s place in a fractured world — and a roadmap for middle powers to follow. It not only won him international applause but also supercharged his political fortunes at home.
In that address, Mr. Carney argued that the old rules-based international order was giving way to a harsher era of great-power rivalry. Middle powers, he said, would have to adapt.
His answer was what he called “values-based realism.”
Canada, he suggested, would accept the realities of geopolitics while remaining anchored in core principles: respect for sovereignty, consistent standards for allies and adversaries, and limits on the use of force except within international law.
It was an elegant formulation — realism without cynicism, pragmatism without abandoning principles.
But the value of policies and doctrines should not be measured by the elegance of their framing. They should be assessed by the clarity of the light they cast on the pathways they are meant to illuminate.
And the events of the past week suggest that the Davos framework sheds very little light on the decisions it is supposed to guide.
In the wake of the Iran strikes, Canada endorsed the use of force by an ally without explaining how that action aligned with the principles invoked only weeks earlier. As political pressure mounted, the government adjusted its position — first emphasizing diplomacy, then stressing legal constraints, then raising the possibility of military support.
In Davos, Mr. Carney described Canada’s approach as one of “variable geometry” –– coalitions formed according to circumstances, interests and evolving realities.
The events of the past week suggest that for Mr. Carney, this variable geometry extends well beyond alliances.
The evidence is there. Confronted with its first real test, the Carney framework bent as events unfolded and tensions changed.
Defenders of the Davos doctrine will argue that this is simply realism at work. They will say that middle powers must navigate a world defined by shifting alliances and unpredictable crises.
This is true. And there is no doubt that the stakes are high.
But realism is a moving target. It shifts with circumstances, alliances and political cycles. Untethered from bedrock principles, it becomes little more than a justification for improvisation — a polite way of saying that policy will be adjusted as events dictate.
And when a country’s foreign policy becomes a series of never-ending recalibrations in response to shifting perceptions of the real world, the framework meant to guide decisions collapses.
The deaths, in rapid succession, of Renée Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis may be altering the political calculus in Washington.
Greg Bovino, the strutting public face of federal repression in the Twin Cities, is out and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been sidelined in favour of border czar Tom Homan.
But if this reshuffling of roles is meant to change the channel it is not likely to change anything on the ground.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis is not simply enforcement overreach compounded by inadequate training and bad recruiting. Of course, it is all of those things. But increasingly it resembles something more deliberate and frightening: a dress rehearsal for an authoritarian takeover of America.
And these forces are not operating discreetly. They are conducting enforcement surges using military tactics: establishing visible perimeters, targeting selected neighbourhoods, parking lots, places of worship and even schools; confronting protesters and bystanders alike, and projecting federal power in spaces traditionally governed by civilian norms.
Taken individually, and under a clear legal predicate, some of these tactics could be defensible. Taken together — and justified by increasingly thin rationales– they signal something more troubling: a deliberate effort to normalize federal paramilitary involvement in civil life.
This matters because it collides and seeks to test the resilience of the First and Fourth Amendments — two foundational pillars of American constitutional order:
The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, assembly, and protest. The Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable search and seizure — prohibiting the state from stopping, detaining, or entering homes without individualized suspicion and proper judicial authorization.
Recent immigration enforcement practices — randomized police-style sweeps, the use of “administrative” rather than court-issued warrants, confrontations near places of worship, and routine demands for identification absent reasonable suspicion — run directly up against settled constitutional doctrine. None of this is permitted under a robust reading of the Fourth Amendment. Yet these practices are increasingly normalized.
What we are witnessing is an effort to condition public opinion to the visible deployment of federal force in civilian life; while at the same time probing and testing how courts, local governments, and civil society respond when constitutional boundaries are breached.
The endgame is no longer difficult to discern.
The abuses of Donald Trump’s first term are well documented, as is the unresolved legal exposure that still surrounds him and several figures in his inner circle.
Trump understands this. He also understands that his historically weak approval ratings cast a long shadow over the November midterm elections. The stakes could not be clearer. Speaking to House Republicans last month, he put it bluntly: “You gotta win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just gonna be — I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”
For Donald Trump, surviving the midterms is not merely a political imperative. It is a personal one. What Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland have in common is not that they are blue cities — it’s that they have been chosen as proving grounds for what may be the largest voter-suppression exercise in American history.
For years, Trump and leading voices in the MAGA movement have insisted that American elections are being “rigged” through undocumented immigration — that “illegals” were invited into the country by Democratic administrations to fix the vote.
Within that narrative, an expanded federal presence around elections can be reframed not as intimidation, but as protection for the electoral process.
Now cast your mind forward to November 3, 2026.
Voters line up at polling stations. Federal agents establish a conspicuous presence nearby. In some cases, questions are asked and papers are demanded. Word spreads. Fear does the rest.
None of this would be lawful under a constitutional order that still takes the Fourth Amendment seriously.
This is why Minneapolis matters, just as Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles mattered.
What is being rehearsed there is not aggressive immigration enforcement. It is the deployment of federal power to test constitutional tolerance and institutional resistance.
The deaths of Alex Pretti and Renée Good must never be minimized. But neither should they obscure the larger danger.
Dress rehearsals exist for a reason. The only remaining question is whether this one will be recognized for what it is before its November premiere.
