Read excerpts from FP Comment columns from January, February and March of this year. First instalment in a series

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• Some politicians may be playing anti-democratic right-wing games, but the real objective of voters around most of the world is to curb the power of the progressive authoritarians who have dominated policy-making over the past couple of decades. Calling Trump a far-right fascist or dismissing voters’ genuine desire for more conservative policies as the product of right-wing authoritarian populism does not address the real sources of voter discontent. — Terence Corcoran, Jan. 7

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• The Competition Bureau doesn’t earn its operating budget or economic power by improving the lives of consumers. It gets its budget and power from Ottawa. The Bureau’s customers are federal politicians, not ordinary Canadian consumers. And the way the Bureau pleases its customers is by generating headlines about all the supposedly excellent central planning work it is doing persecuting businesses and protecting consumers. Frivolous investigations, complaints and litigation are in fact the Competition Bureau’s stock-in-trade. — Matthew Lau, Jan. 9

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• In 2005, Ottawa and the provinces wisely eliminated a regulation that limited the Canada Pension Plan’s holdings of foreign assets. But in its recent fall economic statement Ottawa adopted a “carrot” approach — subsidies — directed at pension plans to invest in politically-favoured investments, in this case, artificial intelligence data centres using green energy. If pension plan performance deteriorates as a result, the losers … will be the workers and employers whose money is at stake and whose interests should determine how it’s invested. Workers beware! Big pension plans and government partnerships are not your friends. — Jack Mintz, Jan. 10

• There is only one way out of this trade war quagmire. Unilateral free trade. — Terence Corcoran, Jan. 15

• Carney’s progressive ideas are … on full display in Value(s). At one point in the book, he hitches his intellectual wagon to teen scientist Greta Thunberg and her “How Dare You!” speech to the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit. “There it was in black and white,” Carney fawned, “with the clarity and certainty of youth: we were failing.” With Greta at his side, “you are always conscious of misplaced priorities, of the time slipping away, of the need to rearrange national priorities and act. Now.” —