Quotulatiousness

April 19, 2025

Notes on the English debate

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

In the National Post, Chris Selley explains the apparent utility of having Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet included in the English-language leaders’ debate:

Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet, 8 November, 2023.
Screencapture from a TVA Nouvelles video via Wikimedia Commons.

Wednesday evening’s French-language leaders’ debate kicked off with a video montage that mentioned President Donald Trump roughly 175 times. (I exaggerate somewhat.) Thursday evening’s English-language leaders’ debate was much less focused specifically on Trump, to an almost bizarre extent. When moderator Steve Paikin offered each leader a chance to ask a question of an opponent, Liberal Leader Mark Carney chose to ask Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre about the security-clearance drama.

Carney’s campaign clearly believes Poilievre’s Achilles’ heel is Trump. One has to wonder how many Canadians even know the basics of the security-clearance issue. It was a baffling decision.

Ultimately, though, leaving Trump aside was a benefit. One of Carney or Poilievre will be prime minister in a month, and they essentially agree that Trump is too unpredictable to strategize against with any confidence from our current position as a semi-deadbeat country. (Again, I paraphrase.)

The only thing we can really do is focus on our own affairs in ways that would make us more prosperous, safe, happy and independent in every sense. In the long term: diversify our trade partners in every sector, including natural resources; improve border security, not to satisfy Trump’s fentanyl obsession but to prevent the northbound flow of illegal firearms (and because borders are supposed to be secure by definition); rebuild the military, not because Trump demands it but out of respect to our existing commitment to NATO and our self-styled reputation as An Important Country; fix health care; make housing affordable; get a handle on our own opioid crisis; fix our broken justice system. All that jazz.

You might think in a debate on those big national issues Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet would be extraneous on the stage. I saw plenty of people reacting in real time in that vein: Why is this man here? But in fact Blanchet served a very useful purpose: He was the voice of comfy Canadian inertia; the voice of Quebec continuing to plod along in its own way under Canada’s protective umbrella (ludicrous sovereignty-referendum threats notwithstanding).

Blanchet embodied how Canada might very plausibly abandon the opportunity that Trump’s kick in our rear end, however unjustified, offered us to live up to the greatness Canadian politicians always ascribe — often dubiously — to this country.

“The building of (new) pipelines will take at least 10 to 14 years. Mr. Trump will be 90 years old, not president … and somebody of course less terrible will be there before you can even dream of having oil through (a new) pipeline,” Blanchet said, kiboshing (as ever) the notion of any new pipeline running through Quebec.

At Rigid Thinking, Damian Penny tries to explain Jagmeet Singh’s performance as the designated interrupter:

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh taking part in a Pride Parade in June 2017 (during the leadership campaign).
Photo via Wikimedia.

I didn’t see the entire English-language, federal leaders debate on Thursday night, but from what I did see each of the leaders accomplished exactly what they set out to do:

  • Pierre Poilievre went on offence against the liberals and tried to show that, despite their new leader, it’s the same bunch that have been running the country for the past decade.
  • Mark Carney portrayed himself as much more measured and serious than either his main opponent or his predecessor.
  • The Bloc guy showed that his only concern is Quebec and by the way everything comes down to immigration.
  • And the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh did everything he had to do to lock down that cushy patronage appointment he’ll receive should Carney be elected Prime Minister on April 28.

    There was far more cross talk and interruptions during Thursday’s English debate compared to the French parlay the night before. Singh in particular seemed prone to interrupt his opponents.

    Poilievre was the main target of Singh’s interjections — so much so that at one point Carney told the NDP leader to let his Conservative rival finish his point.

    When Poilievre criticized the industrial carbon tax, Singh jumped in and accused the Conservatives of wanting to let everyone pollute. Poilievre spoke about border issues and Singh accused the former Conservative government of cutting border officers.

    Poilievre at one point tried to make an appeal to voters: “The question that Canadians have to ask…”

    “Why vote for Conservatives?” Singh jumped in before Poilievre could finish.

As of this writing, the venerable NDP is polling about as well in Canada as Marjorie Taylor Greene, and their only real shot at even maintaining major party status is to peel off voters from the Liberals, since no one even considering voting Conservative will vote for Singh’s party.

The Line‘s election Bullshit Bulletin overflowed with bullshit from the debates, including some Mark Carney blarney about pipelines:

Mark Carney had quite a few howlers during Thursday’s debate, one of which was aptly called out by Blanchet (hey, we like the guy, we just don’t think he should be in the debate). Carney wants to portray himself as strongly pro-pipeline, while still respecting Quebec’s ability to effectively veto national projects. That’s bullshit — and Carney should stop pretending otherwise.

Carney has been out of the country in recent years, so he may be unaware of how things are actually working. To sum up the last 10 years of internecine battles on this point: Pipelines absolutely fall under federal jurisdiction to approve or disapprove. However, provinces can hold up or significantly delay certain aspects of the process, either through legal challenges, or through sandbagging local permitting processes. The big lesson of the last 10 years is that absolute jackshit can actually get built when provincial governments try to encroach on federal authority to stall projects that fall under the national interest. Duties for First Nations consultation add another complicating step. Lastly, this country couldn’t build a goddamn supermarket (and Singh might try to stop it, even if we could) if conditions veer into the quasi-spiritual realm of “social license” — because nobody really knows what that means, or how the bar for “social license” can be cleared when any project at all is even remotely contested or controversial.

Add Bill C-69 to the mix, and what we’re facing is a regulatory quagmire in which the Liberals have made the approvals process practically impossible, and pissed everybody off while doing it. It’s worse than that almost nothing is getting built; the situation is now such a disaster that major projects are no longer even being seriously proposed. Even CEOs of Canadian companies know that their best return on investment is energy projects outside of Canada (see The Line Podcast episode from a week ago and our dispatch last Sunday for discussion of this).

In short, Blanchet is correct, here. A pipeline filled with Alberta oil is not getting through Quebec if Quebec gets a veto. Either we’re in a Confederation in which a federal government has the final say over these things, or Quebec has already separated, and that’s the end of it.

There was also an excellent dissection of the Liberal Party’s endless games with Canadian firearm laws, but it was too long to sensibly excerpt, but if you have any interest or curiosity about why so many Canadian gun owners are pissed off with the feds, it’s worth reading in full.

April 18, 2025

Notes on the French debate

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

Paul Wells jotted down some notes in his Substack Chat after the leaders’ debate last night:

A few notes on last night’s post-election scrum fiasco, when reporters from Rebel News and Juno News got most of the questions. Some of the commentary this morning about this, from people who think it was a disaster (I think it’s unfortunate but not quite a disaster), is alarmingly superficial.

So here are some thoughts, threaded.

1. The debate commission didn’t just take it into their fool heads to invite these alt-right news organizations. They tried hard to block them in 2021, got hauled into court, and lost big. Remembering this very recent news event should, it seems to me, be a basic requirement for your pundit’s license. https://globalnews.ca/news/8174634/rebel-news-election-debates-court-challenge/

My first thought was that it’s apparently ok for Mr. Singh to refuse to engage with certain media, but if Mr. Poilievre remarks on CBC bias, he’s the enemy.

2. I’m not fond of Ezra, but in declaring that Rebel News had five divisions, he was engaging in not entirely unfunny satire about the way the CBC shows up with French and English radio and TV to every event. You may not like the joke! But it was clearly, to some extent, obvious satire about an obvious target.

3. I remain astonished that any political leader shows up for scrums after any debate. They just talked for two hours! The only possible newsworthy outcome from a scrum afterwards is, you walk all over the message you prepped for weeks to deliver. We had scrums after our 2015 Maclean’s debate. Stephen Harper just didn’t show up for them. That’s an option! Carney has worked hard since January to control and limit access to his regal person, and then he wanders into a scrum after what would be, for any anglophone, an exhausting two hours in French, as though somebody told him it was where he could get a sandwich? People are weird.

Once upon a time — at least in theory — one of the functions of the mainstream media was to help keep our political leaders under observation for the voters. That fantasy has long since vanished in Canada, as almost all the surviving mainstream media outfits are slavering propagandists, lickspittles, and fart-catchers for the Liberal Party and especially for its leader-of-the-moment. In The Line, a media outlet that isn’t directly funded by the federal government, Andrew MacDougall offers a parable about the Canadian media:

My eldest daughter is nine. Her little sister is five. The little one adores her big sister and believes everything she says.

I, on the other hand, am 49. My eldest often tries to convince me of things. But I am a skeptic when it comes to the things my children tell me, as any good parent should be. And because I push back on the eldest’s arguments, she often comes back moments later with much sharper ones. Sometimes I even change my mind.

Yes, this is a parable about the media and its role in public life, including during this federal election. And yes, we can debate the mechanics of media — who gets access, how many questions, and so on — but this is to both bury the lede and miss the story. There is much more at stake than whether the Toronto Star or the Globe gets a question at a tightly-managed press event.

What’s at stake is whether anyone in power will ever again have a parent to satisfy. Or whether those in power will be nine-year-olds, forever seeking the smoke blown up their asses by the five-year-olds in their life.

The ability to act like a nine-year-old in power is an entirely new phenomenon. In the Before Times, when a politician (or corporate leader) used to have to exchange credible arguments with a member of the media in return for access to the distribution network of their publication or broadcast, serious conversations were par for the course. It wasn’t perfect, no, but it was an adult time. There was no point rocking up to the microphone with a wild ad hominem attack, or armed with a list of faulty facts, because it wouldn’t have passed muster. There was no rolling 24/7 coverage, and easily discredited arguments wouldn’t have made the cut in what was then limited news real estate. Now, thanks to social media, there is an infinite and constantly updating canvas. You don’t even need a credit card, let alone an argument, in order to access and speak to your audience — and then tell them any damn thing you want, no matter its level of adherence to the truth.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In their pre-algorithmic infancy, the major social media platforms promised access and connection. In this more gentle, less attention-hogging iteration, the major benefit of the social media platforms and other owned channels was that they allowed you to go — unfiltered — to your intended audiences. A clean message, straight to the target voter. What politician wouldn’t want that? How could that be a bad thing? Well, other than the fact that politicians and other people in positions of power have been known to lie and try to cover up bad things.

April 13, 2025

They really are trying to shut down “wrong” speech on the internet

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I’ve always been a huge fan of free speech, which has been under continuous and escalating threat by many governments both in person and online. A side-note in the ongoing Canadian federal election has been Liberal leader Mark Carney’s commitment to addressing “online harm” as he defines it:

At a campaign rally in Hamilton, Ontario, Liberal leader Mark Carney unveiled what can only be described as a coordinated assault on digital freedom in Canada. Behind the slogans, applause lines, and empty rhetoric about unity, one portion of Carney’s remarks stood out for its implications: a bold, unapologetic commitment to controlling online speech under the guise of “safety” and “misinformation”.

    We announced a series of measures with respect to online harm … a sea of misogyny, anti-Semitism, hatred, conspiracy theories — the sort of pollution that’s online that washes over our virtual borders from the United States.

He then made clear his intention to act:

    My government, if we are elected, will be taking action on those American giants who come across [our] border.

The former central banker, who now postures as a man of the people, made it clear that if the Liberals are re-elected, the federal government will intensify efforts to regulate what Canadians are allowed to see, say, and share online. His language was deliberate. Carney condemned what he called a “sea of misogyny, anti-Semitism, hatred, conspiracy theories” polluting Canada’s internet space — language borrowed directly from the Trudeau-era playbook. But this wasn’t just a moral denunciation. It was a legislative preview.

Carney spoke of a future Liberal government taking “action on those American giants who come across our borders”. Translation: he wants to bring Big Tech platforms under federal control, or at least force them to play the role of speech enforcers for the Canadian state. He blamed the United States for exporting “hate” into Canada, reinforcing the bizarre Liberal narrative that the greatest threat to national unity isn’t foreign actors like the CCP or radical Islamists — it’s Facebook memes and American podcasts.

But the most revealing moment came when Carney linked online speech directly to violence. He asserted that digital “pollution” affects how Canadians behave in real life, specifically pointing to conjugal violence, antisemitism, and drug abuse. This is how the ground is prepared for censorship: first by tying speech to harm, then by criminalizing what the state deems harmful.

What Carney didn’t say is just as important. He made no distinction between actual criminal incitement and political dissent. He offered no assurance that free expression — a right enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms — would be respected. He provided no definition of what constitutes a “conspiracy theory” or who gets to make that determination. Under this framework, any criticism of government policy, of global institutions, or of the new technocratic order could be flagged, throttled, and punished.

And that’s the point.

Mark Carney isn’t interested in dialogue. He wants obedience. He doesn’t trust Canadians to discern truth from fiction. He believes it’s the job of government — his government — to curate the national conversation, to protect citizens from wrongthink, to act as referee over what is and isn’t acceptable discourse. In short, he wants Ottawa to become the Ministry of Truth.

In Britain, their equivalent to Canada’s “online harms” legislation has induced Bitchute to discontinue service to users in the UK:

A READER alerted us to this statement posted on the Bitchute homepage, visible to geolocated UK users:

    After careful review and ongoing evaluation of the regulatory landscape in the United Kingdom, we regret to inform you that BitChute will be discontinuing its video sharing service for UK residents.

    The introduction of the UK Online Safety Act of 2023 has brought about significant changes in the regulatory framework governing online content and community interactions. Notably, the Act contains sweeping provisions and onerous corrective measures with respect to content moderation and enforcement. In particular, the broad enforcement powers granted to the regulator of communication services, Ofcom, have raised concerns regarding the open-ended and unpredictable nature of regulatory compliance for our platform.

    The BitChute platform has always operated on principles of freedom of speech, expression and association, and strived to foster an open and inclusive environment for content creators and audiences alike. However, the evolving regulatory pressures — including strict enforcement mechanisms and potential liabilities — have created an operational landscape in which continuing to serve the UK market exposes our company to unacceptable legal and compliance risks. Despite our best efforts to navigate these challenges, the uncertainty surrounding the OSA’s enforcement by Ofcom and its far-reaching implications leaves us no viable alternative but to cease normal operations in the UK.

    Therefore, effective immediately, BitChute platform users in the UK will no longer be available to view content produced by any other BitChute user. Because the OSA’s primary concern is that members of the public will view content deemed unsafe, however, we will permit UK BitChute users to continue to post content. The significant change will be that this UK user-posted content will not be viewable by any other UK user, but will be visible to other users outside of the UK. Users outside the UK may comment on that content, which the creator will continue to be able to read, delete, block, reply and flag. Users outside the UK may share UK-user produced content to other users outside of the UK as normal. In other words, for users in the UK, including content creators, the BitChute platform is no longer a user-to-UK user video sharing service.

This is the exactly the kind of consequence we at TCW feared a result of the overly restrictive and poorly written Online Safety Act 2023, which has now come into force.

The way the technology works is that websites can use a geolocation service to analyse the IP address your internet service provider has given your service, and use this to determine where you are. Google does this to tailor ads to you, Amazon does this to get you the most convenient version of their website.

Now Bitchute are using this service to protect themselves from the UK Government’s overreach.

The good news: there is a way round this.

April 12, 2025

Carney’s Liberals promise to do something that’s been part of the legal code for decades

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

Among the Conservative and Liberal mis-steps of the election campaign this week, the promise by Liberal leader Mark Carney to pass legislation to boldly and courageously do something that has been part of the firearms laws for over 40 years deserves calling out:

Your Line editors knew that guns were going to come into the campaign eventually. It’s one of the eternal issues for the Red Team, and while they seemed to have shied away from it a bit after some pretty brutal fumbling in Justin Trudeau’s later years, we figured it would be back eventually. And so it was on Thursday, when Liberal leader Mark Carney announced, as part of a package of crime policy proposals, that a re-elected Liberal government would make sure that guns were automatically taken from anyone convicted of a violent crime, including intimate partner violence.

*pulls hard on chain, activating bullshit klaxon*

See, here’s the thing, friends. First of all, to take Carney at his word here would require us accepting, even just for a moment, that this didn’t already happen. That up until Thursday of this week, the Liberals were hunky dory with people convicted of violent crimes, including intimate partner violence, keeping whatever guns they may own or wish to acquire.

That is, we suspect readers know, utter bullshit. Removing guns is already required in those circumstances, and it doesn’t even require a conviction. Police officers can seize any weapon of any type if it isn’t in the safety interest of any person, even without a warrant, and revoke any license they hold immediately.

Nobody is eligible to hold a license if it isn’t in the safety interest of a person — that’s literally the first eligibility criterion in the Firearms Act. Issuing a license requires the issuer to consider all past convictions, mental illnesses, history of violent behaviour, previous prohibitions, any potential intimate partner violence, and any potential harm to any person before they issue it. That is checked through a process called Continuous Eligibility Screening, where license holders are checked for “hits” against police systems every single day to determine whether they are still able to hold a license.

This is something almost no one outside Canada’s firearms-owning community understands, and The Line wants to underline this point — anyone with a firearms licence is automatically checked for any new legal issues that might render them unable to own firearms every single day. If you happen to find yourself hanging out with someone with a firearms licence, they were checked out by law enforcement within the last 24 hours. This includes your friends at The Line. The day you’re reading this is a day they passed another screening.

A conviction for a violent crime, it hardly need be said — well, actually, check that, apparently it does need saying — would render one rather ineligible! Not only is this already the law, but there are so many overlapping laws to deal with that exact scenario that it takes real effort to be ignorant of them. Weapon prohibition orders on conviction for violent offences? Already a thing at the federal and provincial levels. Prohibitions while on bail? Already a thing. Firearm seizures during divorces? Not automatic, but common, sometimes even where there is no history of violence or reasonable belief that violence is likely.

The Liberals know all this, especially since it was the Liberals who last changed these laws — though not to add the removal provisions, which largely already existed, but to remove any discretion or ability for rehabilitation.

Every party is fine with keeping guns away from domestic violence perpetrators. Carney making this an issue is bullshit. He’s counting on the public to not know enough to call him out on it.

It’ll probably work.

Oh, and by the way. If you don’t want to take our word for any of the above, you can just read the Firearms Act yourself. Relevant section, below.

April 10, 2025

Canadian political aspirations to being “very mid” on the world stage

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

In The Line, Matt Gurney reflects on a recent statement by caretaker prime minister Mark Carney about Canada taking a “leadership role” on the international stage and supplanting the United States under President Trump:

Oh, we will, eh?

Don’t get me wrong, I like the sound of it. He’s certainly manifesting that elbows-up spirit that seems to be so impressing Canadians.

But, like — Carney knows which country he’s in, right? Canada? The one full of Canadians? Because as I heard him say what Canada would do in response to the accelerating American withdrawal from global affairs, I couldn’t help but note that there is a problem here.

Canada isn’t a leader. Canada doesn’t lead.

Even as I write this, I know it’s going to be a fraught statement. Canadian patriotism is a bit supercharged right now. It’s nice to see. But a lot of stupidity gets overlooked — or even caused — by patriotic outbursts. Internal dissent becomes a lot less popular when everybody is sewing the Maple Leaf onto their backpack. So I want to make my point respectfully and politely, largely to spare myself the agony of wading through idiotic replies for a few days. So here goes: many Canadians do indeed lead in their fields, and there is nothing inherent about Canada that makes us incapable of exercising leadership. If Mark Carney remains prime minister — or if someone with similar ambitions should replace him and make a point of pursuing a policy of broad-based Canadian global leadership — I don’t write that off as a doomed proposition.

There is more that we could choose to do. There are practical constraints that would bind us, and we’ll talk about those in a minute, but just to get into the spirit of the moment: sure. We could choose to exercise global leadership.

But we would first have to start with the recognition that it has been generations since we have actually tried to do that. This is not a moral judgment on Canada or Canadians. It is simply a recognition of the historical record. This country has not pursued a national policy — or even a series of smaller policies that take on a greater form in the aggregate — that sought to establish this country as a leader in the world.

If we’re being honest, we’ve typically pursued almost the opposite policy, and deliberately. I’m not saying we’re slavish followers. But this is a country that for generations has been quite comfortable thinking of itself as an overachieving middle power, nestled comfortably in a supporting role for allied countries that do seek to lead. Usually the Americans. Maybe sometimes the British or French. Or something like the UN or NATO. We’ve never claimed to land the hardest punches, or tried to. We’d settle for punching above our weight. We haven’t tried to conquer or command or even compel. In the words of a member of the incumbent government, our aspiration largely maxed out at wishing to convene.

But, of course, as we’re learning these days, Canadian politicians of almost all parties (Maxime Bernier is the only exception I’m aware of) consider the beneficiaries of our trade-distorting supply management system to be the only ones whose interests they always champion:

The most interesting field of international relations, though, and the most germane to what Carney said on Liberation Day, is in the field of trade. Canada definitely likes trade. I’ll even give some credit here to both Liberals and Conservatives. It has been broadly understood that Canada thrives when we have access to markets all over the world. The pursuit of expanded trading relationships has been a bipartisan priority for Liberals and Conservatives alike … so long as it doesn’t cost us anything on the domestic political front.


And yes, I’m talking about dairy. Some other things, too. But mostly the milk and eggs.

Seriously. Scroll up a bit. Look at that big quote I dropped in at the top from Carney. Watch the CTV feed again. Canada is going to pursue a role of leadership in defending liberalized free trade?

Really? Forgive me for squinting. I’m struggling with my middle-aged eyes to find the tiny text appended to Carney’s pledge that notes that “conditions apply”. Because that very same Mark Carney has already gone out of his way to say that protecting Canada’s supply-managed dairy and egg producers is an absolute, unbendable priority for him and his party.

So yes. Let’s all pledge ourselves to a new era of Canadian leadership in defence of free trade and unfettered market access, right up until the moment some weirdo foreigner gets it into their pathetic little brain that they should be allowed to sell me a stick of butter. Because that ain’t on, friends. Let’s get our elbows up, and bury them deep into this wheel of filthy xenocheddar.

April 8, 2025

Mark Carney explained how he viewed the world in his book Values

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

It’s worth considering what Mark Carney wrote about his beliefs before becoming prime minister and how he’s campaigning right now:

For those who haven’t had the misfortune of parsing through Mark Carney’s Values, it reads like a sermon from a high priest of globalism — polished, preachy, and packed with ideas that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cares about Canada’s economy, especially Western energy producers.

Writing as the former Bank of Canada governor and a darling of the Liberal elite, Carney pitches a vision of “sustainable finance”, net-zero absolutism, and heavy-handed regulation. To the National Citizens Coalition, it’s clear: this isn’t a roadmap to prosperity, it’s a wrecking ball aimed at the heart of Canada’s resource sector and the West’s economic lifeline.

Start with Carney’s obsession with “revaluing value”. In Values, he argues markets should prioritize climate goals over profit, pushing financial institutions to choke funding for oil and gas.

For Alberta and Saskatchewan, where energy employs tens of thousands and pumps billions into the economy, this is a death knell dressed up as virtue.

Western producers aren’t just businesses; they’re the backbone of communities, powering schools, hospitals, and homes. Carney’s disdain for fossil fuels ignores their role in keeping Canada competitive while our allies and adversaries keep drilling. His plan? Starve the sector, stranding assets and jobs, all to appease international green lobbyists in European nations with nationalized economies on the road to being as disastrous as Canada’s.

Then there’s his love affair with regulation. Values champions policies just like Bill C-69 — the “No More Pipelines Bill” — which Carney has refused to repeal. He sees it as a tool to enforce his net-zero utopia, but for the West, it’s a padlock on progress. Pipelines that could carry Canadian oil to global markets sit stalled, leaving producers at the mercy of low prices, foreign competitors, and now, tariff threats.

Carney’s mental framework both then and now doesn’t just stop projects, it signals to investors that Canada’s energy sector is a no-go zone. The result? Capital flees, jobs vanish, and the West pays the price for the lofty ideals of a London and Manhattan banker, who spends only part of his time in Canada — specifically, Ontario and Quebec.

Dan Knight on Carney’s swing through some British Columbia ridings this week:

A mock campaign sign for the Liberals spotted on social media.

Mark Carney rolled into Victoria this week with the swagger of a man who’s never missed a wine-and-cheese reception in his life and delivered what the Liberal brain trust likely considers a “bold vision” for Canada. But peel back the banker buzzwords and Churchill cosplay, and what you really got was a cringeworthy display of delusion, detachment, and recycled globalist dogma.

He opened his mouth and immediately signaled his marching orders: “clean energy”. Not once. Not twice. It was practically every other sentence. Because when you’re out of ideas, just say “green transition” on repeat and hope nobody checks the receipts.

He’s not just pushing the same failed Liberal climate ideology — he’s doubling down on it.

Carney promised to turn Canada into a “clean energy superpower” — without explaining how, exactly, we get there when his party has spent years shutting down oil and gas, blocking pipelines, and handing our resource wealth to the Americans.

This wasn’t new policy. It was the same Liberal fantasy that has already gutted Alberta, choked investment, and driven electricity prices through the roof — just ask Europe how that’s going. And when it comes to reopening auto plants or restoring manufacturing jobs? Nothing. Not a plan, not a word, not a clue.

And don’t worry — when Trump’s tariffs hit our industries, Carney says we’ll respond with “retaliatory tariffs”. Sounds tough, until you remember who actually pays those. Working Canadians. Line workers. Parts manufacturers. People trying to keep the lights on while Ottawa plays global economic chicken.

Carney’s big idea for recovery? Just keep handing money to the Liberal-connected elite.

He promised to “give back” — and by that, he means pouring another $180 million into the CBC, the same taxpayer-funded mouthpiece that’s been running interference for the Liberals for nearly a decade. This comes after ArriveCAN, the $60 million QR code boondoggle funneled through Liberal contractors, and countless other slush funds masquerading as “public service”.

While the working class is bracing for a made-in-Ottawa recession, Carney’s pledging more green slogans, more centralized control, and more taxpayer money to keep the illusion alive.

April 5, 2025

Liberals spike the football after eliminating the consumer portion of the carbon tax

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

Among the items in this week’s “Bullshit Bulletin” from The Line is a thoroughly earned drubbing for the federal Liberals who took full credit for eliminating a particularly unpopular tax … that they spent the last several years justifying for “putting more money in Canadians’ pockets”:

Your Line editors are fans of loopholes. And we’re glad that when we laid out the ground rules for the Bullshit Bulletin last week, we made room for things that would technically pass a lie detector test, but are still too egregiously bullshitty to not be called out.

Mona Fortier, Liberal party whip, former cabinet minister and current candidate in Ottawa-Vanier-Gloucester, step up and collect your prize. You’re the first stop in our second bullshit bullet of this campaign. To be clear, Fortier is accepting this award on behalf of the entire Liberal party. The absolutely breathtaking hypocrisy of watching these guys campaign on the dismantling of the carbon tax is something to behold.

If you missed it, the zeroing out of the “consumer-facing” carbon tax took effect this week, at midnight on April 1. This resulted in an immediate drop in the price of gas at many stations across the country. This genuinely did make the news. Your Line editors heard local radio stories about it as they were out and about on their various errands this week. Many of those stories, but not all, made a point of noting that the price drop was directly related to the carbon tax coming off the price of a litre of gas.

And that’s where Fortier steps in. She was quick to take to social media with a video of herself at a gas pump, celebrating how her government had made the lives of Canadians more affordable.

Couple of things.

First, your Line editors have some history of noting the absurdity of politicians posing at gas pumps. Our favourite is still the Conservative who clearly did not have a car and simply posed awkwardly by a pump. But in general, these photo ops are really stupid. And we’re sure they’re demeaning and embarrassing for the people involved. Add this to the long and growing list of why we would never, ever agree to subject ourselves to the humiliation of a life in politics.

But we can’t help but note the chutzpah — or the bullshit, more plainly — of the Liberals touting lowering the price of gas, when that drop is explained by them removing the tax they chose to put on gas, and then spent years insisting was necessary to prevent, literally, the destruction of the planet. We guess we can take our kids on vacation without “letting the planet burn” now. Thanks, Carney!

And we just don’t mean that this is hypocritical in the abstract. Fortier herself, not all that long ago, was loud and proud about how the carbon tax was helping low-income Canadians by giving them more in rebates than they were paying in tax.

Keen-eyed observers might note that there is less than a year between those tweets.

What else can we call this bullshit? We can gussy it up a bit. We can call it hypocritical bullshit or shameless bullshit — but fundamentally, it’s bullshit. The Liberals taking credit for removing the carbon tax makes about as much sense as them taking credit for rescuing a man from drowning whom they beat senseless and threw over the side of a yacht. The entire thing reminds us of the Hot Dog Man sketch — an obviously guilty party insisting, despite the evident disbelief of everyone else, that they aren’t responsible for the problem. Except this is actually worse — they’re claiming they fixed the problem, while studiously ignoring any question of where it came from.

Only in politics would someone actually seek to claim any credit for reversing a cost that they had willingly inflicted on people, despite howls of protest, for years, all while insisting the pain was necessary, and even worth it, because of the rebate. And only in Canada would we have very little expectation that the voters would actually hold those people accountable for their, wait for it, bullshit.

April 3, 2025

Election 2025 – Candidates overboard, biological clocks ticking, and Trump tariff letdown

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

One of the recent events in the federal election campaign — the Liberals finally getting rid of their toxic candidate in Markham-Unionville — has been reciprocated by the Conservatives dumping their candidate in a southwestern Ontario riding and another in the Montreal area. While the Liberals dragged their feet for several days, the Conservatives have been much faster to pull the ejection handle for their bozo eruptions (some might say too fast), but Poilievre absolutely did not want the kind of media circus that Carney enabled over the Chiang scandal.

The Liberals have been doing what they can to gin up angst and outrage over a recent Pierre Poilievre comment that they’re trying to portray as being somehow misogynistic and insensitive. In The Line, Melanie Paradis says that it’s nothing of the sort and instead it highlights a genuine concern for young Canadian women and their partners:

I just turned 40. I have two beautiful children — three-and-a-half years old and eight months — and I want a third.

That statement raises eyebrows. After all, I run a successful business. I work more than full-time. I live in the same economy as you. And yet — I want another baby. Not because I’m reckless. Because I love being a mom. Because I believe in investing in the future. Because I want to.

And in today’s Canada, that feels like a radical act.

This election, the conversation is dominated by Trump’s tariffs, and understandably so. But as we analyze different sectors that will be impacted by tariffs, and develop policy prescriptions for the hundreds of thousands of jobs that could be lost, where are the policies for the millions of young Canadians pausing their hopes and plans for children because of so much uncertainty? The untold story of Trump’s tariffs and threats is that the quiet collapse of Canada’s birth rate will only worsen. Nothing kills the mood or your hormonal balance quite like Trump.

Of course, the second Pierre Poilievre mentioned this, the Liberals couldn’t resist twisting it into a tired attack line about reproductive rights.

On Monday, Poilievre said, “We will not forget that 36-year-old couple whose biological clock is running out faster than they can afford to buy a home.” This is a statement rooted in the biological and economic realities of being 30-something and trying to conceive. Yet the Liberals are tripping over themselves to condemn Poilievre for somehow insulting women.

What a total misread. Poilievre is the only politician in this campaign who is speaking openly and clearly about a real issue that is radicalizing young Canadians: it has become far, far too hard to start and support a family in this country, and that is obviously a burden that lands entirely on the young. Given the demographics of the average Liberal voter, I can get why this would be below the radar for the party, but I’m begging them, and setting politics aside when I do, to stop viewing this as a moment to launch a political attack on your rival and instead ask if this is actually a national issue that we should be talking about more, not less. Even if the politician happens to be a man.

To my Liberal friends: You are punching down on hurting people when you dismiss this issue, and since this might matter to you more, you’re hurting your electoral chances, too. Your party has a blindspot here, and the issue is too important to become a partisan football. Like, my dudes, for all your stupid rhetoric about The Handmaid’s Tale, have you read the damn book? It starts with a fertility crisis and birth rate collapse. If you don’t want the red capes, maybe we should get out in front of the issue?

The latest round of Trumpian tariffs let Canada off easier than other American allies and trading partners in President Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement:

While the rest of the world was trying to determine the length and breadth of the shaft, Trump waved around a cardboard chart that named their country and the percentage tariff hike they could expect to be hit with.

Top of the list was China, which will see a 34 per cent increase in the tariffs on its exports to the U.S. (on top of the previous 20 per cent). Japan will be hit with a 24 per cent increase and the European Union with 20 per cent.

But half of the chart was hidden behind Trump’s podium, so it took a while to figure that Canada was not on the list.

It was only after the Rose Garden press conference concluded that it became apparent that Canada is exempt, or at least the exports to the U.S. covered by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement are not impacted (and they account for more than 90 per cent, according to RBC Economics).

However, the previously announced 25 per cent tariffs on autos, and on steel and aluminum from Canada remain in place.

The broad-based exemption is good news but the crisis facing the Canadian economy remains dire. As has been pointed out by many industry insiders, no auto plant in Canada can survive 25 per cent tariffs for an extended period at a time when their profit margins are less than 10 per cent.

April 1, 2025

Carney chooses not to dump Paul Chiang as Liberal candidate in Markham-Unionville

Filed under: Cancon, China, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Update: The National Post is reporting that Chiang has dropped out of the campaign.

Liberal leader Mark Carney may believe he’s showing something something strength and something something compassion by allowing Paul Chiang to stay on the ballot as the official Liberal candidate despite the awful optics of the situation:

In the National Post, Anthony Furey says that the decision indicates that Carney values China’s values ahead of Canadian values:

Liberal MP Paul Chiang, left, and Liberal leader Mark Carney, right.

Mark Carney’s mishandling of the Paul Chiang scandal has got to be one of the worst cases of poor judgment in recent Canadian political history. From the moment the story broke, it was a no-brainer that Chiang could not remain as a Liberal MP and as the Liberal candidate in Markham-Unionville.

The fact Carney didn’t immediately do the right thing was a problem. And that he’s now defiant in keeping Chiang on despite several days of significant pushback seriously calls his judgment into question.

On Friday, the civil rights group Toronto Association for Democracy in China broke the scandal on remarks Chiang made about Conservative candidate Joe Tay that appeared in Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao Toronto.

“To everyone here, you can claim the $1 million bounty (on Joe Tay) if you bring him to Toronto’s Chinese consulate,” Chiang said during an ethnic media conference in January.

Jaws dropped when the news spread. Dozens of human rights groups have already condemned the remarks.

Hong Kong Watch, a human rights advocacy group, wrote in a statement: “It is clear that this is a Parliamentarian suggesting to a broad community that a political opponent be taken against their will and handed over to the custody of a foreign government that has a well-documented history of wrongfully detaining Canadian citizens and using coercion to get Canadian citizens to return to (China).”

[…]

Yet Liberal leader Mark Carney is downplaying it and standing by Chiang.

“The comments were deeply offensive,” Carney said on Monday. “This is a terrible lapse of judgment by Mr. Chiang. He has apologized for those comments.”

If they are that offensive and if Chiang’s judgment is that poor, why keep him on as a member of the team?

Carney was hammered with repeated questions to that effect from the news media but was firm that Chiang would remain as a candidate. He also seems to think that Chiang being a police officer makes the remarks less of an issue, when it clearly makes it a much bigger problem.

“Mr. Chiang is a veteran policeman with more than a quarter century of service to his community,” Carney told the press. “And he will continue his candidacy going forward, having made those apologies very clearly to the individual, to the community and moving forward to serve.”

From the outside, it looks less like Carney is trying to stand up for a member of his party and more as though he’s desperate to hang on to that seat (perhaps Liberal internal polls aren’t quite as rosy in the GTA as the public polls are showing at the moment).

Also on the social media site formerly known as “Twitter”, Dan Knight posts a long note on the situation:

This is no longer just a political scandal — this is a national disgrace. Joe Tay, the Conservative candidate targeted by Paul Chiang’s shocking comments, has now broken his silence — and it’s nothing short of damning.

In his official statement, Tay pulls no punches. He calls Chiang’s words what they are: “threatening public comments … intended to intimidate me”. Not debate. Not disagreement. Intimidation. And Tay makes it crystal clear: “no apology is sufficient”. Why? Because this isn’t some offhand gaffe — this is the exact playbook of the Chinese Communist Party, imported straight into Canadian politics.

Let that sink in. A Canadian MP, standing on Canadian soil, echoed a bounty issued by a hostile foreign regime. And the man targeted — Joe Tay — says it plainly: “Suggesting that people collect a bounty from the Chinese Communist Party to deliver a political opponent to the Chinese Consulate is disgusting and must never be condoned.”

Disgusting — and yet, here we are. Paul Chiang is still in the Liberal fold. Mark Carney, the man who wants to run the country, says nothing. Meanwhile, Tay is left fearing for his safety — already in touch with the RCMP before the public even knew what Chiang had said.

This is the state of Canadian politics under the Liberal machine: where the only people paying a price are the ones speaking out. Where the candidate who exposes foreign interference is the one who needs police protection. And the one who parrots CCP propaganda? He gets to keep his seat.

Even Michael Chong — a guy who knows firsthand what CCP intimidation looks like — is stepping in and asking the obvious question: Why is Paul Chiang still a Liberal candidate?

Chong just posted on X (formerly Twitter) that at least three Canadians have already been coerced into returning to the People’s Republic of China against their will. Against their will. Think about that. Beijing is actively running transnational repression ops on Canadian soil — and now, one of Carney’s own candidates is joking about turning a political opponent over to the CCP for a cash reward. And we’re supposed to believe the Liberals take foreign interference seriously?

Chong’s post includes actual evidence — parliamentary testimony, U.S. indictments, and RCMP-relevant keywords like “United Front”, “overseas station”, and “minutes or less”. In other words, this isn’t conspiracy talk. This is real. It’s happening. And it’s been happening under the Liberals’ watch.

And still, Paul Chiang stays in the race. No suspension. No investigation. Nothing from Carney, the security-cleared savior of the Liberal establishment.

And here’s where the hypocrisy hits terminal velocity.

Remember, Mark Carney has a security clearance. That’s been his whole pitch. That somehow he is more qualified to lead Canada because he has access to classified intelligence. Because he is in the know. He’s the grown-up in the room. The steady technocrat with one foot in the Privy Council and the other in Davos.

Well, here’s a question: What good is a security clearance if your own MPs are acting like a propaganda arm for Beijing?

Because while Mark “Bank of China” Carney sits on his classified briefings, his Liberal MP Paul Chiang is out there, on camera, floating the idea that a Conservative candidate should be delivered to a Chinese consulate to “claim the bounty” placed on his head by the Chinese Communist Party.

Let’s repeat that: A Canadian MP is echoing a CCP-issued bounty, and Carney — the man with all the intelligence, all the briefings, all the supposed national security credentials — says nothing. Not a peep. Not even a token tweet.

So what exactly is that security clearance buying us, Mark? If you’re such an expert on foreign threats, why can’t you recognize one when it’s sitting in your own caucus?

It’s a joke. The entire premise of Carney’s leadership bid is unraveling in real time. He promised Canadians he could stand up to foreign interference — meanwhile, his own candidate in Markham–Unionville is out there sounding like a CCP press secretary. And instead of showing leadership, Carney hides behind talking points, closed-door fundraisers, and his carefully curated media handlers.

Joe Tay is right. This isn’t just about intimidation — it’s about sending a “chilling signal to the entire community”. And the message from Carney is loud and clear: if you’re a threat to the Liberal regime, they’re not just coming for your policies. They’re coming for you.

Security clearance? Please. It’s not leadership if you only speak up when it’s politically convenient. And if Carney won’t condemn this, then he’s not qualified to lead a PTA meeting, let alone a country.

March 31, 2025

The infighting among the Conservatives is becoming a story in this election

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

Listening to Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney on The Line podcast a few days ago, I was surprised to hear that the Ontario Progressive Conservatives seem to be trying to actively torpedo the federal Conservative election campaign. While internecine combat among conservative factions is pretty normal, it isn’t quite as normal for it to be happening in the middle of a federal election campaign. It’s almost as if Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s team would rather throw the election to the Liberals than to let Pierre Poilievre’s team score a win. Some friction, sure, but this level of conflict is almost unheard of.

At Acceptable Views, Alexander Brown mulls the chatter he’s been hearing from the campaign trail:

“Something’s really going on here,” says word from on the ground in once-Liberal-safe Toronto.

“The polls say one thing, but we’ve never given out so many signs. We’ve had to print thousands more than usual.”

“We’re actually doing just fine,” says another source high up on the federal campaign trail.

“Don’t believe the chatter from disgruntled so-called conservatives … Nobody here is hanging up their skates. We’ve had a very good week — long days notwithstanding! — and are beginning to inflict solid brand damage on Carney.”

“The best is yet to come. We are running the campaign we should be running. One that’s true to conservative values and principles.”

On that “chatter”, this non-profit campaigner and writer has no qualms about going weapons-hot.

For those unaware, Ford-“conservative” insiders in Ontario have been taking to the media circuit, issuing complaint after complaint, as both anonymous and named sources, in an effort to pull the Conservatives off of major pocketbook issues such as immigration, housing, affordability, and crime, and on to, all but exclusively, Trump, Trump, Trump.

It matters to them not, apparently, that the Liberals have lucked into booby-trapping both sides of the Trump issue, and that it forces the Conservatives onto uneven terrain.

Drag this out and make it worse, as Carney has largely chosen to do? His elbows are up!

Get shoved around by the administration to the south? See, this is why he’s the one to deal with it. He’s Trump’s enemy!

(Apparently, it also matters not that Carney has received repeated pats on the head and quasi-endorsements from #45, and now, #47.)

The real story here? Allegedly embittered that they were left out of the war-room for reasons of not being all that conservative and being untrustworthy (a point they are now proving over and over again), and wanting to neglect a youth vote they were incapable of turning out, a select few in an Ontario crew think they know best, and would rather engage in public displays of industrial sabotage than keep it private and above the belt.

It’s a ridiculous little consultant slap-fight, at a time when 5000 people are standing out in the rain, to tell a man they don’t know that their Canadian Dream is now a nightmare, that they’re now drowning in debt and don’t feel hope for the future.

“These guys have no idea what they’re talking about. When this is all over, I hope they regret ever weighing in like this.”

For Doug Ford’s campaign manager Kory Teneycke, who has been working the Liberal podcast and media circuit the hardest, it might be worth noting that not every campaign has the advantage — nor indulgence — of being able to run on Liberal-lite and solely Trump.

The Ontario PCs were granted the easy road of being able to cut the corner to the polls in February, in an election no one asked for, while running Carney-adjacent messaging, and they still couldn’t pick up a seat against the worst Ontario Liberal leader of a generation.

The Line‘s Gerson and Gurney both seem quite taken with the attacks on Poilievre by Ford’s right-hand spokes-hatchetman, but others are reporting lots of enthusiasm on the campaign trail and contrasting it with Carney’s handlers deliberately keeping the PM away from the press as much as they can.

The numbers of people who show up to political events isn’t a dependable metric, but if the disproportion gets to the point that you’re able to hand-count the number of supporters at a given venue, it might be a useful bit of anecdata:

The first genuine “bozo moment” of the federal election campaign

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

I saw a mention on social media that an Ontario candidate had publicly suggested that his primary opponent be dragged off to the Chinese embassy for some kind of reward, and I assumed it was another example of something being taken wildly out of context … but no:

Liberal MP Paul Chiang, left, and Liberal leader Mark Carney, right.

So let’s just recap, because this is almost too surreal to believe.

A sitting Liberal Member of Parliament — Paul Chiang — stood in front of a Chinese-language media outlet in January 2025 and said that if someone were to kidnap Joe Tay, a Conservative candidate and Canadian citizen, and deliver him to the Chinese Consulate in Toronto, they could “claim the one-million-dollar bounty”. That wasn’t some fringe YouTuber or anonymous social media post. That was a sitting MP, elected to represent Markham—Unionville, who also happens to serve as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion.

Let me be crystal clear here: that’s not just inappropriate. That’s not just “deplorable”. That’s language lifted directly from the Chinese Communist Party’s playbook. Joe Tay is on a real bounty list. Not fantasy. Not fiction. A real HK$1 million bounty placed on his head by the Hong Kong police for supporting democracy and speaking out against tyranny.

And what happens when a Canadian MP echoes that threat — on Canadian soil?

Nothing.

As of right now—this minute — Paul Chiang is still an MP in good standing in with the Liberals. Not suspended. Not removed from caucus. No RCMP probe. No parliamentary discipline. Nothing.

And the Carney campaign? The Liberal Party’s new face? Crickets. Absolute silence. Carbon Tax Carney, Trudeau’s old money-man turned globalist messiah, who’s spent the last month talking about “foreign interference” and demanding Pierre Poilievre get a security clearance? Not a word. Apparently, if a Conservative doesn’t submit to Ottawa’s surveillance state, it’s a national crisis. But if a Liberal MP plays mouthpiece for Beijing and jokes about abducting a political opponent? It’s just … Tuesday.

Imagine for a second that a Conservative MP had said anything remotely close to this — maybe even joked about placing a bounty on a Liberal politician funded by a foreign regime. Every major newsroom in the country would have declared martial law. CBC would be live for 72 hours straight. The RCMP would have launched a task force. But because it’s a Liberal, they issue a press release. A shrug. A “deplorable” comment, followed by a half-hearted apology and — get this — no consequences.

As former prime minister Justin Trudeau amply demonstrated, consequences are for other people, not members of the Liberal caucus.

March 30, 2025

Recycling an old slogan – [Mark Carney] “didn’t come back for you”

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

I guess you could say that Elizabeth Nickson isn’t a Carney fan:

Doesn’t he look half-dead? Like a shroud covers his saggy emaciated face and spindly body. Indicative of lifelessness of his ideas. NOT his actual ideas because what he is currently selling are the ideas he stole from Canada’s Conservative Party. Those ideas are grass roots, labored over for decades in underfunded think tanks, all roundly mocked and slandered in our repellent media which never tells the truth when an easy lie is within reach. But now, in the hands of a “leader” who will not stop the Liberal Party and its Laurentian elite clients looting of the Canadian people, well now they are AOK. And genius. And a lie, because he will only perform the minimum to gratify the stupid, “educated” women who will elect him.

Because above everything Liberal Party looting must continue. And with Net Zero and all that elite clap trap there will be another three generations of Canadians to ruin, to steal from, to harvest their life’s energy to feed the Party’s enormous ego and the plush lifestyles in the posh suburbs of Canada. Scratch such a resident and whatever he does, his salary is boosted by government, in some form or other, via contracts which do not perform, ghost contracts, just money to play with for supporting the Liberal Party.

If Carney is elected, the country will break up.

First Alberta will go. Danielle Smith emerged grim from her last meeting with Carnage. Have you heard of stranded assets? That’s his goal for Alberta’s oil and gas. Albertas energy is responsible for one third of Canadas private sector economy and no matter what he says, he has worked for two decades for Climate Change sequestration nonsense. For solar and wind, for de-development, sliming his way around the world twisting arms. He was the grim reaper behind Justin’s authoritarianism. As a result our current economy is built on government and debt and refinancing loans and housing.

Oh he will lie and lie and lie and promise new industrial infrastructure. Sure he will. You know who will own that infrastructure? BIS, the Bank of International Settlements or some international banking outfit. They will own it because carbon credits and future use. They will retire some of our debt, not enough for us to actually grow, just to keep body and soul together. And we will grind forward another twenty years, piling up yet more debt, at which time the Liberal Party will broker off another hunk of our heritage.

Then Saskatchewan. BC and Manitoba will look at the powerhouse economy that the U.S. is building, and petition to strand the Eloi, with their banal life of ease on B.C. Coast, all as equally dumb and destructive as California’s ruinous elites. And join the U.S.

Canada has so much banked energy, so much thwarted ambition, so many lives wasted. So much potential lost. We are like a screaming adolescent banging ourselves against the wall, wanting nothing more than to get a job and get on with it. (Oh, wait, that was me)

Kaizen’s video is linked [here]. I STRONGLY recommend you listen to his powerful brief encapsulation of how fast the American economy is going to grow.

We tariff because we are broke. We are broke because we have regulated ourselves into stasis. This below represents what it is to do business in Canada. I have heard this from thousands of entrepreneurs.

March 29, 2025

Carney, our unelected PM, announces the end of our generations-long bilateral relationship with the US

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

As many folks on Twit-, er, I mean X have pointed out, Mark Carney is just a caretaker PM, not having ever been elected to the position, so it’s more than a bit breathtaking that he’s making announcements like this without any mandate from the voters:

Later, we get to vote on whether he made it to the podium

The last Liberal leader promised real change too. Apparently this one uses a different definition.

“It is clear that the United States is no longer a reliable partner,” Mark Carney said after a cabinet meeting on Thursday. “It is possible that with comprehensive negotiations we will be able to restore some trust. But there will be no turning back.”

Uh, sir, you’re sounding kind of categorical —

“The next government — and all that follow — will have a fundamentally different relationship with the United States,” Carney said.

So if I understand correctly, what you’re saying is —

“Coming to terms with this sobering reality is the first step in taking necessary actions to defend our nation,” Carney said. “But it’s only the first step.”

In a career that now stretches back to before many of my readers were born, I’ve covered speeches like this before, of course. Maybe five. Well, two. No, strike that, this was new.

“Over the coming weeks, months, and years we must fundamentally reimagine our economy,” the rookie leader of the Liberal Party of Canada said.

Well, you know, “fundamentally” can mean a lot of things —

“The old relationship we had with the United States, based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over.”

Oh, so you mean fundamentally.

In French, a language that fits this Savile Row man like a hand-carved barrel — it covers the essentials while leaving the odd splinter — Carney did a version of the Doug Ford thing where he asked for a strong mandate to undertake negotiations. Unlike Ford he put no real effort into selling it. Was he being overconfident? Not at all, he said, as every man ever has in response to that question. He still needs to “win every vote,” he insisted.

But it “would be better” to have a large mandate “to have a large, comprehensive negotiation, the most important in our life.” Here he didn’t pause, really, so much as consider the ramifications of what he was saying while the words were still coming out.

“Especially in my life. When I was born the Auto Pact was created.” Which sounds grandiose, sure, but to be fair I believe Carney, who was born in Fort Smith in 1965, was merely asserting correlation, not causality. “And now it’s over.”

Wait, what? The AUTO PACT is over? That’s like saying it’s time to shut the ski operation at Whistler down, if Whistler contributed 11.5% to Canada’s manufacturing GDP. “It’s very serious, this situation,” he concluded, mildly.

Later, some of the early reaction to Carney’s remarks seemed to me to skip too lightly over the plain meaning of the Prime Minister’s words. And yes, it feels odd to call him the Prime Minister. We haven’t yet had a vote on the matter, although I’m told one will be held shortly. But the people in the cabinet room were people Carney had appointed, and the Parliamentary Protective Service let them in, so I guess in a rough-and-ready way, he really is — Anyway. It’s possible Carney’s words meant nothing. Or that he’ll be forced to eat them later. Or that, it being election season, he’ll never get a chance to implement them. In the latter case, the Carney Tariff Scrum of March 2025 would become an item of wonk trivia, like Kim Campbell’s genuinely impressive government reorganization of 1993.

March 18, 2025

“[T]he Liberals have no principles because it works“

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

The first act of our unelected prime minister was to performatively sign a piece of paper that supposedly eliminated the hated carbon tax. Well, part of the carbon tax. And not really eliminated eliminated, it just set the rate to zero percent. The carbon tax that the Liberals had proclaimed was essential to saving the entire planet from global warming. If this seems odd, buckle up, because this is just how the Liberal Party operates:

Obviously, I don’t believe Mark Carney nor the Liberal Party of Canada want to destroy the world.

Nor do I believe they could destroy the world, even if a supervillain gave them an unlimited budget in which to do so. After ten years when the supervillain checked up on the Liberals to see how the world-destruction plan was coming along, he’d find out that the world destruction equity subcommittee was waiting for a report from a sub-subcommittee responsible for convening a task force to authorize a panel to determine how to destroy the world in way which minimally impacted disadvantaged communities, but they’re having trouble finding francophone Saskatchewanians for the breakout sessions.

But I am somewhat startled to see how quickly Carney’s Liberal Party abandoned a signature policy it assured us was necessary to fight the existential threat posed by climate change:

This is like the National Socialist German Workers Party tweeting a meme cheering on Adolf Hitler for killing Hitler. (Given the state of Twitter these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if there actually is an official NSDAP account, but never mind.)

We’re left with two possibilities regarding the carbon tax policy promoted by the last Liberal Prime Minister and now abolished (or is it?!?) by the new Liberal Prime Minister:

  • it never would have made much difference in the fight against climate change anyway, in which case it was always a waste of time and effort; or,
  • it would have made a big difference in the fight against climate change, in which case Carney has decided it’s more important to win the impending federal election and take away his opponents’ talking points than to actually do something about a potential ecological crisis.

I’m not naive about politicians, even those I support, being hypocrites and flip-floppers. There may be some truly principled, ideologically consistent political parties out there, but they can hold their annual conventions in a Ford Club Wagon.

March 11, 2025

“In many ways, Carney is the technocrat’s technocrat. A bona fide citizen of nowhere”

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

In spiked, Fraser Myers expresses incredulity that Canadians have “chosen” yet another technocratic globalist as our next Prime Minister to succeed Justin Trudeau:

Then-Governor of the Bank of Canada Mark Carney at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
WEF photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Canadians have a new prime minister. After a leadership election in the ruling Liberal Party, it’s out with the woke globalist, Justin Trudeau, and in with the woke globalist, Mark Carney.

Extraordinarily, in an age where justified populist rage against an out-of-touch establishment is spreading across the globe, Canadians have ended up with a leader who embodies that very establishment. In many ways, Carney is the technocrat’s technocrat. A bona fide citizen of nowhere.

The new Canadian PM’s CV reads like a parody of an archetypal Davos man. He has been governor of the Bank of Canada, governor of the Bank of England and a United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance. Before he entered the public eye, he worked for Goldman Sachs – in London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto. He has degrees from Harvard and Oxford. Yet he has never once held any form of elected political office. He does not even currently hold a seat in Canada’s House of Commons.

Carney is living, breathing proof that expert credentials are no substitute for sound judgement or political acumen. He has embraced just about every naff and dangerous political trend of our times, never deviating from the Davos script.

Most notoriously, as governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, Carney became the high priest of Project Fear ahead of the 2016 Brexit vote. He warned before the referendum that a Leave vote would spark an instant recession. It didn’t. He claimed Brexit would make investment in British assets so risky that it could ‘test the kindness of strangers’ should the UK take the leap. Needless to say, this was politically motivated hysteria, not a sober assessment of Britain’s economic prospects outside the EU.

More recently, his endorsement of Labour’s Rachel Reeves as chancellor ahead of the UK General Election also smacked of both dubious judgement and needless political interference. Carney said in autumn 2023 that it was ‘beyond time’ her plans were put into action. Yet since Reeves’s plans were actually put into action, in her first budget in October last year, the UK economy has teetered on the brink of recession, unemployment has risen and government borrowing costs have shot up. Call it the Carney kiss of death.

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