News roundup, 18 March 2025

- The second set of remains found at the Prairie Green Landfill have been identified as having been Marcedes Myran, another victim of serial killer Jeremy Skibicki. In other news, a woman from Buffalo Point First Nation who was severely injured in a hit and run in Winnipeg last Friday believes that she was hit intentionally - she says a van followed her as she walked down Osborne Street, then as she crossed the street she made eye contact with the driver, only for the van to strike her, reverse over her, and drive over her again.

- A poll by Leger Marketing suggests that Canadians' sense of national pride is increasing overall - but has decreased by 10% in Alberta. There is also a slight (2%) decline in Atlantic Canada; whether this is statistical noise is hard to say, since the poll was conducted online and doesn't give a margin of error. The Alberta thing, though, is probably real (and would probably be much worse if you didn't include Calgary and Edmonton).

- The Canadian government is seriously reconsidering whether it's a good idea to buy any more F-35 fighters beyond the 16 we've already paid for, especially given that we'd be dependent on the (possibly hostile) US for maintenance and software upgrades. Defence Minister Bill Blair is suggesting that the remainder of the fleet could be made up of the Saab Gripen; as a bonus, Saab has promised that assembly and maintenance of the aircraft could be done in Canada under license, potentially bringing a lot of jobs.

- Canadians crossed the US border by car 23% less last month than they did the previous February. Air travel dropped as well, albeit by only 2.4%. I suspect if you don't count non-discretionary (e.g. job related) crossings, the drops would be considerably higher.

- In his most recent "state of the city" address, Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham mused about ending remote and hybrid work. CUPE Local 500 has filed a grievance on the matter; the local's president Gord Delbridge points out the fact that remote work has been beneficial for employee retention and has not significantly harmed productivity. Gillingham says that bringing workers back into the office will help downtown businesses; no doubt that is the real motivation here, especially since a decline in the value of commercial real estate will be bad for the city's revenue stream. Delbridge, however, questions the benefit to downtown businesses; he says some of his members are vowing to boycott downtown businesses if forced back into the office.

- The Canadian woman who was detained in an immigration facility in Arizona has been released and has returned home to BC. Most of her fellow inmates are not so fortunate; to her credit, she recognizes that.

- The metaphor of the "dumpster fire" has been used to describe a number of things, including Trump's first term. Now, in Brandon we finally have something worthy of comparison to Trump's second term - a whole landfill is burning.

News roundup, 17 March 2025

- Mark Carney was sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada on Friday. Sadly (but predictably) the first thing he did was to eliminate the consumer-level carbon tax. As I've said before, if it were up to me I'd have reduced the GST by an amount equivalent to the carbon tax, and if that still left some GST in place I'd have gotten rid of that too and increased the carbon tax to replace the revenue. Of course, that wouldn't help with rural alienation, but I'm not sure that anything is going to reach those people in the near future anyway.

- The Bureau of Reclamation, which among other things is responsible for managing dams on the Colorado River system, is facing staffing reductions of up to 40% as part of the regime's war on the public sector, and has been ordered to stop nearly all spending. Given that some of the bureau's spending is on things like maintenance for dams, and that the region is plagued by high demand for water as precipitation declines, this does not bode well.

- A court challenge to Ontario's anti-bike lane legislation has brought to light internal documents that suggest that the move will not make a meaningful impact on congestion, and will furthermore mean a 54% increase in the risk of collisions for all road users. Of course, if you're a populist like Doug Ford the truth isn't really what matters; what matters is what "the people" think. Hopefully the court will put the government in its place.

- Federal judges in the US that rule against the Trump regime are being threatened with violence; moreover, some Republican legislators are making moves to start impeachment proceedings against some of them. Combine that with the fact that Trump might simply ignore court orders, and the prospects of containing him through peaceful means do not look good.

- Europeans are torching Teslas to show their displeasure with Elon Musk. Some Americans are also taking various forms of direct action in this department, a matter that the regime wants investigated as "terrorism". Meanwhile the FBI is investigating a suspected arson attempt at the home of a Bayer executive.

News roundup, 14 March 2025

- An American Airlines Boeing 737 en route from Colorado Springs to Dallas made an emergency landing in Denver due to an engine issue, and then caught fire as it was taxiing to the terminal. The aircraft was successfully evacuated without any serious injuries, though.

- Donald Trump once again repeated his threats to annex Canada and Greenland, this time in front of NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. Rutte, who previously served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands, was notably quiet on the matter of a threat to conquer one NATO member in its entirety and steal a territory from another. Trump hasn't forgotten about the Panama Canal either; he's asked the military to develop "options" for the territory.

- The latest poll from Nanos puts the Conservatives at 36%, just one point ahead of the Liberals. The NDP is at 15%, which if nothing else is better than some early polls had them. The margin of error is 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, meaning that the two main parties are statistically tied. Notably, this poll was done before Carney took over as the Liberal leader. A poll from Leger a few days later, over a time period that includes the Liberal leadership election, has the two parties tied at 37% and the NDP down to 11%. The Leger poll also has a regional breakdown as well as a breakdown by age and gender; notably the Liberals are ahead in the 55+ age group but behind the Cons in younger age groups. I guess the silver lining to that is that boomers are more likely to vote; even then, though, it's a mixed bag, because the NDP does especially poorly in this group. So if the Liberals win there's a good chance it will be with a majority; while much better than a Conservative majority this would still be a disappointing result.

- South Korea sent a delegation to Ottawa to advocate for their country as a more reliable source of military hardware than the US. They're offering to sell advanced submarines with a 7,000 NM range; furthermore, they're prepared to set up maintenance facilities in this country and give Canada full access to the technologies behind the subs, which is more than the Americans are willing to do with some of their hardware.

- Empire Foods, the parent company of Sobeys, Canada Safeway, and Freshco, reports that sales of goods from the US are declining sharply as shoppers are increasingly unwilling to buy American stuff if they can avoid it.

- A Canadian entrepreneur was arrested by ICE while trying to reenter the US from Mexico in order to get a new visa, after her previous visa had been revoked. Because of the revocation of the first visa, she was told that she would have had to go to a US consulate outside of the country to reapply. The key phrase is "would have", because they weren't going to give her another chance - or even let her just leave and not return. She's currently being held in a private, for-profit prison in Arizona while they decide what to do with her. She describes the conditions as "inhumane", which is telling, because if they're treating a white person whose first language is English that way, it's probably worse for almost everyone else in the facility.

- A bill before Alberta's legislature to amend the province's Wildlife Act (which governs hunting) would, among other things, allow kids as young as 12 to use firearms without adult supervision. I can't see anything going wrong with this, no siree. The bill also allows "cervid hunt farms", where you'd be able to pay to shoot captive cervids (i.e. deer, including things like elk as well as whitetails or mule deer). They have that in some places in the US but it's worth noting that even the Alberta Wildlife Federation, which advocates for hunters in the province, thinks that allowing canned hunts is going too far.

News roundup, 13 March 2025

- Russian forces have recaptured most of the Kursk region seized by Ukraine last year as a bargaining chip. There are suggestions that the Trump regime's move to suspend intelligence sharing with Ukraine may have been a factor.

- Shelly Glover, who ran for the leadership of the Manitoba PCs in 2021, is looking at launching a new rightwing party on the assumption that the Tory brand is too badly tainted by the refusal to search the landfill. Glover says she cancelled her party membership after the party ran ads campaigning on said refusal. Whatever else one can conclude from this, it's certainly not going to hurt the NDP's prospects.

- A lobby group called the "Freedom Cities Coalition", backed by billionaire techbros, is calling on the Trump regime to create new special development zones where they could build corporate run cities that aren't bound by the usual rules governing municipalities. One of the stated reasons is so that they can develop new technologies without regulatory oversight. That does not sound like a good idea.

- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that Trump's proposed annexation of Canada will not be a topic of discussion at the upcoming G7 summit. It's kind of telling how he thinks it's entirely up to the US what will be discussed there, especially since they aren't even hosting the summit.

- Canadians continue to cancel vacation plans in the US in large numbers. Provincial tourism boards are hoping to capitalize on this by getting people to travel within the country. The boycott movement is also spreading to Europe, where both individuals and businesses are getting on board.

- Canadian intelligence agencies are taking the danger of US interference seriously. It's no great secret that the Americans have destabilized countries before, and the rise of social media has added a dangerous new dimension to this.

News roundup, 12 March 2025

- A Portuguese container ship, the Solong, collided with an anchored American tanker, the Stena Immaculate off the UK's east coast. The tanker was full of jet fuel, which ignited and caused a series of explosions, setting fire to both ships; to make matters worse, the freighter's cargo included sodium cyanide. Despite this, everyone except one crew member of the Solong has been rescued. Sadly the missing crew member was not the captain but some hapless low-level sailor; the captain is, however, facing manslaughter charges.

- The Trump regime is backing off on their plans to raise tariffs on aluminum and steel to 50% from the 25% already planned. In return, Ontario is suspending their planned 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the US. Hopefully that's not deterring the feds from keeping all options on the table, up to and including fees, restrictions, or a complete stoppage of oil exports if necessary. Although in the latter case I don't think the Americans would take it very well.

- The regime has abruptly withdrawn $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University, accusing the institution of being soft on antisemitism. They've also gotten ICE to arrest a Palestinian student at the university, Mahmoud Khalil, for his activism, but a court has blocked his deportation for the time being. They apparently arrested him claiming his student visa was cancelled, apparently not realizing that he had a green card.

- Former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte has been arrested at the request of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity allegedly committed in his zeal to arrest drug traffickers (or certain drug traffickers, or people accused of being drug traffickers, or...)

- BC's Liquor Distribution Branch has removed all American alcohol from its shelves (previously they had selectively removed products from red states). Premier David Eby, commenting on the situation, said "if the president so interested in Canadian water, then we're gonna help him out by letting him keep his watery beer".

- Ukraine has agreed to a 30 day ceasefire negotiated by the US; in turn, the US will resume military aid and intelligence sharing. The ceasefire is, however, subject to Russian approval.

- Amazon is actually complying with the Manitoba government's request that it follow the law on the sale of machetes in the province. 

- US Customs has seen a 36% increase in the smuggling of eggs at the Windsor-Detroit border crossing since October, and a 158% increase at the Tijuana-San Diego crossing. The customs service has made 3,768 seizures of eggs and poultry at its crossings in that time, compared to 352 fentanyl seizures.

- An automated assistant for moderators at Reddit is flagging posts containing the name "Luigi" as potentially violent content thanks to the Luigi Mangione case.

News roundup, 11 March 2025

- Various fake images of Mark Carney with such despicable people as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are being circulated on social media. The images show signs of having been generated with AI.

- Donald Trump apparently has his eyes on the Columbia River Treaty, which regulates the flow of the eponymous river for hydroelectricity and flood prevention. Trump apparently listed the treaty among his grievances against Canada in discussions with Trudeau.

- While interim Manitoba PC leader Wayne Ewasko has belatedly apologized for his party's stance on the landfill search in the last provincial election, leadership candidate Obby Khan isn't so sure; while he eventually came around to supporting the apology (presumably after sniffing the wind) he is not prepared to say that the Stefanson government made a mistake in its decision not to conduct a search at the time. For his part, the other leadership candidate, Wally Daudrich, is now saying that he's in favour of a search but that he thinks it should be paid for by private sector donations (like that's ever going to happen).

- X (the former Twitter) was hit with a massive distributed denial of service attack that shut down the platform several times on Monday. Musk has hinted that it might be a country who's responsible due to the scale of the attack, however a hacker organization called Dark Storm Team is claiming responsibility for the outage.

- A&W Canada, which has long been independent of its American former parent company, may be reaping the benefits of Canadians' rage against the US. The fact that the food is considerably better than McDonalds fare is a bonus.

News roundup, 10 March 2025

- Mark Carney has won the leadership of the federal Liberals in a landslide, and will be sworn in as prime minister shortly. He will become the first person to hold the office of prime minister while not yet having a seat in the House of Commons.

- The Hudson Bay Company has filed for creditor protection. The company intends to restructure; they cite the trade issues with the US as one of the problems, but another one cited is "post-pandemic declines in downtown store traffic". This seems questionable, though; these days most of their stores aren't in downtown locations. The downtown store in Winnipeg closed early in the pandemic (and the writing had been on the wall well before); all remaining locations in the city are in suburban malls.

- Human remains found in the Prairie Green Landfill in Rosser, Manitoba have been identified as having been Morgan Harris, one of four women killed by a Winnipeg serial killer. Moreover, there appear to be remains from another, as yet unidentified person. That person could be Marcedes Myran, or the woman known provisionally as Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe (Buffalo Woman). Or it could be someone else entirely; time will tell.

- Mere hours after declaring another pause in the tariffs on Canada, Trump is now threatening new ones on lumber and dairy products. For her part, Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt openly declared that if Canada wants to avoid tariffs, it should accept American rule. And four different anonymous sources, apparently with insider knowledge of the recent discussions between Trump and Trudeau, report that Trump does not accept the legitimacy of the 1908 treaty that settles the boundary between Canada and the US. Trump also wants to eject Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement, presumably so that the US can spy on Canada with impunity, but other members of the agreement now want to limit what they share with the US. So do Saudi Arabia and Israel - and if those two countries don't fully trust the US with their intelligence secrets, I doubt anyone else will either.

- Trump is blaming "globalists" for the decline in stock markets in response to his erratic tariff behaviour. Of course that term tends to be a bit of a dog whistle among his ilk, kind of like "rootless cosmopolitans" was for an earlier generation.

- Investigators into the death of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, have concluded that Arakawa died of hantavirus, a disease carried by deer mice. Hackman, who was in an advanced state of dementia, may not even have realized that she was dead, much less been able to seek help, but lingered on for another week or so before dying of heart failure.

- A Florida man has been arrested after making multiple calls to 911 to ask them for assistance in assassinating Donald Trump. He also claimed to have hacked into a missile system that would enable him to destroy New York City, and that the missiles were "attracted" to Trump Tower. He reportedly has a history of mental health issues.