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About Sutherland Quarterly
Sutherland Quarterly is an exciting new series of captivating essays on current affairs by some of Canada’s finest writers, published individually as books and also available by annual subscription.
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05.07.2024
Justin Trudeau on the Ropes
Governing in Troubled Times
By Paul Wells
The worst decade in the history of the Liberal Party of Canada came to an end on October 19, 2015. Justin Trudeau swept to power, ending the ten-year rule of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. Trudeau’s vision was relentlessly optimistic: the word "positive" was heard eight times in his victory speech, along with references to "sunny ways" and "hope and hard work." But the fates decreed that he would govern in darker times. His rookie government, itself mainly staffed by rookies in federal politics, had to learn on the job in an age of polarization, misinformation, and pandemic, while dealing with the rise of Trump and Brexit, a newly belligerent China, and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The moment needed more than a young PM's abundant charm. And almost from the outset, Trudeau struggled to rise to the occasion.
A decade after he published The Longer I’m Prime Minister, the definitive portrait of Stephen Harper in power, Paul Wells, one of Canada’s all-time great political writers, turns his attention to Justin Trudeau, a man of talent, ambition, and trust issues in a time of mistrust.
02. 13. 2024
Superintelligence
Is Canada Ready for AI?
Reported by The Logic
The emergence of Chat GPT in late 2022 launched the world into a new era of highly capable artificial intelligence, the most fascinating new technology since the birth of the Internet. Superintelligence: Is Canada Ready for AI? is a ground-breaking collection of original work from The Logic, Canada’s business and tech newsroom. It provides a comprehensive overview of the state of AI in Canada, introduces some of the technology’s current champions (and fallen ones), explores some of its most exciting applications, and weighs its potential impact on our daily lives, our workplaces, our economy, and the future of humanity.
This bracing and highly-readable book also traces Canada’s critical role in the development of artificial
intelligence and asks whether we’ll reap the rewards of that early contribution or wind up a bystander in the increasingly frenzied world of AI.
09. 19. 2023
We Have Received A Complaint
The Fraught World of Workplace Justice
By Matt Malone
We used to go to court to enforce our rights. Now we do it at the office.
Workplace investigations are everywhere. From complaints at Fox, BBC, TVO, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show to sports teams like the Seattle Mariners, the Boston Celtics, and the Dallas Mavericks, as well as Fortune 500 companies, governments, universities, and schools, seemingly every week brings a new announcement of another workplace under scrutiny. As conflicts increase in a new era of behavioural expectations, offices are being transformed into forums of informal justice. Investigators are summoned to adjudicate and peers become witnesses in poorly understood, often opaque proceedings. The shift is fraught for all involved: complainants often feel the investigations fail to right wrongs; respondents regularly decry them as exercises in shunning; employers wonder how they fell into this role.
06. 06. 2023
We Are Not Okay
The Pandemic and its Consequences
By Dr. Elaine Chin
COVID-19 made almost five million Canadians sick, put hundreds of thousands in hospital, and claimed over 50,000 lives. The numbers are startling yet they don’t begin to capture the enormity of what we endured in our three-year ordeal, nor the fact that it’s not over. Many people are still grieving loved ones, many survivors are still grappling with long covid, and many continue to experience the pandemic as never-ending trauma. General healthcare has deteriorated and waiting lists have swelled even for urgent surgeries. Rates of respiratory and heart disease and strokes are up. Years of involuntary confinement, isolation, and boredom have contributed to a “shadow pandemic” of alcohol, cannabis, and opioid abuse, especially among the young. Rage is everywhere, the number of hate crimes has spiked, along with fears of civil disorder. Three million workers lost their jobs and a majority of small businesses either failed or weathered near-death experiences. Our workplaces, schools, and downtowns were hollowed out and may never entirely recover.
As year four begins, people are still dying at alarming rates and we are just beginning to learn of the myriad knock-on effects of the pandemic. In this important and galvanizing book, Dr. Elaine Chin argues that a full audit of the personal and social consequences of COVID-19 is the indispensable first step to a full recovery for individuals, families, and communities.
04. 11. 2023
An Emergency in Ottawa
The Story of the Convoy Commission
By Paul Wells
On Feb 14, 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made what might be the most controversial decision of his tenure, invoking the Emergencies Act to end a three-week occupation of downtown Ottawa by truckers protesting mandatory COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Proclaimed in 1988, the Emergencies Act is designed to give federal officials extraordinary powers in the event of threats to Canada’s national security that can’t be managed under existing laws. Trudeau used it to make the protest illegal, freeze the accounts and cancel the vehicle insurance of participants, requisition tow trucks to clear protestors from the streets, among other measures. The government defended the first-ever invocation of the act as just and necessary; several premiers and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association called it an assault on democratic rights and civil liberties. As required by the act, Trudeau appointed a commission of inquiry into its use. Last November, justice Paul Rouleau held six weeks of riveting hearings that included testimony by so-called Freedom Convoy organizers, police officials, cabinet ministers, and Trudeau himself.
12.06.2022
Funeral For A Queen
Twelve Days in London
By John Fraser
On September 8, 2022, an announcement was posted on the gates of Balmoral Castle in Scotland and Buckingham Palace in London that Queen Elizabeth II, the longest serving monarch in British history, had died. That set in motion a remarkable ten days of official mourning and ceremony unlike anything seen in any nation for decades.
Members of the royal family gathered—the new King Charles III and his Queen Consort Camilla; the newly-minted Prince of Wales, William and his princess, Kate; Harry the Bolter and his celebrity wife Meghan; and even the bad boy himself, “Prince” Andrew—along with hundreds of royals and heads of states from around the world. Hordes of people, many from overseas, spent long hours lining up in the rain to pay tribute to the beloved monarch, a presence in their lives for seventy years. On the scene for these events, renowned journalist John Fraser takes the reader from inside St. James Palace where the new King was proclaimed to Queen Elizabeth’s final resting place at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, from deeply moving scenes to the occasional hilarious screw-up, capturing the magic of the occasion with trenchant observations and witty commentary informed by a lifetime’s experience and curiosity about all things monarchical and his own encounters with the royals.