re:canola. Apparently, canola contributes more than twice the GDP to Canada as automobiles do ($43b vs $19b, going off the news reports I've seen from the last year). It's interesting just how much hang-wringing is done over automobiles, but tariffs on canola doesn't warrant anywhere near as much coverage.
Justin Trudeau's comment about the Americans voting against Kamala Harris because of anti-feminism or whatever really didn't get enough lookback. Did no journalist want to ask him about those comments again after Mark Carney gave Chrystia Freeland an 86% - 8% drubbing? I'd like to hear his thoughts on the apparently women-hating Liberal party members.
Per bail reforms, there was a headline just today that the person who murdered his sister and stabbed seven others in a stabbing spree in Manitoba was out on bail. This is, sadly, a far too common story these days. I think one of the Canadian satirical news sites should basically copy The Onion and write a "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" headline and refresh it every time it occurs. Being compared to the Americans in an embarrassing way sometimes appears the only way to cajole a lot of Canadians out of their fugue state.
Cheer up. The next few years are going to be a lot of fun.
The Forever referendum is going to be a gas, tormenting Alberta federalists by turning into a plebiscite on the transfer payments. Further to your analogy, Confederation is a marriage, and even the Catholic church acknowledges that divorces are the natural consequence of those that fail.
And then there will be Quebec referendum. How does Albertans for an Independent Quebec sound? That will get more support than the Forever thing.
The left has made a major mistake in Alberta by left coding Canadian nationalism. That works nationally, but most Albertans identify as right of centre. The right could turn it into "us vs them" and then Canada Together is cooked.
When I voted in 2020 in AZ there were almost 80 choices in the ballot. There were only 3 US presidential choices. The rest were for state governor, assorted state executives, federal and state senator and federal and state representatives, county sheriff, retention of state judge, and a whole bunch of voter initiated propositions including borrowing etc. Trump vs Harris was only a minor part. Our state elected a gay female democrat governor but the state chamber narrowly went Republican. All this to say is that the Harris Trump choice was only a small part of the process and the male female issue even less. Party policies are a much stronger part of the equation. You can even vote a straight ticket in some states where you choose all the candidates from one or the other party. And all the candidates at some time had to win a primary among their party membership to even be candidates. Unlike say Ontario where the premier appointed a whole bunch of candidates.
To be fair, I don't think that Freeland is more obviously qualified than Carney in the same way that Harris was much, much more qualified than Trump for their contested political positions. What's arguably unique in the American case is that no amount of qualification was good enough for a woman to beat an unqualified man, not that a man merely beat a woman in a contest.
That is not to say that I agree that sexism was the dominant factor. Although the Republican base expressed ugly sexism towards Harris, swing voters decided less on the basis of her gender than just on the fact of her being an unknown and unfamiliar figure. And for diplomatic reasons of course, it is not the job of the Prime Minister of Canada to weigh in on all this.
Good stuff, as usual. On the crime beat, I have come around to a "3 strikes and you're out" approach. Not saying that a resume of, for example, shoplifting, mischief and tweeting that no mass graves have been found in Kelowna yet, should get you locked up forever. We're talking about violent crime - three convictions for violent offences (we can come up with our precise definition of "violent" at a later time) and you're put away for life. End of discussion. Maybe we let you out when you are 75 years old and have no testosterone left but maybe we don't. (For now, let's ignore the fact the SCC as presently constituted would never allow this.)
The fact is, there are "bad seeds" out there who will never change - we all KNOW this. And there's a famous study from, I think, Sweden, from, I think, 10 years ago or so, showing that 1% of the population is responsible for 63% of all violent crime. You wanna' significantly reduce violent crime, lock up that 1% FOR GOOD.
1. Instead of gun control laws can the laws be changed to deem the smuggling of a firearm, the use of a firearm when committing a crime or the possession of an illegal firearm terrorism or domestic terrorism with significant penalty?
2. How about a frank discussion on what Canada could do and what would, realistically, be the response from NATO and our allies if it were attacked by the USA?
The Liberal Party supports and possibly even funds groups that exist solely to lobby them to attack lawful gun owners, who are a group that can easily be painted as scary and "American style" to their voting bloc, and who almost never vote Liberal or live in significant numbers anywhere Liberals are competitive.
Going after criminals runs into all kinds of uncomfortable problems because they are disproportionately from "equity seeking groups".
Socialists pretty much live and die by the philosophy that everyone is exactly the same and any differences in outcomes are caused by the privileged circumstances or lack thereof in which a person finds themselves. Therefore, in their minds there is no fundamental difference between a licenced gun owner who has had a PAL/FAC for 25 years and no criminal record, and a career criminal with 40 violent convictions, and therefore a gun is equally dangerous in the hands of either. An easy way to reduce the number of guns is to remove them from people who they can more easily track, achieving the same result in their minds as the more difficult (and morally harrowing) task of removing the same number of guns from criminals.
I have heard some leftists even argue that people living in gang-ridden areas need (illegal) guns more than anyone else to protect themselves from being mistakenly targeted by gang members while minding their own business!
So no, we are never going to go after firearms in the hands of criminals, and will continue to target only the law abiding, as long as the horrendous Liberal Party remains in power.
There are some criminals who will never reform nor change. However, that is not an argument for mandatory minimums or automatic sentences - that is an argument for giving parole boards flexibility of discretion.
I like the way that the Norwegian criminal justice system operates. The mass-murderer Anders Brevik was sentenced to "only" 21 years in prison - but the parole authorities there have the discretion to lengthen his sentence if he shows no hope of reform, and they have kept the discretion to condition behaviour through solitary confinement.
I would entertain the possibility of a “faint hope hearing” mechanism. A "3-strike" prisoner can become eligible for such a hearing after, say, 25 years. The prisoner does not get a hearing as of right though – leave is required and will be rarely granted. Any hearing begins with the rebuttable presumption that the prisoner will not be released. And in order to rebut the presumption, the adjudicator must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the prisoner will not re-offend if released.
In the 1980s I was living in suburban Ottawa with a wife and two small children. I heard from a man I had known when I was young and who had become a hardened criminal, with multiple long jail sentences. He was quite violent, and I still bear a scar. Out of the blue, I heard from him, he was now in Ottawa, and he wanted to see me. I didn't want to see him, and I worried about my family. So I convinced my wife that this was a perfect time to visit with her relatives, and packed her and the children off for two weeks, Those two weeks, I slept with a loaded .303 beside the bed. Luckily he didn't show up, and after the two weeks, I felt comfortable enough to resume a normal, albeit watchful, life.
The thought of alerting the police briefly entered my mind, but I dismissed it. My faith in the police was not that high, after having experienced their reaction to two burglaries. I would have shot Mike in the legs if I had had to. Luckily it never came to that.
Early on in the podcast, Jen mentioned in passing the Green slush fund scandal. She wondered what had happened with that and (somewhat casually) mentioned the media probably could have done a better job of publicizing that. To which I relied resoundingly in my head … YES they could have and should have. Parliament ground to a halt for weeks late last year because the Liberals refused to comply with a parliamentary order for them to produce the documents around the slush fund. The situation disappeared when the Liberals prorogued Parliament to allow for their leadership race. And the whole slush Fund affair was then allowed to silently disappear … even though this was a government had refused to comply with a parliamentary order. How can the media and us, the citizens, not hold the Liberals accountable for this ?
And I could ask the same question around the Winnipeg lab scandal from a few years back. I think that was the one that the Liberals were going to take the (Liberal) speaker of the house to court.
One can’t help but think we do indeed get the government we deserve.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat." ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Yes, the Carney cabinet should have listened to the presentation by Kevin Roberts from Project 2025; not that they should agree with him, but they should understand how he, and the people he influences, think.
The Chinese EV tariff issue is more complicated than just an auto industry protection action (though I am sure that was a big part of it) or because the Americans told us to do it (but again, also a significant factor. I know The Line has access to notable experts in national security and technology so I would be interested to read or listen to more on some of those aspects of the issue
FYI, you can’t just run out and buy a firearm in Canada in the way you purchase a baseball bat. You first need a PAL, which requires finding, attending. and passing a multiple choice test at the end of an approximately 8-hour course. There is also an RCMP criminal record check required.
Additionally, the PAL application requires 2 references, a photo guarantor, and your current and former conjugal partners to sign off (if there is no signature, the RCMP will notify them of the application).
None of this is new.
Changes made since 2020 mostly consist of prohibiting specific models of firearm (and stopping purchase or transfer of handguns by legal owners).
The quality of today’s podcast was a welcome back from a summer season meandering rambling. Now I remember why I thought you were worth my time each Saturday morning!
The truth is that there are two different standards of justice in Canada when it comes to self defence. The general public will have the book thrown at them if they defy elite opinion and use deadly force to defend their family at home. Those who live in the right places, have the means to hire top legal talent without a sweat and those well connected need not worry. Canada's elite are nothing if not "do as I say, not as I do."
This is the problem with ambiguous (up to interpretation) law that is all too common in Canada, such as with self defence. Our "may issue" and not "shall issue" rights in fact are a big problem in our society, and again predicated as most cultural things in Canada are, on avoiding confrontation and hard decisions. Even areas such as investment arr impacted by the lack of hard lines and predictability. Our Charter in fact enshrines it.
Canada will have a lot of work to do in modernizing our country from the cultural foundation on up once the boomers finally step out of the way.
As for Conservatives going "all in" on self defence, I don't believe it. Until self defence is recognized as a legitimate reason to own a firearms and tools such as mace and tasers are not prohibited it's all the usual populist "trick the rubes" claptrap from the Poilievre Conservatives.
Canadian gun owners gave up a lot when they abandoned self defence as a legitimate reason to own firearms, and are now relegated to defending a "hobby" as they lose firearm after firearm to disingenuous Liberals pandering to demographics who couldn't tell a machine gun from a Nerf gun spray painted black.
"Yes, strictly speaking I don't need an AR-15 with a 50-round drum mag to hunt, but I do need it to make sure I respond with appropriately overwhelming force if a group of drugged out losers try to break into my house and mess with my things and family, so kindly fuck off."
Fudds are a Canadian phenomenon. It astounds me the level of implicit trust that Canadians have in the leadership, that they will have their best interests at heart.
I agree with your argument, but 5.56 is probably not someone's best choice for a "kindly fu*k off" unless you live a ways out of town or have brick/concrete walls, IMO.
I expect most people would want the lead to stay in the first wall it hits, so maybe consider a little .22 semi-auto (which has the added benefit of everyone in the room not going deaf), or the old school birdshot to pepper him up, with buckshot to take a kneecap off the really aggressive ones.
Your friendly and supportive neighbors will appreciate not having to pick rounds out of their houses.
Several of the additions to the list in March 2025 were .22 and shotguns, which is pretty suboptimal.
I have seen lively debates among Americans about whether an AR or some kind of shotgun makes the best home defence weapon, and over-penetration with the former is usually brought up. But you should have the choice :)
I wouldn't use a .22LR on home invaders for the same reason I wouldn't try to stop a charging rhino with a 223. It might not deter the target, could make them even angrier, and by the time they bleed out the damage to you could already be done. Also I've never had a .22 semi-auto that doesn't jam at least once in a while.
.22 wouldn't be my first choice either, but I do expect the vast majority of defensive shooting stops are psychological. In any case, having a firearm, the will to use it and the skill to hit will matter more than how big the bullets are. Whatever you are going to be able to use most accurately in a rush with high adrenaline is what's best for you.
Black Badge or similar training for firearm owners is a good idea. Safety first.
There is no self-defence law that could ever in principle guarantee that the police would not press unreasonable charges against someone fighting in self-defence. It's a fact of life that authorities can and will press some number of unreasonable charges against all kinds of groups. That some citizens who fight in self-defence get charged is not necessarily evidence of a systemic problem with the law itself.
Agreed. Ultimately it is a Canadian culture problem that needs to be solved. Why are the elites and authorities so vehemently against Canadians defending themselves at home even when polling shows a strong majority support it?
Jen continues to believe Canada is now post-woke. Woke's precursor label was cancel culture. Its premise was/is that there is one truth and anything else is heresy.
Just last month an American Christian singer had Canadian shows cancelled because Trump voters like him. The Liberal Party sees itself as progressive. It must retain its cultural purity so cancelling a Project 2025 person is de rigour. Carney the outsider is still learning who's onside and who's not.
That's a weird claim to make of someone who was by all accounts invited to be a member of Stephen Harper's Cabinet, not to mentioned appointed by the UK Conservatives a little more recently than 15 years ago.
Did I hear that correctly? Did Jen say that firing a warning shot should be mandatory? In which direction? At what angle? How much distance should you allow before it hits something? Sorry, but that's silly advice. The first rule of shooting is know your target. I sure hope I misheard Jen.
Well, this should have titled "Kicking the can down the road". Having agreed six months was the line, it is now nine months. Time for action to address the existential crisis...
Having had a B&E while in the house, with the bad guys between our bedroom and the kids, you don't think, you just act. Trying to explain an outcome while everyone is digesting their breakfast and coffee would be impossible. So accept the insanity and the consequences. At least until things change - and Ms. Gerson was right run, hide, fight. Remembering the only rule to a fight is there are no rules.
It's understandable that canola farmers would prefer to not be reliant on the Canadian government. The problem is that the alternative is to be reliant on the Chinese government.
There's a school of thought that Canada should just dig stuff out of the ground for export and buy finished goods from abroad. Take that business model to its extreme, and Canada becomes a plantation economy - wholly in thrall to a foreign nation as a customer and as a supplier. That exposes us to a lot of economic and existential risk as we are experiencing now with the US relationship. Is that the kind of risk we want to incur with China? I don't think that's a good idea. We need to be able to build things at home if we want Canada to remain a going concern.
The tension between ag exporters and industrial development is an old story. Fast tracking investment in new industries usually means that ag exporters are harmed. Compensation must be paid to maintain national unity. If we want to be a sovereign nation, we can't just give up control of our economy to foreigners.
The question is do we have the business culture to be anything other than an extraction and branch plant economy? Bay Street quite frankly isn't interested in anything else.
Looking at what people do and not what they say, I'd say that our economic establishment doesn't think of us as much more than that.
I was just talking to a friend today in the tech space. Private equity does the venture finance, but the big banks really only like to deal with government guaranteed mortgages and government backed business loans, so there's no finance to scale up small businesses. They just go to the US to scale because there's lots of money down there - ironically a bunch of that money comes from Canadian pension funds.
We have lots of innovative people in Canada, but the finance system here discourages business formation. There's lots of money to be made in extraction, and innovation is expensive and hard. So our financiers do the easy thing.
We really need to break up the Canadian banks and foster more competition in finance. Curtail a lot of mortgage guarantees to encourage more business lending. Repatriate the foreign pension fund investments. And the government would do well to just buy a lot of stuff that's made in Canada rather than giving out niche grants and narrowly targeted business loans.
The banks here want immovable security. Resources are that as is real estate. Literally the first question the banks ask when you meet for a business line of credit is "do you own your home."
Our banks are colonial like that and it reflects our culture of farmers rather than hunters.
One point I disagree with you, pensions shouldn't be forced to repatriate to Canada. If Canada isn't attractive we should be changing the culture, not be providing yet another subsidy in lieu. We need to change, not bandage our flaws.
re:canola. Apparently, canola contributes more than twice the GDP to Canada as automobiles do ($43b vs $19b, going off the news reports I've seen from the last year). It's interesting just how much hang-wringing is done over automobiles, but tariffs on canola doesn't warrant anywhere near as much coverage.
Justin Trudeau's comment about the Americans voting against Kamala Harris because of anti-feminism or whatever really didn't get enough lookback. Did no journalist want to ask him about those comments again after Mark Carney gave Chrystia Freeland an 86% - 8% drubbing? I'd like to hear his thoughts on the apparently women-hating Liberal party members.
Per bail reforms, there was a headline just today that the person who murdered his sister and stabbed seven others in a stabbing spree in Manitoba was out on bail. This is, sadly, a far too common story these days. I think one of the Canadian satirical news sites should basically copy The Onion and write a "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" headline and refresh it every time it occurs. Being compared to the Americans in an embarrassing way sometimes appears the only way to cajole a lot of Canadians out of their fugue state.
As long as Ottawa knows that Albertans will sign petitions to stay in Canada rather than fight, why should they care.
Like an abused spouse trying to keep the marriage together for the kids, a sizable amount of Albertans think this abuse is normal.
Cheer up. The next few years are going to be a lot of fun.
The Forever referendum is going to be a gas, tormenting Alberta federalists by turning into a plebiscite on the transfer payments. Further to your analogy, Confederation is a marriage, and even the Catholic church acknowledges that divorces are the natural consequence of those that fail.
And then there will be Quebec referendum. How does Albertans for an Independent Quebec sound? That will get more support than the Forever thing.
Vive le Québec libre!
The left has made a major mistake in Alberta by left coding Canadian nationalism. That works nationally, but most Albertans identify as right of centre. The right could turn it into "us vs them" and then Canada Together is cooked.
Look at something similar to happen in Quebec.
When I voted in 2020 in AZ there were almost 80 choices in the ballot. There were only 3 US presidential choices. The rest were for state governor, assorted state executives, federal and state senator and federal and state representatives, county sheriff, retention of state judge, and a whole bunch of voter initiated propositions including borrowing etc. Trump vs Harris was only a minor part. Our state elected a gay female democrat governor but the state chamber narrowly went Republican. All this to say is that the Harris Trump choice was only a small part of the process and the male female issue even less. Party policies are a much stronger part of the equation. You can even vote a straight ticket in some states where you choose all the candidates from one or the other party. And all the candidates at some time had to win a primary among their party membership to even be candidates. Unlike say Ontario where the premier appointed a whole bunch of candidates.
To be fair, I don't think that Freeland is more obviously qualified than Carney in the same way that Harris was much, much more qualified than Trump for their contested political positions. What's arguably unique in the American case is that no amount of qualification was good enough for a woman to beat an unqualified man, not that a man merely beat a woman in a contest.
That is not to say that I agree that sexism was the dominant factor. Although the Republican base expressed ugly sexism towards Harris, swing voters decided less on the basis of her gender than just on the fact of her being an unknown and unfamiliar figure. And for diplomatic reasons of course, it is not the job of the Prime Minister of Canada to weigh in on all this.
I guess, but I did notice that China really seems to like blocking Canola like its a Tuesday every time there's a dispute with Canada.
Good stuff, as usual. On the crime beat, I have come around to a "3 strikes and you're out" approach. Not saying that a resume of, for example, shoplifting, mischief and tweeting that no mass graves have been found in Kelowna yet, should get you locked up forever. We're talking about violent crime - three convictions for violent offences (we can come up with our precise definition of "violent" at a later time) and you're put away for life. End of discussion. Maybe we let you out when you are 75 years old and have no testosterone left but maybe we don't. (For now, let's ignore the fact the SCC as presently constituted would never allow this.)
The fact is, there are "bad seeds" out there who will never change - we all KNOW this. And there's a famous study from, I think, Sweden, from, I think, 10 years ago or so, showing that 1% of the population is responsible for 63% of all violent crime. You wanna' significantly reduce violent crime, lock up that 1% FOR GOOD.
2 unrelated questions.
1. Instead of gun control laws can the laws be changed to deem the smuggling of a firearm, the use of a firearm when committing a crime or the possession of an illegal firearm terrorism or domestic terrorism with significant penalty?
2. How about a frank discussion on what Canada could do and what would, realistically, be the response from NATO and our allies if it were attacked by the USA?
The Liberal Party supports and possibly even funds groups that exist solely to lobby them to attack lawful gun owners, who are a group that can easily be painted as scary and "American style" to their voting bloc, and who almost never vote Liberal or live in significant numbers anywhere Liberals are competitive.
Going after criminals runs into all kinds of uncomfortable problems because they are disproportionately from "equity seeking groups".
Socialists pretty much live and die by the philosophy that everyone is exactly the same and any differences in outcomes are caused by the privileged circumstances or lack thereof in which a person finds themselves. Therefore, in their minds there is no fundamental difference between a licenced gun owner who has had a PAL/FAC for 25 years and no criminal record, and a career criminal with 40 violent convictions, and therefore a gun is equally dangerous in the hands of either. An easy way to reduce the number of guns is to remove them from people who they can more easily track, achieving the same result in their minds as the more difficult (and morally harrowing) task of removing the same number of guns from criminals.
I have heard some leftists even argue that people living in gang-ridden areas need (illegal) guns more than anyone else to protect themselves from being mistakenly targeted by gang members while minding their own business!
So no, we are never going to go after firearms in the hands of criminals, and will continue to target only the law abiding, as long as the horrendous Liberal Party remains in power.
The "illegal firearm" is problematic when the gov keeps adding perfectly legal firearms to the list.
There are some criminals who will never reform nor change. However, that is not an argument for mandatory minimums or automatic sentences - that is an argument for giving parole boards flexibility of discretion.
I like the way that the Norwegian criminal justice system operates. The mass-murderer Anders Brevik was sentenced to "only" 21 years in prison - but the parole authorities there have the discretion to lengthen his sentence if he shows no hope of reform, and they have kept the discretion to condition behaviour through solitary confinement.
I feel like the dangerous offender designation is for that
That's what I thought
I would entertain the possibility of a “faint hope hearing” mechanism. A "3-strike" prisoner can become eligible for such a hearing after, say, 25 years. The prisoner does not get a hearing as of right though – leave is required and will be rarely granted. Any hearing begins with the rebuttable presumption that the prisoner will not be released. And in order to rebut the presumption, the adjudicator must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the prisoner will not re-offend if released.
In the 1980s I was living in suburban Ottawa with a wife and two small children. I heard from a man I had known when I was young and who had become a hardened criminal, with multiple long jail sentences. He was quite violent, and I still bear a scar. Out of the blue, I heard from him, he was now in Ottawa, and he wanted to see me. I didn't want to see him, and I worried about my family. So I convinced my wife that this was a perfect time to visit with her relatives, and packed her and the children off for two weeks, Those two weeks, I slept with a loaded .303 beside the bed. Luckily he didn't show up, and after the two weeks, I felt comfortable enough to resume a normal, albeit watchful, life.
The thought of alerting the police briefly entered my mind, but I dismissed it. My faith in the police was not that high, after having experienced their reaction to two burglaries. I would have shot Mike in the legs if I had had to. Luckily it never came to that.
Dead criminals can't sue you for "injury and damages" and they can't testify against you. Just sayin'
Cheers to you. I hope you still have that .303 .
Early on in the podcast, Jen mentioned in passing the Green slush fund scandal. She wondered what had happened with that and (somewhat casually) mentioned the media probably could have done a better job of publicizing that. To which I relied resoundingly in my head … YES they could have and should have. Parliament ground to a halt for weeks late last year because the Liberals refused to comply with a parliamentary order for them to produce the documents around the slush fund. The situation disappeared when the Liberals prorogued Parliament to allow for their leadership race. And the whole slush Fund affair was then allowed to silently disappear … even though this was a government had refused to comply with a parliamentary order. How can the media and us, the citizens, not hold the Liberals accountable for this ?
And I could ask the same question around the Winnipeg lab scandal from a few years back. I think that was the one that the Liberals were going to take the (Liberal) speaker of the house to court.
One can’t help but think we do indeed get the government we deserve.
Remembering this is correct.
If we have to wait for a change in government before we get truth, so be it.
If it remains a mystery at that point, we know it wasn't much of a change in government.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat." ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Yes, the Carney cabinet should have listened to the presentation by Kevin Roberts from Project 2025; not that they should agree with him, but they should understand how he, and the people he influences, think.
The Chinese EV tariff issue is more complicated than just an auto industry protection action (though I am sure that was a big part of it) or because the Americans told us to do it (but again, also a significant factor. I know The Line has access to notable experts in national security and technology so I would be interested to read or listen to more on some of those aspects of the issue
FYI, you can’t just run out and buy a firearm in Canada in the way you purchase a baseball bat. You first need a PAL, which requires finding, attending. and passing a multiple choice test at the end of an approximately 8-hour course. There is also an RCMP criminal record check required.
Additionally, the PAL application requires 2 references, a photo guarantor, and your current and former conjugal partners to sign off (if there is no signature, the RCMP will notify them of the application).
None of this is new.
Changes made since 2020 mostly consist of prohibiting specific models of firearm (and stopping purchase or transfer of handguns by legal owners).
The quality of today’s podcast was a welcome back from a summer season meandering rambling. Now I remember why I thought you were worth my time each Saturday morning!
The truth is that there are two different standards of justice in Canada when it comes to self defence. The general public will have the book thrown at them if they defy elite opinion and use deadly force to defend their family at home. Those who live in the right places, have the means to hire top legal talent without a sweat and those well connected need not worry. Canada's elite are nothing if not "do as I say, not as I do."
This is the problem with ambiguous (up to interpretation) law that is all too common in Canada, such as with self defence. Our "may issue" and not "shall issue" rights in fact are a big problem in our society, and again predicated as most cultural things in Canada are, on avoiding confrontation and hard decisions. Even areas such as investment arr impacted by the lack of hard lines and predictability. Our Charter in fact enshrines it.
Canada will have a lot of work to do in modernizing our country from the cultural foundation on up once the boomers finally step out of the way.
As for Conservatives going "all in" on self defence, I don't believe it. Until self defence is recognized as a legitimate reason to own a firearms and tools such as mace and tasers are not prohibited it's all the usual populist "trick the rubes" claptrap from the Poilievre Conservatives.
Canadian gun owners gave up a lot when they abandoned self defence as a legitimate reason to own firearms, and are now relegated to defending a "hobby" as they lose firearm after firearm to disingenuous Liberals pandering to demographics who couldn't tell a machine gun from a Nerf gun spray painted black.
"Yes, strictly speaking I don't need an AR-15 with a 50-round drum mag to hunt, but I do need it to make sure I respond with appropriately overwhelming force if a group of drugged out losers try to break into my house and mess with my things and family, so kindly fuck off."
Fudds are a Canadian phenomenon. It astounds me the level of implicit trust that Canadians have in the leadership, that they will have their best interests at heart.
I agree with your argument, but 5.56 is probably not someone's best choice for a "kindly fu*k off" unless you live a ways out of town or have brick/concrete walls, IMO.
I expect most people would want the lead to stay in the first wall it hits, so maybe consider a little .22 semi-auto (which has the added benefit of everyone in the room not going deaf), or the old school birdshot to pepper him up, with buckshot to take a kneecap off the really aggressive ones.
Your friendly and supportive neighbors will appreciate not having to pick rounds out of their houses.
Several of the additions to the list in March 2025 were .22 and shotguns, which is pretty suboptimal.
I have seen lively debates among Americans about whether an AR or some kind of shotgun makes the best home defence weapon, and over-penetration with the former is usually brought up. But you should have the choice :)
I wouldn't use a .22LR on home invaders for the same reason I wouldn't try to stop a charging rhino with a 223. It might not deter the target, could make them even angrier, and by the time they bleed out the damage to you could already be done. Also I've never had a .22 semi-auto that doesn't jam at least once in a while.
.22 wouldn't be my first choice either, but I do expect the vast majority of defensive shooting stops are psychological. In any case, having a firearm, the will to use it and the skill to hit will matter more than how big the bullets are. Whatever you are going to be able to use most accurately in a rush with high adrenaline is what's best for you.
Black Badge or similar training for firearm owners is a good idea. Safety first.
https://www.ipsc-canada.org/training.html
There is no self-defence law that could ever in principle guarantee that the police would not press unreasonable charges against someone fighting in self-defence. It's a fact of life that authorities can and will press some number of unreasonable charges against all kinds of groups. That some citizens who fight in self-defence get charged is not necessarily evidence of a systemic problem with the law itself.
Agreed. Ultimately it is a Canadian culture problem that needs to be solved. Why are the elites and authorities so vehemently against Canadians defending themselves at home even when polling shows a strong majority support it?
Jen continues to believe Canada is now post-woke. Woke's precursor label was cancel culture. Its premise was/is that there is one truth and anything else is heresy.
Just last month an American Christian singer had Canadian shows cancelled because Trump voters like him. The Liberal Party sees itself as progressive. It must retain its cultural purity so cancelling a Project 2025 person is de rigour. Carney the outsider is still learning who's onside and who's not.
Carney the "Liberal" INSIDER - for at least 15 years.
That's a weird claim to make of someone who was by all accounts invited to be a member of Stephen Harper's Cabinet, not to mentioned appointed by the UK Conservatives a little more recently than 15 years ago.
One needs to read the REAL, ACTUAL tracks Carney produced and is producing.
Did I hear that correctly? Did Jen say that firing a warning shot should be mandatory? In which direction? At what angle? How much distance should you allow before it hits something? Sorry, but that's silly advice. The first rule of shooting is know your target. I sure hope I misheard Jen.
Especially if your firearm happens to be a single shot anything and you have to reload.
Well, this should have titled "Kicking the can down the road". Having agreed six months was the line, it is now nine months. Time for action to address the existential crisis...
Having had a B&E while in the house, with the bad guys between our bedroom and the kids, you don't think, you just act. Trying to explain an outcome while everyone is digesting their breakfast and coffee would be impossible. So accept the insanity and the consequences. At least until things change - and Ms. Gerson was right run, hide, fight. Remembering the only rule to a fight is there are no rules.
I'm still stickin' to six months. When it's up, I'll say so. The actual spread between my countdown and Jen's will be about six weeks, give or take.
I agree with Jenn, give a warning. However, it is better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
It's understandable that canola farmers would prefer to not be reliant on the Canadian government. The problem is that the alternative is to be reliant on the Chinese government.
There's a school of thought that Canada should just dig stuff out of the ground for export and buy finished goods from abroad. Take that business model to its extreme, and Canada becomes a plantation economy - wholly in thrall to a foreign nation as a customer and as a supplier. That exposes us to a lot of economic and existential risk as we are experiencing now with the US relationship. Is that the kind of risk we want to incur with China? I don't think that's a good idea. We need to be able to build things at home if we want Canada to remain a going concern.
The tension between ag exporters and industrial development is an old story. Fast tracking investment in new industries usually means that ag exporters are harmed. Compensation must be paid to maintain national unity. If we want to be a sovereign nation, we can't just give up control of our economy to foreigners.
The question is do we have the business culture to be anything other than an extraction and branch plant economy? Bay Street quite frankly isn't interested in anything else.
Looking at what people do and not what they say, I'd say that our economic establishment doesn't think of us as much more than that.
I was just talking to a friend today in the tech space. Private equity does the venture finance, but the big banks really only like to deal with government guaranteed mortgages and government backed business loans, so there's no finance to scale up small businesses. They just go to the US to scale because there's lots of money down there - ironically a bunch of that money comes from Canadian pension funds.
We have lots of innovative people in Canada, but the finance system here discourages business formation. There's lots of money to be made in extraction, and innovation is expensive and hard. So our financiers do the easy thing.
We really need to break up the Canadian banks and foster more competition in finance. Curtail a lot of mortgage guarantees to encourage more business lending. Repatriate the foreign pension fund investments. And the government would do well to just buy a lot of stuff that's made in Canada rather than giving out niche grants and narrowly targeted business loans.
The banks here want immovable security. Resources are that as is real estate. Literally the first question the banks ask when you meet for a business line of credit is "do you own your home."
Our banks are colonial like that and it reflects our culture of farmers rather than hunters.
One point I disagree with you, pensions shouldn't be forced to repatriate to Canada. If Canada isn't attractive we should be changing the culture, not be providing yet another subsidy in lieu. We need to change, not bandage our flaws.
Far too long and rambling.
Lie back and think of Rosedale.