What's black and white and red all over? The Canadian newspaper industry's balance sheets.

But as has been said here many times before, no industry had more warning of the extent and nature of the coming digital revolution than the Canadian newspaper industry, and it has turned the wrong direction at every step along the way to its current disastrous destination.

But that doesn't mean these newspapers' well-heeled owners won't demand tax-supported subsidies to support their badly run businesses if they're given any encouragement -- which is exactly what the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to have been doing.

Next week the Fraser Institute's newly established Peter Munk Centre for Free Enterprise will offer a daylong "Introduction to Economic Reasoning" seminar for Grade 10-12 students in Scarborough. Launched in June with $5 million from the founder of Barrick Gold, the Centre for Free Enterprise cements Munk's position as leading contributor to right-wing ideas. But, the ideologue's biggest contribution has been to a venerable public institution.

The Munk School of Global Affairs reveals much about the state of foreign-policy debate in this country. Among 35 million Canadians, the University of Toronto would be hard pressed to find a less credible source of support for the study of international affairs.

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Fast-food restaurant owners in Alberta continue to screech that a $15-per-hour minimum wage will put them out of business or, failing that, force them to lay off workers.

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Wow! Talk about a full-court press! All the usual suspects are pouring on their attacks against improvements to the Canada Pension Plan.

It's almost as if they're all singing from the same hymnbook -- probably one printed in the musty basement of the Fraser Institute bunker not far down the road from Vancouver's old Pacific Press Building, which is nowadays home to pricey, empty condos.