News roundup - 9 Oct 2025

- The BC Conservative Party is experiencing a lot of internal strife as it tries to figure out whether it wants to be a pragmatic centre-right party or a youth-oriented, populist, far-right one. The firing of staffer Lindsay Shepherd was not the only one in recent weeks; caucus researcher Siavash Tahan was also fired in September; both say that they were fired for being too conservative for the party. Many of this lot cite leader John Rustad's failure to talk enough about such things as reversing the NDP's attempts to bring the province's legislation in line with the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the province’s existing gender identity education framework, known as SOGI 123. The thing is, in order to have a path to victory the Tories need to appeal to suburban voters, many of whom are understandably a bit spooked by hardcore social conservatism. Part of me hopes that the extremists win out, because that will likely keep them out of power for quite a while. The problem with this, though, is that sooner or later any government is going to wear out its welcome, and one person in this Reddit thread sums it up nicely:

 Wish for your competitor to be crazy, and you get what happened to America, or the Fords in Ontario, or Alberta. It's an unsafe bet - the public might just elect crazy to spite you. 

It's also worth noting that moderation of one's position to attract suburban voters is not limited to the right. The NDP also has tended to take more moderate, centrist positions, even as it tries to make incremental improvements to society. (The Liberals, of course, have no such problem, because suburban voters are their bread and butter). It's not limited to Canada either, though the problem is more acute in countries like ours (or the US or the UK) due to our first-past-the-post electoral system.

- Former FBI director James Comey has pleaded not guilty to charges of misleading the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2020. In that hearing Comey told the committee that he had not authorized any associate to serve as an anonymous source to the media regarding investigations into Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The indictment makes no mention of what was allegedly leaked or who the source was; a Trump loyalist, Lindsey Halligan, who was appointed to head the prosecution, is having difficulty getting staff to work on the case.

- David Frum thinks that Trump may be running out of time to consolidate his power as public opinion turns against him with next year's midterms looming. Frum cites Trump's pressure on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute as many of his enemies as possible, and thinks that Bondi is having to weigh the merits of keeping in the president's good books with the possibility of herself facing prosecution once he is out of office. This may be wishful thinking, however; I think the odds are already against the midterms being anything resembling free and fair elections.

- A historian at Rutgers University who teaches a course about resistance to fascism is putting all his courses online and moving with his family to Spain due to threats and doxxing from the far right. He has already received numerous death threats, including one in which someone threatened to kill him in front of his students. The university's chapter of Turning Point USA, the group founded by Charlie Kirk, has already called for him to be fired, ironically claiming he is "a risk to their safety". Admittedly, he is on record as saying that "violence is sometimes necessary" to stop fascism, but that is entirely true.

- The pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago is suing the federal government after he was shot with a pepper ball, apparently without provocation, while protesting at an ICE facility in nearby Broadview. Rev. David Black says he was taking part in a prayer vigil outside the facility when officers opened fire. 

- Two social media accounts popular with the MAGA crowd, Defiant L’s and Resist the Mainstream, are run by a Macedonian national who has never set foot in the US and who once donated over $3,000 to far-right conspiracy theorist Ron Watkins' unsuccessful bid for the Republican primary for Arizona's 2nd congressional district (as donations by foreign nationals are illegal, Watkins returned the money when this was discovered).

A story from "liberal" California

This is disgusting:

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes. Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.

What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold's lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

Source (all emphasis is in the original). Would that happen in Canada? I honestly think not (one of a diminishing number of things for which we can still feel genuine pride in our country). However, we shouldn't be too smug about even this. After all, it's not because we're intrinsically better people, but merely because our constitution is worded in such a way that implies the right not to be discriminated against on the grounds of sexual orientation. Were it not for that, I wouldn't be surprised to see abuses like the above in some parts of this country (including some places a few kilometres outside the Perimeter).

Canadians' attitudes on crime are at odds with their other social values

A recent poll is the latest to suggest that Canadians are more vindictive now than a decade ago:

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an aging population and a Conservative government have changed the way in which Canadians look at crime and punishment, with a new poll suggesting we are slightly more socially conservative than we were 10 years ago.

The EKOS survey shows that although a modest plurality of Canadians (36 per cent) support prevention as the main goal of the criminal justice system, those who support punishment as priority are on the rise – 30 per cent now, up from 22 per cent a decade ago. (Prevention used to garner 44 per cent support, down 8 percentage points over the past decade.)

“There is a tougher outlook on crime, and punishment takes a more prominent role in views of the underpinnings of the criminal justice system than it did a decade ago,” pollster Frank Graves says.

“This is why it is increasingly perilous for a politician to be caught on the wrong side of the ‘tough on crime’ debate, even if their policy position is more rational.”

So far, this is in line with what's been reported previously. What's interesting, though, is that crime seems to be the only major issue where people are becoming more socially conservative, despite what others have suggested:

Although, Mr. Graves found that Canadians line up with the Manning Centre’s views on crime, they do not in some of the other areas. His polling on abortion rights, for example, found that 52 per cent of Canadians are decidedly pro-choice. And 53 per cent of Canadians support same-sex marriage.

Overall, Mr. Graves says, Canadians are becoming increasingly progressive with the exception of crime. Indeed, the emphasis on punishment is much stronger among older, more poorly educated Canadians.

Interesting. I think that the main factor here is probably the focus of the news media, especially commercial TV and tabloid newspapers. Almost anyone in the know about these things will tell you that crime has been declining for some time, but if you took the Sun seriously you'd be scared to step outside your door. There's a simple reason for this; crime makes good copy. It's exciting (heck, I'm as guilty as the next person of clicking on lurid crime stories if I come across them in a scan of the news), and it's a way of playing people's emotions without getting them riled up over anything that might affect the bottom line for the media outlets and their advertisers. After all, almost nobody's in favour of crime except for the criminals, and even they have their doubts when it's someone else doing it, so you're not going to rock the boat writing a story about it. The effect of this, though, is that most of the news gets filled up with crime stories, leading the casual viewer/reader to think that it's everywhere. And when people get scared, their attitudes understandably tend to harden.