The idea that Carney's agenda is the same as Trudeau's may miss something important. Even if the new agenda isn't different in kind, it might be meaningfully different in degree.
Watching Carney, and looking at his platform, I agree that he doesn't think Trudeau was wrong about much (not even carbon tax, which Carney clearly saw as a good policy but a comms problem). Carney's theory is different; he thinks Trudeau was insufficiently ambitious.
Governments pretty much never under-spend their platform commitments; Carney's platform called for a $62Bn deficit this year, even after counting on $20Bn in tariff revenue that mostly isn't going to materialize. When he talks about redirecting trade flows and conjuring new industries by decree and doing a Euro-style crackdown on misinformation, he makes Trudeau sound like a rank incrementalist. He won't shut up about dramatically increasing the pace of "building", i.e., spending.
We tend to watch for policy reversals, and miss escalations, but those are important too. This isn't more of the same; it's even more of the same. A lot more.
Yes seeing Gilbeault in the front row Tuesday morning (along with Joly, Fraser and Freeland) and listening to his arrogant, ill informed attitude Wednesday sunk my hopes that Carney might be a different PM as he alluded to during the campaign.
Same shit, different driver. Two to four more years of doing nothing and talking lots singing the same loser songs.
1:12 Journalism is another industry that has been captured by woke beliefs. Woke is a religion; those who disagree are heretics. The kids learned this at J school. And they will soon hold all the sr. editor jobs. And they are getting paid by our government.
19:06 I suggest that JT did run the Liberal Party. NO one challenged him. Perhaps now, Carney doesn't have that luxury, being a newcomer, untested and unused to party politics. He can't break out of the regional representation requirement for Cabinet. Look at the public noise that Nathaniel Erskine-Smith is making about being dropped from Carney Cabinet 2.0.
Please also remember that Liberals say anything to get elected but only do stuff (or not) to keep power. Promises, platforms: what are they?
Not to mention being replaced by a moron who made it about 24 hours in cabinet before thoroughly embarrassing himself (I even saw US commentators retweeting his "economic theories" ironically) and giving a giant middle-finger to young Canadians. I may not agree with a lot of Nate's policies, but he understands housing policy and how to talk to younger Canadians.
We should also consider that Smith was dumped from the portfolio because he WAS going to do something about it. The Liberals were elected by the Boomers and Robertson’s statement is sweet music to their ears.
27:35 The Liberals have done their analysis of the election result and their mandate. "We won". Full stop. They can happily be Trudeau 2.0 because they believe that's what the electorate told them with their votes. Elections are for winning, not considering past shortcomings (never mistakes/failures). Their change requirement was to dump Trudeau and replace him with a mature adult.
Job done. Stop whining about what you thought the election was about.
We badly need PP back in an in-session parliament to at least give the appearance of ideas other than the Liberals.
I am not seeing in Canada any evidence of the pendulum swing against woke of which you speak. In the USA? Absolutely! Trump’s behaving in monstrous ways. His administration's attempts to mandate quotas among university researchers/professors based on political ideology is a perfect example of a pendulum swinging way, I mean FUCKING WAY, too far. But again, this is the USA, not Canada. Listening to part of this podcast at times sounded like listening to Liberals whinging about the effect of overturning Roe v Wade on Canadian abortion laws.
In the past few months in Canada (just off the top of my head), right up to this very week we have seen the Dallas Brodie fiasco, Dundas subway station being re-named, Carney insisting on 50-50 M/F representation in his cabinet (maybe that was Erskine-Smith’s downfall – he should have self-identified as a female!) and an Ontario election in which only Bonnie Crombie spoke to the ongoing disgrace that is the Sir John A statue being vertically entombed at Queen’s Park (visitors from France that stumble upon it must think it’s Canada’s perverse answer to Napoleon being horizontally entombed for public viewing at Les Invalides in Paris). And we have the very real looming threat of Carney reviving the worst of Junior’s censorship legislation to tamp down on “misinformation” which you KNOW will consist of anything that challenges woke beliefs. I just do not see a pendulum swing at all in Canada.
I don’t disagree with the suggestion that there is a population of Canadians who embrace and embody the worst aspects of the MAGA backlash to woke but (a) they are relatively few and (b) as far as I can tell, outside of Quebec, none of them are even close to having their hands on the grip of power – and even in Quebec the legislative backlash seems to be confined to religion (not a Quebec resident so definitely stand to be corrected on that). And the latter point is determinative for me. Until you have someone in actual power who has the radical, illiberal, anti-woke views there is no chance of the pendulum swinging too far.
So yeah, we need to be alert to the possibility of a pendulum swinging too far, but not until it gets anywhere close to equilibrium and/or a Trump-like figure ascends to power in Canada. The former is a long way off to my eyes and the latter seems inconceivable to me. YMMV as the kids say.
No pendulum-swinging in my workplace. That said, I feel I can safely miss the first 10 minutes of a meeting because that's about the amount of time it takes for land acknowledgments and pronoun mentions. One day, I may declare my pronouns as who and whose. But I'll have to be at the don't give a fuck stage of employment because it would likely result in disciplinary action.
1:04 Canada's woke element may be much more deeply embedded in our government bureaucracy and education system (primary to graduate). They will continue to set the standards for participation with and service by those bodies. We also have deep woke in the unions and professional bodies of those organizations.
When the Leafs fire a goaltender coach for ‘liking’ progressive tweets the pendulum will have swung too far. Until then, let ‘er swing. And may the curse of Dusty Imoo keep the Leafs far away from Lord Stanley’s cup.
20:06 Did Carney ever talk about pipelines besides yes in the West and no in Quebec? He spoke of an "energy corridor", whatever that means. |I suspect he'll set up a plan for electricity grids that connect across Canada. Useful but nothing we can sell to make money.
Carney was, is, and will be full of deceptions. For years the economic advisor of Forever The Idiot King, now no federal budget for no good reasons, just 'cuz they have power. The only thing that will change is that the West will get screwed even worse, and the national debt will get also even worse.
I don’t think he is deceptive. The thing is that in the election, he was a blank slate who would be anything you imagined him to be. Now we actually get to see who he actually is.
Sure, but you are assuming that people know everything about one’s past views. People also change their views with time.
It also cuts both ways. For example, there is 20 years of data suggesting that PP is anti-abortion. Now I don’t think he would legislate that because I believe him and people change their minds.
PP allowed Carney to set the tone of the election by not pivoting fast enough. He allowed Carney unopposed press coverage by being a shithead to the media and blocking them from joining the campaign. That’s on him or on his advisors.
In view of the two-minute retaliatory tariffs before they were sneakily removed (or reduced to near zero) and the distinct possibility it was all a “cook up” with DJT in the first place (to wit, Carney’s warning to DJT that he would have to talk tough during the campaign), it seems pretty obvious to me that Carney is extremely deceptive, slippery, not to be trusted. Throw in carefully worded things such as “energy corridor” and all the unspecific palaver about the economy which sounds more every day like government grants to all and sundry, and you have Trudeau with connections, a resume, and foolish boomer support.
Wow the "pendulum swing" is going to be even more extreme than the woke era? I'm excited! So instead of woke cancellation mobs, land acknowledgements, pronouns, feminist foreign policy, pride flags, BLM, diversity statements, minority hiring quotas, drag queen story time, will we get - Family Values flags flying from every institution? Traditional morality, heirarchy, and the glory of Western Civilization relentlessly pushed in k-12? Patriarchal nationalism as our foreign policy? Patriotic loyalty statements for all higher ed applications? Toppled statues of John A. MacDonald replaced with towering monuments to our colonial triumphs? Mainstream newsrooms across the nation seized by militant right wing youth cadres? If we do not see a Canadian Joseph McCarthy 2.0 arise to stamp out the commies, I am going to be PISSED, and I will blame both of you personally.
Thank you for this. I have no idea what ‘alt right’ atrocities Jen was alluding to but never actually specifying when she talked about the pendulum swinging too far. I don’t see it swinging at all. The woke commie genderwangs still control our cultural sense making institutions
11:32 Carney as communicator solving the same Liberal problems. The MSM want to believe this in order to confirm their correct election support & call. No one but your guys will be the little boy who yells "but he has no clothes".
On the issue of overrepresentation/underrepresentation of different provinces in parliament (as compared to their population), Jan correctly made the point that smaller, poorer provinces tend to be over-represented (more MPs than their populations warrant) than the larger, richer, more successful provinces.
I think there may a causal factor here - overrepresentation is what helps keep the poor provinces poor.
This is partly a question of math. As MPs want to build local support by demonstrating how much patronage in the form of federal government spending they can deliver to their province, it's costs fewer dollars per vote to curry favor in Prince Edward Island than in Ontario or Alberta. The cost of legal political bribery is lower, so governments make more promises. Thus - in the 2025 election - both the Liberals and Conservatives promised to lower or eliminate tolls on the Confederation bridge and ferries to PEI.
This pork barreling math helps keep the poor small provinces poor and small. Perhaps most significant example is the (misnamed) "Employment Insurance." This operates inversely to normal actuarial insurance principles in that risk is inversely correlated to benefits. People in high unemployment regions (Maritimes and the north) get more weeks of benefits for fewer weeks of contributory earnings than people in richer areas. This keeps the chronically unemployed stuck in poor regions AND impedes economic development within those regions because seasonal work becomes more lucrative than full-time employment. From time to time, the federal government has geared up to change this - but has always quickly retreated. If fewer seats were at stake, the government might be more willing to take an unpopular policy decision that would have longer term benefits.
The real harm from unequal representation is not face by those in provinces that are "underrepresented." It is faced by those living in places "overrepresented." More MPs generates more government, which generates more reliance on government. That helps keeps smaller, poorer provinces poor and small.
👏👏👏 Excellent summary of the issue. I always wondered in particular how much better off PEI would be if it weren’t a province of its own.
I had a cousin in law who after retirement drove a school bus because it gave him something to do and he loved kids. He didn’t really need the money because he had invested wisely. Another shirttail relative lived in Newfoundland and had a government job training people how to apply for EI where she lived. She heard about the school bus driving and promptly showed him that he was entitled to EI during the summer and that he was stupid not to apply. I was 😡😡😡. This is how the cancer spreads folks.
Jen - love the shirt! Also, I did a similar tour as you but in a different order - born in Toronto (& named Jen), lots of family still in Niagara and GTA, grew up in Kelowna, been in Alberta for 33 years now (had to do the thing). Alas, I did not spring for the “lived abroad” upgrade. But I do live only 10 minutes from Donut Mill, so, y’know… I have that going for me.
Given Matt's mention of Ontario paperwork and his last article talking about it. Having lived in both Alberta and Ontario at given points in my life (but far more in Alberta), it was striking to me how much more agile Alberta's bureaucracy seems to be. Things like how Ontario still requires snail mail, phoning in, or faxing or emailing a form. Meanwhile, the Alberta equivalent would have already set up a slick, easy-to-use website over a decade ago that you can pay your bills and renew a license within minutes. Again, this isn't about the actual legislature and executive of each provincial government, but the actual citizen-facing public service.
Also for Alberta vs Ontario, tangential to the podcast, is the topic of housing and Robertson's appointment and tone-deaf comments. You could probably talk to Mike Moffatt about it given his brief mention on the podcast, but Ontario has seen a complete collapse in new housing starts in the last year, and B.C. to a lesser extent. Alberta is building more than Ontario has this year, and Quebec is actually staying definitely on track. It's only a blip so far, but people absolutely need houses to live in. Ontario housing is buried in development charges and paperwork, and David Eby's bragging about being the premier of building more houses has fizzled hard. People need houses to live, and population gains are absolutely going to follow where the houses are being built at this point.
Re:the mention of population by representation, and the lag. There's definitely some truth to the issue about the lag. The seats were awarded based off the 2021 census, but they didn't actually come into play until just this election. It's entirely possible if the next 3 elections are 4 years apart, that ridings based off the 2031 census aren't contested until October 2037. By now, having just ticked over 5 million, Alberta is outpacing Ontario and B.C. instead of being slightly better represented, to the tune of a couple of thousand residents per riding more. Given my above mention of the housing collapse in Ontario and B.C., this disparity may start to drastically widen in the next decade. In previous decades, it's whatever, because Alberta would 'only' gain a couple of extra seats. But as it stands, Alberta could possibly be due to stand another outsized bumper crop of ridings next census.
Or put it this way: if the 2022 Liberals had done what the 2012 Conservatives did and said this pop-by-rep disparity is getting out of hand, and given another 20 seats to B.C., Alberta, and Ontario instead of 5 (and another 3 seats or whatever to Quebec), what would the results of this last election be? A Liberal plurality that was 6-7 seats away from a minority instead of 1-2? A very tight balance of power like 2005-2006 where the Liberal + NDP + Green votes were equal to the CPC + the Bloc?
Jen and Matt, Your opening reminds me of a comment I heard from a Haitian not long after the earthquake "Hope is gone but life goes on". They were/are a people in a horrible state with no real government, no real prospects and no real hope. Sadly, the comment applies to Canada at present.
You seem to think that Guilbeault's comments were just his natural state but consider that he made the comments the first day and think that maybe he is signalling the real agenda for oil and gas. The housing minister makes what many think were stupid comments (I agree) but think of this - build rentals or 'affordable' portable houses and then tax the 'unfair capital gain' that many made on their houses and you have a solution to two problems! Build houses and tax 'the rich'. Our foreign affairs minister opines that Israel is using food as a lever so supports Hamas. And, NOTHING GETS DONE ABOUT ANY OF IT BY OUR 'CAN DO' PM!!! He flies off to see the Pope cause he's like Catholic and it would be cool.
Housing is beginning to sound like 'you will own nothing and be happy' isn't it? Go dig out Klaus Schwab's book on post COVID Build Back Better and see if you don't begin to see that there really is a 'plan' that WEF is pushing and that Canada is looking eerily like the proposed plan. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but just a simple guy who can read and then look around at the crap we are being fed. I'm on the back nine but fear for my grandchildren's futures.
I agree that we got conned by Carney with his elbows up BS which he continued to spout even after he had cancelled most of the tariffs he imposed. He even admitted in the interview with the BBC reporter that there was never a 'real' threat.
The election results should give all of us pause. The Quebec riding is unbelievable - votes lost, votes found, hundreds spoiled (the poll I scrutineered for had 2 out of 1,000 in two individual polls). You failed to mention that so many of the recounts are going to the LPC and no one seems to think there is anything strange about that issue. Unfortunately a voter or the Bloc will have to go to court to overturn the election results. Maybe it is time to have video recording of the vote count so that the voters can see what it done and what the results are - it isn't rocket science folks.
"Housing is beginning to sound like 'you will own nothing and be happy' isn't it? Go dig out Klaus Schwab's book on post COVID Build Back Better and see if you don't begin to see that there really is a 'plan' that WEF is pushing and that Canada is looking eerily like the proposed plan. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but just a simple guy who can read and then look around at the crap we are being fed. I'm on the back nine but fear for my grandchildren's futures." Thanks for posting this. I enjoyed Jen's mini-rant about the lefty media gaslighting her on a lot of issues, but then throughout the day, I started thinking, "Hmm. That's what Jen does to those who comment about the WEF." There are definitely valid concerns about the WEF. A lot of the big players around the world are involved. Are we to assume they are involved for absolutely no reason? If so, what's the point of the WEF?
The Ontario thing is to ask about someone's heritage. The American thing is to ask where did you grow up or go after high school. (Then bring up school or military rivalries, always in good fun). People are curious about where you've been to see where you are going
The Maritime thing is asking who someone's parents are (partially to see if you're related). The other option is asking where someone is from, and then immediately replying with your connection to that community. An example that happened to me literally yesterday when meeting a fellow Maritimer in Ontario:
"I grew up in Fredericton"
"I used to play ringette in Fredericton. I'm from New Glasgow"
I don’t often run into “where are you from”in eastern Ontario. It may be because I have a French last name so they assume I’m from Quebec and Catholic. I’ve also been asked if I was a “dogan.” (Irish slang for Papist). I was also often told I spoke English like a real Canadian.
In the US - specifically Arizona - I get the standard “where are you from” and then the universal “have you found a church yet” followed by an invite to visit theirs. Once people realized I had conservative values I started being introduced as “he’s from Canada but he’s as American as we are”. And when I became a citizen there were more congratulations and group announcements than I could shake a stick at. More than I ever got when I moved back to Canada after a 2 year stint in Montreal.
The idea that Carney's agenda is the same as Trudeau's may miss something important. Even if the new agenda isn't different in kind, it might be meaningfully different in degree.
Watching Carney, and looking at his platform, I agree that he doesn't think Trudeau was wrong about much (not even carbon tax, which Carney clearly saw as a good policy but a comms problem). Carney's theory is different; he thinks Trudeau was insufficiently ambitious.
Governments pretty much never under-spend their platform commitments; Carney's platform called for a $62Bn deficit this year, even after counting on $20Bn in tariff revenue that mostly isn't going to materialize. When he talks about redirecting trade flows and conjuring new industries by decree and doing a Euro-style crackdown on misinformation, he makes Trudeau sound like a rank incrementalist. He won't shut up about dramatically increasing the pace of "building", i.e., spending.
We tend to watch for policy reversals, and miss escalations, but those are important too. This isn't more of the same; it's even more of the same. A lot more.
Yes seeing Gilbeault in the front row Tuesday morning (along with Joly, Fraser and Freeland) and listening to his arrogant, ill informed attitude Wednesday sunk my hopes that Carney might be a different PM as he alluded to during the campaign.
Same shit, different driver. Two to four more years of doing nothing and talking lots singing the same loser songs.
1:12 Journalism is another industry that has been captured by woke beliefs. Woke is a religion; those who disagree are heretics. The kids learned this at J school. And they will soon hold all the sr. editor jobs. And they are getting paid by our government.
Can you imagine a bleaker picture for a nation?
19:06 I suggest that JT did run the Liberal Party. NO one challenged him. Perhaps now, Carney doesn't have that luxury, being a newcomer, untested and unused to party politics. He can't break out of the regional representation requirement for Cabinet. Look at the public noise that Nathaniel Erskine-Smith is making about being dropped from Carney Cabinet 2.0.
Please also remember that Liberals say anything to get elected but only do stuff (or not) to keep power. Promises, platforms: what are they?
The fact that he was dropped while Sean Fraser was kept would make me squawk too.
Not to mention being replaced by a moron who made it about 24 hours in cabinet before thoroughly embarrassing himself (I even saw US commentators retweeting his "economic theories" ironically) and giving a giant middle-finger to young Canadians. I may not agree with a lot of Nate's policies, but he understands housing policy and how to talk to younger Canadians.
We should also consider that Smith was dumped from the portfolio because he WAS going to do something about it. The Liberals were elected by the Boomers and Robertson’s statement is sweet music to their ears.
27:35 The Liberals have done their analysis of the election result and their mandate. "We won". Full stop. They can happily be Trudeau 2.0 because they believe that's what the electorate told them with their votes. Elections are for winning, not considering past shortcomings (never mistakes/failures). Their change requirement was to dump Trudeau and replace him with a mature adult.
Job done. Stop whining about what you thought the election was about.
We badly need PP back in an in-session parliament to at least give the appearance of ideas other than the Liberals.
I am not seeing in Canada any evidence of the pendulum swing against woke of which you speak. In the USA? Absolutely! Trump’s behaving in monstrous ways. His administration's attempts to mandate quotas among university researchers/professors based on political ideology is a perfect example of a pendulum swinging way, I mean FUCKING WAY, too far. But again, this is the USA, not Canada. Listening to part of this podcast at times sounded like listening to Liberals whinging about the effect of overturning Roe v Wade on Canadian abortion laws.
In the past few months in Canada (just off the top of my head), right up to this very week we have seen the Dallas Brodie fiasco, Dundas subway station being re-named, Carney insisting on 50-50 M/F representation in his cabinet (maybe that was Erskine-Smith’s downfall – he should have self-identified as a female!) and an Ontario election in which only Bonnie Crombie spoke to the ongoing disgrace that is the Sir John A statue being vertically entombed at Queen’s Park (visitors from France that stumble upon it must think it’s Canada’s perverse answer to Napoleon being horizontally entombed for public viewing at Les Invalides in Paris). And we have the very real looming threat of Carney reviving the worst of Junior’s censorship legislation to tamp down on “misinformation” which you KNOW will consist of anything that challenges woke beliefs. I just do not see a pendulum swing at all in Canada.
I don’t disagree with the suggestion that there is a population of Canadians who embrace and embody the worst aspects of the MAGA backlash to woke but (a) they are relatively few and (b) as far as I can tell, outside of Quebec, none of them are even close to having their hands on the grip of power – and even in Quebec the legislative backlash seems to be confined to religion (not a Quebec resident so definitely stand to be corrected on that). And the latter point is determinative for me. Until you have someone in actual power who has the radical, illiberal, anti-woke views there is no chance of the pendulum swinging too far.
So yeah, we need to be alert to the possibility of a pendulum swinging too far, but not until it gets anywhere close to equilibrium and/or a Trump-like figure ascends to power in Canada. The former is a long way off to my eyes and the latter seems inconceivable to me. YMMV as the kids say.
No pendulum-swinging in my workplace. That said, I feel I can safely miss the first 10 minutes of a meeting because that's about the amount of time it takes for land acknowledgments and pronoun mentions. One day, I may declare my pronouns as who and whose. But I'll have to be at the don't give a fuck stage of employment because it would likely result in disciplinary action.
Try using hey/you. Looks great in an email.
Me / Myself / I
👍👍👍💪
Nah, who/whose channels Abbott and Costello so is much more fun 🤣
1:04 Canada's woke element may be much more deeply embedded in our government bureaucracy and education system (primary to graduate). They will continue to set the standards for participation with and service by those bodies. We also have deep woke in the unions and professional bodies of those organizations.
The hole that needs filling is awfully deep.
...... woke element IS much more deeply embedded .....
The "pendulum" will not swing on that atrocity for another 20 years.
Podcast #278: The Scourge of the ‘Woke Right’
Quillette, Andrew Doyle
I'm sorry, but the idea that he pendulum has swung back is a canard based on being too online.
(A) Hasn't happened in Canada
(B) Trump legislating a swing is nowhere near as powerful or systemic as the deep infiltration of corporations and schools.
Let me now when these same institutions fire people for being to pro immigration or for stating their pronouns.
Go talk to real people. Here in Canada DEI, even by a different name, is still fully on the menu in companies.
When the Leafs fire a goaltender coach for ‘liking’ progressive tweets the pendulum will have swung too far. Until then, let ‘er swing. And may the curse of Dusty Imoo keep the Leafs far away from Lord Stanley’s cup.
https://x.com/TorontoMarlies/status/1425190926931083264
20:06 Did Carney ever talk about pipelines besides yes in the West and no in Quebec? He spoke of an "energy corridor", whatever that means. |I suspect he'll set up a plan for electricity grids that connect across Canada. Useful but nothing we can sell to make money.
Carney was, is, and will be full of deceptions. For years the economic advisor of Forever The Idiot King, now no federal budget for no good reasons, just 'cuz they have power. The only thing that will change is that the West will get screwed even worse, and the national debt will get also even worse.
I don’t think he is deceptive. The thing is that in the election, he was a blank slate who would be anything you imagined him to be. Now we actually get to see who he actually is.
There is about 30 years of records showing who he is.
Sure, but you are assuming that people know everything about one’s past views. People also change their views with time.
It also cuts both ways. For example, there is 20 years of data suggesting that PP is anti-abortion. Now I don’t think he would legislate that because I believe him and people change their minds.
PP allowed Carney to set the tone of the election by not pivoting fast enough. He allowed Carney unopposed press coverage by being a shithead to the media and blocking them from joining the campaign. That’s on him or on his advisors.
In view of the two-minute retaliatory tariffs before they were sneakily removed (or reduced to near zero) and the distinct possibility it was all a “cook up” with DJT in the first place (to wit, Carney’s warning to DJT that he would have to talk tough during the campaign), it seems pretty obvious to me that Carney is extremely deceptive, slippery, not to be trusted. Throw in carefully worded things such as “energy corridor” and all the unspecific palaver about the economy which sounds more every day like government grants to all and sundry, and you have Trudeau with connections, a resume, and foolish boomer support.
Oh the 51st state thing was defined overblown. Trudeau knew exactly what he was doing when he left the speaker on.
Wow the "pendulum swing" is going to be even more extreme than the woke era? I'm excited! So instead of woke cancellation mobs, land acknowledgements, pronouns, feminist foreign policy, pride flags, BLM, diversity statements, minority hiring quotas, drag queen story time, will we get - Family Values flags flying from every institution? Traditional morality, heirarchy, and the glory of Western Civilization relentlessly pushed in k-12? Patriarchal nationalism as our foreign policy? Patriotic loyalty statements for all higher ed applications? Toppled statues of John A. MacDonald replaced with towering monuments to our colonial triumphs? Mainstream newsrooms across the nation seized by militant right wing youth cadres? If we do not see a Canadian Joseph McCarthy 2.0 arise to stamp out the commies, I am going to be PISSED, and I will blame both of you personally.
Thank you for this. I have no idea what ‘alt right’ atrocities Jen was alluding to but never actually specifying when she talked about the pendulum swinging too far. I don’t see it swinging at all. The woke commie genderwangs still control our cultural sense making institutions
11:32 Carney as communicator solving the same Liberal problems. The MSM want to believe this in order to confirm their correct election support & call. No one but your guys will be the little boy who yells "but he has no clothes".
On the issue of overrepresentation/underrepresentation of different provinces in parliament (as compared to their population), Jan correctly made the point that smaller, poorer provinces tend to be over-represented (more MPs than their populations warrant) than the larger, richer, more successful provinces.
I think there may a causal factor here - overrepresentation is what helps keep the poor provinces poor.
This is partly a question of math. As MPs want to build local support by demonstrating how much patronage in the form of federal government spending they can deliver to their province, it's costs fewer dollars per vote to curry favor in Prince Edward Island than in Ontario or Alberta. The cost of legal political bribery is lower, so governments make more promises. Thus - in the 2025 election - both the Liberals and Conservatives promised to lower or eliminate tolls on the Confederation bridge and ferries to PEI.
This pork barreling math helps keep the poor small provinces poor and small. Perhaps most significant example is the (misnamed) "Employment Insurance." This operates inversely to normal actuarial insurance principles in that risk is inversely correlated to benefits. People in high unemployment regions (Maritimes and the north) get more weeks of benefits for fewer weeks of contributory earnings than people in richer areas. This keeps the chronically unemployed stuck in poor regions AND impedes economic development within those regions because seasonal work becomes more lucrative than full-time employment. From time to time, the federal government has geared up to change this - but has always quickly retreated. If fewer seats were at stake, the government might be more willing to take an unpopular policy decision that would have longer term benefits.
The real harm from unequal representation is not face by those in provinces that are "underrepresented." It is faced by those living in places "overrepresented." More MPs generates more government, which generates more reliance on government. That helps keeps smaller, poorer provinces poor and small.
👏👏👏 Excellent summary of the issue. I always wondered in particular how much better off PEI would be if it weren’t a province of its own.
I had a cousin in law who after retirement drove a school bus because it gave him something to do and he loved kids. He didn’t really need the money because he had invested wisely. Another shirttail relative lived in Newfoundland and had a government job training people how to apply for EI where she lived. She heard about the school bus driving and promptly showed him that he was entitled to EI during the summer and that he was stupid not to apply. I was 😡😡😡. This is how the cancer spreads folks.
Jen - love the shirt! Also, I did a similar tour as you but in a different order - born in Toronto (& named Jen), lots of family still in Niagara and GTA, grew up in Kelowna, been in Alberta for 33 years now (had to do the thing). Alas, I did not spring for the “lived abroad” upgrade. But I do live only 10 minutes from Donut Mill, so, y’know… I have that going for me.
Given Matt's mention of Ontario paperwork and his last article talking about it. Having lived in both Alberta and Ontario at given points in my life (but far more in Alberta), it was striking to me how much more agile Alberta's bureaucracy seems to be. Things like how Ontario still requires snail mail, phoning in, or faxing or emailing a form. Meanwhile, the Alberta equivalent would have already set up a slick, easy-to-use website over a decade ago that you can pay your bills and renew a license within minutes. Again, this isn't about the actual legislature and executive of each provincial government, but the actual citizen-facing public service.
Also for Alberta vs Ontario, tangential to the podcast, is the topic of housing and Robertson's appointment and tone-deaf comments. You could probably talk to Mike Moffatt about it given his brief mention on the podcast, but Ontario has seen a complete collapse in new housing starts in the last year, and B.C. to a lesser extent. Alberta is building more than Ontario has this year, and Quebec is actually staying definitely on track. It's only a blip so far, but people absolutely need houses to live in. Ontario housing is buried in development charges and paperwork, and David Eby's bragging about being the premier of building more houses has fizzled hard. People need houses to live, and population gains are absolutely going to follow where the houses are being built at this point.
Re:the mention of population by representation, and the lag. There's definitely some truth to the issue about the lag. The seats were awarded based off the 2021 census, but they didn't actually come into play until just this election. It's entirely possible if the next 3 elections are 4 years apart, that ridings based off the 2031 census aren't contested until October 2037. By now, having just ticked over 5 million, Alberta is outpacing Ontario and B.C. instead of being slightly better represented, to the tune of a couple of thousand residents per riding more. Given my above mention of the housing collapse in Ontario and B.C., this disparity may start to drastically widen in the next decade. In previous decades, it's whatever, because Alberta would 'only' gain a couple of extra seats. But as it stands, Alberta could possibly be due to stand another outsized bumper crop of ridings next census.
Or put it this way: if the 2022 Liberals had done what the 2012 Conservatives did and said this pop-by-rep disparity is getting out of hand, and given another 20 seats to B.C., Alberta, and Ontario instead of 5 (and another 3 seats or whatever to Quebec), what would the results of this last election be? A Liberal plurality that was 6-7 seats away from a minority instead of 1-2? A very tight balance of power like 2005-2006 where the Liberal + NDP + Green votes were equal to the CPC + the Bloc?
Jen and Matt, Your opening reminds me of a comment I heard from a Haitian not long after the earthquake "Hope is gone but life goes on". They were/are a people in a horrible state with no real government, no real prospects and no real hope. Sadly, the comment applies to Canada at present.
You seem to think that Guilbeault's comments were just his natural state but consider that he made the comments the first day and think that maybe he is signalling the real agenda for oil and gas. The housing minister makes what many think were stupid comments (I agree) but think of this - build rentals or 'affordable' portable houses and then tax the 'unfair capital gain' that many made on their houses and you have a solution to two problems! Build houses and tax 'the rich'. Our foreign affairs minister opines that Israel is using food as a lever so supports Hamas. And, NOTHING GETS DONE ABOUT ANY OF IT BY OUR 'CAN DO' PM!!! He flies off to see the Pope cause he's like Catholic and it would be cool.
Housing is beginning to sound like 'you will own nothing and be happy' isn't it? Go dig out Klaus Schwab's book on post COVID Build Back Better and see if you don't begin to see that there really is a 'plan' that WEF is pushing and that Canada is looking eerily like the proposed plan. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but just a simple guy who can read and then look around at the crap we are being fed. I'm on the back nine but fear for my grandchildren's futures.
I agree that we got conned by Carney with his elbows up BS which he continued to spout even after he had cancelled most of the tariffs he imposed. He even admitted in the interview with the BBC reporter that there was never a 'real' threat.
The election results should give all of us pause. The Quebec riding is unbelievable - votes lost, votes found, hundreds spoiled (the poll I scrutineered for had 2 out of 1,000 in two individual polls). You failed to mention that so many of the recounts are going to the LPC and no one seems to think there is anything strange about that issue. Unfortunately a voter or the Bloc will have to go to court to overturn the election results. Maybe it is time to have video recording of the vote count so that the voters can see what it done and what the results are - it isn't rocket science folks.
"Housing is beginning to sound like 'you will own nothing and be happy' isn't it? Go dig out Klaus Schwab's book on post COVID Build Back Better and see if you don't begin to see that there really is a 'plan' that WEF is pushing and that Canada is looking eerily like the proposed plan. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but just a simple guy who can read and then look around at the crap we are being fed. I'm on the back nine but fear for my grandchildren's futures." Thanks for posting this. I enjoyed Jen's mini-rant about the lefty media gaslighting her on a lot of issues, but then throughout the day, I started thinking, "Hmm. That's what Jen does to those who comment about the WEF." There are definitely valid concerns about the WEF. A lot of the big players around the world are involved. Are we to assume they are involved for absolutely no reason? If so, what's the point of the WEF?
The Ontario thing is to ask about someone's heritage. The American thing is to ask where did you grow up or go after high school. (Then bring up school or military rivalries, always in good fun). People are curious about where you've been to see where you are going
The Maritime thing is asking who someone's parents are (partially to see if you're related). The other option is asking where someone is from, and then immediately replying with your connection to that community. An example that happened to me literally yesterday when meeting a fellow Maritimer in Ontario:
"I grew up in Fredericton"
"I used to play ringette in Fredericton. I'm from New Glasgow"
"oh nice, my dad's from that area"
"what's your dad's name?"
A rare double dip.
I don’t often run into “where are you from”in eastern Ontario. It may be because I have a French last name so they assume I’m from Quebec and Catholic. I’ve also been asked if I was a “dogan.” (Irish slang for Papist). I was also often told I spoke English like a real Canadian.
In the US - specifically Arizona - I get the standard “where are you from” and then the universal “have you found a church yet” followed by an invite to visit theirs. Once people realized I had conservative values I started being introduced as “he’s from Canada but he’s as American as we are”. And when I became a citizen there were more congratulations and group announcements than I could shake a stick at. More than I ever got when I moved back to Canada after a 2 year stint in Montreal.
That's hilarious!