@ShaneWenzel@brianlilley Coyne is a has been that needs to move on. His stage 5 TDS permeates like a cancer into his other rationale rendering him ineffective at best, useless at worst.
Moral Posturing Is Not Journalism:
Andrew Coyne’s column reads less like principled journalism and more like partisan venting dressed up as moral clarity. He accuses Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre of scapegoating immigrants, but in doing so he flattens a complex policy debate into a smug morality play where he alone occupies the high ground. That is not analysis. It is advocacy.
There is a serious conversation happening in this country about immigration levels, housing supply, labour markets, and infrastructure capacity. Instead of engaging it honestly, Coyne caricatures it. He suggests that raising concerns about intake levels or system strain is equivalent to blaming immigrants themselves. That leap is not just sloppy. It is misleading.
Smith and Poilievre are not arguing that newcomers are personally responsible for Canada’s economic challenges. They argue that federal immigration policy has been mismanaged. Those are fundamentally different claims. One targets people. The other targets policy. Coyne collapses that distinction because it is easier to condemn than to debate.
Journalistic integrity requires grappling with the strongest version of your opponent’s argument. Coyne does the opposite. He selects the most uncharitable interpretation possible and scolds it. That might win applause from readers who already agree with him, but it does nothing to illuminate the tradeoffs at stake.
Canada has increased its population at a historically rapid pace while housing starts have not kept up. Health systems are strained. Municipal services are stretched. It is not xenophobic to ask whether growth aligns with capacity. It is responsible governance. If a government expands intake without ensuring housing and infrastructure are ready, criticism is inevitable. Pretending correlation cannot be discussed is not serious thinking.
Coyne’s column also ignores political reality. Public support for immigration remains broad, but confidence in how it is managed has declined significantly. When commentators dismiss every concern as coded bigotry, they alienate citizens worried about affordability and services. That reflexive moralizing fuels resentment rather than calming it.
There is an irony here. Coyne warns about politicians exploiting division, yet his tone is combative. He does not merely disagree with Smith and Poilievre. He imputes motive and frames them as opportunists cynically targeting vulnerable groups. That narrative requires more evidence than he provides.
Opinion journalism has a role. Strong arguments are healthy in a democracy, but they must be grounded in fairness. When a columnist reduces policy disagreements to accusations of scapegoating, he abandons nuance. When he assumes bad faith instead of engaging substance, he drifts into partisan broadsiding.
Calling out genuine xenophobia is necessary. But conflating policy criticism with prejudice cheapens that standard and turns a serious moral charge into a routine weapon.
A more credible approach would acknowledge that immigration brings enormous benefits while recognizing that scale and sequencing matter. It would admit governments can misjudge capacity and scrutinize federal decision-making with the same intensity applied to provincial rhetoric.
Readers deserve arguments that wrestle with facts, tradeoffs, and consequences. They deserve commentary that questions power without sneering at half the country. @acoyne ’s piece may generate applause from his camp. What it does not generate is trust. If the goal is to elevate the public conversation, this column misses the mark.
@acoyne Dude. You actually have a mental issue. You need to seek external advice. Your Brian is not capable of diagnosing the issue since your brain is malfunctioning. You have stage 5 TDS. You need help.
@acoyne You see. This is why you’re infuriating. When you’re not displaying your very real stage 5 TDS you actually make a lot of sense. If you would seek help and get rid of the TDS or alternatively vow to never mention trump again you have a million more followers.
@acoyne F you Coyne. Wish you’d leave with some dignity. What have you ever done to further the lives or benefit Canadians. Political commentator my ass. More like a washed up has been.
@EnglandRugby Forward pass 100% of the time. The passer is moving laterally so forward momentum of the ball argument is BS. You can literally see the ball leave his hands in a forward trajectory.
@SenatorSlotkin You’re full of shit. You know what you were doing …. You don’t get to act all innocent as if the military needed reminding that they should follow the law. You were dog whistling that they should not follow orders. You know it, we know it, and hopefully the courts will know it.
@ScottJenningsKY@grok what is the likelihood of this man being sued for defamation due to this comment and what is the likelihood of him being found guilty?
@Real_RobN@grok you have repeatedly said there was no widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election and even when pressed to come up with plausible reasons why the vote count in 2020 was so much higher than any other year you repeated denied there was any evidence of voter fraud.