CANADA AND America’s economies are joined at the hip. Some $2bn of trade and 400,000 people cross their 9,000km of shared border every day. Canadians on the west coast do more day trips to nearby Seattle than to distant Toronto. No wonder, then, that the two economies have largely moved in lockstep in recent decades: between 2009 and 2019 America’s GDP grew by 27%; Canada’s expanded by 25%.
Nearly 50 percent of Canadians would support calling a federal election before next fall, a new national survey suggests.
Thirty-two percent of Canadians are ready to head to the ballot box as soon as possible while 16 percent would prefer an election to happen sooner than October 2025 but not before the end of this year, according to a newly-released Abacus Data poll.
Only 30 percent of Canadians polled don’t want an election to happen until its scheduled date in October 2025, while the remaining 22 percent have no preference.
Only one word captures the vibe in the West following Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah: anguish. Everywhere you look there is dread over what Israel has done, and fear of what it might unleash. Disquiet drips from every newspaper. You hear it in the trembling timbre of news anchors. You see it in the feverish warnings of ‘anti-war’ types that the Middle East now stands upon the precipice of apocalypse. You hear it in Guardianistas’ shrill damning of Israel as a ‘pugnacious out-of-control force’ that now even takes out terrorists ‘against the United States’ explicit wishes’. Yes, how dare this uppity state defy our masters in the neo-empire?
You get the impression that western leaders, diplomats and media come to enjoy chatting with Islamist terrorists over cocktails and begin ascribing them an underserved humanity while conveniently forgetting their murderous friends would slit their throats in a New York minute.
Bob Rae “Nasrallah was an extraordinarily influential figure in the whole region, the whole of the Middle East”
Rae sounds downright wistful at his loss pic.twitter.com/9yEj6uFAxN
— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) September 29, 2024
The federal Conservatives are poised to form one of the largest majority governments in Canadian history, and push the governing Liberals into third—if not fourth place—in the House following the next general election, say pollsters.
Whether the national win will eclipse Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative victory in the 1984 federal election that resulted in a 211-seat majority in the then-282-seat House, the Conservatives will almost certainly capture at least 200 ridings in the newly configured 342-seat Commons if polling trends continue.
From the Star … Justin Trudeau’s Liberals continue to trail the Conservatives in all age groups, with men and women, and in all provinces but Québec.
China’s influence on Canada is evolving from influencing political and economic elites to a more dangerous form of “state capture,” says a former diplomat posted to Canada’s embassy in China.
Charles Burton, a sinologist who is now a senior fellow at the think tank Sinopsis, made the remark during a Sept. 26 event in Ottawa for the launch of investigative journalist Sam Cooper’s third edition of “Wilful Blindness,” a book that examines China’s influence in Canada.
Some argue that Canadians do have an option for affordable groceries at the discount chains of the major supermarket chains: No Frills (Loblaws), Freshco (Sobeys) and Food Basics (Metro). Indeed, Loblaw Cos. Inc. is piloting an ultradiscount grocery store in Ontario, No Name, that promises lower prices by stripping away even more frills.
However, the prices at these discount chains are not nearly as attractive as those found at the hard discounters in other countries (even in the U.S., Trader Joe’s and Aldi are thriving).
A new kind of violence known as “salad bar extremism” has come to Canada, warns an internal government report obtained by Global News.
The term refers to attacks fuelled by a mix of views rather than a coherent ideology, said the report, which cited the recent Edmonton city hall shooting.
“While some extremists are assessed to have a primary motivation, others are influenced by a combination of beliefs,” said the Strategic Threat Assessment.
“Salad Bar Extremism” is just the latest PC effort designed to avoid offending Muslims or Sikhs etc.
Terror on the home front?
…Closer to home, Canadians are increasingly concerned about the threat of rising jihadist-inspired terrorism.
Prior to ongoing Hamas-Israel war, Canadian authorities had charged only a handful of individuals for jihadist-motivated terrorism. Recent cases include a knife attack by an ISIL adherent in British Columbia and an instance of incitement/recruitment in support of terrorism in Montreal (both events happened in 2023). But within the past two months alone, there have been five separate incidents where Canadians or people with domicile in Canada have either launched jihadist-motivated attacks or been involved in their planning.
There’s a storm brewing on Vancouver Island — and this one isn’t coming in off the coast.
When the next federal election rolls around, five of the six ridings the New Democrats hold on the island could be scooped up by the Conservatives, according to polls aggregator Eric Grenier of The Writ.
It’s a potential shift that residents of Campbell River, B.C. are starting to notice on the ground.
Abacus Data Poll: NDP passes Liberals outside of Quebec; Conservatives lead by 22.
If an election were held today, 43% of committed voters would vote Conservative, while 21% would vote for the Liberals, 19% for the NDP, and 5% for the Greens. The BQ has 37% of the vote in Quebec. The Liberal vote share is down 1, the NDP is up 1, and the Conservatives are unchanged from earlier this month.
In 2024 Canada has good news to share!
We now have a rapidly growing export industry, already considered to be one of the global top 10.
It is an industrial dream come true, consisting of selling advanced manufacturing goods to the Global South. Statistics are somewhat unreliable, but the annual revenues were above $1.5-billion in 2023 with 2024 promising to break that record.
There is only one problem with this new export – it consists of stolen cars.
Almost imperceptibly from Canada, the countries of the comparatively advanced world whose politics are more or less democratic, are edging back from their infatuation with the woke and racially atomized and extreme green, left. The shocking wave of antisemitism that freakishly arose after the barbarous assault of Hamas on Israel last October, has largely subsided. The campuses are quiet, the public is tired of having streets disrupted by ridiculous demonstrations proclaiming that the Jews have no right to be in the land of Israel, where they have been for more than 5,000 years, and the burdens of political correctness are becoming insufferable to the sensible majority of most western countries.
This seems a touch optimistic but I am curious about the turnouts on the upcoming anniversary of Oct 7.
I don’t bother going downtown where most of these demo’s take place but that’s due primarily to traffic and urban decay.
Missisaugastan is a place I avoid and Brampton may as well be in South Asia as far as I am concerned.
The crowds of the first Hamas support rallies in Canada may not be matched again but that doesn’t mean the Mohammedans and their useful idiot allies have had a change of heart.
Canada’s economic output is stronger than expected but far from impressive. Statistics Canada (Stat Can) real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew in July, following up a flat month. Any positive expectations are cooled by the details, revealing a few only-in-recession data points. That includes government stimulus in the form of public sector expansion being one of the few primary drivers of growth. Economic output is also significantly behind population growth, continuing the trend of per-capita GDP contractions that have never been this deep outside of a recession.
The truckers’ protest in the winter of 2022 against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate not only continues to make headlines as the trials of prominent protesters drag on and verdicts are sporadically delivered, but the Freedom Convoy itself remains a touchstone in the ongoing debate about the country’s direction after a decade of increasingly left-wing Liberal government. The movement’s implications continue to resonate.
Saturday mornings are not generally a good time to start reading essays on public policy that run the length of the average Ken Follett or James Michener novel.
But last week I started reviewing a thought piece by three British writers from the Works in Progress online magazine — Ben Southwood, Samuel Hughes and Sam Bowman — on what they called the defining task of their generation: ending the stagnation that has seen Britain fall behind the developed world in economic dynamism.
OTTAWA — Canada’s new luxury tax on luxury cars, boats and private planes brought in $137 million in its first year, but it cost $19 million to bring in those taxes.
Conservative MP Scot Davidson tabled an order paper question demanding information about the new tax in the spring and received answers from the government when Parliament returned this month.
This suggests either evasion a legal loophole or Canada just doesn’t have much of a luxury market as the number of sales seems low. Is there a way to legally avoid the tax?
Gov. Gen. Mary Simon insists her lack of French language proficiency does not hinder her ability to represent Canadians, after several Quebec politicians this week criticized her for not yet being fluent in the language, three years after her appointment.
“We’re all human,” Simon told CTV’s Question Period host Vassy Kapelos, in an interview airing Sunday. “I think we all have sensitivities when you get a personal attack, when without knowing really what the reality is.”
A lack of French does not concern me but like many Justin appointees she is simply a dud.
