Article

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Leading

Politics

25 March 2025

5 min read

Canadians are riled up: who's got the plan to meet the moment?

A restless nation looks to what’s next.

Emerson Csorba

Emerson Csorba works in deep tech, following experience in geopolitics and energy.

Ice hockey players fight in front of a goal

Canadian and American hockey players fight it out.

Canada is on edge. The world feels more volatile than it has in years, and at the center of the political storm is the looming presence of Donald Trump. With a Canadian election called this past Sunday, Canadians are fixated on a single question: who among our leaders is best equipped to deal with the return of Trumpism?

It is not just about diplomacy; it is about defining Canada's role in a world that is growing more uncertain by the day.

Right now, two figures are in competition: Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre. They are, in many ways, opposites. Carney, with his economic expertise and international standing, represents a polished, globally respected leadership style. Poilievre, by contrast, channels raw frustration, presenting himself as the anti-establishment fighter ready to take on both the political elite and external threats.

The country is divided, with polls showing both men running neck and neck. The choice before Canadians is not just about policy; it is about the kind of leadership style they believe can best meet the challenges ahead.

Canadians are restless and want a leader with a clear plan - a person who is willing to fight but who also has a strong, actionable vision for the country. Empty rhetoric will not suffice; voters want substance behind the message. They want to know that the elected leaders - and their team - can actually deliver.

This moment demands a different kind of leadership, one grounded in values and virtues that resonate with Canadians. This is because Canadians want to know that their next leader has substance, given the lack of this over the last decade.

Among these, community stands out as essential. Communities are not just social units; they are the backbone of resilience. In times of crisis, as I argued in a previous article Canada’s Long Hot Summer, strong communities determine whether a nation weathers the storm or succumbs to decline.

The plans devised by the Federal government, and in partnership with Canada's thirteen provinces and territories, will need to be delivered at the community level. It will not be government bureaucracies but rather communities pulling Canada through upcoming challenges.

Community is not just about togetherness - it is about shared responsibility and the willingness to take action. Historically, the strength of Canadians comes from pulling together in times of crisis, not from passive compromise. We built our communities with a sense of collective responsibility, recognizing that our prosperity depends on our willingness to support our neighbors.

Canadians respect leaders who fight for their values while delivering results. In hockey terms, we admire the hard-working, two-way player who battles in the corners and delivers when it counts - not someone who plays a careful, neutral game. A leader who embodies that spirit, who presents a clear, actionable plan for Canada’s future, will resonate deeply with voters.

Indeed, the last ten years for Canada have been anything but this: all words and no action.

There is therefore a delicate balance between channeling people's justified frustrations and a focus on presenting a better future.

Now is the time to reflect on individual and shared values and virtues. My own personal and political values are those of integrity, honesty, pluralism, self-reliance, ingenuity, and a commitment to protecting the most vulnerable. Values and virtues are not abstract ideals; they are practical necessities in a rapidly changing world.

For instance, integrity means acting in accordance with one’s principles and delivering on promises. Honesty is about telling hard truths, even when they are inconvenient. Pluralism acknowledges the richness of the Canadian people and the need for different perspectives at the decision-making table. Self-reliance is not about isolation; it is about ensuring Canada can stand on its own economically and politically without over-reliance on others. Ingenuity is about fostering a culture of innovation that keeps Canada competitive in an era of global transformation. And protecting the vulnerable is not charity - it is about creating a country where everyone has the opportunity to contribute meaningfully.

A leader who can embody these types of principles (or any principles) while also presenting a concrete plan for Canada’s future will resonate with voters.

While Pierre Poilievre has had difficulty adapting to the election of Donald Trump and is losing ground in the polls to Carney (a previous 20-point lead now reduced to one), he remains in a good position and can achieve victory by adapting his messaging and policies to the world we are in.

Anger and a focus on the brokenness of Canada is not what Canadians want; dissatisfaction needs to be channeled in a way that is more forward-looking. What can Canadian communities achieve together, based on our shared values and virtues, translating words into actions? Answering this question clearly and authentically is key to Carney's success.

This election is not just about choosing between Carney and Poilievre - it is about what kind of Canada we want to build. Canadians will not be satisfied with vague assurances of moderation or status quo politics. We do not want the same old, and this is where Carney must be careful - bringing voices into his team from beyond the ancien régime. A plurality of voices is powerful.

We want a leader who will take decisive action and who brings real change.

As Canadians, we do not just watch history unfold; we participate in it. We built one of the world’s strongest economies, and now we face the challenge of defending it in an era of deglobalization and shifting alliances. Canada has the resources, the talent, and the spirit to succeed, but we need leadership that understands how to harness that potential.

The political landscape is shifting, and Canadians are ready for change.

The question is no longer just who can stand up to Trump; it is who has the plan, the resolve, and the leadership to ensure Canada thrives in an uncertain world. That is the ballot question, and it will define the country’s next chapter.

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Review

Culture

Music

Politics

25 July 2025

6 min read

As the congregation gathers Bruce Springsteen leans hard into hope

Chords of confrontation and communion

Elizabeth Wainwright

Elizabeth Wainwright is a writer, coach and walking guide. She's a former district councillor and has a background in international development.

Bruce Springsteen crouches down and holds a hand out to a sea of outstretched hands

Springsteen plays Manchester.

Brucespringsteen.net.

I finally got to experience a Bruce Springsteen concert recently. Which is to say, for three hours, I touched a land of hope and dreams.

We walked along a canal to get to the arena – my husband, my father-in-law, and me –Manchester shimmered with the arrival of summer, and light bounced off red brick and still water. We neared the arena and the air felt dense with anticipation. T Between us we carried heartbreaks, elections, hopes, failures, and a collective return to music that had accompanied and clarified it all. We were drawn by loyalty and nostalgia and joy, but also I sensed by a hope that Bruce would meet the moment — the frayed, furious, anxious now — with something that mattered.

We found our seats and gripped our drinks as the lights dimmed. Thousands of people stopped individual conversations, and hushed, and then joined voices into a deep and reverent chant. “Bruuuuuuuce”. To my right, the glow of a screen, the woman holding it sending a text – “yes babe, 1pm, lovely” – and it seemed incongruent and true. In the tension before the release, in the dark before the light, we hold our breath even as the ordinary carries on. The ordinary carries on even as the world fractures and glows. The ordinary is what Bruce often sings of, it is one reason why fans feel heard and seen by him. That night though, all the ordinaries he sang of formed something extraordinary.

Then there was light, and Bruce walked slowly from the side to the front of the stage, his guitar suspended across his body, his face a relaxed, broad smile, his bandmates and companions beside and behind him. Then there was music. No videos, no pyrotechnics; just old songs that felt as if they existed for the now. My City of Ruins, Death to My Hometown, Land of Hope and Dreams, The Promised Land. The song Long Walk Home was introduced as a “prayer to my country”. It is a country that he embodies, despairs of, and loves. He sings of his home with fury, sorrow, tenderness, and love.

Riffs and rhythms that were decades old were being made urgent again. Springsteen’s music holds both grit and glory, and hard-won joys leave space for sorrow. I write this and lines by Mary Oliver come to mind: “We shake with joy, we shake with grief / what a time they have these two / housed as they are in the same body.” What a time they had, joy and grief, that night with Bruce.

The evening unfolded not as spectacle but as liturgy; all of us involved in something like devotion – in part to Bruce, but also to moral clarity, to the power of poetry, to the promise of who we could be. At times the crowd seemed silent, ushered into something deeper – not entertainment or escapism, but something like confrontation and communion. We were being offered the joy of music and memory, but also an opportunity to reckon with who we are.

Between songs, Bruce spoke. He apparently rarely does so in his gigs. His voice slowed and deepened – not chit chat, not to entertain, but to bear witness and stand defiant and call us to the best versions of ourselves. “I’ve spent my life singing about where we’ve succeeded and come up short in pursuit of our civic values,” he said. “I just felt that was my job.” He proceeded to describe how those values are being torn apart, and why they matter. The crowd roared. He was making civic values shine, speaking about them with urgency. He acknowledged both the dream and the failure, but still he believes in the promised land and he asks us to as well. Before he belted out Rainmaker, he said, “when conditions in a country are right for a demagogue, you can bet one will show up.” He spoke of America, and really of the world – what it is, what it is becoming. His honesty and poetic rage situated us, then became a map for how to keep going.

We can be glad to be alive even while we are honest about sorrow, injustice, broken politics, fractured families, and tired hearts.

I found myself wondering: why is it that Bruce can sing and speak about justice, warped politics, and who we are becoming, and be met with cheers, while so many churches avoid doing so, preferring instead to whisper in neutral tones while the world burns? That night, I stood in a crowd of thousands and I heard a kind of moral clarity that orientates the soul and made me cry. It wasn’t partisan, it was human. Why can it feel riskier to speak specifically and prophetically in a sermon than in a stadium? I wonder if it’s because Springsteen has always rooted his politics in people’s real lives – in work, family, grief, memory. He doesn’t gesture toward abstract ideologies for fear of alienating people, or in the hope of retaining fans: he tells stories and gives names to problems and injustices, singing about crooked institutions, boarded-up factories, buses that never come, lovers who don’t come back.

The evening felt, for me, like the kind of church I long for and sometimes touch: no tidy answers, no insincere lyrics, no vague calls for justice, but rather honesty and specificity and the chance to stand alongside strangers and feel something challenging, beautiful, true.

I scribbled a question as the music soared: can a chord be mystical? Because that’s how it felt. As if there are progressions – minor then major, dissonance into harmony – that can reach past language and speak directly to the part of us that longs for love more than cynicism, to the part of us that still dares to hope even when there is very little obvious reason to do so, to the part of us wondering how to be truly alive.

Near the end, Bruce quoted the American writer James Baldwin:

“In this world, there isn’t enough humanity as one would hope. But there’s enough.”

There’s enough. It was a small phrase but it hung in the air like incense. For Bruce, there is enough humanity to keep singing for, and about. Now, he seemed to ask the crowd, what will you do with that enoughness, with that humanity?

In the final stretch, Bruce leaned hard into hope with songs like The Rising and Born to Run. The energy in the room felt like resistance – not against something, but for something. He didn’t pretend everything’s fine, but he sang anyway. “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”

We can be glad to be alive even while we are honest about sorrow, injustice, broken politics, fractured families, and tired hearts. Gladness is being asked to stand its ground now, and to do something with our improbable aliveness. For the final song, Bruce played Bob Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom. It is a song about lightning and exiles and freedom, about the trembling of the soul and about a sky that “cracked its poems in naked wonder.” He sang it slowly, tenderly, like a prayer – which can also be a trembling of the soul, a song of naked wonder. Perhaps he prayed to God, perhaps to some other sacred thing: our better angels, or the fragile hope of who we might yet become.

In a BBC documentary about Bruce Springsteen’s history with the UK, someone says “there’s something in Bruce fans, you know you can implicitly trust them.” As we filed out of the arena, it felt like 25,000 of us briefly knew each other, trusted each other, could take on the world together. Perhaps we just had.

Soon it was just me, my husband, my father-in-law, and the silent dark canal as we walked back into the night. We were tired, we were awake. I thought of Bruce’s belief in the promised land, and of Baldwin’s line: there’s not enough humanity, but there’s enough. These are beliefs that can feel risky. So can belief in God. But enough is plenty. Enough can turn up the volume and let the spirit be our guide. With 25,000 other people, I’d turned that volume up and I could hear the spirit defiant, unifying, guiding. It is – has always been – time to go and sing of it, despite everything.