Quotulatiousness

May 25, 2025

Comparing Japan’s supply management system to the Canadian version

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

Colby Cosh considers the fate of a Japanese government minister who accidentally told the truth about a subject near and dear to Japanese consumers’ hearts (well, stomachs, actually):

“Japanese Girls at Work in the Rice Fields – Grand Old Fuji-Yama in the Distance, Japan” by Boston Public Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

I’m sure some of you saw Wednesday’s NP headline for an Associated Press wire story: “Japan’s agriculture minister resigns after saying he ‘never had to buy rice’” AP’s Mari Yamaguchi explained this international-news nugget. A cabinet minister in a shaky minority government made a flippant comment indicating that he was light-years out of touch with ordinary people facing high grocery costs in a developed country.

Taku Eto’s political survival thus became impossible within a matter of hours, and his prime minister hastily swapped a congenial young star into the agriculture portfolio. Japan is a constitutional monarchy with a system of parliamentary government more or less like ours, so there’s nothing incomprehensible about any of this to a Canadian …

… but, of course, one almost couldn’t help flashing back to our recent election campaign, wherein the prime minister had half-boasted to a Radio-Canada reporter that he doesn’t buy his own groceries and has no earthly idea how the stuff in his fridge gets there. It struck me at the time that this was a classic mistake for an electoral neophyte like Mark Carney. Fans of the legendary American columnist Michael Kinsley will surely think of it as a “Kinsley gaffe”, i.e., an obviously true statement that is nevertheless bound to get a politician in trouble.

[…]

Eto was talking about rice because the prices for it in Japan have gone through the roof, the clouds and the stratosphere. And rice plays a role in the Japanese culture and diet for which there is no analogue in omnivorous Canada. For precisely that reason, rice is supply-managed there in much the same way our dairy, eggs and poultry are — i.e., through confiscatory tariffs on foreign products, along with a mafia of politically powerful producer cooperatives who operate under supply quotas.

If you read Canadian news, you can recite the effects of this, whether or not you’re capable of finding Japan on a map of Japan. Their supply-management system is, like ours, a major headache for counterparties in trade negotiations. Their farmers, like Canada’s, are dwindling in number and aging out of the business. They are sometimes paid to destroy crops. Farm costs for machinery and supplies are subject to inflation. And sometimes the system for domestic demand forecasting blows a tire.

It’s a constant high-wire act for Japanese governments, who still have official responsibility for the national rice supply under wartime statute. If store-shelf prices get too high, and consumers start to make trouble, the cabinet must consider loosening tariff barriers and releasing rice from the national strategic reserve. The LDP ministry has done both these things in the face of hallucinatory prices, and so the farmers are now just as ticked off as the buying public.

May 22, 2025

Trump, “the American Mussolini”, versus ever-so-democratic Mark Carney

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

In the National Post, John Robson contrasts the authoritarian dictator at the helm of the American ship of state with our peaceful, democratic, and fully accountable to the voters prime minister:

President Donald Trump greets Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney, Tuesday, May 6, 2025, at the West Wing entrance of the White House.
(Official White House Photo by Gabriel B Kotico)

It was the best of budgets, it was the worst of budgets, it was the age of restraint, it was the age of profligacy, it was the epoch of the legislature, it was the epoch of the executive, it was the season of open debate, it was the season of closed doors, it was the spring of Canada, it was the winter of America. Or possibly the other way around.

The confusion arises because as a patriotic Canadian I keep hearing how U.S. President Donald Trump is an American Mussolini who has abolished the last vestiges of the old Republic, so we should drink rye not bourbon or some other decisive action easily performed while sitting down. Yet the news media mysteriously insist that the Bad Orange Man is having trouble getting his budget through some quaint relic called the United States Congress while Green Mark Carney isn’t bothering to get his spending plans rubber-stamped by some quaint relic called the Canadian Parliament. How can it be?

Tuesday’s the Morning newsletter from the New York Times, which is no MAGA outlet, reads: “Speaker Mike Johnson has a math problem. He wants to pass a megabill before Memorial Day to deliver President Trump’s legislative agenda.” But with only three spare votes in the House, “there are way more than three G.O.P. dissenters, and they don’t agree on what the problem is. Some think the cuts to Medicaid are too large. Others think they’re too small. Some want to purge clean-energy tax breaks. Others want to preserve them because their constituents have used them.”

Likewise The Atlantic, part of the thundering herd of independent liberal American minds, says: “The struggle to pass Donald Trump’s second-term agenda in Congress has never been between Republicans and Democrats … it’s been a battle between the House and Senate GOP, between moderates and hard-liners, and, most salient, between Republicans and reality.”

Egad. What manner of rambunctious folly is this? Open debate within the Maximum Leader’s own party? Dictatorship! By contrast here in decorous Canada can someone remind me which inane or malicious measures from former prime minister Justin Trudeau were ever put at risk by the principled courage, truculence or mere pandering even of his NDP coalition non-partners, let alone the trained seals in red?

Periodically one would bark. But which ever bit? To be sure, as the Canadian Press noted on Sunday, “Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Liberal government will present a federal budget in the fall, allowing time for clarity on some key economic and fiscal issues to emerge”. But if there’s going to be a brawl, it will be inside his office, or head, with his finance minister promising to brush aside Parliament with an “economic statement” before Carney overrode him, saying the government would introduce “a much more comprehensive, effective, ambitious, prudent budget in the fall”.

May 21, 2025

Canadian voters got fooled again

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

Roxanne Halverson on Canadian voter gullibility that Mark Carney and the Liberals took full advantage of in the election campaign:

Offer not applicable in Canada, apparently.

Liberals voters on your elbows up crusade — do you feel foolish, do you feel shamed? Are you ready to admit that you were duped? That you were played like the fiddle in the Devil went down to Georgia. How does it feel to know that you fell for Mark Carney’s fear mongering fabricated crisis that made him Prime Minister. Or is your Trump Derangement Syndrome so severe that you cannot recognize how the Liberals used it and used you to win an election they didn’t deserve to win. It wouldn’t be so bad if only you had to pay the price, but unlike the phony COVID mantra, of we’re all in this together, we really are all in this nightmare together for another possible four years of Liberal rule and corruption, and we’re all going to pay the price. That includes those of us who didn’t get fooled again, but most of us are the same ones who also didn’t get fooled in the last three elections that gave the country the Liberals under Justin Trudeau for a decade of destruction.

Did you see the interview Prime Minister Mark Carney did with Sky News Australia?

You really should watch it. Because in it he admits what those of us who didn’t vote for him knew, and what he, himself also knew. There was never any real threat from Trump to annex Canada. And when pushed on it by the Sky News interviewer Samantha Washington who asks if he inflated the threat as political tool to inflame voters who hated Donald Trump, Carney dances around it saying one minute it wasn’t a threat and the next minute, well he thought it was and so did the Canadian people and well maybe he did use it to kind of stir them up. Essentially he was trying to dodge the fact that he lied and knew all along that Trump wasn’t really going to make Canada the 51st state.

So, let’s begin with the Trump threat — the existential threat to the existence of our country! According to Carney, Trump “wanted to take Canada, he wanted to break it“. But when asked by Washington about that ‘existential threat’, Carney walked it back. In his words, “No the existence is not at stake, it was more of economic crisis, and had a heavy element of national security comes with it, the extent to which we will be cooperating with others, particularly with the United States“.

Now wait a minute, Carney told voters — the elbows uppers — that Canada’s existence was at stake. And now he’s adding in a national security element? I don’t recall Trump ever saying anything about invading Canada or threatening our national security, in fact it was quite the opposite, he said the United States would always protect Canada for any foreign threat. His interest in national security had to do with Canada’s porous border and the fentanyl trade that the Liberals chose to ignore. This response is a typical Carney word salad dancing around answering the question. Something he seems to have in common with his predecessor Justin Trudeau. But at its core, he says, no Canada’s existence was never in danger.

Yet, he repeatedly told crowds at rallies that the US wanted to break us, when it was really just an economic crisis — something Canada has faced many times before, often due to bad Liberal policies.

But that’s what Mark Carney, with the help of his cartel media echo chamber, drummed into the heads of the elbows up crowd during his leadership campaign and during his entire election campaign. Trump was going to come and take our country — “he wants our resources, he wants our land, and he wants our water“.

Now here’s another word salad, walking back the ‘threat’ from Trump. When Washington asked him why he met with Trump when he was still disrespecting Canada by talking about making it the 51st state, even during their meeting in the Oval Office, which he said it, as she described it, “right to your face“. According to Carney this was ‘different’, and then he delivers another word salad because apparently, “Trump was expressing a desire … he had shifted from an expectation to a desire for that to happen. He was also coming from a place where he recognized that that wasn’t going to happen. I made it clear to him in that context.”

May 14, 2025

Carney’s new cabinet – remarkably similar to Trudeau’s cabinets

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

Prime Minister Mark Carney talked as if he was initiating a new era in Canadian politics, but when it came to nominating his first cabinet, it’s plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose with most of the same cast of incompetents, crooks, lickspittles, and fart-catchers. Justin Trudeau would feel right at home:

Prime Minister Mark Carney promised change, a new way of doing things at speeds never before seen. Yet to help him do this, he is relying on the same old, tired, incompetent ministers who got us into the mess we’re currently in.

The Liberals will trumpet the large number of new faces in Carney’s 28-member cabinet — there are 15 MPs who have never served before.

But the top tier of ministers — the ones sitting in the front row at the swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday — were all former Trudeau acolytes, cabinet ministers now committed to rescuing us from a crisis of their own making.

In the front row was Sean Fraser, our new justice minister and attorney general, and the man who, under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, was responsible for immigration and then housing, two files he spectacularly failed at. If we want to know how bad Fraser was in those jobs, we need only look to Carney’s election platform.

“The last time we faced a housing crisis at such a broad scale was after the Second World War”, read the platform. This crisis “has left younger generations facing rents, down payments and mortgage payments so high that it turned housing into a barrier to opportunity instead of a cornerstone of opportunity”.

What about Fraser’s record at immigration? According to the Liberal platform, the Trudeau government let immigration “grow at a rapid and unsustainable pace”.

In December, when Liberal fortunes were in the toilet, Fraser announced that, for family reasons, he was quitting politics. Strangely, after the party witnessed a reversal in the polls, he announced he was returning.

In Carney’s eyes, Fraser’s blundering on two key files qualifies him to become justice minister. The only thing worse than Fraser as a cabinet minister may be Carney’s judgment.

Also in the front row was Chrystia Freeland, who served as deputy prime minister and finance minister under Trudeau and is now returning to cabinet as minister of transportation and internal trade.

Freeland’s record is best summed up, again, by the Liberal platform: “Business investment in Canada has dropped from 14 per cent of GDP in 2014 to 11 per cent in 2024, undermining long-term economic growth”.

Meanwhile, long-time Trudeau lieutenant Mélanie Joly, whose reign at foreign affairs was about as successful as Fraser was at housing and immigration, moves to industry.

Well, if we’re stuck with Carney’s retreads, at least we can laugh about ’em. Through the tears:

Noah has some faint praise for the new minister of National Defence and the new Secretary of State for Defence Procurement:

Welp it’s official. Bill Blair is out.

I cant say that it’s overly shocking. I don’t think anyone truly expected Blair to be MND by the end of today. While I will give Blair some credit for holding the fort, most of you already know I wasn’t his biggest fan.

He was a great placeholder who was able to smoothly roll out the plans left to him. He also did have several good public showings, such as his efforts in Korea last year. I will give credit where it is due.

However, he was also uninspiring, too passive in his role, and while I have no doubt he took it seriously, was never going to be a great long-term option. He had long overstayed his welcome […] Now he’s out completely from cabinet and in his place we have not one but two new ministers on the defence profile!

David McGuinty, best known for his eight-year stint as Chair of the National Security and Intelligence Committee has taken the reigns as the new Minister of National Defence While Kelowna MP and veteran Stephen Fuhr will take on a new role as Secretary of State for Defence Procurement.

In this role Fuhr will work under McGuinty specifically to tackle the file of Defence Procurement ahead of the establishment of the DPA. He is one of eight new secretaries of state that will operate on a “junior” level in cabinet.

Now McGuinty wouldn’t have been my first pick. I will openly admit that, but it is hard [not] to argue that he is the most prepared for the role, and likely the best we have available.

McGuinty previously held the NSICOP chair from 2017 all the way until December when he was appointed Minister of Public Safety. He has a background in International Development before becoming a parliamentarian, including stints with UNICEF.

He isn’t coming into this without a background on the current security climate we’re facing. He certainly can’t be said to be ill-prepared to take the role at a time when CAF and the DND are at one of their most pivotal moments in restructuring.

May 6, 2025

If “a trade imbalance constitutes an American ‘subsidy’ justifying annexation of that country, then the US is going to have to annex most of the planet”

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

Despite getting his preferred choice elected as Canadian Prime Minister, US President Donald Trump still seems determined to troll Canadians about becoming the “51st state”. Among his shifting set of justifications for this is the trade imbalance between the US and Canada, which Trump chooses to interpet as a “huge” subsidy the US is providing to Canada. On that basis, there are going to have to be a lot more US states in the future:

So now we have serious commentators gaming out the pros and cons of war with Canada. What started out as a mildly amusing bit of presidential “trolling” is now being discussed as next year’s Donbass.

If, for the purposes of argument, one accepts the President’s line that a trade imbalance constitutes an American “subsidy” justifying annexation of that country, then the US is going to have to annex most of the planet: last year Washington had a one-and-a-quarter trillion-dollar imbalance with the world. It’s not hard to figure out why: over recent decades the uniparty turned a country that used to make things into a crappy low-wage service economy. […] The US now has trade imbalances with — or “subsidies” of — not only the countries that you’d expect (China, Mexico, Germany, Japan, India) but a lot of ones you wouldn’t (Finland, Algeria).

True, Canada is closer than Algeria, so there are national-security implications for Washington: the country and its politicians (Trudeau, Carney) have been entirely hollowed out by Peking, but then so it goes south of the border (Biden, McConnell). And Trump’s plan for a “fifty-first state” will not solve that problem.

The “fifty-first state” shtick can’t ever have been serious, can it? Geographically, the fifty-first state would be bigger than the other fifty combined, and with a bigger population than California’s. Last time they added stars to the flag, both parties got something out of it: the GOP Alaska and the Dems Hawaii. So wouldn’t it make more sense to make Canada’s ten provinces and three territories a baker’s dozen of new American states with a couple of senators apiece? Yeah, sure – if you want Republicans never to win a national election again.

So, aside from last week’s vote, how is the other side reacting? Last Thursday’s print edition of The Spectator contained a curiously phrased squib from my old editor, Charles Moore:

    The President may be only hazily aware that the King, of whom, he says, he has the “honour to be a friend”, is also King of Canada. If, as seems likely, the King follows his mother’s twice-used precedent and opens the new Canadian parliament in person, Trump may come to see that his next-door neighbour is part of a long-standing, legitimate order which Canadian voters are happy to endorse.

Let’s just run that again:

    If, as seems likely, the King follows his mother’s twice-used precedent and opens the new Canadian parliament in person …

The last time his mother opened Parliament in Ottawa was in 1977 — her Silver Jubilee year. Trudeau-wise, Justin’s father Pierre was not keen on it, but didn’t feel he could pick and win a fight with the Palace over it. A quarter-century later, Trudeau’s successor Jean Chrétien, a towering colossus of micro-pettiness, was annoyed at being given a crappy seat at the Queen Mum’s funeral and so scuttled Her Majesty’s Golden Jubilee throne speech.

So why would Charles Moore think it “likely” that the King would be opening Parliament in Ottawa later this month? If, as it was in my day, Speccie columns for Thursday’s magazine have to be filed on Tuesday, that would make Moore the first guy in either the Canadian or UK media to know what was not revealed to the world until Friday […]

The King has travelled far less in the first three years of his reign than his mother did: shortly after her Coronation, the Queen set off on a tour of parts of the Commonwealth that kept her away from London for six months. Her son can’t do that because he’s very sick with cancer. So it’s quite something that he’ll land in Ottawa on Monday May 26th, deliver the throne speech the following day, and then fly out again. Carney wouldn’t be doing this if he weren’t going to take the opportunity to put his view of Canadian sovereignty into the Sovereign’s mouth.

So, if Trump really has the “honour to be a friend” of the King, the only point of this 24-hour flying visit is so His Majesty can send the message that friends don’t let friends threaten to steal each other’s countries. In fact, he has made a point of referring to himself as “King of Canada” quite a bit of late. […] The “King of Canada” bit was done at the instigation of Carney. Which is odd. Especially from a party that has spent half-a-century diminishing and degrading the Crown, and for a monarch who is, unlike his mother, largely unloved and unloveable. Yet Carney seems belatedly to have come around to the old-school monarchist view that, without the Sovereign, there is insufficient to distinguish Canada from its domineering southern neighbour — especially when that neighbour keeps talking about taking it. On the other hand, both the King and his Canadian prime minister are bigtime players at the World Economic Forum, so they’re not the most obvious choice for defenders of national sovereignty. On the other other hand, it’s one thing to surrender it to fellow globalists, quite another to surrender it to Donald Trump.

I have no idea where this is headed, and if anyone can enlighten me I’d be happy to hear it. But Trump has doubled down on it, and Carney is playing the King card to oppose it. As longtime readers know, I have a general preference for smaller nations as happier homes for their people. If Alberta or Quebec voted to secede, why would you take the trouble to do that just to become a minor and inconsequential part of another big country?

But, that aside, why would it be in America’s interest to absorb a hostile population of mostly lefties over a vast and unpoliceable landmass? The history of the last thirty years is that China has shown there are subtler ways of taking over the world without firing a shot, while America has persisted in doing it the old-fashioned way and, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and elsewhere, has gotten nowhere. Why add Canada to the list?

May 5, 2025

Post-election Bullshit Bulletin from The Line

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

Last week’s federal election has left us in the weird, unresolved situation of being not significantly different than the situation before the writ dropped. We still have a Liberal minority government, probably supported by the rump of the NDP caucus (minus Jagmeet Singh) and a reliable vote from the Green MP, which is enough to pass at least an initial confidence vote in the Commons. Before The Line‘s editors put the Bullshit Bulletin back into mothballs, we get a useful wrap-up post:

Pierre and Ana Poilievre at a Conservative leadership rally, 21 April, 2022.
Photo by Wikipageedittor099 via Wikimedia Commons.

We want to now offer some advice to Pierre Poilievre: grow up.

Seriously. Because not calling your opponent to congratulate him is bullshit.

We don’t mean Mark Carney! We do think Poilievre should call Carney and offer congratulations and also test the waters to see what extent, if any, there is room for cooperation. We aren’t naive idealists. We know neither man is going to want to hop into the sack — politically speaking — with the other. But there are still norms in a democracy, and they should be observed. Poilievre did congratulate Carney in his remarks on election night, and did so with professionalism and grace, and that’s good.

But we’re actually talking about Bruce Fanjoy, the newly elected Liberal MP for Carleton, the riding that had been held for many years by … Pierre Poilievre. Fanjoy defeated Poilievre on Monday, and by a decisive margin. In an interview with NewsTalk 1010 in Toronto, Fanjoy said that he hadn’t received a call from Poilievre to congratulate him. Calls to the winners of a riding race by the opponents in that riding are routine. Fanjoy doesn’t seem much fazed by the lack of a call, but still. It’s not a great look.

Indeed, we might go so far as to say that not making a call will be seen as confirmation in the eyes of some voters of what they already thought about Poilievre. We aren’t the first to note that the Conservative leader is polarizing and has high “negatives” — Canadians tell pollsters that they dislike him. We understand that congratulating the guy that beat you must be like pulling your own teeth out. We also think we have a good enough read on Poilievre’s personality to know why this is particularly difficult for him.

Too bad. A would-be national leader is expected to sometimes do unpleasant things. And we’re calling about a two-minute phone call here, not making a decision to send troops into battle (some of whom will die) or a decision that will alter the trajectory of our national history.

Make the call, offer congratulations, wish him well, offer any cooperation you can, and get it over with. And if you don’t, Canadians will be right to call bullshit on that.

In the latest SHuSH newsletter, Ken Whyte notes the oddly incurious attitude of the Canadian mainstream media toward the man who became Trudeau’s successor as PM and leader of the Liberal Party:

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.

Mark Carney became prime minister of Canada in March without our media delivering a single meaningful profile of him.

There was a time, only recently ended, when every party leader and most prospective party leaders (and most senior cabinet ministers and chiefs of staff) were subjected to scrutiny the moment they were deemed serious players. A reporter, usually a high-ranking feature artist, would be assigned by Maclean’s, Saturday Night, Report on Business, The Walrus, The Globe & Mail, The National Post, a CBC documentary desk, or any number of other outlets, to dig into the person’s past, read everything on the record, speak to friends and enemies and knowledgeable observers, weigh all the evidence and craft a narrative to give readers (or audiences) a sense of what made the person tick, and some idea of how to think about him or her in relation to public office. At their best, these profiles would provide a welcome counterpoint to how political actors chose to define themselves and how they were defined by their opponents. They were an arbiter of sorts, a first draft of history depended upon by participants in the political process, other media, and the informed public.

No one bothered to profile Carney, even though his advent in our politics had been rumoured for years. It was as though the press gallery in Ottawa assumed he was a known quantity because he’d shown up at the Politics & The Pen Gala for several years in his capacity as governor of the Bank of Canada.

Carney was not only sworn in as prime minister without sustained scrutiny, he made it all the way to the last week of a national campaign before the Globe landed what read like a well-intentioned but hastily assembled and not terribly revealing profile of him. Also in the last week, The Logic, a very good upstart business news site, produced a better one, but for a relatively tiny audience behind an expensive paywall.

Thinking and reporting in depth about the careers and characters of our leaders is perhaps the most important thing that journalists do. Yet Carney’s experience is not unique. If you want to know anything about our last two prime ministers, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, you won’t find much in newspapers, magazines, or documentaries. You’ll need to read the books about them: Stephen Harper by John Ibbitson, Right Side Up and The Longer I’m Prime Minister by Paul Wells, Party of One by Michael Harris; Trudeau by John Ivison, Promise and Peril by Aaron Wherry, The Prince by Stephen Maher, Justin Trudeau on the Ropes by Paul Wells. There is a whole other shelf of aggressively critical takes on the two leaders which offer valuable insights amid their axe-grinding: Tom McMillan’s Not My Party (Harper), Mel Hurtig’s The Arrogant Autocrat (Harper), Brooke Jeffrey’s Dismantling Canada (Harper), Mark Bourrie’s Kill The Messengers (Harper), Yves Engler’s The Ugly Canadian (Harper), Ezra Levant’s Libranos (Trudeau), Candice Malcolm’s Losing True North (Trudeau). Additionally, there are books by the leaders themselves, Harper’s Right Here, Right Now, and Trudeau’s Common Ground, and a range of others written about particular issues or by other participants in their governments.

The past year has brought a wealth of books on our political leadership. Justin Trudeau on the Ropes (Sutherland House) and The Prince (Simon & Schuster) chronicled the last days of Trudeau’s prime ministership. Catherine Tsalikis’s Chrystia (House of Anansi) profiled the woman who ultimately brought him down. Andrew Lawton’s Pierre Poilievre (Sutherland House) and Mark Bourrie’s Ripper (Biblioasis) treated the Conservative leader who sought to replace him. Carney, seemingly intent on dominating the conversation about himself, was ready with another book this spring. The election delayed it until summer.

May 3, 2025

Carney sets his agenda

Filed under: Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

On his Substack, Paul Wells says that newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney had a good opening press conference on Friday morning:

Mark Carney at the National Press Theatre, 2 May, 2025.
Photo By Paul Wells via his Substack

The first news conference is the easiest, because armies of public servants have been working on deliverables for weeks, and because little has had time to go wrong yet. Even by that congenial standard, Mark Carney had a good morning.

He began by noting something few of us had: that there was no serious organized attempt to reject Monday’s election result. “The leader of every party quickly and graciously accepted the results. At a time when democracies around the world are under threat, Canadians can be proud that ours remains strong.”

Canadians want “big changes quickly”. He promised to work “relentlessly” to deliver. He is “committed to working with others, governing as a team in cabinet and caucus … working in real partnership with provinces, territories, and Indigenous people and bringing together labour, business, and civil society”. Everyone always promises to work with the provinces, at first. He seemed to have something specific in mind. “In the coming weeks, I will unveil more of our plans to engage with Canadians as we embark on the biggest transformation of our economy since the end of the Second World War.”

There’ll be a new cabinet in 10 days. A return to Parliament on May 27. The King will read the Throne Speech. Before any of that, Carney will meet Donald Trump in Washington next Tuesday. He’ll remove “federal barriers to internal trade” by July 1. He’ll “identify projects that are in the national interest, projects that will connect Canada, deepen our ties with the world, and grow our economy for generations”. He’ll build a lot of houses. He’ll hire more border-services agents and muster “dog teams, drones and scanners to fight the traffic in guns and drugs”. He’ll “make bail harder to get for those charged with stealing cars, home invasion, human trafficking, and smuggling”.

There was more but you get the gist. Time for questions! What’s he expecting from his Washington trip? “Quite a comprehensive set of meetings,” mostly on tariffs. Does he expect a better reception than Volodomyr Zelensky got? “Look, I go there with the expectation of constructive — difficult but constructive — discussions.”

How’s he going to make Parliament work, with less than a majority? He offered no details at first, except to point out that the Liberals won more votes on Monday than any party ever has, and that it won seats in every province and a majority of the seats in seven provinces. He said he’s already spoken to Yves-François Blanchet and Pierre Poilievre. Speaking of Poilievre, there’ll be a by-election for the currently discomfited Conservative leader “as soon as possible … No games. Nothing. Straight.” Is the prime minister a subscriber? I don’t divulge such things.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the PM found a way to include the King in his agenda, but JJ is quite right here:

May 2, 2025

Trump’s victory lap after getting his preferred PM elected in Canada

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

In the National Post, Tristin Hopper rounds up American reactions to the Liberal victory in the Monday election, as many Americans seem to agree that Carney’s win was at least partly their doing:

As the U.S. awoke to a renewed Liberal government on their northern border, Americans of all political persuasions embraced the view that they — for better or worse — had caused it.

“Carney owes his job to President Donald Trump,” was the Tuesday view of the Washington Post editorial board, declaring that the U.S. president had singlehandedly thwarted the election of a populist Conservative government in Canada.

The Centre for American Progress Action Fund — a left-wing Washington, D.C.-based think tank — framed Carney’s win as a model for how anti-Trump rhetoric can win elections.

“Prime Minister Carney’s success demonstrates that resistance to President Trump’s bullying has mass popular appeal,” read a statement.

Actor Billy Baldwin, a perennial backer of progressive causes, cheered Carney’s victory with a viral social media post declaring “Trump singlehandedly delivers the election for the liberals in Canada with his 51st state bullsh-t.”

Even Rolling Stone, which put Justin Trudeau on the magazine’s cover in 2017, opined that Canada’s newest Liberal government was effectively a Trump creation. “Donald Trump single-handedly elected a new Canadian Liberal Government that was down 25 points in January with his endless ’51st State’ bloviation,” wrote the publication.

Conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro broke down the Canadian election in an extended segment on his Tuesday show, framing it as a direct failure of Trump’s foreign policy.

“Let’s be real about this; the rhetorical attacks on Canada have not actually resulted in a net good for the United States,” said Shapiro. A perennial critic of Trump’s tariff policy, Shapiro said that the White House’s habit of “yelling at Canada” had helped install a “far left-leaning internationalist” hostile to U.S. interests.

“All of this started off as a joke, and I think President Trump is so committed to the bit at this point that he couldn’t get off the train,” said Shapiro, in reference to Trump’s repeated pledges to turn Canada into the “51st state”.

A Republican consultant quoted anonymously by Politico on Tuesday was of a similar view, saying the outcome in Canada was a “pretty specific result based on the tariffs and 51st state trolling.”

On his Substack, Paul Wells offers some advice to Mark Carney about his dealings with Pierre Poilievre at this awkward time for the Conservative leader:

Stornoway in the Rockcliffe Park area of Ottawa, Ontario. It has been the official residence of the leader of the Official Opposition in Parliament since 1950.

One danger for Mark Carney is that he will be taught how to be a terrible politician by terrible politicians. A low-stakes test case is at hand. In this as in all things, a decent guiding principle should be: Don’t be like your opponent, and don’t be like your predecessor.

The test at hand is the uncomfortable predicament of Pierre Poilievre, who used to be a Member of Parliament and may want to be one again. In the meantime he is still the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Poilievre lost his seat in Carleton on Monday night. This is not entirely his fault. Liberal campaign teams from neighbouring ridings were invited to spend part of their time door-knocking in Poilievre’s riding. But candidates should try to win even when their opponents work hard to defeat them. I bet this thought has occurred to Poilievre since Monday.

The usual route to the Commons, for a leader who is not yet an MP, is to run in a by-election. Often new leaders find a sitting MP somewhere to vacate their seat and enable a by-election. Brian Mulroney ran in Central Nova in 1983, Jean Chrétien in Beauséjour in New Brunswick in 1990, Stephen Harper in Calgary Southwest in 2002.

Assume Poilievre can find some Conservative MP-elect willing to abandon a seat they just won so Poilievre can try his chance (again). How should Carney react?

It’s really a question in three parts. Should a by-election be held quickly or much later? Should the Liberals run a candidate? Should the Poilievre family keep living at Stornoway, the Opposition leader’s official residence, in the meantime?

I’m hearing from a lot of people who say Carney should wait as long as the law permits — up to a half year after a seat opens — before calling the by-election; that the Liberals should definitely run a candidate; and that Poilievre and his family should be evicted from their current fancy abode.

I spent part of Wednesday debating these questions with readers on Substack Notes. Most of the people offering this advice — let him twist, then hit him hard — pointed out that if Poilievre had a say about an adversary’s career plans, he would do everything in his power to make that adversary hurt.

I think it’s bad advice. It manages to be bad tactics and bad for the soul. The two considerations don’t always line up, but here they do.

Carney should call a by-election as soon as possible after a sitting MP resigns — 11 days after the notice of vacancy is received, the minimum permitted in law. If asked, he should prefer that the Poilievre family stay at Stornoway in the meantime. And while the third question is less clear, I’d argue that the Liberals should refrain from running a candidate in the by-election.

This plan would have Poilievre back in the Commons as soon as possible, with minimal risk and discomfort. He’ll be lucky to receive such generous treatment and, while I’m less confident than ever that I know how he thinks, what he should feel is gratitude. I suspect the feeling would confuse him.

April 29, 2025

Canadian federal election result

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

April 23, 2025

“Liberals have never met a crisis they didn’t think they could spend their way out of”

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

Jesse Kline refutes Mark Carney’s recent diss against libertarians:

The Liberal Boomer in his natural state (spotted on social media, 20 April, 2025).

“The capacity of the federal government to invest in the economy, to support businesses and individuals, will ensure that we bounce back strongly.”

That was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing an $82-billion support package at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it could just as easily have been Carney, who said over the weekend that, “In a crisis … government needs to step up.”

At a Saturday news conference, the Liberal leader unveiled his party’s election platform, which includes $130 billion in new spending over four years to fend off the threats posed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“It’s said there are no atheists in foxholes, there should be no libertarians in a crisis,” Carney argued to justify the continued spending spree.

This offends me as both a libertarian and an atheist. In fact, Canada would be in much better shape today if there were a few libertarians in the room when the Liberals were dealing with the numerous emergencies they’ve faced over the past decade.

The problem with crises is that there’s no way to predict when the next one will hit. But a prudent government should expect the unexpected and leave some fiscal room in the budget to address unforeseen events, while working to fortify the economy during good times so it can withstand the bad. This is not what the Liberals have done.

They took a $1.9-billion surplus in the 2014-15 fiscal year and turned it into a $25-billion deficit in 2016-17.

[…]

And so, we got more Big Government programs that we could ill afford, while Trudeau turned away world leaders looking to Canada to help solve an energy crisis resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Now, as Carney prepares to launch another massive spending spree to deal with the effects of U.S. tariffs, he’s pledging hundreds of millions of dollars for unnecessary programs, including permanent funding for the Sexual and Reproductive Health Fund to make it easier to abort babies, and $400 million for IVF treatments to create new ones in a test tube.

Needless to say that if there were some libertarians around the cabinet table during the crises of the past 10 years, we likely wouldn’t be facing a major economic upheaval with a $40-billion budget deficit, which Carney wants to increase to $62 billion, and a national debt approaching $1.26 trillion.

Spending always appeals to the voters at election time, and the Liberals have been past masters of using that to get into power. But even though there may be a lot of ruin in a nation, even the biggest of nations eventually runs out of money. According to a report from Policy Horizons Canada, an in-house government think tank, we’re well on the way to reaching that ruin and nobody will like what that looks like:

The report warns that by 2040, housing affordability is essentially limited to the wealthy or those with family help; most new homeowners get help from family, some depend on intergenerational mortgages and have several generations of family living together, and others enter “alternative” household mortgages with friends, with a growing percentage of homeowners also owning rental properties.

“Inequality between those who rent and those who own has become a key driver of social, economic, and political conflict,” reads the report.

Moreover, the report highlights a growing dependence on intergenerational wealth, noting that by 2040, inheritance is widely seen as the only reliable path to prosperity. “Society increasingly resembles an aristocracy,” it states, as family background — particularly property ownership — becomes the defining factor in determining one’s opportunities.

Canadians in this future rarely mix with others of different socio-economic status, and there is a clear disconnect between the aspirations of the country’s youth and economic realities, which leaves most with limited expectations of success.

And finally, the rapid propagation of artificial intelligence has dramatically reshaped the labour market. By 2040, the rise of artificial intelligence will have significantly diminished the availability of jobs in creative and knowledge-based professions, once seen as stable paths to upward mobility.

[…]

As a result of the six factors, Canada’s economy could shrink or become less predictable, with the consumer economy shrinking in size, and a higher proportion of very wealthy, older people holding the capital capacity for investment in new businesses. Labour unions could also grow in power and size from a frustrated population. The mental health of Canadians could suffer from living cost challenges.

With these upward mobility issues, Canada may become a less attractive destination for immigrants, and there could be an exodus of young workers, which would exacerbate the issues with supporting the public and social services that support the country’s growing cohort of seniors. This could also result in a labour shortage in industries where artificial intelligence is most difficult.

Perhaps most dystopian is a partial reversion of Canadian society to a trade-and-barter and neo-hunter-gatherer society by 2040, in response to declining trust in formal systems and reduced access to traditional economic opportunities.

[…]

The report’s vision of a future Canada — where trust in institutions collapses, effort no longer yields reward, and people yearn for systemic change — carries echoes of that dangerous historical crossroads, where ideological extremes once flourished in the face of prolonged despair.

With all that said, how likely is this precarious scenario of Canadian society in just 15 years from 2025?

According to Policy Horizons Canada, its “research suggests that it is plausible and would create challenges across a range of policy areas.”

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.

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