Quotulatiousness

April 25, 2026

“… as the review of USMCA approaches. Dairy is once again at the center of the storm”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Food, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois on the strong hints the US government has been dropping that Canada’s stance on our restrictive dairy cartel — euphemistically referred to as “supply management” — is going to be a key negotiating point in the upcoming USMCA trade negotiations:

The warning came quietly, but it was unmistakable. According to a Reuters report carried by The Western Producer, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer made it clear: Canada’s dairy dispute will be resolved one of two ways, through negotiation or through enforcement.

That is not diplomatic nuance. That is a choice.

And it comes at a delicate moment, as the review of USMCA approaches. Dairy is once again at the center of the storm. It always is. Canada’s supply management system, long defended domestically, continues to frustrate U.S. officials over limited market access. As reported by Reuters, tensions remain high around how Canada administers its tariff-rate quotas.

None of this is new. What is new is the tone.

Recent commentary out of the United States, including sharp criticisms aimed at Mark Carney, reflects a growing impatience. Some of it is political theatre. But some of it signals something more consequential, a willingness to move from negotiation to enforcement if progress stalls.

In food trade, that shift matters.

Canada’s agri-food economy is deeply integrated with the United States. This is not a casual trading relationship. It is structural. Supply chains cross the border multiple times before products reach consumers. Roughly three-quarters of Canadian agri-food exports still head south. You do not casually antagonize the market that anchors your value chain.

The critique coming from voices like Brian Switzer, however undiplomatic, boils down to a familiar expectation. Canada should act like a predictable partner. Not subordinate, but steady. When that perception erodes, the consequences are rarely immediate. They emerge later, in tighter border controls, procurement shifts, or dispute panels.

And eventually, in prices.

April 23, 2026

They put out propaganda because it works

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Government, History, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

I often find myself commenting on social media posts that the Canadian government’s direct subsidies to most of the mainstream media in Canada has created one of the most effective propaganda machines since 1930s Germany. “eLbOwS uP!” They keep doing it because it clearly is working fantastically well on a large enough share of Canadian voters that the polls (which may or may not be biased) keep touting that Dear Leader Carney and the Natural Governing Party are ever more popular. And most of the people consuming the propaganda message have their preferences re-inforced and the cycle starts again.

At Cracking Defence, Matthew Palmer discusses wartime propaganda during the 20th century, emphasizing that it’s the use to which it is put rather than the mechanism itself that has a moral value:

Propaganda is an absolute favourite subject of mine — probably not surprising considering that one of my roles in the military was psychological operations.1 Despite its very negative connotations thanks to the work of interwar writers like Frederick Ponsonby,2 propaganda really should be seen as a neutral term, perhaps best defined as “the deliberate attempt to persuade people to think and behave in a desired way”.3 Nor does it need to be state-driven; propaganda can come be generated from below as much as being driven top-down from the state or elites.

Some of the best propaganda comes out of wartime, and the First and Second World Wars were absolute goldmines. I also have a particular weakness for propaganda drawn up in early modernist and art deco styles, for which the first half of the 20th century was the high watermark. As such, here are a few of my all-time favourites for your delectation.4

Women of Britain Say — Go!

Women of Britain Say ‘Go!’
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/14592

A true classic that has reverbrated through the ages. Despite First World War propaganda having the reputation of being crudely jingoistic, much of it was in fact consciously aware of the pain and sacrifice being endured by the warring population, and did not try to hide it. This one acknowledges the sacrifice undertaken by the women and children left behind, while the background reminds the viewer of the green and pleasant land of ‘old England’ that they are fighting for.

[…]

Canadiens, Suivez l’Exemple de Dollard des Ormeaux

Canadiens, Suivez l’Exemple de Dollard des Ormeaux [Canadians, Follow the Example of Dollard des Ormeaux] a depiction of Adam Dollard resisting an attack by Iroquois tribesmen. Dollard’s dead comrades lie at his feet.
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/31027

I find this one intriguing, not because I think it is actually a brilliant poster but for what it tells you about historical context and how propaganda was often tailored explicitly for local sensibilities. While Canadian support for the Allies in the First World War was generally fierce, the major exception was Quebec, which saw relatively poor levels of recruitment for overseas service. As such, propaganda aimed at Quebecois often tapped deeply into local traditions, in this case the (extremely dodgy!) myth of Adam Dollard, venerated in the period as a Catholic martyr who died defending Quebec from native Iroquois.5

[…]

Together

Image courtesy of the IWM.

One can of course criticise the imperialism inherent in this poster, but I think it still works exceptionally well as a bold call for unity between the different nations of the British Empire. It shows how British propagandists took pains to highlight the Second World War as a global conflict against fascism.

  1. A job which, if I do say so myself, I was pretty bloody good at.
  2. Ponsonby wrote Falsehood in Wartime in which ironically he basically made up stories about British propagandists in a book supposedly about manufactured atrocity propaganda!
  3. Phillip Taylor, Munitions of the mind: A history of propaganda (Manchester University Press, 2013).
  4. I’m only going to present Allied propaganda. Because, frankly, fuck fascism.
  5. The story of Dollard is mostly myth, and he was more likely an idiot fur-trapper who got himself killed through stupidity.

Arctic defence – Canada can’t “go it alone”

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Lee Humphrey explains a few of the reasons that we can ignore Prime Minister Mark Carney’s claims that Canada can defend the north without US assistance:

Canada is not capable of going it alone & is not going it alone. It’s a lie to say otherwise.

The majority of new radars being bought to replace existing radars will be from US companies, all our radars including the Australian built OTH radar will use US military satellites to communicate with monitoring stations in the US & Canada.

The armed drones we are buying are built in the US & will use US military satellites to communicate with their ground based controllers.

The subs we are spending $40 billion on are not capable of safely patrolling under sea ice for more than 11 continuous days before they have to turn around & get to clear water so we will continue to rely on US nuclear powered subs to track Russian & Chinese subs who are in sovereign CDN arctic waters.

Over the last year, US fighter aircraft have had to respond to 3 separate incidents that the RCAF were unable to respond to at all or in a timely way.

CDN’s who still believe Trump is going to invade need to realize just how many opportunities he keeps missing 😎

Reality sucks especially when national security or national sovereignty is at stake but the reality is that not only can we not operate independently at home, we can’t & haven’t been capable of operating independently for 60 years now!

April 21, 2026

The Royal Canadian Navy’s proposed Arctic Mobile Base

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

At True North Strategic Review, Noah tries to answer the obvious question “what the hell is an Arctic Mobile Base?”

RCN Arctic Mobile Base concept image
RCN via True North Strategic Review

For those that don’t know, the Arctic Mobile Base, as it is currently called, is officially on the books. Despite a few years of conceptualization, the project is still in its early stages.

I always feel the need to reiterate that to folks; it is very much still a concept. It is not funded, not approved, but despite that, we already have a fairly decent vision of what the RCN is sorta looking for as a platform.

[…]

When you hear a name like Arctic Mobile Base, I’m sure a lot of ideas go through your head. Indeed. What exactly is a base in this context? Who or what is it meant to support? What sort of gaps is it designed to fulfill?

To understand the AMB (as I will call it from here on out), you need to understand exactly what the Navy is facing up in the Arctic; more specifically, the difficulty in building and maintaining infrastructure. With the failure of Nanisivik, the RCN is faced with a difficult position.

The first thing you need to know here is fundamental limitations. Canada, unlike our other allies, lacks an available ice-free port to utilize in the Arctic year-round. The closest available major ports that Canada has access to with year-round access are Saint John on the East Coast and Prince Rupert on the West Coast.

Iqaluit, Tuktoyaktuk, and Churchill, the major ports available in the Canadian Arctic, all freeze in the winter. Even Nome in Alaska freezes. The only port facility available year-round would be in Nuuk, where, while work is underway on the Danish side to expand current facilities, it is still not enough to provide ample support for Canadian vessels operating in the Archipelago.

[…]

That brings us to the vessels themselves, or at least the concept as I have been told. I guess one could say they are the true successors to the original Joint Support Ship concept; maybe even ALSC if you want to get deep into the philosophical.

They are an everything vessel. They will be Command and Control centres. They will have large, extensive medical facilities. They will be Replenishment Vessels, able to support the rest of the fleet at sea. They might have some submarine tender capabilities and forward repair capabilities built in. Those two are me speculating, though I’m sure someone is asking those questions.

They will be HADR platforms, able to operate independently of any existing infrastructure like ports. They will have an amphibious capability to support that, and if needed, support the Army in any endeavour they find themselves in. They will be able to reach any other vessel in the fleet, even the Polars if required.

That means that as of now, the Navy is looking at PC 2 for its potential rating, a monumental ask. It is likely to have similar range and endurance requirements to the existing Polar Icebreakers, so perhaps around a 25,000-30,000 Nautical Mile Range (as a general rough figure) and upwards of 270 days endurance.

That will allow for the AMB to maintain a persistent, on-station capability in the Archipelago for an extended period of time, similar to the future Arpatuuq and Imnaryuaq. Again, the AMBs are meant to be a semi-permanent capability in the Arctic, with the desire to have one up there or available to get up there at any given time and stay up there supporting both the fleet and local communities for an extended period of time.

As for what I know? Two are planned. Both will be based on the East Coast, where it is easiest to access the Arctic compared to going from Esquimalt, past the Bering Strait, and over Alaska. It is also the area of most activity for the Navy. So it makes sense, along with the typical desire to consolidate maintenance, crews, training, and additional infrastructure.

While I’m pleased to discover that the RCN seems to be taking the Arctic seriously and doing planning to that end, we should also keep in mind that the federal government is a big believer in the “ice free Arctic by 2050” predictions, they may not be willing to fund hulls built to PC 2 levels of ice-breaking capability. Which would be fine if the predictions come true, but very limiting to the planned ships if the Arctic fails to warm up as the climate models claim it will.

April 20, 2026

“Hail, Caesar!” oops we meant “Hail, Carney!”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

At The Rewrite, Peter Menzies discusses the unseemly media adulation1 for Caesar Prime Minister Mark Carney after more than a year in power:

Grok illustration of PM Carney as Caesar
Image from The Rewrite.

Thirteen months into his reign as prime minister, we still don’t know who Mark Carney is or how he engineered the removal of Justin Trudeau from office.

Nor do we know what really happened behind the scenes to convince five Members of Parliament to betray their constituents’ democratic decisions and, for the first time in the nation’s history, give Canadians a majority government they didn’t elect.

What we do know is that none of that seems of great interest to most of our media or, as they like to describe themselves when seeking federal subsidies, “defenders of democracy”.

As The Rewrite noted a year ago, the moves behind the scenes to effect the abrupt ouster of Trudeau remain a mystery. And, unlike with other PMs, there have been no Carney family magazine profiles. (Who can forget Justin and Sophie Trudeau‘s sexy Vogue cover?) Yes, there are the books, Values and The Hinge. We have learned he likes hockey, runs, won’t criticize China and is ruthless. But there is a tangible paucity of efforts within MSM to get beyond what is permitted to be known. We don’t even know if he watches Heated Rivalry or why the Brits called him “the unreliable boyfriend”. And yet, as Stephen Maher wrote for Time magazine last week, Canadians adore him.

As for how he has seized power in excess of that granted by the electorate 11 months ago, there wasn’t a hint of concern on the part of CTV News anchor Omar Sachedina when Carney’s majority was confirmed in a couple of “gimme” by-election victories.

The leading voice on Canada’s most-watched newscast, Sachedina appeared awestruck by the “historic” moment and “what the Liberals have been able to achieve in the past year”. When his sidekick, Vassy Kapelos, noted Carney was now out of excuses for not fulfilling the promises that won him a minority government in 2025, Sachedina suggested soothingly that Canadians remember “sometimes ambition does take time, sometimes several election cycles”.

Screencap of CTV News from The Rewrite

The message to Canadians? The Liberals have accomplished great things in the past year, the greatest of which was to do what no one in the nation’s history had ever done before — manufacture a majority without the public’s consent. Oh, and be patient. PMMC’s agenda could take a few more elections. Sit tight and trust.

The next morning, questions were not, as one might expect from defenders of democracy, about whether the PM felt a tad greasy for the way in which he had won unfettered power. Like, in some countries — many actually — that might be considered kind of scary. Here? If you watch the news, it’s dreamy.

The preferred line of inquiry was to ask Carney whether, if he was the Opposition Leader, Pierre Poilievre, he would quit. And so it went for the rest of the week. PMMC wasn’t asked if he worried that his majority would undermine the public’s faith in its institutions. Nor did the press corps pursue their sources to discover what inducements may have been offered to create his Judas Gang of Five.

  1. Yes, I know … the presstitutes will “love him long time” as long as the government subsidies keep rolling in.

April 19, 2026

HMCS Magnificent – Canada’s Forgotten Carrier

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Skynea History
Published 13 Nov 2025

The Royal Canadian Navy is probably not the first one you think about for naval aviation. You’re more likely to think of lighter ships, like Haida.

However, the Canadians would operate three aircraft carriers during the Cold War. The short-lived (well, short-lived in Canadian service) Warrior. The more famous Bonaventure, that I’ve covered before. And, the topic of this video, HMCS Magnificent.

The middle child and probably the least famous of the three. But the one that is, largely, responsible for building Canadian carrier doctrine. It was Magnificent that built up the Canadian naval air arm. Magnificent trained the pilots that would go on to serve with Bonaventure.

And Magnificent is often overlooked for being the middle child. Hence why I chose to cover her today.

Further Reading:
https://forposterityssake.ca/Navy/HMC…
https://naval-museum.mb.ca/rcnships/c…

April 17, 2026

Canada joining the EU is a terrible idea

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Europe, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Dean Allison explains a few of the reasons Canada should not be attempting to join the European Union, despite Prime Minister Carney’s obvious love for the idea:

One of the dumbest ideas floating around right now: Canada joining the European Union.

This isn’t a trade deal. This is a surrender.

You don’t “partner” with the EU. You hand power to unelected technocrats in Brussels who dictate policy across 27 countries.

Let’s be clear what that means for Canada:

  • You lose control of monetary policy. Goodbye independent Bank of Canada.
  • Your federal budget gets reviewed and constrained by foreign bureaucrats.
  • Regulations get imposed from overseas with zero accountability to Canadians.

And if you think Ottawa is slow now, wait until every decision requires EU-level consensus. Nothing gets done without layers of approvals, committees, and political trade-offs across continents.

Then there’s censorship.

The EU is aggressively regulating online speech, platforms, and content. Handing them influence over Canada means more control over what you see, say, and share.

This isn’t sovereignty. It’s outsourcing it.

As Brian Lilley points out, we’d be giving up more control than in any U.S. trade deal.

Rejecting becoming the 51st state of the U.S. only to become the 28th state of Europe isn’t strategy, it’s pure stupidity!

And Canadians will pay the price.

April 16, 2026

UOTCAF – EP 002 – Royal 22e Régiment (R22R)

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Stormwalker Group
Published 11 Nov 2025

Units of the CAF: Episode 2 – R22R

Join your host, Mario Gaudet, as he confuses his brain by talking about French stuff in English, and dive into the epic saga of the Royal 22e Régiment, Quebec’s legendary “Van Doos”, in Episode 2 of “Units of the CAF”.

From their 1914 founding as the first French-speaking battalion in WWI and their heroic stand at Vimy Ridge, and at Ortona in WWII, to Korea’s Hill 355 raids and Afghanistan’s dusty patrols, we spotlight decorated heroes like Joseph Kaeble (VC, WWI), Paul Triquet (VC, WWII), Léo Major (DCM, Korea), and modern heroes aswell. Explore their iconic cap badge featuring the motto “Je me souviens” adopted in 1925.

Whether you’re a veteran, history buff, or just a fan of military trivia, this one’s for you.

#Royal22eRegiment #VanDoos #CanadianArmy #MilitaryHistory #CAF #QuebecPride #WWI #WWII #KoreaWar #AfghanistanWar

April 15, 2026

MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ is “a case study in progressive linguistic self-sabotage”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Quillette, Jonathan Kay highlights how NDP politician Leah Gazan’s freshly coined replacement for our already over-long initialism for other-than-cis-gendered individuals has been a boon to online commentators and comedians across the internet:

While the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was announced in 2015, its final report wasn’t published until mid-2019. The three-and-a-half year period in between overlapped with Justin Trudeau’s manic campaign to replace the idea of biological “women” in public discourse with faddish gender-inclusive terms that describe female-identified men. The initialism he eventually came up with is “2SLGBTQI+” (whose “2S” component signifies a special — albeit ill-defined — “two-spirited” LGBT category that Indigenous people can opt into).

And so, channelling the state-of-the-art in Canadian gender jargon, the Inquiry’s commissioners duly expanded references to Indigenous “women” by addition of the words “… and 2SLGBTQQIA people” — i.e. Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual.

The term “2SLGBTQQIA” appears in the final report 1,197 times. Agglomerating that with the original “MMIWG” mandate yields “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA”.

Detail from page 229 of The Final Report Of The National Inquiry Into Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women And Girls.

If this unbreakable wi-fi code sounds familiar, it’s because a Canadian MP named Leah Gazan just became an international laughingstock for using it at a televised 8 April news conference. (Indeed, she lengthened it even further by adding a plus sign to the end — suggesting that yet more letters, numbers, and/or symbols are on their way.) This unintentional comedy routine was made all the more meme-worthy by the casual, deadpan, en passant way the sixteen-character term rolled off Gazan’s tongue, as if it were a set of ASCII characters that ordinary Canadians ran together all the time in normal day-to-day discussions.

As some Canadians (including me) tried to explain on social media, “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” is not a commonly used term outside of activist circles. I also let people know that Gazan is not a Canadian government representative (as was being claimed), but rather a member of a small and increasingly radicalised hard-left federal party known as the New Democrats.

But by then, no one was in the mood for such nuances. Elon Musk‘s three-word tweet on the subject — “Canada is cooked” — has, as of this writing, garnered more than half a million likes and 77 million views. Thanks to Gazan, millions of people around the world now believe that ordinary Canadians talk in this ridiculous fashion. We don’t.

Gazan told CBC News that the whole episode only goes to show that “bigots are offended by my positions around equality”. A more useful lesson she might take away from this experience is that the use of cultish ideological jargon can turn discussion of even the most serious issue into a farce. This is especially true when terms such as “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” (or “menstruators”, or “uterus-havers”, or “people with a vagina”) are used to soothe the sensitivities of men who demand the right to be called women.

April 13, 2026

Young Canadians don’t have the resources to “buy their way out”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, John Carter points out the screamingly obvious fact that it’s insane to propose imprisoning young Canadians in a dying economy if they can’t scrape up half a million dollars to escape:

First, young Canadians don’t have shit. They definitely don’t have half a mil to pay the boomers in extortion fees so that they can leave the country.

Second, how are they planning to enforce this? Charge $500k for a passport? What stops the US from just offering amnesty? Ottawa can’t tell Washington what visas it can and cannot offer.

Third, and what makes this malicious boomerfap especially piquant, young Canadian professionals don’t leave because they especially want to. Wanderlust aside, most would prefer to remain close to family and friends.

They leave because they don’t have a choice. The Canadian state is set up to restrict opportunity to the point of nonexistence. Canada is a country that strangles ambition in the crib. As the old joke goes, if Musk had stayed in Canada he’d be a mid-level financial manager at CIBC (with any possibility of further promotion eliminated by the all-of-society DEI imperative).

Canada invests an absurd amount into educating its youth. It then refuses to allow them to use their training. So they leave. The University of Waterloo is one of the best engineering schools on the planet; virtually all of its graduates end up in the Bay area. Because the alternative is sitting on their hands or trying to get a job in the Ministry.

It would be a mistake to see Canadian investment in education as intended for the benefit of Canadian youth, by the way. Like everything else in Canada’s political economy, this is a subsidy to a Liberal Party client group, in this case the academics and administrators staffing the universities. The primary purpose of the universities is providing sinecures to liberals; the secondary purpose is indoctrination of the youth with liberalism; the third, to launder liberal ideas through intellectual channels. Whether the kids learn anything, or whether they can use whatever useful knowledge they acquire to (lol) better themselves or (lmao) “build the country”, is not a priority.

If it were not for the Laurentian Elite running the country into the ground, if young Canadians were not sabotaged at every step of their lives, then there would be no brain drain problem.

But as usual, boomerlibs would rather punish the youth to try and fix the problems the boomerlibs caused.

If you haven’t been paying attention to the progressive hellscape that Canada is becoming, here’s the wife of the Prime Minister boasting to the Liberal convention in Ottawa about how wonderful things are in Soviet Canuckistan:

It would make perfect sense for new grads to look for greener pastures, wouldn’t it? Which is why the Liberals want to force them to stay here, of course.

April 11, 2026

The Liberal Party is about pure politics, not principle

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In some ways, you have to admire the Liberal Party of Canada — often described as Canada’s “Natural Governing Party” — for their long-term success at staying in power. They do this because, unlike the Conservatives or the NDP, their raison d’être is gaining and holding power. No Liberal holds firm values in any other area and therefore can switch sides on a given topic at a moment’s notice. As long as believing A keeps them in power, they’ll believe wholeheartedly in A, but if believing B becomes more important, like a shoal of fish, they’ll instantly switch to believing in B. It’s an amazing phenomenon. In the Toronto Sun, Jamil Jivani (my local MP) documents this Liberal talent:

April 10, 2026

“MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Another Canadian interest group decided that their already oversized abbreviation needed to be super-sized. Jonathan Kay provides some useful context for those not familiar with Canadian domestic politics:

Canadian here, with four (count em) points of clarification on the “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” thing, which has now escaped its absurdist Canadian genderwang containment chamber, and gone viral internationally:

1) the speaker here is @LeahGazan, a fringe minor-party politician. She’s not in the government. She regularly calls for dumb things, such as criminalizing anyone who dares talk candidly about the 2021-era unmarked-graves social panic. CBC types treat her as a serious person because she’s indigenous and because she always talks in the tear-drenched idiom of white-settler colonial evilness. But she’s not.

2) MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ is a mashup of two acronyms (each unique to Canada). Her decision to run them together is hilarious, which is why this has gone viral, but it’s not a common practice, even in rarefied leftist circles.

3) MMIWG refers to “Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls”. The problem of violence against indigenous women is a real and tragic issue. Unfortunately, a couple of years ago, a bunch of activists produced a ridiculous report on the subject that called it a “continuing” (!!!) “genocide”, and demanded that we all call it that. The whole movement collapsed when it was pointed out that something like 80% of the indigenous women who are killed are killed by indigenous men, which is very much off-message from the whole white colonial G-word thing. But the acronym still gets name-dropped when people are indicting Canada for all its infinitely genocidey genociding of everybody

4) “2SLGBTQetcetc…” Americans always ask me what “2S” stands for. It stands for “2 spirited,” a term that white academics popularized 50 years ago to give expression to their mystical reveries about sacred indigenous elf-people living in some precolonial eden-like genderwang Nirvana where everyone has three penises and five vaginas. No one is allowed to ask what the term even means, but our government made it official policy to use ridiculous words like this under Trudeau, so we’re stuck with it. Basically, if you’re an indigenous guy who likes to wear eyeliner, or an indigenous woman with blue hair and sensible shoes, you call yourself “2 spirited” on your govt grant applications. No one is even allowed to ask whether it’s a gender identity or a sexual orientation. It apparently exists in some exalted state that defies this kind of rigid colonial typology, or something like that.

Back in 2022, I read a whole report about how to teach two spirited concepts to Canadian students, and it turned out that even the authors of the report admitted they had no idea what the term meant. I wrote about it for @Quillette: https://quillette.com/blog/2022/10/0

April 9, 2026

Carney gets another MP to defect, drawing ever closer to a Parliamentary majority

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

I’m not a Parliamentary history buff, but it strikes me that the number of Canadian Members of Parliament switching parties (always in the direction of the government) over the last year must be close to its historical high-water mark. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed yet another “Conservative” MP to the Liberal caucus in Ottawa:

Call me a cynic if you like, but something is fishy about Carney’s talent for drawing turncoats over to his side. It would not surprise me to find that many more MPs have been offered all sorts of incentives to discover that they were really Liberals all along. Once upon a time I’d have been unbothered by this, but I’m coming to believe that an MP elected under a party banner may choose to leave that party but if they switch to a different party (that also ran a candidate in that MP’s riding), a byelection should be called. If the voters in North Bumbleford-Moosehip-Bongwater are happy with the MP’s decision, they’ll re-elect him/her/them. If not, well, shoulda thought longer before turning traitor.

Along with many others on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, J.J. McCullough clearly feels the same way: “This floor crossing BS is out of control. If MPs in this country can just change parties whenever they want, then voters truly have no control over who becomes prime minister and runs our government. The whole Canadian system is based on the premise that parties MATTER.”

At least one opposition MP did go public about Liberal approaches to switch sides — it’s my belief that he’s one of perhaps dozens:

Ian Runkle (“Runkle of the Bailey”) responds to a typical middle-of-the-Canadian-road take by Spencer Fernando:

L. Wayne Mathison is viscerally against such backroom shenanigans when it comes to Parliament:

I am disgusted, and I am not going to dress it up with polite Ottawa language.

Marilyn Gladu crossed from the Conservatives to Mark Carney’s Liberals on April 8, 2026, saying constituents want “serious leadership” and “a real plan to build a stronger and more independent Canadian economy”. Her move gives the Liberals 171 seats, one short of the 172 needed for a majority.

That is exactly why people do not buy the noble script.

This is how Ottawa usually works. The speech is about conscience.

The reality is about power.

Suddenly the language gets soft, patriotic, and lofty right when the political math gets useful. We are asked to believe an MP was hit by a lightning bolt of principle at the exact moment her switch strengthens the governing party and brings it within one seat of majority control. Convenient does not begin to cover it.

Gladu says this is about leadership and collaboration. Fine. Then let voters decide whether they agree. That is the part these people always skip. They act as if a personal change of heart magically rewrites the contract with the public. It does not. People did not vote only for Marilyn Gladu the individual. They voted for a Conservative MP, a Conservative platform, and a Conservative opposition role. Crossing the floor without first seeking a new mandate may be legal, but it feels like a bait-and-switch because that is exactly what it is.

And spare me the line about “doing the best thing” for the riding. Every floor crosser says some version of that. It is the oldest detergent in the political cupboard. It is meant to wash ambition into service. What it really signals is this: I think my judgment now matters more than the basis on which you elected me.

That is where the anger comes from.

Voters are already drowning in managed language, staged sincerity, and plastic promises. Trust in politics is weak because people keep seeing the same pattern. Politicians campaign one way, govern another, then call the switch “leadership”. They wrap self-interest in national purpose and hope the flag covers the fingerprints.

What makes this worse is the timing. Carney publicly welcomed Gladu into Liberal caucus the same day, and the result is not symbolic. It materially strengthens the government’s position in the House. This is not some minor personal journey. It changes parliamentary leverage. It changes committee numbers, confidence calculations, and the balance of power.

So yes, I’m pissed.

I am pissed because voters are treated like props in a story written after the fact. I am pissed because party labels suddenly matter a great deal during elections and apparently not at all when power is on offer. I am pissed because people who were sent to oppose Liberal policy can simply walk across the aisle and help entrench it, then expect applause for being “constructive.”

And there is another detail that makes this smell even worse. Local reporting says that in January, Gladu had advocated for byelections when MPs switch parties. If that report is accurate, then this is not just opportunism. It is opportunism with a side order of hypocrisy.

That is the real issue here. Not whether floor crossing is technically allowed. Not whether Ottawa insiders can invent a respectable sentence for it. The real issue is whether voters still mean anything once the election is over.

My view is simple. If you want to switch parties, resign and run again. Go back to the people. Make your case honestly. Ask for a fresh mandate under the new banner. Anything less might be lawful, but it is not clean. It tells voters their consent is temporary, conditional, and easily bypassed once the machinery of power starts humming.

That is why this disgusts me.

Because democracy is not only about counting seats. It is about keeping faith with the people who gave you one.

“Trump … scared us into doing the right thing”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Canada got into the incredibly bad habit of freeloading on national defence under Pierre Trudeau, and from 1968 onward, we’ve been leaning ever more heavily on US military power to fill in the gaps we’ve chosen not to invest in ourselves. At the same time, we’ve almost dislocated our arm in patting ourselves on the back for our “soft power” on the international diplomatic scene. The Americans, for reasons known only to themselves, rarely pushed back or called us out for our perpetual slacking … until Donald Trump came along. Now, as Matt Gurney regretfully points out, Trump seems to be the only accountability mechanism on the Canadian government:

Coming soon to a Jewish daycare centre near you, sadly.
Image from The Line

Every well-functioning society needs effective accountability mechanisms. It needs something that can reliably deter bad guys from doing bad things, or at least catch them and stop them when they try. Hell, it also needs some sort of immune system that simply prevents the good ones from getting flaky and lazy, and to prune out the soft corruption that can easily settle in in comfortable and generally affluent societies.

“Accountability mechanism” is a broad term, but it has to be. It can be many things. It can be as basic as a strict moral or religious code, enforced by a priestly caste or even simple scolds. Or, ahem, a thriving press, with reporters and columnists poring over all the information they can find for examples of bad things that need fixing and then making a lot of noise about them. In democracies, effective opposition parties are a key part of this; so are government accountability officers, like auditors and ombudsmen. In a pinch, even just a healthy sense of personal honour and shame can work.

In a perfect world, you’ll have many or all of these, and they’ll be mutually reinforcing. Does Canada have any? Or, as I’m increasingly worried, have we basically outsourced this key democratic function entirely to the United States, and specifically, Donald Trump?

This bleak thought occurred to me after I watched, with equal parts horror and relief, a recent video put out by the Toronto Police Service. You can see it for yourself here, but, in short, it’s a promotional video for the new public order mission that is putting heavily armed and armoured officers onto the streets of Toronto to secure sites at risk of attack. The video has an intensely martial vibe; the deployment looks much more like a military operation than a police patrol. Though the video doesn’t say so directly, the intended purpose is clearly stopping the sustained attacks we’ve seen on Jewish religious, commercial and cultural sites in Toronto since Oct. 7, 2023.

[…]

There was also border security and fentanyl. I’m fully aware that the White House exaggerated both issues so they could use them against us. But I’m equally aware that Canada tends to ignore issues even slightly related to national security. A few tweets from Trump changed that. Some of our initial responses, like a czar and a pair of leased Blackhawks, were symbolic, clearly intended for Trump’s consumption. But Mark Carney has continued to ramp up our border security, and make a point of saying so. Again, we did this to avoid Trump’s wrath.

The biggest example, though, is clearly defence spending and rearming the Canadian military. Canada had long pledged to hit the NATO target, but never did; indeed, the former PM reportedly told our allies he had no plans to even try, as it wasn’t a domestic priority. But then Trump comes along and scares the crap out of us and, voilà, we’re hitting the target. Some of that is creative accounting, but not all of it.

Again, Trump did this. He scared us into doing the right thing.

April 7, 2026

Alberta is the only province moving in the right direction

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Health, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Martyupnorth responds to Tristin Hopper’s post about Don’t Be Canada: How One Country Did Everything Wrong All At Once, which he published a year ago:

Here is a one-line summary of each of Tristin’s 8 points:

Housing crisis: Canada pioneered turning entire cities into over-leveraged real estate bubbles, driving home ownership out of reach for ordinary people because prices detached from wages.

Crime and justice: Soft-on-crime policies, catch-and-release bail, and activist courts created a revolving door for repeat offenders, leaving our streets unsafe.

Harm reduction & drugs: “Safe supply” and decriminalization experiments escalated addiction and public drug use, worsening overdoses, tent cities, and societal harm instead of reducing it.

Euthanasia (MAiD): Canada rapidly expanded medical assistance in dying into one of the world’s most aggressive programs, with soaring death numbers and cases pushing it as a tratement for poverty and disability.

Healthcare system: Despite high spending, Canada’s “free” system ranks near the bottom in performance among developed nations, with deadly wait times and dysfunction.

Transgender policies: Canada went further than most countries with permissive rules on youth transitions, pronouns, biological males in female spaces, and related ideology in schools and institutions.

Identity politics and “anti-racism”: Canada outdid even the U.S. in embracing divisive oppressed frameworks, including declaring itself guilty of an ongoing “genocide” against Indigenous people with little accountability.

Censorship and speech laws: Expansive hate speech rules, online content takedowns, and bills like the Online Harms Act pushed Canada toward Orwellian restrictions, chilling expression and drawing international warnings.

Canada took progressive ideas further and faster than peers, almost always with cascading negative consequences, turning a once-stable nation into a totally dysfunctional one.

He’s right in saying that Danielle Smith is the only one finally acknowledging that things aren’t working, and is trying to reverse some of these pad idea.

It’s still not enough to save Alberta, we need to divorce ourselves from the rest of Canada and their bad ideas.

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