Melissa Lantsman’s latest video cuts right to the bone. She points to Brazil, Terry Gilliam’s dark, brilliant satire. The film’s dystopian world unsettlingly mirrors the direction in which Canada is heading.
In Brazil, the government doesn’t exist to serve citizens. It exists to preserve itself. Bureaucracy grows for its own sake. Paperwork multiplies. Departments expand. Ordinary people become trapped in a maze of rules, forms, and procedures. These processes seem designed to wear them down rather than help them.
It’s one of Hollywood’s sharpest political warnings. It doesn’t rely on fantasy. Instead, it shows how a system collapses under its own weight. This happens when the government forgets who it’s supposed to serve.
And today, that warning hits uncomfortably close to home.
We’re watching a federal government that keeps getting bigger but delivers less. Programs multiply while outcomes shrink. More money goes into feeding the machinery of the state than improving the lives of the people who fund it. That’s the road Brazil warned us about, a country where the bureaucracy survives, but its citizens don’t thrive.
Gilliam meant it as satire. But for Canadians, it’s starting to feel like a preview.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer cut through the noise this week. They did what Ottawa refuses to do. They told the truth about the books. Carney’s so-called “balanced operating budget” wasn’t a plan, a discipline, or anything resembling a real anchor. It was creative accounting dressed up as credibility.
The PBO lays it out plainly; the anchor is not credible. The government has been shifting definitions and moving pieces around. It also relies on accounting tricks. These tricks smooth over the reality of rising spending and ballooning debt. Balancing the operating budget was always a political slogan, not a fiscal guardrail.
This matters. When your anchor is fake, your entire budget drifts. And right now, Canada is drifting into more profound deficits, higher interest payments, and fewer choices for the next generation.
Carney can put a shine on it. The PBO pulled the shine off.
He wasn’t born into power, and he didn’t fit the political could. But John Diefenbaker reshaped Canadian politics with grit, principle, and a deep belief in a freer, more united country.
Diefenbaker’s tenure as Prime Minister offers valuable lessons that remain relevant today. Diefenbaker was one of the first Canadian prime ministers who didn’t come from the traditional English or French elite. That gave him a unique view of being Canadian. His perspective was not rooted in the old colonial tensions. He believed in strengthening Canada as a proud, independent nation. That belief was both his driving force and, at times, a political trap. For Diefenbaker, “true north, strong and free” wasn’t a campaign line; it was how he lived.
One of his most lasting contributions, as outlined in Freedom Fighter, was his push to enshrine our freedoms into law. The Canadian Bill of Rights wasn’t perfect; few things are. However, it marked the beginning of the codification of civil liberties in this country. It set a precedent that would shape Canada for decades to come.
The book also reminds us of another key part of Diefenbaker’s legacy: his lifelong defense of the disadvantaged. As a prairie lawyer, he often took on cases for those who couldn’t afford a voice. That principle carried into his government. Under his leadership, Canada expanded pensions for veterans and increased support for the most vulnerable. In short, Diefenbaker didn’t just talk about fairness, he acted on it.
Of course, Diefenbaker wasn’t a perfect politician. The book makes clear he often clashed with his cabinet and butted heads with key ministers. His feud with Bank of Canada governor James Coyne became a defining low point. Political management wasn’t his strength; he was far more effective as a conviction-driven leader than a backroom operator.
Diefenbaker’s tenure as Prime Minister offers valuable lessons that remain relevant today. As the first PM of neither English nor French origin, he helped redefine Canadian identity based on principle, not privilege. He stood up for individual freedom long before it was popular, laying the groundwork for the rights we enjoy today. And above all, he never forgot who he served: the Canadian people.
