- Michael Ma, the up-till-now Conservative MP for the GTA riding of Markham-Unionville, has crossed the floor to the Liberals, a month after his colleague Chris d'Entremont did the same thing. I'm wondering if someone like Michael Chong might follow. After all, Carney is a neoliberal who would have fit in quite comfortably in Brian Mulroney's cabinet, and isn't mean and petty and reactionary like Pierre Poilievre. It kind of says a lot about both parties and their leaders, really. Fortunately we still have alternatives to both, in theory at least. Meanwhile a recent poll by Angus Reid suggests that 58% of recent Conservative voters want Poilievre to stay on as leader, though that is a decline from 68% in August. That means that Carney is likely to remain prime minister for some time to come; sadly while he's doubtless better on purely social issues (not to mention decorum) than Poilievre, he's not much of an improvement on economic matters - not to mention environmental ones. Ma's move brings the Liberals to within one seat of a majority.
- Yves Engler, a self-described "agitator", has been barred from running for the NDP leadership by the party's federal council. Party president Lucy Watson said that candidates "need to uphold values of integrity, honesty and respect for human rights" and that Engler fails this test. The party cited "credible evidence of harassment, intimidation and physical confrontation", including following party members to their homes and vehicles to question them. Engler is also accused of denying or downplaying the Rwandan genocide, being overly sympathetic to Russia, and making comments "consistent with antisemitic attitudes". That last point is a source of contention for many, given how freely that accusation is thrown at people who speak up for Palestine - but Jordy Cummings thinks that in Engler's case there's merit to the accusation, though it's worth noting that Cummings doesn't actually think barring Engler was necessary.
- Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the US National Transportation Safety Board, has publicly condemned a section of the latest defense policy bill before Congress. The bill would effectively erase the NTSB's recommendations in the wake of last winter's disastrous midair collision over the Potomac River. The safety board had called for military aircraft to be required to use ADS-B to make them trackable. Evidently making the military follow civilian rules, even (or especially) for safety reasons, is woke. In tangentially related news, the default font in Microsoft Office is apparently too woke for the regime to use because it was favoured over the fonts like Times New Roman by those with vision problems or dyslexia, and had been made the standard in the State Department for that reason.
- Manitoba Hydro plans to increase its generation capacity by 1,760 megawatts. The corporation hopes to do this by a combination of improvements to hydroelectric plants, new wind farms and battery storage, as well as the construction of three new natural gas turbines in Brandon. Except for the natural gas part, this is a good move, but it should have been made 20 years ago. Unfortunately that would have required governments to plan ahead by more than an electoral cycle.
- Heavy rains have brought significant flooding to parts of BC, with some neighbourhoods in Abbotsford being evacuated. The situation is considerably worse south of the border, with tens of thousands of people being evacuated in various communities in Washington State.
- Jordan Peterson has created an online school full of courses that attack progressive ideas and deny climate change. The school isn't accredited, but Danielle Smith wants to change that.
- Some in the film industry fear that Netflix's bid to take over Warner Brothers could devastate the movie theatre industry, with critics saying the company's business model "does not support showing movies in theatres".
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