It’s been a tough year for some auto companies. Sales of electric vehicles continue to grow, especially in China and India, though more slowly than expected in North America and Europe. Demand is even falling in Italy, Japan and Germany. Meanwhile, cheaper Chinese EVs are grabbing market share in Europe and Asia. While improving recently, global vehicle sales remain sluggish at 90 million units in 2023, four million short of 2018.
The Trudeau government’s ban on new gas and diesel vehicles is a non-starter for three powerful reasons.
First, Canadians want to drive gas-powered minivans and diesel pickups.
Second, Canada does not have the electrical power to fuel these battery-powered cars.
OTTAWA — With no new campaign director, no new ad campaign rollout, no major cabinet shuffle, and no change at the top amid grim polling data for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, anxiety and dread amongst MPs and insiders about their electoral prospects has ramped up, sources tell the Star.
Most MPs head out Friday — some fled Ottawa earlier — into a Thanksgiving week parliamentary break which should be a reprieve from parliamentary wrangling with the opposition Conservatives that has stalled government business for two weeks.
Former public safety minister Marco Mendicino says he is very worried the public conversation about some parliamentarians being complicit in foreign interference is becoming a “kangaroo court.”
Mendicino said at a federal inquiry into foreign meddling today that it’s important to follow due process under the law before leaping to conclusions about the conduct of parliamentarians.
Recently revealed documents show that members of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet were looking to associate rising inflation in Canada with “climate change” by using the term “heat-flation,” but abandoned the idea after negative feedback from polls.
An article by former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair this week suggested Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is shaping Canada’s foreign policy to please a few thousand voters in her own Montreal riding, particularly as it would pertain to Israel. “Thomas, have you seen the demographics of my riding”? Joly asked Mulcair.
While the defining feature of our parliamentary system is that MPs represent constituents, pandering to them in such a role as Joly holds becomes an obvious dereliction of a higher duty, and an act of moral cowardice.
Mulcair notes that it “can’t be debated” that Joly’s positions on the Israel-Hamas war have been “utterly incomprehensible.”
I wouldn’t call it cowardice, it’s the sinister math needed to keep her seat.
OTTAWA — The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s corrected analysis of the carbon tax has confirmed most Canadians are getting back more in rebates than they pay in carbon taxes but that the policy will make most Canadians worse off financially.
Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux corrected a mistake he made in two previous reports, but it came to the same broad conclusion. Those previous reports counted both the fuel tax that average consumers pay and the tax on heavy emitters, which they don’t.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had to make then-Public Safety Minister Bill Blair feel “comfortable” with a request for surveillance powers on an Ontario politician, a former top Public Safety official told the Foreign Interference Commission.
The commission has been probing why it took Blair 54 days to approve the 2021 warrant application against a subject whose identity was not revealed during proceedings.
It’s time to put this Parliament out of its misery — or at least on life support.
Canadians can be excused for ignoring the dysfunction of this fall, or tuning it out. Even people paid to keep an eye on the antics in Parliament are finding it hard to watch.
“Antics” = Getting to the roots of yet another LPC scandal.
If you thought the Freedom Convoy types played a role in the last federal Conservative leadership race, just wait and see what the Hamas and Hezbollah types will do when the Liberals try to find a new leader.
Trudeau laid the groundwork for this and I don’t doubt it could happen.
OTTAWA — As the House of Commons remains in procedural suspended animation, Canada’s Opposition leader is standing firm on his pledge to hold the government to account.
During question period on Wednesday, Liberal House leader Karina Gould said the quagmire — triggered by a Conservative privilege motion over the government’s refusal to hand over unredacted documents related to the now-defunct Sustainable Development Technology Canada’s billion-dollar “green slush fund” scandal — should be resolved in the committee room, not the House.
I was packing for a trip to Germany when the first reports of Hamas’ massacre of civilians began circulating online. Initially, what I saw fit the pattern of other Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis, and I went to bed that night believing the IDF would eliminate the perpetrators and that would be that.
Just when you think the Liberals couldn’t possibly sink to another new low, they rose to bring disgrace upon the House of Commons.
Theoretically non-partisan House Speaker Greg Fergus banned Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre from speaking in the House Tuesday. This stemmed from a Monday exchange Poilievre had with Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly who refused to denounce antisemitic and “genocidal chants from hateful mobs” supporting terrorism.
Let the gravity of that sink in.
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet says the Liberal government has only days left to secure his party’s support in the House of Commons by agreeing to boost to some pensions and shield supply management from concessions in trade talks.
“The solution is so simple. It is so simple that I do not know what more I could explain,” Blanchet said Wednesday. “They know what we want, they know how to proceed to give, not only us, but all those in Quebec and Canada who want it, they know how to give it,
“They only have to proceed or find themselves another way out of this, but they know how we will behave.”
Video shows Harper saying his warnings about Trudeau ‘have come to pass’
Update: The video was pulled.
@anilthapa7981 Close meeting with Rt. Hon #StephenJHarper, a #FormerPrimeMinister of #canada #windsorontario #CPCWindsorWest ♬ original sound – Anil Thapa
