The old expression “straws in the wind” refers to small signs or hints that a significant change or event is coming—signs or hints so subtle that they rarely make the headlines or attract social media attention.
So here are four straws that most of us may have missed—missed because they wafted on the political breezes in Switzerland, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Denmark—but not in Canada, though we too greatly need what they portend.
In Denmark’s case, these remarks were prompted in part by the government’s attempt to recruit more young Danes into military service and finding that many of them were unwilling to fight for their country—not for its flag, its democratic institutions, or the welfare state that the previous generation had worked so hard to build. In the words of one commentator: No civilization can survive, let alone defend itself, without something sacred at its foundation, and when there is nothing left that we are willing to sacrifice ourselves for—nothing we value greater than ourselves—that is a real crisis.
So what about Canada? At first blush it would appear that there are no such straws as these blowing in the wind, or that what wind there is, is blowing in the opposite direction.
Our mainstream media, academic, and education-system elites are for the most part atheistic and thoroughly secular, falling over themselves to demonstrate their intellectual sophistication and modernity by disparaging and tearing down the country’s spiritual traditions—in particular its Judeo-Christian foundations.
If a Canadian MP made a public speech in our House of Commons like that made by Danny Kruger, it would be either ignored by our mainstream media or castigated by the CBC and Toronto Star as an example of unwanted “right-wing extremism.” If a Canadian cabinet minister made a speech like Marco Rubio at a nationally televised event like the Kirk funeral, he or she would likely find themselves out of a job the next morning.
Quebec, which has increasingly become the base of the federal Liberal Party, is now Canada’s most anti-religious province, and also the province most severely infected by anti-Semitism.
But are there any straws in the winds which periodically blow across the Canadian landscape that might foreshadow a turning?
In Prime Minister Carney’s 540-page book titled “Value(s),” there is not a single substantive or explicit reference to Canada’s Judeo-Christian tradition as a relevant and commendable source of national values today. Yet very recently, the prime minister joined with 2,000 other politicians, media personalities, and laypersons at the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa to explicitly acknowledge and celebrate Canada’s spiritual heritage.
Even more significantly, according to a November 2025 survey of 5,000 nationally representative Canadians conducted by Angus Reid and the Cardus think tank, while it noted a general decline in “religious commitment” among older Canadians, the one demographic category in which there is a significant “uptick in religiosity” is among 18 to 34-year-olds.
Whether this “uptick in religiosity” will eventually draw heavily upon our Judeo-Christian foundations or something else remains to be seen. In the past, it has usually been assumed that it is the life-experienced older generation that is most capable of providing value-based guidance to the next generation. But when the values inherited by that older generation have been systematically trashed and abandoned, rendering it incapable of providing value-based leadership, might it be the younger generation to whom we must look for such leadership?
Straws in the wind? Let us hope and pray for the ability to recognize such signs if and when they occur, and to encourage rather than dampen efforts to recover and build upon those spiritual values required to sustain and guide Canada’s future.
