The word “Luddite” carries a particular connotation. Typically, it’s a term of mockery hurled at a person deemed technophobic, perhaps simply too stupid to appreciate modern technology. But the Luddites were a real group of people with an important place in history. And it isn’t fair they’ve become synonymous with ignorance.

In 19th century Britain, technological advances in the textile industry reduced the amount of labour necessary in manufacturing. Unsurprisingly, this new tech was implemented to undercut labourers, reducing both jobs and wages, with zero social safety net in place to compensate the workers’ loss of livelihoods. The capitalist owners profited massively as they shunted workers aside.

Rather than accommodating these displaced labourers, the government passed legislation restricting workers’ ability to collectively bargain. People began to go hungry and the institutions of society met their rumbling bellies with indifference.

Then the riots started. With no other recourse, workers began to smash, loot and burn, all under the aegis of a mythical leader they named Ned Ludd, which is how they earned their moniker.

Every conversation about Manitoba’s future seems to arrive at the same place.

We talk about investment, innovation, productivity and skilled labour. We celebrate the strength of our aerospace sector, the opportunities created by the world-class companies, community development corporations and educational institutions that have made Manitoba one of Canada’s aerospace leaders.

These are important conversations, but I have come to believe we are overlooking one of the earliest — and perhaps most important — investments we can make in our future economy.

Where does inspiration begin?

The shuttering of Winnipeg’s Free Press Community Review means 200,000 households will no longer get the benefit of a free community newspaper delivered to their doors. It also means that more than 800 people who deliver the paper and their families will be affected.

This is an unforced error that never should have happened.

How did we get here? The answer is complex.

First, there is a high degree of concentration in the flyer printing market in Canada. Montreal-based TC Transcontinental enjoys the dominant position in the marketplace thanks, in part, to a 2012 Competition Bureau-approved asset swap.

At his trial for impiety and corrupting youth, the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates defended himself by justifying his life’s work, famously maintaining that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Lamentably, he was found guilty of the charges and ironically sentenced to death via drinking poison hemlock.

Yet human life is undeniably worth examining. So how do we best do so?

The liberal arts curriculum in Western post-secondary education — liberal as in “to be free” and art as in “learned skill” — has historically been perhaps the primary means of examining the human condition and experience, in contrast to vocational, professional or technical fields of study in universities.

Today they comprise the humanities, such as history, philosophy and literature, as well as the social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology and political science, with psychology bridging onto the natural sciences.

India and the United States are the world’s two biggest democracies, and both seem to be in danger. In each of them, populist federal governments are deliberately polarizing the population, radicalizing the politics and seeking to undermine the impartial rule of law.

In other places, such an approach has often ended in tyranny or civil war.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a classic populist leader, although he prefers an austere and religious style to the more florid approach favoured by Donald Trump. Both men control their political parties with an iron hand, both flaunt their religions in public (although only Modi really has one), and both try to eliminate or co-opt all rival centres of power.

Both men also have a complete disregard for the truth. Their rhetoric about helping the poor while actually serving the purposes of the rich is the same. Above all, their scapegoating of minorities is the same. (For Modi, it’s Muslims, for Trump it’s practically anybody non-white.) Yet neither man is really preparing to stage a violent takeover.

On July 2, the United States Department of Justice issued a forceful statement rejecting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over American nationals. The declaration described any attempt by the court to assert authority over Americans as illegitimate and a violation of national sovereignty.

It was unusually categorical, and it arrived at a moment when Washington has been sharpening its political posture toward international criminal accountability. Canada should not be unsettled by it. Canada’s position has been clear for more than two decades, and this new declaration does not alter Canada’s commitments or responsibilities.

The context surrounding the July 2 statement matters. It was issued under Attorney General Todd Blanche, who also continues to serve as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.

That dual role is highly unusual, and it inevitably shapes the tone of the department’s communications. President Trump has long expressed strong hostility toward the court, and the July 2 statement reflects that longstanding view. It is part of a broader political environment in Washington, where international criminal accountability is increasingly framed as a challenge to national sovereignty rather than a shared global responsibility.

For decades, I have sought to spice up otherwise dull speeches with quotes from Norman R. Augustine’s book Augustine’s Laws, which examined the complexities and conundrums of management and came up with 52 witty and wise laws.

Law Number XXXII reads: “Hiring consultants to conduct studies can be an excellent means of turning problems into gold, your problems into their gold.”

In recent decades, governments have made increasing use of consultants to support both policy development and operational activities. Governments could not function effectively and efficiently without the support of consultants in a wide range of areas. Reliance on consultants, however, involves risks and potential problems. In short, there is a place for consultants in the governing process and consultants should be kept in their place.

A small number of accounting and management firms — Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst and Young and McKinsey — dominate the consulting industry on a global basis. These firms, along with numerous smaller companies, interact thousands of times annually with different parts of a sprawling public sector and deliver positive results which definitely serve the public interest.

It is striking that one of the smallest exhibitions at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg has generated one of the largest public controversies in the museum’s history. Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present occupies only about 12 metres within an existing gallery.

Yet it has prompted protests, political statements, passionate public debate and accusations that the museum has somehow abandoned its mission.

This exhibition matters. But I have come to think that the reaction to it matters just as much. It raises a question that reaches well beyond this particular exhibition.

Why has one small gallery space become such a flashpoint?

What is it we should fear about AI? That it will take our jobs? Overload our electricity networks and make our own energy needs more expensive? Put scarce freshwater resources at risk? Or is it that it will be unregulated, breach privacy laws and be used for a wide range of perverse purposes?

If Canadians are among the most distrustful of the AI revolution, it isn’t because they are uninformed or technologically regressive. Their reluctance is because there is no plan for Canadian AI guided by an overarching public interest.

To the contrary, the hundreds of AI data centre proposals in Canada are driven by an investor frenzy completely disconnected from Canadian needs or economic and social goals.

A Canadian Press freedom of information request from the federal government revealed that power demands from current proposals total more than 20 GW, a massive capacity comparable to the total power needs of all Canadian households, and 25 times greater than the roughly 850 MW the federal government has projected that known sovereign AI proposals will reach by 2030.

The last time oil-tankers were being shot up in the Persian Gulf, back in the 1980s, it was Saddam Hussein’s brutal tyranny in Iraq versus Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary Islamist regime in Iran.

The United States backed Saddam because he was just another murderous thug, whereas the new regime in Tehran was an actual threat to American interests. It had overthrown Iran’s American-backed puppet king and wanted to spread its Islamist ideology across the region.

So, of course, Ronald Reagan’s administration chose Saddam’s side. It sent Iraq arms by clandestine means (because Congress wouldn’t authorize it) and even provided targeting information for Iraqi poison gas attacks on Iran. The Americans chose the “lesser evil,” but at least they knew it was evil.

Once in a while they would even say it out loud, quoting U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger: “It’s a shame that both sides can’t lose.” But they never did anything about it, and after eight years of slaughter, the war ended in a no-score draw.