Harper was right—Canadian foreign policy should prioritize the Americas: The Weekly Wrap

The Trudeau government, for its part, largely abandoned the hemispheric frame altogether. Its foreign policy was defined by moral posturing and diminished influence, including, of course, in Washington. That makes the present moment especially striking. As the Trump administration executes its own hemispheric strategy—a modernized, if blunt, version of the Monroe Doctrine—it’s hard not to consider the counterfactual. What if Harper’s core insight had endured across governments? What if Canada had spent two decades systematically building influence, relationships, and credibility in its own neighbourhood? The answer is uncomfortable. A sustained hemispheric strategy would have, in theory, left Canada with greater leverage in Washington and a clearer role in a rapidly re-ordering Americas. Instead, we’re essentially a vulnerable spectator. It’s too bad. In hindsight, Harper was right. It’s been an impressive first decade for the Runnymede Society As the Runnymede Society marks its tenth anniversary this month, it’s worth reflecting on just how much ground it has covered—and why its steady growth matters for the future of Canadian constitutionalism. When the Runnymede Society was founded by Joanna Baron, Asher Honickman, and Howard Anglin, there was genuine uncertainty about whether it could find traction in Canada’s monolithic world of legal thought. We now know the answer. In just a decade, Runnymede has helped to create space for heterodox yet rigorous thinking about constitutional law—thinking that’s rooted in text, structure, history, and democratic accountability, and that takes seriously the limits of judicial power. The institutional footprint alone is impressive. Runnymede has established student chapters at law schools across the country, which is creating a pipeline of young lawyers exposed early to alternative approaches to constitutional interpretation. More recently, its lawyer chapters, typically populated by alumni of those student groups, have begun to take shape in several major cities. This matters. It signals that Runnymede is no longer just a campus phenomenon, but a growing professional network whose influence will increasingly be felt in academia, law firms, and ultimately the judiciary. Its growth speaks to an underlying demand in Canadian legal culture for an intellectual alternative to the Living Tree monolith that has dominated jurisprudential thinking for decades. For too long, constitutional interpretation in Canada has been treated as a largely one-way ratchet—expansive, purposive, and untethered from democratic constraint. Questioning that approach was often dismissed as unserious or retrograde rather than engaged on its merits. Runnymede has helped change that dynamic. It has shown that skepticism of living constitutionalism need not be ideological or crude. One can thoughtfully (and persuasively) defend judicial restraint, parliamentary sovereignty, and the separation of powers while remaining committed to rights, pluralism, and the rule of law. In that sense, Runnymede has already greatly enriched Canada’s constitutional debate. The growing challenge to interpretive orthodoxy is now visible beyond academic panels and student events. One can see it, for instance, in the renewed and more confident invocation of the notwithstanding clause by elected governments. Whatever one thinks of those decisions, they reflect a political culture increasingly willing to contest judicial supremacy rather than accept it as settled fact. At 10 years old, the Runnymede Society is still young. But its growth suggests something durable: Canadian constitutionalism is no longer a closed conversation. And that, in itself, is a healthy development for the country’s legal order. A clear-eyed look at the Counting Crows As a longtime fan, I’ve been looking forward to the release of a new major documentary on the Counting Crows, including the band’s origins, its rapid rise, and its place in the culture of the 1990s. The new film (available on HBO Max) largely delivers on that promise, offering a clear-eyed account of both the band’s success and the burdens and costs for its enigmatic frontman and songwriter, Adam Duritz. For me, the story is also personal in a rather ordinary way. The Counting Crows’ first album, August and Everything After, which was hugely successful due to famous singles like “Mr. Jones” and “Round Here,” is one of the first instances I can remember as an adolescent developing my own musical tastes and preferences and not relying on my parents. And it really holds up. More than 30 years later, it remains such a solid album from the first song to the last one. It still ranks among my personal favourites. The extraordinary stardom that followed was hard on Duritz, who, as the song “Mr. Jones” presciently tells us, both wants to be a rock star and yet knows it won’t ultimately fill his emotional or metaphysical needs. The opposite happened. It weighed on him mentally and socially so much that his iconic dreadlocks became almost a costume that sought to disguise the real him from the outside world. The documentary doesn’t overstate this point, but it makes clear that the line between Duritz’s exteriority and interiority was difficult to maintain. The film is also rich with 1990s cultural context, from the Nirvana-led grunge explosion to the ubiquity of cable television shows like Friends. For many Millennials, it’s a familiar backdrop—one that situates the band within a specific and influential moment in popular culture. The result is a documentary that’s neither hagiographic nor overly psychological. It tells a straightforward story about music, success, and the unintended consequences of both. If you were born in the early 1980s, I recommend it.