This past week saw Hub readers engage in discussions on where Gen Z stands on health care, the emptying of newsrooms, how we discuss Canadian history, and Danielle Smith’s invoking of the Sovereignty Act in a constitutional confrontation against Ottawa, amongst other topics.

The goal of Hub Forum is to bring the impressive knowledge and experience of The Hub community to the fore and to foster open dialogue and the competition of differing ideas in a respectful and productive manner. Here are some of the most interesting comments from this past week.

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Where’s the prudence? Freeland bets big on soft-landing fiscal plan

Monday, December 4, 2023

“The highest accumulated debt, the highest interest rates in decades, and inflated food prices along with the economic carbon tax. Let’s hope a new government can turn things around soon.”

— Gary Oxenforth

“It’s sheer folly for the Liberals to think they can cross their fingers and just simply hang in there in the hope that this looming debt crisis of their making will somehow fix itself. Despite their better wishes, that day of reckoning is coming—sooner than they would like to think.”

— RJKWells

“Economists are already predicting rates will start falling in the first or second quarter of 2024. Servicing costs will come down with rate decreases. It’s not like this government wanted to spend that money. They had to.”

— Michael F

Gen Z doesn’t care about your public health care hang-ups

Tuesday, December 5, 2023

“If personal experience and outcomes are bad enough, most people will be open to alternatives. Does that mean that we have a stark choice between continuing to ‘throw money at it’ or allowing for market dynamism to save it (for those that can throw money at their own health care)?

There are obviously many more options for the Federal and Provincial governments to improve the service and outcomes…and some harnessed market dynamism could very well be part of any effective solutions.”

— Rob

“The sad thing is that our system is more costly, with longer wait times, than most European countries where they already have parallel public-private systems. Surely we can look at all these other countries and come up with a good version that helps everyone.”

— Al Raftis

As newsrooms empty out, governments swoop in for the kill

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

“We need a robust fourth pillar or democracy will be out of balance. A strong, independent media is essential.”

— Michael F

“Journalism is an essential public good. As such it should be funded by society. Due to its adversarial role, its funding should be adequate, locked in long term, and firewalled from everything (people, government, business, special interests). It should have some sort of professional governance structure that provides assurance and enforcement of a baseline of conduct and output (the quality, not the content)…On the more realistic side, I do like the idea of funding the ‘most basic’ newsgathering in an open-source way, whether CBC funding to CPAC, or something else.”

— Rob

We are telling the wrong story about Canada

Thursday, December 7, 2023

“More of us need to speak up so that our cultural heritage is not lost.”

— Faye Perkins

“Recognition of the sins of the past is, of course, necessary, as is some form of restoration, but wrapping it all in one big ideologic shame fest muddies the waters and contributes to alienation such that any meaningful solution gets lost in the rhetoric.

Acknowledge, commemorate, and teach the terrible shortcomings of our fore-bearers, then put it behind us and move forward cooperatively to right those wrongs which can be righted and consign to history everything which belongs there.”

— Gordon Divitt

“Multiculturalism was an actively pursued national goal based on the notion that people from away would enrich our culture. First generations would tend to settle in a community of the same background, bringing security and ties to tradition. The second generation, educated in Canadian schools and conforming to our ways would assimilate while still holding true to their ancestral roots. Canada is a grand and bold experiment of which I am deeply proud. But it will take real tolerance and empathy—real Canadian values—to ensure this beautiful experiment is a success.”

— Michele

Danielle Smith is invoking the Alberta Sovereignty Act for the first time. Here’s why

Friday, December 8, 2023

“A large majority of Canadians want action on climate change. It consistently polls as a top concern for Canadians. Canada is no different from the majority of other developed countries in imposing a carbon levy on fossil fuels. Now Canada is taking the next step in capping emissions after doing a lengthy consultation process.”

— Michael F

Last week in Toronto, more than a hundred wine people (media and trade) were assembled in a fancy financial district restaurant at the very un-Dionysian hour of 9:30 in the morning. The room was set up in a series of numbered tables, and as we filed in to register for the event we were told at which table to sit. Before us at each sitting were four glasses and a list of 70 or so fine red wines from 35 producers that belong in the Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino.

It was Brunello Day, a tasting event held not just in Toronto, but on the same day in Dallas, Miami, New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, Zurich, and Vancouver. These events were, in turn, smaller versions of a greater series of tastings, called Benvenuto Brunello, organized by the Consorzio and supported abroad by the Italian Trade Agency.

Brunello di Montalcino is one of Italy’s “Big B” success stories, along with its northern luxury wine cousins Barolo and Barbaresco. Until the 1970s, the vineyards around the Medieval hilltop town of Montalcino, about forty kilometres south of Siena in Tuscany, grew mostly Muscat grapes to make sweet white fizzy wine. The resurgence of the Brunello clone of the Sangiovese grape in this small wine region has never slowed down—demand continues to outstrip supply and prices rise correspondently.

Benvenuto began in Montalcino, two weeks before. It ran for four days there, then moved to London for another big show. All of this was in the service of what the Italians call an anteprima, or preview. The Tuscan and U.K. versions would have had all or most of the wines to be released to buyers this year, whereas the satellite versions, like the ones in Canada, would focus on products available in each specific market.

The Toronto-based wine writer Michael Godel was our event host and MC and acted as an ambassador of the Brunello preview. It might be said that Godel “brought” the wines to us, since he and fellow Canadian Brunello ambassador Michaela Morris (who played host at the event in Vancouver) had spent the previous week in Montalcino at the proper anteprima.

Before any wines were poured into our glasses, Godel gave us a preview of the preview, as it were. The bulk of the wines released were from 2019; these were “plain” Brunello di Montalcino DOCG wines. The DOCG wines are distinguished from the more ordinary Rosso di Montalcino, though as Godel pointed out, the winemakers of Montalcino make twice as much of the Brunello as the everyday Rosso, as there is a significantly higher price ceiling on the former.

The rest of the wines were the Riservas. The chief difference for those wines selected to be Riserva is aging. Whereas “regular” Brunello cannot be released to be sold until the first of January “of the year following the end of the fifth year calculated in consideration of the year of harvest,” the rule for Riserva is six years. Accordingly, all of the Riservas poured to be previewed were from 2018, except one outlier from 2016.

Godel brought more than wine; he brought news from the small, prestigious wine region. First, he addressed the vintage just brought in, 2023. He confirmed the bad news from much of Italy: this rainy year was something of a disaster, chiefly because of powdery mildew. A number of producers do not expect to make any Brunello at all from 2023 grapes. In any event, production will be severely limited.

Bad news was followed by good. The 2019 was, by contrast, a “Goldilocks year”: not too hot, not too wet. Godel said one producer told him that making wine in 2019 was a “breeze”. 2019 is predicted to be a “famous vintage”, and the Montalcino winemakers are happy to focus on this good fortune after the heartbreak of the previous six months.

Then, because there is never a dull moment in the world of wine, back to bad news. Or at least not as good news. 2018 was a challenging year, cooler than most. A wine writers’ joke is that vintages like 2018 are called “classic”. There’s truth to the sarcasm, though. Cooler vintages hark back to wines made before the effects of global warming were consistently felt beginning in the late 1990s. Looking on the bright side, Godel told us to look for an expression of “pure Sangiovese” in the 2018 Riservas.

During the tasting proper, I tasted 39 out of the 70 or so wines on offer over three hours. Here’s my verdict: if you can afford and enjoy Brunello di Montalcino, then you have nothing to worry about. Nearly all the wines I tasted showed well. The 2019 wines were generally speaking rich, complex, and showing what the Brits call hedgerow fruit: blackberries. The tannins were still gripping but fine; these wines could be drunk now with a decanting, or better to be put down for a few or more years. If you want to impress your date at a fancy Italian restaurant in 2029, I suggest you order a 2019 Brunello.

If you want to impress your wine nerd friend at a fancy Italian restaurant in 2024, ’25, or ’26, then order a 2018 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva. The 2018 wines sang a softer song. I could see what Godel meant by pure Sangiovese: cherries. These wines showed a red fruit elegance and were more or less ready to go.

If contemporary winemakers are cursed with weather disasters and climate chaos like this summer in Italy, then they are also blessed to be making wine in the information age. Never has so much knowledge about how to shape wine in the cellar been accumulated and disseminated. The enologi of Montalcino knew exactly what to do with their fruit from a cooler year. I predict that as things continue to heat up, fresher vintages like 2018, or 2013 before, will become sought-after rarities.