I agree with the points about the Major Projects Office being a work-around that primarily reveals how broken the baseline is. But I think it has another even more concerning fault: it entrenches political favor as the chief criterion for what economic activity is permitted to take place in Canada.
There has always been political meddling in project approvals. I remember Sheila Copps abusing the federal EA process to hold up the Red Hill Creek expressway in Hamilton. But it was done in the shadows, covered in a mist of shame. Politicians would indignantly insist that there was no political input whatsoever into how long the process took.
No longer. Bestowing political favor on this project but not that one isn't a grubby exception discussed in whispers; it's the proud signature initiative of the Prime Minister of Canada. Carney is so Euro-fancy that it's easy to fail to recognize that this is banana republic stuff.
And why are we declaring (in the politicians' sole, arbitrary discretion) that this copper mine and not that one is in the "national interest" and can therefore get built actually, not just theoretically? Are we prioritizing some scarce resource here? Why can't we approve ALL the mines that are fit to approve? We don't prioritize which businesses are permitted to start, what patents will be granted, or which restaurants may have liquor licenses this year. Comply with the rules and go. But for a "major project", you'd better impress the Big Man.
Sure, political violence on both sides, because neither has a monopoly on the mentally ill rejects who commit these acts. But what is lopsided is the reactions from prominent people ranging from bullshyte equivocations, to "I don't condone violence buuuuuut ;)", to outright celebration - we saw the same thing with Charlie Hebdo, with October 7th, the Trump attempt, Luigi, the Blackstone woman, the Israeli embassy couple, now with Kirk... Again, not just random anons but prominent people who feel comfortable doing it proudly under their own names, because they clearly exist in an environment where that is the default position.
This is what has concerned me the most as well. I lean left politically and have a lot of left leaning “friends” on social media. The amount of people who I know personally posting comments from - well he deserved it to I am glad it happened - was horrifying.
Good podcast. Bleak AF, but that is where we are now.
Warren Kinsella said that America ended at Sandy Hook. For me, he was right. If all those dead children didn't wake people up, I doubt anything will. This was growing for years and its been hand-in-hand with technology. Everyone has a tv studio in their pocket. Everyone is half past angry and well on the way to something worse, I fear.
Humans created the ultimate communications tool that everyone and their dog has globally - a smart phone. Irony is that in 2025, human beings don't really talk that much any longer and instead, thumb type. People's minds have been rewired by the technology and the algorithms point us in the direction of countless places to lose one's @#$%.
The pandemic pushed everyone and everything well beyond the tipping point.
High speed rail... In 2009 California started building a line connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles. It was originally supposed to be completed by 2020 at a cost 0f $33 billion. So far, there is no clear completion date, the cost will be at least $100 billion, and there is no service, not even between intermediate points.
Granted, the California fiasco was caused in large part by all the processes needed to assemble land and so on. But what makes us think that Canadian regulatory processes are any better, what with social acceptability and environmental impacts?
Even if Canada does manage to build high speed rail, it will come on line much too late to help with the problems faced by our economy. And even if it were to come on line within a year (hah!), would this help diversify our exports? Would it provide significant new jobs? Would it increase the productivity of Canadian businesses? Would it attract significant foreign direct investment? I very much doubt any of these would happen.
Still, the announcement makes me optimistic. Perhaps Carney knows all this, and is counting on a lengthy planning process as an excuse not to actually start building anything. The announcements will happen. Environmental friendliness would be signalled. A nostalgia for the good old days of useful passenger rail would warm our hearts. All with a minimum of actual expenditure. Or such is my hope.
"The Line" podcast being sponsored by Universities Canada is both ironic and disturbing. The academy has become the most censorious and intolerant group, on par with their right wing counterparts. Freedom of expression, but not for you.
The President of the Oxford Union, a premier, academic debating society, celebrated the killing of Charlie Kirk. A man he had sat across from and debated. This is no different than those who celebrate the murder of an abortion provider.
Perhaps you can find a better sponsor? The Union of Canadian Pimps?
Has anyone else noticed what HASN'T happened regarding Charlie Kirk's public assassination and aftermath?
Maybe that sounds strange but, when I keep hearing this supposed equivalency about left and right expressions of violent extremism, I can't help but notice what hasn't happened that indicates the equivalency to be absolutely false.
First: where is all the rioting, looting, and (mostly peaceful) demonstrations that typically follows a high profile (thanks, media!) assassination of a prominent left wing activist (can't think of any recent examples off hand) or a (socially privileged) minority member?
Second: why do so few people expect anything else (left wing minority member, okay to riot; right wing majority member, not so much).
Third: after 9/11, a PEW study asked British born university educated graduates about levels of acceptable violence following various topics/events. There was a massive discrepancy between the percentage of 'Christian/Jewish/atheist' people who thought violence was sometimes an acceptable response to offensive free speech (if memory serves, it was about 3%) to Muslim graduates that came in around 35% generally and well over half specifically regarding criticism of Islam. At the time, these figure were dramatically different. Fast forward to today, and we see 34% of university students in the US find violence acceptable versus offensive speech (FIRE). Dig deeper (like this YouGov survey here: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kirk-americans-political-violence-poll), and we see a vast difference across similar age cohorts between left and right that shows violence is FAR more acceptable to those from the left than the right, which may explain why people are not surprised there is no widespread rioting or demonstrations against Kirk's assassination, or no 'Say Her Name' treatment of the Iryna Zarutska stabbing murder victim when committed by a black man. We don't expect the media generally to EVER call out anyone on the left as a Nazi or fascist or bigot or racist or far left extremist (they are usually either classified as mentally ill or from a historically victimized identity group); such names automatically presume some far right connection... even if some inconvenient fact to the progressive narrative is stated by someone on the left that reassigns them by fiat to the far right! The very notion of suggesting 'equivalency' of violence by way of political leanings is itself a rather damning indication of what seems to be a rather preferential bias (knowingly or unknowingly).
I have lived in Ne York City, and the surrounding suburbs for 20 years. With the passage of time, memorials on 9/11 have changed. This year though, the vibe was much… less? Then in prior years. I hadn’t noticed it until you mentioned it, but now that you have it’s really obvious. It passed with very little comment, whether from conversations with friends and coworkers, or comments on my neighborhood Facebook groups. It really is much leas noted this year.
I don’t think that’s it. Last year, and every year before, it was just a part of the week. People would share where they were, what they remembered. Sometimes in person, sometimes on social media, but it was just in the air in the days leading up to the anniversary. That was just absent this year.
The passage of time is obviously an important part of the change, and equally obviously my observations are just anecdotal… but it was a very dramatic change in a single year.
1) One American alive who might help bring that country back together again. Perhaps there are indeed none, but you may have left out one potential candidate. The Pope.
2) Major Projects? How about providing resources for science and research, especially in ecology, green technology, and astronomy/astrophysics/space? I have seen too many people leave Canada due to lack of opportunities. On the contrary, we could recruit talent from certain places not far away that have become more hostile to stable scientific research. It would be an improvement over an economy based too much on flipping real estate (and which is now faltering).
3) In connection with the above - perhaps these are minor projects, but how about the feds supporting or reinstating institutions like the Science Centre, including its fantastic modernist architecture and ravine setting? And while we're at it, un-mothballing the McLaughlin Planetarium (does anyone remember that place? The building still exists). Such public institutions actually play a big role in supporting our scientific community by raising awareness and getting people interested and enthusiastic.
I want to applaud the Edmonton Police Service for their actions. Of course this can be a slippery slope - but I regret to inform you, we are already slipping down the other side that hill. The EPS’s actions here are an attempt to arrest that slide (no pun intended) if however minimally.
I have become alarmingly aware of my changing thoughts and conversations regarding public order and safety. And it leads back the sediment that if our institutions don’t solve these problems - the facists will. Men, in our hardwiring, will seek solutions for safety and security issues, and we will formulate and execute these solutions in groups. As a society we must - as a matter of societal survival, have confidence in those institutions to solve/manage these matters. Or others will create other solutions. Our judicial system is failing us, and we are teetering on the brink. For those progressive minded lawyers and judges, or those in our judicial system that know things are broken, but are too cowardly to speak up. It’s time to look around and wake up. Do your job. There is more at stake than you may know.
For a fleeting moment when I saw "Kirk" in the headline of a Matt Gurney piece, I was excited that it might be about Star Trek instead of the metastasizing political dysfunction in the US. Alas...
I normally listen to podcasts when I'm driving or out for walks, and a lot of them are political and increasingly depressing to listen to. However, this week, a new Star Trek podcast series called "Khan" was launched. Listening to the first episode instead of a political or news-oriented podcast felt great. Think I'm going to have to start listening to audiobooks or more entertainment-oriented fare more often, and I think the very online partisans would do well to do the same.
I listened to this pod on the train from Toronto to Ottawa. I travel there often and prefer the train but it is always, always late. If you have to be somewhere at a specific time, you either after to budget in a few hours for delay or go another way. But it is stress free and with -- mostly reliable -- Wifi, you can be productive while you travel.
Interesting 9-11 comment. I went to the memorial in NYC in 2017 and then again in 2024. The first time it felt like a memorial. The second time it felt like a museum. I chalked it up to the passage of time. The technology is now ancient. The images are grainy. I feel like I watched something move from reality to history.
I know it’s late but the fact that so many days later this still resonates makes me want to say it anyway.
My husband is a man who can internalize a lot. I rarely see him shaken but after inadvertently witnessing Kirk’s assassination online, he was clearly shaken. This, coupled with Matt’s comments about not really being able to intervene as a parent to keep his kids from witnessing the same really hit home for me.
I was an ER nurse for a decade. I left, not because I didn’t love the job, but because I learned too well how much that stuff can pile up and stick with you forever.
One thing that has gotten lost in the political discourse is how not okay it is for millions of people to be inadvertently traumatized by real life, real time videos of murder. I am a middle aged adult and if I could put a filter on my phone to keep out murder/rape videos I most certainly would. We don’t need to see these things occur to understand they are horrific.
We all remember where we were on 9/11 for a reason. It was traumatic. So is seeing something like this. By all means, there is plenty to discuss on this topic politically and socially but I think we are missing a vital element if we don’t acknowledge that it’s not great for us or our kids to see this sort of thing in real time on a regular basis. No way that ends well.
About the middle school school library book removals...
Matt, you're not wrong...
Reasonable people will be and should be annoyed by a government doing government badly and thus screwing up the removal of cartoon oral sex from middle school libraries.
BUT...
Reasonable people will be and should be MORE angry and MORE FURIOUS at the people who put the cartoon oral sex into a middle school library in the first place.
As to anyone insisting that cartoon oral sex is actually appropriate middle school reading... Good grief... What you said about this possibly constituting child sex abuse starts to ring very true.
I agree with the points about the Major Projects Office being a work-around that primarily reveals how broken the baseline is. But I think it has another even more concerning fault: it entrenches political favor as the chief criterion for what economic activity is permitted to take place in Canada.
There has always been political meddling in project approvals. I remember Sheila Copps abusing the federal EA process to hold up the Red Hill Creek expressway in Hamilton. But it was done in the shadows, covered in a mist of shame. Politicians would indignantly insist that there was no political input whatsoever into how long the process took.
No longer. Bestowing political favor on this project but not that one isn't a grubby exception discussed in whispers; it's the proud signature initiative of the Prime Minister of Canada. Carney is so Euro-fancy that it's easy to fail to recognize that this is banana republic stuff.
And why are we declaring (in the politicians' sole, arbitrary discretion) that this copper mine and not that one is in the "national interest" and can therefore get built actually, not just theoretically? Are we prioritizing some scarce resource here? Why can't we approve ALL the mines that are fit to approve? We don't prioritize which businesses are permitted to start, what patents will be granted, or which restaurants may have liquor licenses this year. Comply with the rules and go. But for a "major project", you'd better impress the Big Man.
Sure, political violence on both sides, because neither has a monopoly on the mentally ill rejects who commit these acts. But what is lopsided is the reactions from prominent people ranging from bullshyte equivocations, to "I don't condone violence buuuuuut ;)", to outright celebration - we saw the same thing with Charlie Hebdo, with October 7th, the Trump attempt, Luigi, the Blackstone woman, the Israeli embassy couple, now with Kirk... Again, not just random anons but prominent people who feel comfortable doing it proudly under their own names, because they clearly exist in an environment where that is the default position.
This is what has concerned me the most as well. I lean left politically and have a lot of left leaning “friends” on social media. The amount of people who I know personally posting comments from - well he deserved it to I am glad it happened - was horrifying.
Good podcast. Bleak AF, but that is where we are now.
Warren Kinsella said that America ended at Sandy Hook. For me, he was right. If all those dead children didn't wake people up, I doubt anything will. This was growing for years and its been hand-in-hand with technology. Everyone has a tv studio in their pocket. Everyone is half past angry and well on the way to something worse, I fear.
Humans created the ultimate communications tool that everyone and their dog has globally - a smart phone. Irony is that in 2025, human beings don't really talk that much any longer and instead, thumb type. People's minds have been rewired by the technology and the algorithms point us in the direction of countless places to lose one's @#$%.
The pandemic pushed everyone and everything well beyond the tipping point.
Perhaps Matt might have some thoughts about this for next week's podcast: "A Mississauga father says he was forced to personally track down the driver who fled after striking his 13-year-old son — frustrated by what he describes as a slow police investigation...a left-turning Toyota Sienna struck the boy head-on, tossing him several feet into the air before he fell in the middle of the crosswalk." https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/local/peel/article/mississauga-father-says-he-tracked-down-driver-who-left-scene-after-hitting-his-13-year-old-son-near-school/
High speed rail... In 2009 California started building a line connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles. It was originally supposed to be completed by 2020 at a cost 0f $33 billion. So far, there is no clear completion date, the cost will be at least $100 billion, and there is no service, not even between intermediate points.
Granted, the California fiasco was caused in large part by all the processes needed to assemble land and so on. But what makes us think that Canadian regulatory processes are any better, what with social acceptability and environmental impacts?
Even if Canada does manage to build high speed rail, it will come on line much too late to help with the problems faced by our economy. And even if it were to come on line within a year (hah!), would this help diversify our exports? Would it provide significant new jobs? Would it increase the productivity of Canadian businesses? Would it attract significant foreign direct investment? I very much doubt any of these would happen.
Still, the announcement makes me optimistic. Perhaps Carney knows all this, and is counting on a lengthy planning process as an excuse not to actually start building anything. The announcements will happen. Environmental friendliness would be signalled. A nostalgia for the good old days of useful passenger rail would warm our hearts. All with a minimum of actual expenditure. Or such is my hope.
"The Line" podcast being sponsored by Universities Canada is both ironic and disturbing. The academy has become the most censorious and intolerant group, on par with their right wing counterparts. Freedom of expression, but not for you.
The President of the Oxford Union, a premier, academic debating society, celebrated the killing of Charlie Kirk. A man he had sat across from and debated. This is no different than those who celebrate the murder of an abortion provider.
Perhaps you can find a better sponsor? The Union of Canadian Pimps?
Has anyone else noticed what HASN'T happened regarding Charlie Kirk's public assassination and aftermath?
Maybe that sounds strange but, when I keep hearing this supposed equivalency about left and right expressions of violent extremism, I can't help but notice what hasn't happened that indicates the equivalency to be absolutely false.
First: where is all the rioting, looting, and (mostly peaceful) demonstrations that typically follows a high profile (thanks, media!) assassination of a prominent left wing activist (can't think of any recent examples off hand) or a (socially privileged) minority member?
Second: why do so few people expect anything else (left wing minority member, okay to riot; right wing majority member, not so much).
Third: after 9/11, a PEW study asked British born university educated graduates about levels of acceptable violence following various topics/events. There was a massive discrepancy between the percentage of 'Christian/Jewish/atheist' people who thought violence was sometimes an acceptable response to offensive free speech (if memory serves, it was about 3%) to Muslim graduates that came in around 35% generally and well over half specifically regarding criticism of Islam. At the time, these figure were dramatically different. Fast forward to today, and we see 34% of university students in the US find violence acceptable versus offensive speech (FIRE). Dig deeper (like this YouGov survey here: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kirk-americans-political-violence-poll), and we see a vast difference across similar age cohorts between left and right that shows violence is FAR more acceptable to those from the left than the right, which may explain why people are not surprised there is no widespread rioting or demonstrations against Kirk's assassination, or no 'Say Her Name' treatment of the Iryna Zarutska stabbing murder victim when committed by a black man. We don't expect the media generally to EVER call out anyone on the left as a Nazi or fascist or bigot or racist or far left extremist (they are usually either classified as mentally ill or from a historically victimized identity group); such names automatically presume some far right connection... even if some inconvenient fact to the progressive narrative is stated by someone on the left that reassigns them by fiat to the far right! The very notion of suggesting 'equivalency' of violence by way of political leanings is itself a rather damning indication of what seems to be a rather preferential bias (knowingly or unknowingly).
I have lived in Ne York City, and the surrounding suburbs for 20 years. With the passage of time, memorials on 9/11 have changed. This year though, the vibe was much… less? Then in prior years. I hadn’t noticed it until you mentioned it, but now that you have it’s really obvious. It passed with very little comment, whether from conversations with friends and coworkers, or comments on my neighborhood Facebook groups. It really is much leas noted this year.
I don't know what's up. I have a theory or two, but they're really just guesses. But man. Yeah. Palpable shift this year.
I think we can't discount that a generational shift has occurred since 9-11 - fueled in large part by social media and smartphones.
I don’t think that’s it. Last year, and every year before, it was just a part of the week. People would share where they were, what they remembered. Sometimes in person, sometimes on social media, but it was just in the air in the days leading up to the anniversary. That was just absent this year.
The passage of time is obviously an important part of the change, and equally obviously my observations are just anecdotal… but it was a very dramatic change in a single year.
Could be. Dangerous times we are living through.
A few quick thoughts.
1) One American alive who might help bring that country back together again. Perhaps there are indeed none, but you may have left out one potential candidate. The Pope.
2) Major Projects? How about providing resources for science and research, especially in ecology, green technology, and astronomy/astrophysics/space? I have seen too many people leave Canada due to lack of opportunities. On the contrary, we could recruit talent from certain places not far away that have become more hostile to stable scientific research. It would be an improvement over an economy based too much on flipping real estate (and which is now faltering).
3) In connection with the above - perhaps these are minor projects, but how about the feds supporting or reinstating institutions like the Science Centre, including its fantastic modernist architecture and ravine setting? And while we're at it, un-mothballing the McLaughlin Planetarium (does anyone remember that place? The building still exists). Such public institutions actually play a big role in supporting our scientific community by raising awareness and getting people interested and enthusiastic.
I want to applaud the Edmonton Police Service for their actions. Of course this can be a slippery slope - but I regret to inform you, we are already slipping down the other side that hill. The EPS’s actions here are an attempt to arrest that slide (no pun intended) if however minimally.
I have become alarmingly aware of my changing thoughts and conversations regarding public order and safety. And it leads back the sediment that if our institutions don’t solve these problems - the facists will. Men, in our hardwiring, will seek solutions for safety and security issues, and we will formulate and execute these solutions in groups. As a society we must - as a matter of societal survival, have confidence in those institutions to solve/manage these matters. Or others will create other solutions. Our judicial system is failing us, and we are teetering on the brink. For those progressive minded lawyers and judges, or those in our judicial system that know things are broken, but are too cowardly to speak up. It’s time to look around and wake up. Do your job. There is more at stake than you may know.
For a fleeting moment when I saw "Kirk" in the headline of a Matt Gurney piece, I was excited that it might be about Star Trek instead of the metastasizing political dysfunction in the US. Alas...
I normally listen to podcasts when I'm driving or out for walks, and a lot of them are political and increasingly depressing to listen to. However, this week, a new Star Trek podcast series called "Khan" was launched. Listening to the first episode instead of a political or news-oriented podcast felt great. Think I'm going to have to start listening to audiobooks or more entertainment-oriented fare more often, and I think the very online partisans would do well to do the same.
I listened to this pod on the train from Toronto to Ottawa. I travel there often and prefer the train but it is always, always late. If you have to be somewhere at a specific time, you either after to budget in a few hours for delay or go another way. But it is stress free and with -- mostly reliable -- Wifi, you can be productive while you travel.
Interesting 9-11 comment. I went to the memorial in NYC in 2017 and then again in 2024. The first time it felt like a memorial. The second time it felt like a museum. I chalked it up to the passage of time. The technology is now ancient. The images are grainy. I feel like I watched something move from reality to history.
I know it’s late but the fact that so many days later this still resonates makes me want to say it anyway.
My husband is a man who can internalize a lot. I rarely see him shaken but after inadvertently witnessing Kirk’s assassination online, he was clearly shaken. This, coupled with Matt’s comments about not really being able to intervene as a parent to keep his kids from witnessing the same really hit home for me.
I was an ER nurse for a decade. I left, not because I didn’t love the job, but because I learned too well how much that stuff can pile up and stick with you forever.
One thing that has gotten lost in the political discourse is how not okay it is for millions of people to be inadvertently traumatized by real life, real time videos of murder. I am a middle aged adult and if I could put a filter on my phone to keep out murder/rape videos I most certainly would. We don’t need to see these things occur to understand they are horrific.
We all remember where we were on 9/11 for a reason. It was traumatic. So is seeing something like this. By all means, there is plenty to discuss on this topic politically and socially but I think we are missing a vital element if we don’t acknowledge that it’s not great for us or our kids to see this sort of thing in real time on a regular basis. No way that ends well.
About the middle school school library book removals...
Matt, you're not wrong...
Reasonable people will be and should be annoyed by a government doing government badly and thus screwing up the removal of cartoon oral sex from middle school libraries.
BUT...
Reasonable people will be and should be MORE angry and MORE FURIOUS at the people who put the cartoon oral sex into a middle school library in the first place.
As to anyone insisting that cartoon oral sex is actually appropriate middle school reading... Good grief... What you said about this possibly constituting child sex abuse starts to ring very true.
With regards to the major projects office... I think you're being overgenerous with a sense of achievement.
So far, Mr. Carney hasn't yet got past what Mr. Trudeau achieved. Mr. Carney has **announced** something. Mr. Trudeau did that too.
Mr. Carney is saying all the right things about what they're **going** to do. That's the LPC for the last decade.
Maybe Mr. Carney will be different. We don't know that he's not, but we also don't know that he is.