News roundup, 22 July 2026

- Donald Trump is lambasting the National Academies of Sciences over its role in the publication of a reference manual on science aimed at judges. It will surprise few that the reason for his outrage is a chapter about climate change.

- Clownvoy leader Pat King, already convicted on five criminal charges related to the protest/occupation, will be re-sentenced after the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned his acquittal on a charge of intimidation and obstructing police. The court found "overwhelming evidence" that King intended, even before the so-called "Freedom Convoy" arrived in Ottawa, to occupy the downtown core and cause distress to residents. This makes sense to everyone except supporters of the protest; it was pretty apparent to anyone who was paying attention that the clownvoy were practicing what Hunter S. Thompson so aptly called "an ethic of total retaliation".

- Gord Delbridge, the president of CUPE Local 500 representing the majority of City of Winnipeg staff, has died suddenly at the age of 55 following a medical emergency. Besides the obvious shock and sadness for his family and friends, this comes at a time when the union is trying to negotiate a new contract.

- The NDP's Jennifer Flett has won an overwhelming victory in yesterday's byelection in The Pas-Kameesak, winning nearly 75% of the vote. The byelection was necessitated by the death of Amanda Lathlin in March.

- Toronto mayor Olivia Chow has introduced a motion to investigate the city's ability to ban personalized algorithmic pricing for essentials such as groceries, including those delivered by companies like Save-On Foods or services like Instacart. The practice, also known as "surveillance pricing" or "predatory pricing", uses demographic information about you (harvested from your browser and smartphone history) to determine what you're going to be willing to pay for something so that the price can be adjusted accordingly. For his part, Doug Ford says he's opposed to such a ban; in contrast, the NDP government in Manitoba introduced a bill to outlaw the practice in March. Critics question how often this is happening (Loblaws, for instance, denies using it) but it seems to me that the best way to limit such a practice is to stop it before it becomes established.

- A physician at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children has been charged with what is described as "child abuse and exploitation material". Police say that they have "found no evidence that the child sexual abuse and exploitation material is connected to his practice as a physician", which presumably means that no photos of his actual patients have been found so far on the devices seized from him, but this is not particularly confidence-inspiring. Meanwhile a Winnipeg dermatologist has been ordered to stop most of his practice after admitting to misconduct including trying to start a relationship with a patient and continuing to message her after she turned him away.

News roundup, 5 May 2025

- Lawrence Martin of the Globe and Mail argues that the Conservatives would be well-advised to ditch Pierre Poilievre based solely on his lack of likeability, but that they are unlikely to do so. I agree with Martin on both counts, but he pulls his punches somewhat on the second part - the only reason he gives for the party not being willing to select a new leader is that there's no obvious successor waiting in the wings. That may well be true, but I think there's a deeper reason, even if it's impolite to say so - the very things that make Poilievre unlikable to the likes of you, me, or Lawrence Martin make him more likable to the folks of the rural "heartland" who make up the Conservative base. Those people don't want someone polite and civil, they want someone mean, driven by what Hunter S. Thompson would call an "ethic of total retaliation". And Poilievre delivers that in spades. Another sign that Poilievre is unlikely to be dropped is the fact that Damien Kurek, the MP for Battle River—Crowfoot, has already resigned his seat to make way for the leader after the Prime Minister said that he would quickly call a byelection in the event of such a resignation.

- Anthony Albanese's Labor Party has won a second term with a majority in Australia's parliamentary election. Much as was the case here, the incumbents were trailing the opposition in the polls until people started noticing how much their leader, Peter Dutton, looked like a Trump wannabe. And like Pierre Poilievre, Dutton ended up losing his own seat.

- The US House of Representatives has voted to revoke California's ability to regulate vehicle emissions, including the state's planned phaseout the sale of gasoline-powered cars. There is some question whether the rules the House is using to do this actually give them the authority to stop California's measures; in a country where rule of law still applied that might be a factor.

- McDonald's has reported their worst 3 month decline in sales since 2020; this is largely a result of a decline in domestic consumption among middle-income customers due to economic uncertainty, though they have also noticed signs of a shift away from American companies in the international market (especially in Canada and Europe).

- Autonomous semis are now driving their first regular long-haul routes, between Dallas and Houston.

- A Toronto man has been arrested after launching a shopping cart into the path of an e-bike in a bike lane, injuring the rider. The suspect faces charges of assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm, and mischief endangering life.

- A Vancouver teen who lost his father, sister, and stepmother in the vehicle attack on the Lapu Lapu festival last week is offering half of what was raised in a GoFundMe campaign for him to other victims, saying he recognizes that he isn't the only one suffering. Meanwhile, it has come out that the suspect in the attack was on leave from a psychiatric facility at the time of the attack, but that there had been no previous indication that he was a public safety risk. It should be pointed out that most patients in such a situation really aren't a danger; whether this unfortunate exception will make it more difficult for other patients to be released remains to be seen.

News roundup, 9 April 2025

- Many economists now think a global recession is almost inevitable unless the US changes course on tariffs. Of course, that probably won't sway the MAGA crowd; they'll just look for some outsiders to blame.

- UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves are considering doing something that was unthinkable in the neoliberal era even for the Labour Party - renationalizing British Steel. Of course, steel is a key strategic material for running any modern society, and when knockoff effects from the Trump regime's tariffs threaten to possibly end domestic production of the stuff in a newly uncertain geopolitical climate, it concentrates the mind wonderfully. It would be interesting to see if they go ahead with this, and if so, whether other social democratic parties in places like the EU, Canada, and Australia might follow suit. For instance, it wasn't long ago (well, 54 years actually, but...) that the Manitoba NDP government under Ed Schreyer directed the Manitoba Development Corporation to take over a struggling bus manufacturer and keep it afloat, then rather controversially sold it (creating what is now known as New Flyer) after it became profitable. Soon they might want to consider doing that again, only maybe without that last part.

- A suspect has been charged in the case of the woman who was run down and severely injured while crossing Osborne Street last month. Curiously, they have only been charged under the Highway Traffic Act, despite the fact that leaving the scene of an accident is a Criminal Code offense as well. Her family expressed a suspicion at the time that it wasn't an accident at all; even if it was, though, it's interesting that they didn't use that obvious charge. The police did specify that the suspect is definitely not a cop; the fact that they went out of their way to say that while saying little more about the suspect's identity is rather telling.

- US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sees a lot of opportunities to bring manufacturing back to America without the problem of having to pay those pesky factory workers by replacing the latter with robots.

- Traffic at the border crossing between Emerson, Manitoba and Pembina, North Dakota has declined 17% compared to the same time last year. Once we get into times when there's more leisure travel the drop may well be considerably more, and people in the tourism industry in border states are getting worried. An odd footnote - an industry group, the Travel Health Insurance Association of Canada, conducted a survey that's mentioned in the article. Of the possible answers to a question about reasons people don't want to travel to the US, 57% of respondents cited tariffs as a factor, 51% cited political leadership, and 34% mentioned the low Canadian dollar. The fact that nobody cited the orange monster's threat to take over our country as a reason to not want to visit seems only explicable if that wasn't listed as a possible reason; that seems like a strange thing to leave out of such a poll.

- Donald Trump has signed several more executive orders aimed at increasing coal production in the US, mostly reversing the policies of previous administrations but also one that allows the Justice Department to "investigate" states that are "discriminating" against coal for energy production. One interesting quote comes up here:

The president said coal miners want to mine coal, not work in high-tech jobs or other fields. 

"You could give 'em a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and a different kind of job, and they'd be unhappy," Mr. Trump said, with the miners behind him. "They want to mine coal. That's what they love to do."

The thing is, there's actually an element of truth to that. There is a fairly large subset of the population that is so contrarian that they have made their backwardness and nastiness a huge part of their identity. These are the same kind of people who think that "environmentally friendly" is tantamount to "unmanly". And their response to society moving on is what Hunter S. Thompson called "an ethic of total retaliation". Unfortunately, most of those people can't be reasoned with; the best you can do is defeat them. Whether the latter is possible remains to be seen.