Monday, October 26, 2026

News roundup, 26 Oct 2026

- Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won his runoff against far-right challenger Flavio Bolsonaro by a narrow margin. Bolsonaro is refusing to accept the results, citing an extension of voting hours (despite the fact that his own campaign as well as Lula's had requested the extension). Whether he'll be stupid enough to try to stage a coup like his father did remains to be seen; presumably he doesn't want to go to jail. Unless of course he's able to gain meaningful backing from the Trump regime, in which case all bets are off.

- David Eby's gamble in calling a snap election has backfired in the worst way possible.The BC Conservatives, whose disarray Eby was trying to take advantage of, won a majority government under interim leader Lorne Doerkson (with some 48% of the popular vote). Turnout was lower than the 2020 election, despite the former having been held while numerous pandemic restrictions were in place; it is suspected that a lot of prospective NDP voters didn't bother to show up. The thing is, Eby was born and raised in Kitchener, and you'd think a young fellow growing up in Ontario would have known of David Peterson. One wonders why Eby thought he was somehow different.

- A "fact sheet" circulated by the US embassy in Ottawa uses quotes from MPs Melanie Joly, and Anthony Housefather, Ontario premier Doug Ford, and Canada's consol in Boston, Bernadette Jordan to argue that Canada is trying to influence the US midterms. The fact that Donald Trump himself is not shy about endorsing candidates in other countries doesn't seem to matter. The document has been dismissed as "not credible at all" by a political scientist at the U of T; nonetheless, the government is trying to avoid further accusations of this sort by ordering Canadian diplomats to avoid contact with candidates.

- A new poll from Abacus Data indicates that incumbent Winnipeg mayor Scott Gillingham has the support of 36% of respondents. Kevin Klein is in second place at 19%, while Noah Redden and Mike Vogiatzakis are tied for third at 14%. The election will be decided on Wednesday. Meanwhile in Toronto, which along with the rest of Ontario will be holding its municipal election today, a poll from Pollara puts Olivia Chow in the lead once again, with 55% support compared to 44% for Brad Bradford among decided voters. This poll seems to be an outlier, though, as other polls put the race as too close to call.

- Air Canada appears to have been trying to game the system to avoid paying compensation that would be owed to passengers for cancelled flights. The Air Passenger Protection Regulations exempt airlines from the need to compensate beyond the cost of the ticket if a flight needs to be cancelled due to safety-related maintenance. The airline, however, seems to have avoided the need to cancel lucrative flights when the plane goes out of service by reassigning planes from less lucrative ones, then telling the passengers on the latter flight that it's a "maintenance related" cancellation.

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