News roundup, 27 Aug 2026

- Mark Carney's willingness to walk away from US trade talks is drawing praise from many former European leaders, many of whom see the EU's recent deal with the States as capitulation. Current leaders are being far more discreet, but observers say that they are quietly admiring Canada's resistance.

- The Pentagon apparently keeps a list of journalists whose questions it will not answer. Richard Allee, an official with US Central Command Public Affairs, reportedly threatened a reporter with being added to the list if they keep asking the wrong questions.

- BC premier David Eby is calling on the federal government to shut down US coal shipments through the Roberts Bank port in Delta. According to someone in this Reddit thread, the Americans depend on the port for access to Pacific markets, as Washington, Oregon, and California have blocked the development of infrastructure needed to export coal. If true this would make it an excellent and effectively targetted measure against the coal producing states, which lean Republican.

- BC MLAs Teresa Wat and Brennan Day have left the BC Conservative caucus, becoming the third and fourth MLAs the party has lost in a three day period. Both say that they have lost confidence in party leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay and can no longer serve under her. One observer says that Findlay has gone "out of her way" to alienate those she disagrees with.

- Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi is calling on Danielle Smith to cancel, or at least postpone, a referendum question scheduled for October which asks voters whether they favour starting the legal process to hold a future binding vote on independence. Nenshi argues that Canada needs to show unity in the face of American aggression; Smith, not surprisingly, refuses to consider doing this.

- Former Conservative MP Inky Mark, already facing numerous firearms charges, has been re-arrested and hit with 26 new charges. These include weapons trafficking, three counts of knowingly possessing a prohibited weapon, nine counts of possessing a restricted/prohibited weapon with ammo without a licence or registration, nine counts of possessing a firearm knowing it is unauthorized, possessing a firearm with a tampered serial number, two counts of failing to report a lost firearm, and having more than six kilograms of explosives.

- There's a street in Ottawa named after Donald Trump. The street is in a neighbourhood with several New York-themed street names, but not surprisingly many want it renamed. An attempt to do so in 2021 failed, but the area's councillor believes that it's time to put an end to this "embarrassment".

News roundup, 25 Aug 2026

- Doug Ford declared on a Toronto radio station that Donald Trump "can kiss my ass" in response to the latest tariffs from the US. Wab Kinew, who doesn't agree with Ford on very much, doesn't fault him at all for his comments. For his part, the Mango Mussolini now says that he wants to rename Lake Ontario as "Lake America", saying "we don’t expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer".

- Jeff Leiper, an Ottawa city councillor turned mayoral candidate, is promising to end return-to-office mandates for municipal employees where possible, if elected. Incumbent mayor Mark Sutcliffe is crying foul - a statement from his campaign bleats that this matter is "the decision of the city manager"; another source cites him as calling the promise "counterproductive and performative". Despite this, though, the folks on Reddit say that Sutcliffe has been a vocal supporter of RTO at the federal level.

- The American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is heading home from a lengthy deployment in the Middle East due to the ongoing war in Iran, having been relieved by another carrier, the USS George Washington. The deployment has become notorious for the horrific living conditions on the vessel; many sailors apparently reported suicidal thoughts, with at least one having to be stopped from jumping overboard. Democratic senators are demanding that the Pentagon investigate; the Pentagon's response so far has been to fire the editor-in-chief, publisher, and a reporter from the military newspaper Stars and Stripes which reported on the conditions, allegedly for "insubordination".

- Two MLAs who left the BC Conservative caucus intend to form a new party. Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Peter Milobar, considered one of the party's moderates, left the party earlier this month in response to the hard-right shift under leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay. He was joined on Monday by Ian Paton, who represents Delta South and who, like Milobar, previously represented the centre-right BC United (the former BC Liberals). They acknowledge concerns about vote splitting but say they want to "give a home to those who feel politically homeless" in the province.

- There's an old joke about a guy who's coming out of anesthesia and the doctor says to him "Well, I have some good news and some bad news. What would you like to hear first?" The patient says "Give me the bad news first", so the doctor says "We amputated the wrong leg." He asks what the good news is, and the doctor says "Your other leg might not need to be amputated after all. Unfortunately, this scenario played out for real at a Winnipeg hospital, according to a lawsuit currently before the courts.

News roundup, 16 April 2026

- Donald Trump is once again threatening to fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell for refusing to lower interest rates, even though it's far from clear that he has the authority to do that unilaterally. The regime is also pursuing a criminal investigation regarding alleged cost overruns for renovations at the central bank's headquarters; a judge has already given the legal opinion that the overruns are a mere pretext and that the government wants to intimidate the bank. The strange thing is, Powell's term is set to expire in May, although he would stay on until a successor is found. 

- Hospitalization rates for vaccine-preventable respiratory infections, including flu and RSV as well as COVID-19 and other conditions, have doubled since the start of the pandemic. Evidently enough people went down the antivax rabbit hole that they stopped getting the vaccinations that they previously went along with.

- To the surprise of nobody with any sense, speeding has increased in Ottawa school zones since the Ford government banned municipalities from using speed cameras.

- More information has emerged about Jeremy Frimer, the psychology professor who is suing the University of Winnipeg for allegedly giving him complex PTSD and the faculty union for not backing him up. It seems that Frimer made some highly questionable claims about race, intelligence, and crime; despite his protestations, the general consensus among most scientists is that human races are so ill-defined that it's pretty safe to assume that such claims are nonsense. As to what could have motivated to make such claims, well...

- Travis Patron, a Saskatchewan man who once served as the leader of a now defunct far right fringe party, has been charged with wilful promotion of hatred for some online posts. He has previous convictions for the same offense, as well as for assault, harassment, and impersonating a police officer.

- Remember the story a few years back about the programmer whose best friend was killed by a hit-and-run driver, so she trained a chatbot on all the texts he'd sent to her so she could still feel like she was talking to him? Whatever you think about whether that's psychologically healthy or not, at least she knew what was going on. A more recent case, though, is a bit more problematic. After a man died in a car accident last year, his family decided to keep the news from his mother, fearing that the shock would harm her health. So they got together all the audio and video they could find of him and trained an AI on it. The AI has brief conversations with her on screen but then apologizes saying that he has to go back to work because he's very busy, and that he will be sure to move back to her city to be with her once he has earned enough money. As some folks in this Reddit thread have remarked, this might be justifiable if she had severe dementia (the only thing worse than having to tell her that he'd died would be having to tell her that over and over again), but there's no mention of this in the article, and I can't see things going too well if the AI has some sort of glitch that reveals its true nature or if she finds out the truth in some other way.

News roundup, 7 April 2025

- Nearly a dozen candidates for the two major federal parties have left or been removed from the race since the start of the campaign. Besides the Liberals' Paul Chiang and the Cons' Don Patel, of whom we've spoken before, this list includes such luminaries as Simon Payette, who was the Conservative candidate in Berthier—Maskinongé until he accused École Polytechnique massacre survivor (and Liberal candidate) Nathalie Provost of exploiting the crime to "grease the palms of anti-gun extremists". I guess he'll have to move to Alberta and run for the UCP there. Today is the parties' last day to replace candidates.

- An Ottawa man was arrested after he entered Parliament's East Block on Saturday and allegedly made threats, sending Parliament Hill into lockdown. Nobody was injured and no weapons found; the nature of the threats and their target has not been disclosed.

- Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is warning that inflation may remain high for the foreseeable future, and stagflation is a risk, due in large part to the policies of the Trump regime. It's a safe bet that Trump will do his darnedest to get Powell removed, not that this will help the situation of course.

- An Australian tourist was denied entry to the US, resulting in him losing out on a $15,000 non-refundable cruise, because the route he took to the US was circuitous and was deemed "suspicious" for that reason. For his part, he says that the route was chosen for the cheapest airfares, but American officials weren't having it. He has vowed never to return to the US. Stuff like this isn't going to help the American travel industry, which is already reeling from a dramatic drop in visits from abroad.

- Another child (unvaccinated of course) has died of "freedom freckles" in Gaines County, Texas. The victim apparently had no underlying health conditions. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has visited the area; perhaps someone should convince him to take a side trip to Dallas.

News roundup, 13 Aug 2024

- The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) has received numerous complaints about unprofessional actions by their staff at Ottawa International Airport. This includes overly invasive searches, sometimes conducted in front of other passengers, as well as damage to items carried and general power-tripping behaviour.

- Tim Walz has a history of relatively progressive economic policies (for the US). Interestingly, unusual for American politicians he's not a big investor; he owns no individual stocks or bonds, or really anything except his pensions from his careers in politics, the National Guard and as a teacher. To those want to avoid politicians who can take part in insider trading without consequence, this is a good thing, and in keeping with legislation he co-sponsored as a member of Congress in 2011 that would prohibits legislators and staffers from trading on non-public information. Interestingly, some in the r/austrian_economics subreddit think it's a sign of "financial illiteracy". Because of course it couldn't be integrity...

- The Manitoba government has reduced the number of moose hunting licenses to be issued to hunters from out of the province by 75% until 2030. Actual biologists think that this is a necessary (and in fact overdue) move, but outfitters really have their knickers in a knot.

- The Manitoba government has extended the funding for the retail theft initiative in Winnipeg, following positive results. The hard part, of course, will be changing social conditions so that the crime doesn't just surge back once suppression efforts are reduced.

- A woman was run over by a car and killed while lying on the road at 1:45 AM on Winnipeg's Harry Lazarenko Bridge. There have been a lot of accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists in the city lately, some of them fatal, but this one sounds more like a suicide than an accident.

- A 15 year old boy suffered life-altering injuries after being attacked with a machete by another 15 year old over the weekend, in an apparent robbery.

- A man in Cairns, Queensland was celebrating a recent promotion to a ground crew position with a helicopter tour company when made the rather curious decision to steal a helicopter from his employer. He subsequently crashed it into a hotel, killing himself and injuring two hotel guests.

Exposing corruption... by being corrupt?

The Cambridge Times has an interesting comment from a local MP, Gary Goodyear, on the recent RCMP raid at the Conservative Party's Ottawa headquarters:

Although some argue over the political timing, Goodyear said it was the Conservatives who actually brought the campaign finance issue to the fore when it filed a claim against Elections Canada to seek reimbursement for advertising expenses. The Conservatives have taken the matter to Federal Court.

As a friend of mine points out, when a party that's accused of illegal activities claims credit for drawing attention to the problem, it's a bit like a drunk driver saying "Without people like me going out and killing people every so often, they'd never do anything about drunk driving!" Takes a certain amount of chutzpah to say something like that.

On the home front, packing and preparation, including trying to balance quality time with friends (some of whom are incompatible with one another) continues apace. I actually had to work Saturday of all days, because we were still doing surveys at the Centre Wellington landfill, asking everyone who showed up with garbage or recycling a short questionnaire and putting their garbage and putting it in our truck if they gave certain answers (very few people were actually sampled). On the plus side, this means I'll get tomorrow off, so I'll have the opportunity to do a lot of preparation.

Among the things I must do is to decide whether or not to keep my bike, and to get a bike rack for my car if I do decide to keep it. It's a good, solid, reliable bike, in excellent mechanical condition, and has rendered yeoman service over the last four years. On the other hand, it only cost me $50 at a yard sale, and I am reminded of the reason for this low price each time I have to pedal it up a significant hill or carry it up or down a flight of stairs. Of course, significant hills are not exactly common in Winnipeg, but staircases are. And it's been pointed out to me that a bike rack for a car is one of those things that you almost never use as much as you think you will. This is doubly true for me, since although I use my bike a lot, it's usually because I want to get somewhere, and driving out to Bird's Hill to ride my bike around isn't the sort of thing I'm liable to do.