How do you defend something most people rarely see, but rely on every single day?

It’s called the rule of law — the principle that lets us speak freely, breathe clean air and live without fear of unchecked power. It’s the foundation of our democracy: an invisible framework that ensure disputes are judged impartially and that our rights will be protected.

Right now, it’s under threat.

Released this week, the latest World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, produced by a non-partisan, multi-disciplinary organization that independently evaluates 143 countries and jurisdictions worldwide, marks the eighth consecutive year of global decline for the rule of law — including in Canada.

When the internet first arrived in the mid-1990s, it screeched. Literally.

It screamed its way into our homes through the telephone lines, a metallic cry that sounded like the future forcing its way through. We waited through the static, convinced that life was about to get easier. People said it would save us time, let us work from home and give us more hours with our families.

No one mentioned that it would also move into our bedrooms, our pockets and our dreams. No one could have imagined that it would change how we fight, how we march, how we plead for justice. That the fight for justice itself would become a digital labyrinth where truth moves slowly and attention moves fast.

Back then, when a heroine from a popular early-2000s television show was dumped with nothing but a handwritten note, it became a cultural tragedy. There was nothing noble about writing your cowardice on a Post-it. A few years later, a company fired hundreds by email and it made national news. Today, we “quietly quit” through apps without blinking, edit our grief into reels, add the music the app suggests and call it closure.

Q: Why do some Canadians want U.S. President Donald Trump to invade Venezuela?

A: Because if Trump invades Venezuela first, he’ll get bogged down in that war and never get around to invading Canada.

Actually, most Canadians are not thinking that, because a) Venezuela is not even on their mental maps, and b) they are not convinced that Trump would ever really invade Canada. The U.S. president talks about strangling Canada economically and forcing it to surrender that way, but the only places he has literally threatened with invasion are Greenland and Panama.

Nevertheless, this discussion is overdue, because a U.S. invasion of Venezuela would probably end up as a long and dirty guerrilla war. Eight million Venezuelans have left the country, and at least half of the rest would love to see the end of Nicolás Maduro’s regime, but that leaves up to 14 million people who might decide to resist an American invasion.

Earlier this month, Premier Wab Kinew’s government unveiled what it characterizes as “a bold plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, strengthen communities and build a resilient, low-carbon economy that benefits all Manitobans.”

The centrepiece of the strategy is the goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the province by 2050. The government says that objective will be achieved through several initiatives, including the creation of a new climate-change committee of cabinet, strengthening provincial climate-change laws, partnering with Indigenous nations on clean energy and net-zero initiatives, making Manitoba’s electricity grid net zero by 2035, expanding renewable energy generation and smart grid technology, supporting low-emission building practices and retrofits, as well as advancing sustainable agriculture programs and waste diversion strategies.

The plan appears to have the support of the Manitoba chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, but it has also been criticized for the lack of a specific criteria to quantify how each action item will help reach the overall emissions-reduction target. Last week, professor Scott Forbes condemned the plan, with its distant goals, as having “the pretense of doing something without actually doing anything substantial.” (How to recognize climate-insincere politicians, Think Tank, Oct. 21)

The professor’s right. The plan is deep in lofty long-term objectives, but lacks a detailed, quantifiable strategy to achieve meaningful results in the nearer term. In fact, it can be viewed as a scheme that exhibits a pretense of concern about climate change, yet consigns the burden and political cost of decisive action to future governments.

Now that a tenuous Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal has been cobbled together, will the world community finally be able to expedite the prospects for peace and security in crisis-ridden Haiti?

There is reason to be cautiously optimistic about recent developments. While things can quickly go off the rails in Haiti, there does appear to be a growing international consensus on a viable path forward.

Let’s not forget that Haiti is a country in constant crisis, unrelenting internal violence and institutional decay. It is nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe.

There is no credible government in place, and no legitimate national elections have been held for almost a decade. The current governing authority — the so-called Transitional Presidential Council — is thoroughly inept, ineffective and woefully inadequate.

“I couldn’t do what you did,” people would say.

And what we did, as police officers do every day, was take another routine call (as much as any call is “routine”).

Essentially, we were to remove an unwanted visitor who broke into his sister’s home and refused to leave.

Computer checks provided some information about him. Even after talking to her, there were no red flags, which isn’t unusual.

Recently, a school principal in Carman brought a defamation case against a parent who insinuated on social media that the principal promoted the dissemination of child pornography in schools.

The principal’s lawsuit against the parent is more than a matter of personal reputation. It is about upholding human rights and children’s rights. It is about teacher professionalism. It is about the future of public education.

“Parental rights” rhetoric is on the rise, where some parents or lobby groups seek to control the curriculum and books that are available to all students. “Parental rights” activists purposefully employ language about protecting children as rhetorical Teflon, deflecting any criticism.

In doing so, anyone that challenges their views or underlying motivations is positioned as someone who wants to harm children.

Transforming a long-standing industrial bus mall into a people-first destination street was never going to be easy. For three decades, buses ran up and down Graham Avenue, delivering some 100,000 transit users to and from the area each day. When the transit master plan took buses off the street last July, something new had to be done.

As the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. That’s never been truer than when it comes to the downtown, hence the mandate from city council to CentreVenture to begin short-term activation and long-term planning for Graham.

Now, four months on, people are rightfully asking, What’s happening on Graham Avenue?

To start, let’s look at what’s been done so far.