Here’s a very Canadian story that happened just before the start of Thanksgiving.

A social media user, @arugulapiquante, posted an old video clip on X on Oct. 8 with the following description: “Canada would have no culture without Quebec.” (That’s inaccurate, since many provinces have contributed to Canadian culture, but it’s simply a matter of opinion.) It featured what seemed like a young boy with loads of personality and confidence singing an upbeat French-Canadian song to an enthusiastic TV audience.

The original X post has already received over 2.5 million views as of this writing. It’s been posted and reposted numerous times on social media. There’s near-unanimous consent that it’s been one of the most enjoyable moments circulating on the internet in recent days.

Who was the young singer? Where did the clip come from? Did this appearance lead to a career in arts and entertainment? Is there more to this story?

The overall picture has since become much clearer.

To begin with, this is a clip from the Quebec-based television show Soirée canadienne. The popular weekly variety program, hosted by Louis Bilodeau, ran from 1960 to 1983 on Télé-7 and TVA’s Télé-Métropole. Bilodeau and his team visited several villages in different regions each week, found several local acts and rehearsed with them. Once the participants had been chosen, some of the villagers headed to the CHLT studios in Sherbrooke and served as audience members during the taping.

Soirée canadienne, which means “Canadian Evening,” was a staple in many Quebec households. Repeats have been broadcast on the Quebec-based French-language specialty television channel Prise 2 since 2006. Its reach outside of Quebec was more limited. The show was later broadcast in Ottawa, which made sense due to its geographical proximity. WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire, also picked it up, giving this long-running program the unique distinction of being the first French-language show in Quebec to be broadcast on an international network.

There have been several video clips of Soirée canadienne that have circulated on social media over the years. Joël Legendre’s 1976 performance was posted on YouTube in 2014, for instance, and has sometimes appeared on X.

Nothing compares to the most recent viral moment, however.

The widely circulated clip shows Serge Veilleux performing a traditional Québécois folk song, “Le Docteur Guérit-Tout” (The Cure-All Doctor), in 1981. It’s a cumulative song based on a patient’s visit to a doctor with swollen body parts — nose, ear, finger, arm and stomach. The doctor’s remedy? Cut each body part off, and the song repeats with the newest one listed first. Hence, it’s constructed in a similar fashion to “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” but in a far more absurd situation!

The show that featured Veilleux and other local acts was broadcast from Ascot, which was located near Sherbrooke and has since been amalgamated. He was either 15 or 16 years old when he performed the folk song. His short stature made him look much younger than his actual age. A longer version of his 1981 performance included a short interview with his family that revealed the reason: he apparently had a kidney transplant about four years earlier.

Veilleux clearly had an abundance of talent. He performed “Le Docteur Guérit-Tout” like a seasoned veteran: strong voice, excellent timing and a gregarious personality. The positive reaction from the Ascot community in the audience matches what he has received online from social media users.

This is Veilleux’s only known performance on a public stage. He never went on to have a music or acting career. No interviews of his Soirée canadienne appearance are readily available on the internet. If there were any small articles in local community papers and magazines, they’ve been lost to time.

Sadly, Veilleux passed away on March 27, 2007, at his home in Sherbrooke. He was only 41 years old. Of note, the first line in his obituary mentioned he had “une vie des plus extraordinaires” (or “a most extraordinary life”). What this means is anyone’s guess.

That’s all we currently know about the young man who had a memorable one-off appearance on a popular Quebec variety program roughly 45 years ago. While it’s a shame he’ll never know about his newfound (and unexpected) success, it’s nice to know that others are enjoying and sharing his one true moment in the sun.

Michael Taube is a political commentator, Troy Media syndicated columnist and former speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He holds a master’s degree in comparative politics from the London School of Economics, lending academic rigour to his political insights.

The post A Quebec teenager becomes an internet sensation 45 years later first appeared on Edmonton's Business.

Mark Carney’s approach to governance clearly differs from Justin Trudeau’s. Carney has balanced net-zero carbon pursuits with tolerance for fossil fuels and pipelines, and the pursuit of nation-building. Unfortunately, too many leftovers remain from Trudeau’s legacy.

Trudeau opened the floodgates for newcomers, straining housing, health care and education. In 2015, Canada admitted 271,845 new permanent residents, but that flow swelled to a record 483,640 in 2024. The temporary resident population grew from about 925,000 in the 2021 Census to 3.049 million on Oct. 1, 2024. International student permits numbered 352,330 at the end of 2015 and soared to 1.055 million by mid-2024.

The Trudeau government cut this flow back in its final months, and Carney cut temporary arrivals further. The target for new permanent residents in 2026 is 380,000, with 239,800 selected through work-based and regional economic immigration plans. This year, Canada plans to admit just 230,000 new temporary workers and 155,000 new international students. This represents percentage reductions from the 2025 targets of 37 and 49 per cent, respectively, marking the sharpest one-year cuts in decades.

The civil service hiring spree has also been curtailed. From 2015 to 2024, the federal public service grew 43 per cent, while the Canadian population grew just 15 per cent. Now, the federal public service numbers 345,282, a drop of 22,490 from its 2024 peak.

Carney removed the consumer carbon tax on his first day in office last year and has taken his foot off the gas on other carbon-fighting initiatives. He moved to repeal the electric vehicle sales mandate and delayed and reduced scheduled increases to the Output-Based Pricing System (a.k.a. industrial carbon taxes). Ottawa has also put the Clean Electricity Regulations in abeyance while the Alberta Court of Appeal hears a challenge to them, and has promised to loosen them to allow a larger role for natural gas. That’s especially good news for Alberta and British Columbia and allows New Brunswick to reconsider its ban on fracking.

The Carney government also seems keenly interested in nation-building infrastructure and a more robust military. The Trudeau years saw the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion and LNG Canada, but this was overshadowed by mothballed or cancelled projects, such as the Teck Frontier oil sands mine and Northern Gateway and Energy East pipelines.

Like a drowning person finally reaching the surface for air, Canada seems poised to build. Carney is courting foreign investment dollars to replace the capital that fled the country under Trudeau’s leadership.

Trudeau built a legislative and regulatory labyrinth that smothered Canadian development. Carney’s solution, the Building Canada Act, allows cabinet-approved projects to bypass normal restrictions. This is an inferior fix because Carney created exceptions for government favourites instead of making better rules. Government-approved media continue to get federal dollars, while Ottawa’s policies still prompt Facebook to ban news on Canadian accounts.

Ottawa has doubled down on the Liberals’ regulatory and legal encroachments on free speech. Under Bill C-9, which is now law, a good-faith religious opinion is no longer a defence, and people could even be charged with wilful promotion of hatred for displaying certain symbols. And what are these symbols? Beyond the three the law names, those of any group the cabinet chooses to list as a terrorist entity.

Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, now at second reading, would require platforms to mitigate the risk that users see content that foments hatred or incites violence. A new bureaucracy in the Digital Safety Commission will watch over the results. Free speech advocates have every reason for apprehension, given how often legitimate criticism is dismissed as hateful.

Finally, the terrible deficit budgets that became a habit under Trudeau show no signs of stopping. There has been no adequate accounting of how many tax dollars will go into Carney’s ambitious nation-building, military-expanding intentions. Instead, he is as committed as Trudeau was to funding Ukraine’s defence against Russia, and even wants Canada to become the European Union’s first associate member. Canada’s reprieve from its destructive slide is only partial at best.

Lee Harding is a research fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He holds a master of public policy (U of C) and a BA in Journalism, with a career spanning major networks like CBC and Global TV, as well as landmark published research on Canadian economic and social policy.

The post Carney differs from Trudeau, just not enough first appeared on Edmonton's Business.

Title: The Peril of Woke Schools and the Value of Traditional Education
Edited by: William Brooks and Rodney A. Clifton
Publisher: Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Publication Year: 2026
(Available from Amazon)

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy, an independent Canadian public policy think tank, has entered the debate over the ideological battle reshaping Canadian schools. Its recent book argues that woke ideology has not simply changed what schools teach. It has changed what education is for.

The Peril of Woke Schools and the Value of Traditional Education is a collection of 52 essays by 18 contributors examining contemporary educational practices and calling for a return to traditional principles centred on knowledge, critical inquiry and intellectual diversity. The essays are framed by a useful introduction and concluding remarks by co-editors William Brooks and Rodney Clifton. Canadian scholar and businessman Conrad Black also endorses the collection in an insightful foreword.

The book covers a wide range of topics, from influential philosophers of progressive education like John Dewey and Paulo Freire to parents’ growing concerns about the effects of 21st-century woke education on their own children.

From the so-called woke perspective, there are no shared universal truths. In fact, particular groups of people are encouraged to construct their own truths. Several contributors challenge the radical curriculum that was allegedly created to inspire revolutionary action by “oppressed people” and shift the balance of formational power toward educators who have supposedly been suppressed by traditionalists.

That represents a fundamental break with the traditional purpose of education. Instead of passing on inherited knowledge and teaching students to think critically about it, education has increasingly become a vehicle for challenging established ideas and advancing particular ideological perspectives.

This clash between woke culture and traditional educational values illustrates something akin to a Kuhnian paradigm shift. As in Kuhn’s account of scientific revolutions, an established framework loses authority while adherents of a rival paradigm present their assumptions as the new orthodoxy. Traditionalists are increasingly cast as out-of-touch has-beens whose ideas must give way to a supposedly more enlightened philosophy.

The book’s editors note that traditional teachers earned university degrees in particular disciplines, followed by some form of teacher certification. More recent entrants to the teaching profession, especially in the humanities, are more likely to have a general degree in education. The book argues that postmodern cultural Marxist philosophy has become exceptionally dominant in faculties of education and now serves as a basis for both teacher training and classroom practices.

Traditional educators have consequently come to view faculties of education as a contemporary bastion of the woke culture they oppose. Contributors argue that this shift away from traditional education has resulted in a decline in educational standards and student performance on international tests. Frontier’s book provides examples of unproductive teaching methods and declining curriculum standards that the authors contend have had harmful effects on students and schools.

Contributors to the collection offer many examples of how proponents of woke schools use the uncontested power of teachers’ unions, school boards and faculties of education to oppress those who want to keep or restore more classical approaches to education. In fact, some essays expose incidents in which students, teachers and school board trustees have been suspended or fired for promoting a traditional curriculum and teaching methods.

The book’s argument is unmistakable: the Marxists are winning the education war, and it is hard to disagree. So much for academic freedom and open debate.

One Ontario case shows just how far things have gone. The outlandish female costume worn by a male teacher who chose to dress as a woman while teaching a woodworking course at an Ontario high school was defended by a teachers’ union that saw no problem with the pendulous prosthetic breasts he wore to class and the behaviour he modelled for his adolescent students. Parents, of course, were shocked by the teacher’s deportment.

The same struggle extends to alternatives to the prevailing public education model. Some essays point out the fierce opposition to charter and other forms of independent schools in many provinces and territories. In Alberta, charter schools are autonomous non-profit public schools that follow the provincial curriculum.

Independent schools are seen as elitist, even though several have won awards based on student academic achievement. Unfortunately, only Alberta has allowed taxpayer-funded charter schools to be established. In other provinces and territories, charter schools have not been set up because woke apparatchiks in provincial and territorial governments and teachers’ unions strenuously object to funding them.

With more than 50 essays, the collection inevitably approaches some of the same issues from different directions, and readers who reject its underlying critique of progressive education are unlikely to be persuaded by every argument. Nor does every essay need to be equally persuasive for the book’s larger case to succeed.

Taken as a whole, the collection makes a convincing argument that the debate over woke schools is ultimately not just about curriculum, pronouns, teaching methods or individual controversies. It is about the purpose of education and whether schools should transmit accumulated knowledge and teach students to think critically about it or become instruments for transforming society.

The essays in The Peril of Woke Schools give traditionalists evidence and arguments they can use to get back into the important debate over the quality of our schools. Parents concerned about their children’s education will find this book particularly valuable, as will traditional teachers, school administrators and school board trustees.

James Dean Ph.D. is a Senior Fellow (Retired), St. John’s College and Professor of Economics (Retired) in the University of Manitoba. He taught for 42 years and specialized in public finance. He served the university in various administrative positions, including as Executive Director of International Relations. He has a keen interest in education policies.

The post Woke ideology threatens your child’s education first appeared on Edmonton's Business.

The post Prairie exports are hostage to ports they don’t control first appeared on Edmonton's Business.

The post Ontario’s private health care gamble is failing first appeared on Edmonton's Business.

Changing where Canadians buy and sell food is proving much harder than changing how they feel about the United States.

The latest Statistics Canada figures, which came out this week, suggest that neither the boycott of American food nor efforts to diversify Canada’s agri-food trade have meaningfully reduced our dependence on the U.S. Between January and August 2026, Canadian agri-food imports from the U.S. declined by 0.7 per cent, compared with the same period in 2025.

That might sound like evidence that Canadians’ determination to avoid American products is having an impact. But Canada’s total agri-food imports declined by 1.2 per cent. Consequently, the American share of our agri-food imports increased from 47.09 per cent to 47.33 per cent, a gain of 0.24 percentage points.

The export picture is equally revealing. Between January and August 2025, the U.S. received 61.92 per cent of Canada’s agri-food exports. During the same period in 2026, that share reached 61.98 per cent. Both figures round to 62 per cent.

Despite the boycott rhetoric and repeated calls to find new markets, our agri-food trade remains anchored to the same customer and supplier.

These figures cover everything from agricultural commodities to processed foods, not just what Canadians put in their grocery carts. But there are limits to what they tell us. Import values do not directly measure consumers’ purchasing decisions. Prices, exchange rates and product composition can influence trade totals. An aggregate result can conceal substantial changes in individual categories. What the figures do show is that any changes in buying behaviour have yet to reduce our overall dependence on American food imports.

For Canadian farmers and food processors, the data are telling us the U.S. remains an extraordinarily important customer. Approximately $62 of every $100 in agri-food export value goes there. That concentration creates exposure to American policy decisions, border disruptions and changes in market access.

It also reflects commercial advantages. The U.S. is nearby, offers a large customer base and supports established business relationships. Canadian exporters have developed products, transportation arrangements and sales strategies around that market.

Replacing those relationships takes more than a trade mission and a photograph. An exporter entering a new market must find reliable buyers, meet regulatory requirements, adapt products where necessary and establish commercially viable distribution. For perishable food, transportation time and cold-chain reliability can determine whether an opportunity is profitable at all.

Diversification is possible. It requires patient commercial work, investment and a willingness to address the costs that make Canadian suppliers less competitive.

The import side presents a similar challenge. A shopper can leave an American product on the shelf immediately. A food manufacturer replacing an American ingredient supplier must consider specifications, food safety, price, available quantities and delivery schedules.

A retailer sourcing elsewhere must ensure that products arrive consistently and remain affordable. Finding an alternative supplier is only the first step. This is why the discussion needs to move beyond consumer patriotism.

Canadians should be free to support domestic producers and avoid American products if they wish. But grocery shopping should not become a national loyalty test. A household choosing the least expensive food is managing its budget.

If buying Canadian requires families to pay more indefinitely, the strategy will struggle to endure. Consumers need competitive alternatives, and Canadian businesses need the capacity to supply them.

That brings us to the common problem behind our import and export dependence: competitiveness.

We want Canadian companies to replace imported products at home while winning customers overseas. Both objectives require productive farms, efficient processing facilities, reliable transportation and an environment that encourages investment.

A maple leaf on a shelf cannot deliver those conditions. Neither can a government declaration that Canada is diversifying.

Policy should focus on improving the economics of producing and processing food here. Energy costs, infrastructure, regulatory predictability and barriers to interprovincial trade deserve sustained attention. So does the ability of businesses to expand, modernize and bring new products to market.

Export development should be measured by durable commercial results: repeat customers, profitable shipments and a broader distribution of sales. Import diversification should be assessed through reliable alternative supplies, alongside opportunities to expand competitive Canadian production.

Reducing dependence does not require abandoning the American market. Canada should continue selling to a valuable customer while building enough alternatives to withstand disruptions. The objective is greater resilience and bargaining power.

The latest figures offer a useful reality check. The U.S. supplies roughly 47 per cent of our agri-food imports and receives approximately 62 per cent of our agri-food exports. Neither share has fallen over the comparison period.

Our frustration with Washington may have changed. The structure of our food economy has barely moved.

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, co-host of The Food Professor Podcast and visiting scholar at McGill University.

The post Canada remains hooked on U.S. food first appeared on Edmonton's Business.

The post The frontiersman you’ve probably never heard of first appeared on Edmonton's Business.

The post Canada’s economic decline comes with a Made in Canada label first appeared on Edmonton's Business.

The post B.C. Premier is wrong about what’s driving grocery prices first appeared on Edmonton's Business.

The post One book can change the course of a life first appeared on Edmonton's Business.