Sure, the Greens were, rightly, dropped for not having enough candidates nationwide but that begs the question: “Why on Earth is the Bloq permitted to participate in the debates?”. It only has candidates in one province!
I'm sorry that the Greens were kicked out because I like hearing what they have to say. Same with the BQ. Don't forget that It wasn't that long ago that the Bloq were the official opposition. That situation could arise again. Plus there's a refreshing freedom to hear from a leader who knows he has no chance of becoming P.M. Blanchett's comment on building a trans National pipeline was priceless. Pointed out that Trump will be long gone before that project is even near completion. Add to that the growth and reduced price of alternative energy that line probably won't ever be needed. I love hearing in his charming accent that "You are all living in a fairytale."
Just put party affiliation of the panel members in parentheses beside their names - you expect me to remember this shit over the course of 4,000 words, let alone across columns?
And full names each time, please. You got some guy talking to "Amanda" in his response or whatever. Who the hell is Amanda? And which party is she?
To the plastic straw lovers: are you actually, in 2025, with the oceans choked with plastic refuse, with the streets of my neighborhood littered with plastic bottles and bags and coffee cup lids, with our bodies harboring micro-plastics like some mysterious unexploded bomb, are you actually and for real advocating for more plastic in the world? Your selfishness and short sightedness is astounding. The fact that Mr. Poilievre is in all seriousness advocating for this is a sad reflection of how little many in this country really care about the health of our planet and the health and futures of our children.
This is a bit away from the topic, but there is a chance my straw could end up in the ocean: if I recycled it. Canada recycles 7% of its plastic. If I had to guess, that is almost entirely from industrial producers who use a single type of plastic. The only household recycling would then be in those sea-cans that we ship to Asia, where it in fact could be dumped in the ocean.
Putting plastic in with household garbage does ensure that it ends up in landfill. I'd love to hear from anybody who knows the business, though.
My understanding is that other than aluminum cans which can easily be melted down, and some glass bottles which can be rinsed and re-used, the majority of recycling in this country (and just about everywhere) is fictional. We are sorting goods to be sent to Asia to be burned where doing so doesn't count as our carbon production. You tell people this and it doesn't even register.
I wish Poilievre had gone after the increasing plastic packaging of things, especially the tough hard plastic that nearly requires a machete to cut through it.
"cue the standard Liberal soliloquy about charter rights for criminals, which teed up a tidy little mic-drop moment for Poilievre: he’s here for victims and their families. Point scored.".
That is only a win for people who are emotional and uninformed. It's especially abhorrent promising to use the Notwithstanding clause to make it happen. Everyone, myself included, it gets upset when we hear of a horrible crime and our first reaction is to want that person to be flayed alive or something like that. That's not how Corrections work. And a my Life sentence does mean life. Even if you get parole your parole is never over.
The second Point has to do with Pierre's Trump problem. The idea that PP cares about families seems like a good one but did you see Trump's tweet where he countered the image of the Democratic senator meeting with the wrongly imprisoned guy and El Salvador with a picture of a woman who's child was killed by somebody entirely unrelated. Trump was making the exact same point - that he cares about the victims and the Liberals/Democrats care about perpetrators. PP's campaign logic is that if it works in the US for Republicans then it will work for the Conservatives here. At this point the CPC should just call themselves the Canadian Republican party.
The Charter didn't come down from Heaven on golden tablets and the Supreme Court of Canada justices are not impartial and infallible demi-gods. The notwithstanding clause exists to return supremacy to Parliament and therefore to the people, over judges whose concerns often tend toward philosophical/theoretical navel-gazing and 5-part tests they invented to justify their own opinions.
If the people decide that we shouldn't re-victimize victims' families every 5 years after the first 25 attending parole hearings for a multiple murderer who we all know isn't getting out anyway, 9 mostly-Liberal-appointees dressed as Santa Claus shouldn't get to say otherwise.
Likewise, if our judges are under-sentencing lesser but still serious offenders, which appears to be the case, we will have to resort to mandatory minimums even though it could result in possible injustice in certain cases. The present situation results in injustice for the public.
The notwithstanding clause exists to return supremacy to Parliament and therefore to the people, over judges whose concerns often tend toward
END QUOTE
Surely such a statement is a huge indulgence in pie-in-the-sky thinking?
Who here among us really believes that our “Leninism-in-all-but-name” party politics ensure that Parliament’s will actually represents democratic process?
You do know that the executive authority of the Government of Canada, in the form of all-powerful prime ministers, has almost entirely swamped Parliament’s ability to shape/debate/effectively push back against what “they” (the PM and his closest advisors) want at any given moment?
And that all the “democratization” of leadership contests within parties has subverted older forms of leadership selection that enabled powerful members of the main parties to more credibly hold party leaders to account?
In such a context, the Notwithstanding Clause merely enhances the near-authoritarian grip on power exercised by successive Liberal and Conservative Party prime ministers (and their equally self-aggrandizing provincial counterparts).
You can't complain about all-powerful Prime Ministers and still support idea that the SCoC judges they appoint are independent. The judges, and the senators for that matter, are appointed to support the present PM and then to act as roadblocks for any future PM from another party.
So, you see no problem with allowing our governments to make use of the Notwithstanding Clause, despite how flawed they presently are (because of the concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s hand and the subjugation by the PMO of all other elected officials)?
You seem to forget that there is no way to use the notwithstanding clause quietly.
The whole point of this clause is that politicians must stick their necks out to utilise this power, and even then, their "overruling" of the Courts has a time limit, and the action must be taken again at regular intervals - in between which, presumably an election will happen.
Ultimately, this puts the VOTER in charge.
If a politician has staked themselves to a particular action which relies upon the notwithstanding clause, the voters will have an opportunity to correct that action by hurling them from office. Its not a perfect system, but it does have accountability built in.
We elect politicians to lead us. We do NOT elect judges.
...and it is politicians who are tasked with writing the law - judges are supposed to interpret the law, NOT make it.
Sometimes (not always) we need to let the people we elected to lead us call the tune.
The point of my original post was to underscore the serious problem caused by what I depicted as the "Leninism" that currently dominates the two main political parties.
Why do I worry about the use of the Notwithstanding Clause in this context?
Essentially, the concern is that the use of the Notwithstanding Clause can lead to much social damage that cannot be easily undone, even if, as you assume, that most voters will remain exercised enough about a given government's abuse of the clause when the next round of federal elections come up.
Of course I do. I believe our candidates should be selected by the riding associations (or EDAs, if you prefer) so they are not beholden to the PM.
But the concentration of power in the PMO and the need for the Notwithstanding Clause are two sides of the same coin. The PMO makes the laws and appoints the judges that review the laws.
A sitting PM who has 5 SCoC judges onside only has to worry about abjectly illegal legislation. Those same 5 judges can block any legislation passed by a subsequent PM.
I wish I could remember the name of the precedent, but it involved the illegal discharge of a firearm. The SCoC ruled that it was OK, because a pellet gun is also a firearm, and discharging it in those circumstances was unlikely to cause injury or death. Is that a valid decision?
The PMO may appoint the judges, but it is in the proposal and passing of legislation where our political system is more often abused. Canada's parliament is historically unlikely to reject rather than pass bad legislation coming from the executive, given the intense party discipline. In Poilievre's case, his credibility in invoking the Notwithstanding Clause is affected by the fact that he voted in favour of 100+ motions of time allocation under the Harper government. In English Canada the politicians pushing most for use of the Notwithstanding Clause tend to be aggressive advocates of executive power who have no interest in any pro-legislature democratic reforms.
Victims do not need to be - or should not be - involved in parole hearings. Their grievances are absolutely relevant to decisions made in original sentencing, but not relevant to whether an offender remains an ongoing risk to society after a certain amount of time served.
I had a good chuckle that our NDP friend thinks 10 per day daycare was actually delivered. Just because it exists and a scratch of people have it, isn't the same thing. It was a nonsense promise that was never developed and is not delivered in any impactful way to the country at large.
Thank you for this penultimate round of elections analysis from the panel. I have but one bone to pick, and it was with a comment made by Kim Wright, who among other things, stated the following:
QUOTE
I hate having a discussion about who is media. A couple of weeks ago, Pierre called a reporter a protester. Other times it’s about whether bloggers/Substackers and/or podcasters are real media. Stop it, everyone. This all feeds into bullshit narratives that ultimately harm democracy.
END QUOTE
In my view, this perspective elides a very big issue—the election debates commission decision to allow Rebel News and other third party lobbyists to maintain the pretence that they are bonafide journalists.
Let us be right clear. They are not journalists.
What they are is partisans who each have very clear and well-understood political agendas at play. But, yes indeed, they are happy to mislead people by misrepresenting themselves as journalists who are “simply trying to get to the truth”.
Such biased actors should not be allowed to occupy the same stage as accredited journalists.
Third parties are groups that seek to influence elections but aren’t parties or candidates, and they’re required to register to run ads.
Rebel News and other right-wing media outlets dominated the question-and-answer sessions with federal party leaders after Wednesday’s French-language leaders’ debate.
The point in all this is that the credibility of accredited journalists can be verified by their affiliation with / respect for internationally recognized standards.
Rebel News and the other agencies that were erroneously admitted by the Debates Commission do NOT meet this standard, both because they have acknowledged their partisan political affiliation and because of the methods and tactics they adopt to advance their agendas.
4. The journalist shall use only fair methods to obtain information, images, documents and data and he/she will always report his/her status as a journalist and will refrain from using hidden recordings of images and sounds, except where it is impossible for him/her to collect information that is overwhelmingly in the public interest. He/she will demand free access to all sources of information and the right to freely investigate all facts of public interest.
[abridged]
14. The journalist will not undertake any activity or engagement likely to put his/her independence in danger. He/she will, however, respect the methods of collection/dissemination of information that he / she has freely accepted, such as "off the record", anonymity, or embargo, provided that these commitments are clear and unquestionable.
I didn't know much about this Jamie guy, but this helped me form an opinion of him. I now think he's a total asshole. "I will give him props on two fronts: first, I did respect him going at Patrice Roy on health care — it's a big issue and it could have gotten some airtime (though I feel the same about national defence!); and second, I thought Jagmeet was the best by far in telling some of the “independent media” to go fuck themselves and the horse they rode in on at the scrums."
And she spread disinformation assuring Canadians that there really are human remains of Indigenous children found at Indian Residential Schools right across Canada (not one, even after 4 years of stating this claim as if true), who then claimed (had the audacity) it was Rebel News that was spreading 'misinformation' by asking a related question about the nearly 200 churches damaged and destroyed (a youth in the Kehewin Cree church fire is the ONLY conviction). Why has so many from Canada's second tier press simply want to be in agreement with NYTimes and help flagellate the country after Canada's federal parliament responded by unanimously self-voting Canada to be a genocidal state... based on a lie? Where's the accountability?
It's not just Barton; it's every single person who has gone along with and excused this lie. It's every 'journalist', every media outlet, every talking head, every teacher, and every institutional authority who has gone along unquestioningly with this scaffold of lies that has undermined national unity, forever altered a shared history, and yielded a justification to transfer vast sums of public wealth to those with Indigenous ancestry without any means to measure tangible nation-building results. Believing this lie because we're told to is as unethical as it is irresponsible and plays its important role smearing those who built this wealth while and excusing those who wish to squander it.
The question asked of Singh was met with a refusal to answer it. In a liberal democracy, this position is intolerable from a 'public' servant and execrable behaviour from those in the fourth estate who castigate the questioner. Shame on you.
Sure, the Greens were, rightly, dropped for not having enough candidates nationwide but that begs the question: “Why on Earth is the Bloq permitted to participate in the debates?”. It only has candidates in one province!
I'm sorry that the Greens were kicked out because I like hearing what they have to say. Same with the BQ. Don't forget that It wasn't that long ago that the Bloq were the official opposition. That situation could arise again. Plus there's a refreshing freedom to hear from a leader who knows he has no chance of becoming P.M. Blanchett's comment on building a trans National pipeline was priceless. Pointed out that Trump will be long gone before that project is even near completion. Add to that the growth and reduced price of alternative energy that line probably won't ever be needed. I love hearing in his charming accent that "You are all living in a fairytale."
Just put party affiliation of the panel members in parentheses beside their names - you expect me to remember this shit over the course of 4,000 words, let alone across columns?
And full names each time, please. You got some guy talking to "Amanda" in his response or whatever. Who the hell is Amanda? And which party is she?
Man, do you guys even ADHD?
To the plastic straw lovers: are you actually, in 2025, with the oceans choked with plastic refuse, with the streets of my neighborhood littered with plastic bottles and bags and coffee cup lids, with our bodies harboring micro-plastics like some mysterious unexploded bomb, are you actually and for real advocating for more plastic in the world? Your selfishness and short sightedness is astounding. The fact that Mr. Poilievre is in all seriousness advocating for this is a sad reflection of how little many in this country really care about the health of our planet and the health and futures of our children.
My plastic straws would end up in landfill. Just like yours.
I haven't used a plastic straw in many years. I choose to sip my beverage straight out of the glass, just as people have done for hundreds of years.
This is a bit away from the topic, but there is a chance my straw could end up in the ocean: if I recycled it. Canada recycles 7% of its plastic. If I had to guess, that is almost entirely from industrial producers who use a single type of plastic. The only household recycling would then be in those sea-cans that we ship to Asia, where it in fact could be dumped in the ocean.
Putting plastic in with household garbage does ensure that it ends up in landfill. I'd love to hear from anybody who knows the business, though.
My understanding is that other than aluminum cans which can easily be melted down, and some glass bottles which can be rinsed and re-used, the majority of recycling in this country (and just about everywhere) is fictional. We are sorting goods to be sent to Asia to be burned where doing so doesn't count as our carbon production. You tell people this and it doesn't even register.
It is worse than I thought. Thank you, though.
I wish Poilievre had gone after the increasing plastic packaging of things, especially the tough hard plastic that nearly requires a machete to cut through it.
"cue the standard Liberal soliloquy about charter rights for criminals, which teed up a tidy little mic-drop moment for Poilievre: he’s here for victims and their families. Point scored.".
That is only a win for people who are emotional and uninformed. It's especially abhorrent promising to use the Notwithstanding clause to make it happen. Everyone, myself included, it gets upset when we hear of a horrible crime and our first reaction is to want that person to be flayed alive or something like that. That's not how Corrections work. And a my Life sentence does mean life. Even if you get parole your parole is never over.
The second Point has to do with Pierre's Trump problem. The idea that PP cares about families seems like a good one but did you see Trump's tweet where he countered the image of the Democratic senator meeting with the wrongly imprisoned guy and El Salvador with a picture of a woman who's child was killed by somebody entirely unrelated. Trump was making the exact same point - that he cares about the victims and the Liberals/Democrats care about perpetrators. PP's campaign logic is that if it works in the US for Republicans then it will work for the Conservatives here. At this point the CPC should just call themselves the Canadian Republican party.
The Charter didn't come down from Heaven on golden tablets and the Supreme Court of Canada justices are not impartial and infallible demi-gods. The notwithstanding clause exists to return supremacy to Parliament and therefore to the people, over judges whose concerns often tend toward philosophical/theoretical navel-gazing and 5-part tests they invented to justify their own opinions.
If the people decide that we shouldn't re-victimize victims' families every 5 years after the first 25 attending parole hearings for a multiple murderer who we all know isn't getting out anyway, 9 mostly-Liberal-appointees dressed as Santa Claus shouldn't get to say otherwise.
Likewise, if our judges are under-sentencing lesser but still serious offenders, which appears to be the case, we will have to resort to mandatory minimums even though it could result in possible injustice in certain cases. The present situation results in injustice for the public.
QUOTE
The notwithstanding clause exists to return supremacy to Parliament and therefore to the people, over judges whose concerns often tend toward
END QUOTE
Surely such a statement is a huge indulgence in pie-in-the-sky thinking?
Who here among us really believes that our “Leninism-in-all-but-name” party politics ensure that Parliament’s will actually represents democratic process?
You do know that the executive authority of the Government of Canada, in the form of all-powerful prime ministers, has almost entirely swamped Parliament’s ability to shape/debate/effectively push back against what “they” (the PM and his closest advisors) want at any given moment?
And that all the “democratization” of leadership contests within parties has subverted older forms of leadership selection that enabled powerful members of the main parties to more credibly hold party leaders to account?
In such a context, the Notwithstanding Clause merely enhances the near-authoritarian grip on power exercised by successive Liberal and Conservative Party prime ministers (and their equally self-aggrandizing provincial counterparts).
You can't complain about all-powerful Prime Ministers and still support idea that the SCoC judges they appoint are independent. The judges, and the senators for that matter, are appointed to support the present PM and then to act as roadblocks for any future PM from another party.
So, you see no problem with allowing our governments to make use of the Notwithstanding Clause, despite how flawed they presently are (because of the concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s hand and the subjugation by the PMO of all other elected officials)?
You seem to forget that there is no way to use the notwithstanding clause quietly.
The whole point of this clause is that politicians must stick their necks out to utilise this power, and even then, their "overruling" of the Courts has a time limit, and the action must be taken again at regular intervals - in between which, presumably an election will happen.
Ultimately, this puts the VOTER in charge.
If a politician has staked themselves to a particular action which relies upon the notwithstanding clause, the voters will have an opportunity to correct that action by hurling them from office. Its not a perfect system, but it does have accountability built in.
We elect politicians to lead us. We do NOT elect judges.
...and it is politicians who are tasked with writing the law - judges are supposed to interpret the law, NOT make it.
Sometimes (not always) we need to let the people we elected to lead us call the tune.
The point of my original post was to underscore the serious problem caused by what I depicted as the "Leninism" that currently dominates the two main political parties.
Why do I worry about the use of the Notwithstanding Clause in this context?
Essentially, the concern is that the use of the Notwithstanding Clause can lead to much social damage that cannot be easily undone, even if, as you assume, that most voters will remain exercised enough about a given government's abuse of the clause when the next round of federal elections come up.
Of course I do. I believe our candidates should be selected by the riding associations (or EDAs, if you prefer) so they are not beholden to the PM.
But the concentration of power in the PMO and the need for the Notwithstanding Clause are two sides of the same coin. The PMO makes the laws and appoints the judges that review the laws.
A sitting PM who has 5 SCoC judges onside only has to worry about abjectly illegal legislation. Those same 5 judges can block any legislation passed by a subsequent PM.
I wish I could remember the name of the precedent, but it involved the illegal discharge of a firearm. The SCoC ruled that it was OK, because a pellet gun is also a firearm, and discharging it in those circumstances was unlikely to cause injury or death. Is that a valid decision?
The PMO may appoint the judges, but it is in the proposal and passing of legislation where our political system is more often abused. Canada's parliament is historically unlikely to reject rather than pass bad legislation coming from the executive, given the intense party discipline. In Poilievre's case, his credibility in invoking the Notwithstanding Clause is affected by the fact that he voted in favour of 100+ motions of time allocation under the Harper government. In English Canada the politicians pushing most for use of the Notwithstanding Clause tend to be aggressive advocates of executive power who have no interest in any pro-legislature democratic reforms.
Victims do not need to be - or should not be - involved in parole hearings. Their grievances are absolutely relevant to decisions made in original sentencing, but not relevant to whether an offender remains an ongoing risk to society after a certain amount of time served.
I had a good chuckle that our NDP friend thinks 10 per day daycare was actually delivered. Just because it exists and a scratch of people have it, isn't the same thing. It was a nonsense promise that was never developed and is not delivered in any impactful way to the country at large.
They are being far too kind to Jagmeet. He was annoying as fuck.
Thank you for this penultimate round of elections analysis from the panel. I have but one bone to pick, and it was with a comment made by Kim Wright, who among other things, stated the following:
QUOTE
I hate having a discussion about who is media. A couple of weeks ago, Pierre called a reporter a protester. Other times it’s about whether bloggers/Substackers and/or podcasters are real media. Stop it, everyone. This all feeds into bullshit narratives that ultimately harm democracy.
END QUOTE
In my view, this perspective elides a very big issue—the election debates commission decision to allow Rebel News and other third party lobbyists to maintain the pretence that they are bonafide journalists.
Let us be right clear. They are not journalists.
What they are is partisans who each have very clear and well-understood political agendas at play. But, yes indeed, they are happy to mislead people by misrepresenting themselves as journalists who are “simply trying to get to the truth”.
Such biased actors should not be allowed to occupy the same stage as accredited journalists.
Do the Tyee and Press Progress employ journalists?
So, accredited journalists can't be biased? That's a crock.
QUOTE
Third parties are groups that seek to influence elections but aren’t parties or candidates, and they’re required to register to run ads.
Rebel News and other right-wing media outlets dominated the question-and-answer sessions with federal party leaders after Wednesday’s French-language leaders’ debate.
END QUOTE
C.f.: Dylan Robertson, Federal debates chief says he was unaware Rebel News had registered as advocacy group, The Canadian Press via CTV, 17 April 2025, https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/federal-debates-chief-says-he-was-unaware-rebel-news-had-registered-as-advocacy-group/
- - - - - - -
The point in all this is that the credibility of accredited journalists can be verified by their affiliation with / respect for internationally recognized standards.
Rebel News and the other agencies that were erroneously admitted by the Debates Commission do NOT meet this standard, both because they have acknowledged their partisan political affiliation and because of the methods and tactics they adopt to advance their agendas.
C.f.: Global Charter of Ethics for Journalists, accessed 20 April 2025, https://www.ifj.org/who/rules-and-policy/global-charter-of-ethics-for-journalists
QUOTE
[abridged]
4. The journalist shall use only fair methods to obtain information, images, documents and data and he/she will always report his/her status as a journalist and will refrain from using hidden recordings of images and sounds, except where it is impossible for him/her to collect information that is overwhelmingly in the public interest. He/she will demand free access to all sources of information and the right to freely investigate all facts of public interest.
[abridged]
14. The journalist will not undertake any activity or engagement likely to put his/her independence in danger. He/she will, however, respect the methods of collection/dissemination of information that he / she has freely accepted, such as "off the record", anonymity, or embargo, provided that these commitments are clear and unquestionable.
END QUOTE
Does anyone have a link to the clip of Carney and Poilievre having a downtime chat?
I didn't know much about this Jamie guy, but this helped me form an opinion of him. I now think he's a total asshole. "I will give him props on two fronts: first, I did respect him going at Patrice Roy on health care — it's a big issue and it could have gotten some airtime (though I feel the same about national defence!); and second, I thought Jagmeet was the best by far in telling some of the “independent media” to go fuck themselves and the horse they rode in on at the scrums."
GOTV?
"Get Out The Vote".
Thanks! Literally never seen this abbreviation before 😅
You need to hang around more sweaty politics creeps, friend.
Or not.
Actually probably don't do that.
I doubt Rosemary Barton will condone that comment, and she is now our national arbiter of valid political comments.
Right, Barton et al.why this former fan of the CBC rarely watches now.
And she spread disinformation assuring Canadians that there really are human remains of Indigenous children found at Indian Residential Schools right across Canada (not one, even after 4 years of stating this claim as if true), who then claimed (had the audacity) it was Rebel News that was spreading 'misinformation' by asking a related question about the nearly 200 churches damaged and destroyed (a youth in the Kehewin Cree church fire is the ONLY conviction). Why has so many from Canada's second tier press simply want to be in agreement with NYTimes and help flagellate the country after Canada's federal parliament responded by unanimously self-voting Canada to be a genocidal state... based on a lie? Where's the accountability?
It's not just Barton; it's every single person who has gone along with and excused this lie. It's every 'journalist', every media outlet, every talking head, every teacher, and every institutional authority who has gone along unquestioningly with this scaffold of lies that has undermined national unity, forever altered a shared history, and yielded a justification to transfer vast sums of public wealth to those with Indigenous ancestry without any means to measure tangible nation-building results. Believing this lie because we're told to is as unethical as it is irresponsible and plays its important role smearing those who built this wealth while and excusing those who wish to squander it.
The question asked of Singh was met with a refusal to answer it. In a liberal democracy, this position is intolerable from a 'public' servant and execrable behaviour from those in the fourth estate who castigate the questioner. Shame on you.
Regrettably The Line does not adopt the No Abbreviation Rule that Steve Paikin has on his show. I too had never heard of "GOTV" before.