News roundup, 21 Aug 2026

- Mark Carney is still urging the provinces to allow American alcohol back on the shelves. Wab Kinew says that Carney told the premiers that there "will be no trade deal" unless the provinces capitulate on this. Kinew has not made an absolute commitment on the matter yet. He says he's "reluctantly open" to the idea but urges Manitobans not to buy it even if it becomes available, and further says that given Trump's untrustworthiness "we reserve the right to take the US booze off the shelves again" if Trump reneges on the deal.

- The Manitoba government is looking into the possibilities of extending the shipping season from Churchill and reducing the need for expensive icebreakers as a result of declining sea ice.

- The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is filing a constitutional challenge over Manitoba's inadequate legal aid system. The organization says that the inadequate representation provided by legal aid violates the right to a fair trial and to the presumption of innocence.

- An American computer manufacturer reports that the Fedora Linux version of their laptop is outselling the Windows 11 version by ten to one. Some important context, though - Framework Computer is no ordinary computer manufacturer; founder Nirav Patel is a former Apple employee who is reacting against the industry's planned obsolescence model and has designed his products to be easy to disassemble, repair, and upgrade. So naturally the company is going to attract the kind of people who are more inclined to use Linux anyway.

- Swedish startup Heart Aerospace successfully conducted a test flight of the largest electric aircraft to date, flying for 27 minutes. The company plans to develop a 30 seat aircraft with a hybrid drivetrain, which it hopes to have in service within five years.

- Two members of Milligan University's cycling team were killed and seven injured when a car plowed into them. The suspect, a 69 year old North Carolina man, is in custody and facing multiple charges, including reckless vehicular homicide. His bail was initially set at $150,000 but was doubled at his arraignment; evidence was presented that he made no attempt to brake or take evasive action and that officers detected the smell of marijuana in his vehicle. So much for the idea that pot makes you peaceful...

News roundup,17 Aug 2026

- Negotiations with the US in an attempt to prevent the Trump regime from imposing severe tariffs this Wednesday are not going well. The US wants concessions on supply management for dairy products, something that Quebec has called a "red line", as well as on alcohol, something that is under provincial jurisdiction and which several provinces have said they will not relent on unless promised tariff relief for sectors of the economy relevant to them. The Americans also want preferential access to critical minerals, in part because these are needed to replenish weapons stockpiles that they've used up in the war against Iran. They further say that if the talks break down and they impose new tariffs, they will not tolerate retaliation. A former diplomat is predicting that this could permanently damage trade relations between the two countries, as whatever trust Canadians had for the US is fast evaporating.

- Tech companies in the US are having a hard time building AI data centres as fast as they want. It is expected that only half of the capacity scheduled to go online by 2028 is expected to actually be completed by that date. Public opposition is one factor, but even without that the companies are running into shortages of electricity, materials, and labour. Even with these barriers, though, spending on such facilities is up by 46% compared to the previous year, and is so high that it is contributing to inflation.

- Greenland Energy, an oil startup which despite its name is actually headquartered in Texas, has been rebuked by the Greenland government for moving equipment in such a way that they were suspected of planning to drill without authorization. The territory stopped issuing new licenses for exploration five years ago, but the company had acquired a smaller one that had obtained a license prior to the cutoff date. They still need further authorization to actually drill, however, and it is now expected that no such authorization will be issued until next year at the earliest. Several of the company's board members and partners have ties to the Trump regime; one wonders if they're trying to provoke a confrontation that could give the US a pretext to move militarily on the territory.

- The US moved to bail out the Japanese yen last month, by buying large amounts of the currency, but rather than using US dollars they dipped into their reserve of euros. While this in itself is not unprecedented, the difference today is that they did not notify the Europeans in advance as would have been the standard practice in normal times. The euro dropped by 4% against the yen as a result; while it has mostly recovered since, this does not help in rebuilding trust between the US and EU.

- Around 13% of credit cards in the US have balances that are overdue by 90 days or more. This is the highest delinquency rate since the "Great Recession" of 2007-2009.

- An Irish teenager on a family vacation in Greece was electrocuted while taking a shower, raising concerns about the safety of tourist accommodations in the country. The country also has a history of serving booze spiked with methanol; stuff like this ought to put a chill on tourism, but people's appetite to fly somewhere, anywhere, seems insatiable.

News roundup, 15 July 2026

- The US-Iran conflict seems to be boiling over again, with Iran now threatening to again block all oil export through the Strait of Hormuz in response to the US blockading Iranian ports. The US also launched another wave of strikes; Iran retaliated with strikes on US bases in Bahrain, Jordan, and Kuwait.

- A passenger aboard a Ryanair Boeing 737 on a flight from Thessaloniki, Greece to Memmingen, Germany was partially sucked out of the aircraft after the No. 2 engine failed and a part struck the window next to his seat at around 20,000 ft; his wife clung to him for some five minutes before the plane descended to an altitude that enabled her to overcome the pressure differential and pull him back in with the aid of other passengers. He survived but remains in hospital with significant injuries.

- A car collided with an apartment building in Edmonton on Monday night, sparking a fire that left at least one person dead and two missing. The driver is in hospital. It's worth noting that this kind of thing is far, far more common in Canada and the US than it is in, say, the Netherlands; there are reasons for that.

- Some members of the Conservative Party of Canada is now concerned about something that they haven't worried about for a while - a slump in fundraising. The party has long been able to count on wealthy donors even when in opposition, but with the Liberals behaving more like moderate Conservatives, I suspect many of those donors are wondering why they need to prop up a party that's increasingly looking like the party of rednecks and extremists rather than captains of industry.

- Polling in the US by market research company Verasight found that 69% of respondents would be in favour of AI firms being required to transfer 50% of their stock to a sovereign wealth fund as proposed by Bernie Sanders. Seems like it could be a good idea depending on implementation, though I doubt Silicon Valley is going to roll over easily on this issue.

- The University of Chicago's law school is banning first year students from using laptops, phones, or tablets in class. Those who have disabilities that can be shown to require these devices for accommodation will be exempted.

- Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator from California, is begging Canadian provinces to reconsider their import bans on American alcoholic beverages. Ironically, most of the vineyards are located in parts of the state that vote heavily Republican, but I guess Schiff figures that as a representative of the state at large he still has to be seen to speak up for them, and maybe the industry is big enough that the impact on the state's revenue could be significant. In any case, it's not clear how much the market would recover even if provincial liquor boards agreed to start buying the stuff again; in its absence a lot of people are discovering that many Canadian wines aren't as bad as their reputation, and that's not even considering the wide range of excellent European, Chilean, Australian, and New Zealand wines available.

News roundup, 8 July 2026

- A new bill before the US Congress would direct the US Trade Representative to investigate the bans on American alcohol by most Canadian provinces. In the modern American tradition of contrived backronyms, the bill is called the Combating Attacks on our National Alcoholic Drinks by Allies (CANADA) Act. It was introduced by Claudia Tenney, who represents a large part of rural and small-town New York State and who is a rabid Trump supporter. Curiously, the bill makes no mention of the annexation threats and tariffs that led to the bans in the first place.

- Markus Chambers has become the latest Winnipeg city councillor to announce that he will not be running again this fall. Chambers, who represents the suburban St. Norbert-Seine River ward, says that he wants to spend more time with his family, which is fair enough. However, the sheer number of veteran councillors who are quitting is significant - Janice Lukes, John Orlikow, and Brian Mayes are also not running again. One thing all those councillors have in common is that they represent suburban (or largely suburban) wards; I wouldn't be surprised if they know darn well that continuing to insist on car-centric design and exclusively single-family neighbourhoods is financially unviable (you just don't have enough taxpayers per kilometre of street, water main, etc to properly maintain the infrastructure) but for these councillors to acknowledge this in front of their constituents would be politically unviable.

- Mark Carney has appointed Conservative MP Richard Martel to the Senate. This creates a vacancy in the riding of Chicoutimi-Le Fjord, which Martel narrowly won in the last election.

- The leader of a rightwing fringe party, the Freedom Party of BC, has been charged with vandalizing a Pride crosswalk in Surrey. Amrit Birring, 58, was arrested along with a 67 year old man and charged with mischief over $5,000.

- Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has resigned his seat and announced that he will run for reelection in the resulting byelection. Some may remember when Canadian Liberal MP Sheila Copps did that in 1996; she had promised in the previous election campaign to resign if the GST wasn't abolished, but then ran again, winning without difficulty. In Farage's case, his critics believe this is a way of distracting the public from an investigation into his finances; all the other parties, from the Greens and Labour on the left, to the Liberal Dems in the centre, to the Conservatives and Restore Britain on the right are refusing to contest the seat and give him the attention he seems to crave. He won't be acclaimed, though; comedian Jon Harvey, aka Count Binface, has said that he will contest the seat.

News roundup, 1 Dec 2025

- The fire in Hong Kong, which is now known to have killed at least 151 people, is now being attributed to the use of substandard netting by construction crews.

- Apparently the folks at Time magazine don't realize that The Onion isn't the only satire game in town. The magazine recently cited a Beaverton article which has US ambassador Pete Hoekstra threatening to fire a Patriot missile at Parliament Hill.

- A botched launch at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan has damaged the only launch pad suitable for launching crewed spacecraft. This renders Russia unable to launch crewed missions for the first time since the early 1960s; repairs are expected to start shortly but there is no timeline for completion.

- American liquor that was removed from Manitoba shelves is being repurposed for a "managed alcohol program" to gradually wean addicts off the stuff. Nova Scotia, on the other hand, plans to sell it off and donate the proceeds to charity.

- Two men were arrested following a brawl over Pokémon cards at a Costco in Ottawa. Police were called to the store at around 7:15 last Monday after several people started fighting over a "high-demand item". Two people suffered minor injuries; video can be found here.

- A church in Winnipeg's North End requested a zoning variance to allow them to surround their facility with a 9 ft high barbed wire fence in order to keep the poors out. One wonders what Jesus would have thought of that. In any case, the city had qualms about this and denied the request, though as a compromise they're allowing the church to build fences along the sides and rear of the property higher than the usual standard - they just can't use barbed wire.

News roundup, 24 July 2025

- All remaining personnel in Leaf Rapids, Manitoba, including firefighters, have withdrawn from the community as a wildfire entered the industrial area of the town. 

- Sales of American alcohol in Canada are down 66% nationwide; for wine, imports are down a whopping 94%. Given that most provinces aren't stocking the stuff at all, though, one has to wonder why it's not down more; perhaps the deplorables in Alberta and Saskatchewan are buying a lot to show their allegiance to the orange monster.

-  Time is announcing what they call a "surprising" reason for the increase in grocery prices, namely the large number of extreme weather events of late. And yes, it's pretty apparent that climate change is probably responsible for how many such events there have been recently. This does not come as a surprise, though, to anyone who's been paying the slightest bit of attention.

- Many Canadians who are trying to boycott American products are finding that grocery chains are using misleading signage on imported food displays in their stores. This is of course illegal, but I have yet to hear of one of them getting fined for it. Best to read the fine print on the labels, I guess.

- French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte are suing far-right podcaster Candace Owens for defamation after Owens alleged that Brigitte is trans, that the two are blood relations, and that the CIA used mind control to get the French people to vote for Emmanuel.

- Parks Canada has cancelled the permit for MAGA rocker Sean Feucht to perform at the York Redoubt National Historic Site in Nova Scotia, citing "evolving safety and security considerations" and recommendations from the police. Several municipalities, including Charlottetown, Moncton, and Quebec City have followed suit, as has the National Capital Commission in the case of a planned show in Gatineau. The York Redoubt performance has relocated to the hamlet of Shubenacadie, population 411, in East Hants; shows are also still scheduled to go on in Toronto and Ottawa if you're really keen to see him.

- Waterloo Regional Police arrested a man spotted riding a stolen bicycle on the University of Waterloo campus and found him to be in possession of something that appeared to be a grenade. Fortunately it was an inert one, intended to be used for training purposes.

News roundup, 12 June 2025

- An Air India Boeing 787 with 242 passengers and crew on board has crashed in a residential area shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport on a flight to London. This is the first crash of a 787; video here.

- California governor Gavin Newsom is warning that other states may soon see troops deployed as is happening in Los Angeles.

- Teachers in Alberta have overwhelmingly approved a strike mandate. Given the Smith government's unwillingness to be reasonable (indeed, their base probably considers unreasonableness to be a virtue) it seems unlikely that a strike will be avoided. Education in the province is not in good shape in any case; one school in Airdrie has closed its library and music room in order to convert those spaces into classrooms.

- Saskatchewan is following Alberta's lead in putting American booze back on the shelves. I guess it's too traumatic for the people of those provinces to not be able to get the Jack Daniels and Jim Beam they need to drink while listening to country music. Meanwhile, the return of the booze to Alberta shelves might not get as many takers as they're hoping; demand is down.

- A new law introduced by the Ford government in Ontario holds landlords, both residential and commercial, liable for drug offenses that occur on their premises. Penalties include fines of up to $250,000 and/or up to a year in jail. There are fears about the potential impact on homelessness, if people with addiction issues are denied leases, for instance. It may also pose a risk to music venues and nightclubs.

- When the EPA introduced a rule in 2009 that required industries to report their carbon emissions, this in itself led to a drop in emissions. Of course under the Trump regime this rule is being dropped.

- In addition to consulting AI chatbots about mental health matters, people are asking them for dating and relationship advice. I daresay this isn't such a great idea either. On a related note, Canadian AI researcher Yoshua Bengio is warning that current AIs seem to be putting their own interests ahead of ours, using things like deception. One AI apparently was observed to covertly insert its own code into another system to avoid being replaced. Bengio has founded a nonprofit called LawZero which he says will build AIs that don't do that stuff. Some folks in the related Reddit thread wish to remind us that OpenAI was originally founded as a nonprofit, then essentially said "Just kidding!" and became a for-profit company.

News roundup, 6 Feb 2025

- Donald Trump has declared, in a joint press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the US will take over the Gaza Strip, with American troops if necessary. He gently suggested that some other Middle Eastern country should just take the inhabitants off his hands. I believe that there's a term for that sort of thing...

- The Trump administration is effectively shutting down the US Agency for International Development. The agency is not without its critics (some say, for instance, its relationship with the CIA has at times been a bit too close for comfort) but a complete shutdown might not be such a good idea. I'm sure the fact that it was investigating the behaviour of Elon Musk's Starlink is purely coincidental.

- The huge wildfires that swept through parts of greater Los Angeles have now been fully contained after nearly a month. The costs, though, are just beginning - while the impact on the greater economy so far hasn't been too severe, a lot of people are probably already underwater on their mortgages as a result of these fires; another disaster or two like that could change things as losses pile up, potentially causing a financial crisis as severe as the subprime crisis of 2007-2008 if not worse. Already, some people think that housing prices have peaked in areas most vulnerable to such disasters, partly driven by skyrocketing insurance rates.

- During the COVID-19 lockdowns, most Canadian provinces treated their liquor stores as an essential service. At the time, this was justified on the grounds that for people with severe alcoholism, sudden withdrawal can be life-threatening and those who don't die would add to the burden on the healthcare system. Now, however, many are wondering whether that hypothetical would be enough to outweigh the impact of increased consumption on public well-being. An inconvenient truth is that South Africa banned alcohol sales during the lockdowns, so that people would have less incentive to gather in violation of the lockdowns, and immediately experienced a huge decrease in violence as a result.

- Apparently some activist investors in Tesla are starting to sour on Elon Musk. Whether a bunch of Redditors are going to be enough to fire the CEO is another question, of course - at least unless and until the stock starts to tank.

- Greenland's parliament passed a bill banning foreign political donations, for reasons that will no doubt be obvious. The bill also prohibits donations over 20,000 kroner (about $2,500) from any individual, and no party may receive over 200,000 kroner in total from all donors.

- Knox United Church in Brandon, Manitoba is being forced to increase security following harassment and vandalism over their support for the LGBT* community. To his credit, the church's minister refuses to tone down his messaging on the matter; then again he has the support of his congregation and the church hierarchy. Less fortunate is a Baptist minister in Charlotte, NC who has been ousted for being too progressive.

News roundup, 9 Oct 2024

- One noteworthy thing about the far-right orientation of the American countryside - it wasn't always this bad. In 2000, Republicans only had a five point lead over Democrats in rural America - but today they lead by 25 points. How much difference the folksiness of Tim Walz will make in that regard is doubtful, though the Democrats are hoping that it will help in places like Nebraska which doesn't use a winner-takes-all system for their electoral votes. One wonders how much longer this will matter; the shift of the population towards large cities may not be as pronounced in the US as in a lot of countries, but it's still happening there, and the more that happens, the more irrelevant rural voters will become. Of course they will also become even angrier than they already are as that happens.

- The Manitoba government is putting $10 million into the Collaborative Housing Alliance Real Estate Investment Trust. The trust is being created by the Business Council of Manitoba and will assist community groups in the creation of affordable housing; Housing Minister Bernadette Smith hopes to have three projects going within a year.

- The Mountain View School Division in western Manitoba, which recently passed a motion banning all flags except the Canadian, Manitoban, and school flags despite not having a quorum, says that the motion was meant to "foster inclusivity" and "promote unity". An employee of the school division believes otherwise, though, saying that this is a veiled attack on the LGBT* community. I suspect that the employee is right.

- The BC Conservatives are vowing to "end tent cities" in the province; they plan to achieve this via policing to eliminate encampments, and involuntary treatment in secure facilities. Party leader John Rustad was evasive when asked about how they plan to get around recent court decisions such as the one last year which ruled that municipalities cannot evict encampments if they don't have sufficient shelter space for the residents; the folks in this Reddit thread suspect the notwithstanding clause will likely be used if deemed necessary.

- A new Leger poll in BC has the NDP up 5 points over the BC Conservatives; perhaps the Cons' extreme positions are starting to worry voters. Let's hope so.

- The Halifax Chronicle-Herald has fired award-winning editorial cartoonist Michael de Adder, who had worked for the paper for almost 30 years. The paper's parent company was recently taken over by Postmedia, and maybe the new owners didn't like cartoons like this one.

- The Ontario government's move to allow alcohol sales in convenience stores includes fortified wine. So you'll be able to pick up a bottle of Westminster at your local 7-11 to drink under a bridge. Ain't that grand?

- A Republican candidate for the US Senate has some awkward questions to answer about a social media post from a couple of years ago in which he said that "the bad guys won" in WWII.

News roundup, 4 Sept 2024

- Jagmeet Singh and the federal NDP has evidently lost their patience with the Liberal government, saying that several of the promises made by the Liberals in making the confidence and supply accord have not been fulfilled. Accordingly, they have torn up the agreement, potentially meaning that the government could fall at any time.

- Kamala Harris has a solid lead against Donald Trump in the nationwide popular vote, but remains statistically tied with him in key swing states. So somewhat promising but a sane outcome remains far from assured thanks to the peculiarities of the Electoral College. A big concern is the possibility of something analogous to the "shy Tory" factor in British politics.

- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is trying to get his name removed from the ballot in several states following his endorsement of Donald Trump - but in Michigan and in North Carolina this request has been denied. Yet strangely, he is still trying to get reinstated to the ballot in New York after having been previously removed for misrepresenting his residency.

- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he plans to hold onto the seized Russian territories indefinitely, not because he wants to annex them but as a bargaining chip.

- Doug Ford has severely restricted safe injection sites, banning them within 200 metres of a school among other things. Yet he's more than willing to allow stores near schools to sell one of the most socially damaging drugs. He doesn't like it when this is pointed out, though.

- A list of donors to the so-called "Freedom Convoy" in 2022 includes several of the BC Conservative Party's candidates in the upcoming provincial election.

- The TTC has introduced a feature to its transit app that will show unplanned reroutes in real time. Seems to me that something like that is needed in Winnipeg (and elsewhere).

- While leaded gasoline has been banned for automotive use in most places for decades, it is still widely used in aviation. California is moving to change that, and plans on a full ban by 2031.

Harper shuts down Parliament to avoid non-confidence vote

A lot of people say Canadian politics is boring. The events of the past week certainly give the lie to that belief, though. Our current political crisis is attracting substantial attention from the international media; interestingly, they're a lot more upfront about the situation than our own news outlets:

Canadian Parliament Closed in Bid to Keep Prime Minister in Power (New York Times)

Canada's PM clings on to power as parliament suspended (The Guardian)

Canadian PM suspends Parliament to avoid defeat (People's Daily)

It's pretty obvious to foreign journalists what Harper's real motives are. Of course, the domestic press wants to seem impartial (except the Sun Media papers; Winnipeg's example had the screaming headline "NO! NO! NO!" the other day).

The Economist has a nice piece on this. It's a reasonably fair summary; if I have any quibble it's that their treatment of the Bloc is a bit one-dimensional (yes, they are sovereigntists, but there's more to them than that).

Meanwhile, Sean in Ottawa, with a bit of help from josh, has this to say on babble:

Stephen Harper wants to shut down Parliament just because he does not agree with it.

Some say this is unprecedented.

In fact, Harper is following parliamentary tradition. Consider the following precedents:

1629: King Charles I in England
1799: Napoleon in France
1913: Victoriano Huerta in Mexico
1933: Adolf Hitler in Germany
1936: Fransisco Franco in Spain
1939: Benito Mussolini in Italy
1973: Augusto Pinochet in Chile

1975: Indira Gandhi in India

1999: Perez Musharaff in Pakistan
2008: Stephen Harper in Canada.

Maybe Harper should consider what happened to many of those leaders. In a similar vein is this video, courtesy of The Harper Dictatorship:



My suspicion is that over the holidays the Cons will temper the budget a bit, and the Liberals will get nervous and chicken out come the resumption of Parliament in January. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; the budget will be less harsh than it would otherwise be, and the Cons will thus be in power just long enough to be blamed for the hard economic times that we're in for.

Canada isn't the only country facing a parliamentary crisis, though:

Politicians in Australia’s most populous state could be breath-tested for alcohol before voting on laws after a series of late-night incidents that have embarrassed the centre-left government.

New South Wales state lawmaker Andrew Fraser resigned from his conservative opposition frontbench role after shoving a female colleague at the Christmas party celebrations.

“Breath test this mob,” said a front page headline in Sydney’s mass-selling Daily Telegraph newspaper. State police minister Matt Brown was dumped from his portfolio in September after allegedly “dirty” dancing in his underwear over the chest of a female colleague after a drunken post-budget office party.

Conservative opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell said he would support alcohol breath tests for drunkenness for lawmakers before they entered parliament, while Green MPs John Kaye and Lee Rhiannon also backed the plan, along with the parliament’s speaker.

From the Times of India.