“Canadian Politics”

OTTAWA — Stephen Harper is warning Albertans against setting the province on a path toward secession by using their votes in an upcoming referendum in an attempt to send Ottawa a message.

In an essay published Friday in the Calgary Herald, Harper also expressed optimism over how he sees the Liberals under Prime Minister Mark Carney turning a page from the “anti-Alberta” policies of Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau.

“As a former prime minister of Canada, staying silent on the upcoming referendum on Alberta secession is not an option. But I wish it were,” he wrote.

The Conservatives will try to spin the departure of Scott Aitchison, the popular MP for Parry Sound–Muskoka, as being of negligible importance. Here’s a guy in his early 50s who has spent more than 30 years in municipal and federal politics, and who has decided to move on to another stage in life.
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Fair enough. Aitchison’s reasons for leaving at the end of the fall session remain vague. He said on social media that it is “time for a new chapter to explore new opportunities.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals would secure a larger majority if an election were held today as support plunges for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, polls suggest.

The Signal — the Star’s supercomputer-powered poll aggregator — forecasts that the Liberals would win between 192 and 238 seats, with a median tally of 215 on 46.9 per cent of the vote.

Carney’s party currently holds 173 seats in the 343-member House of Commons, a narrow majority.

I’m shocked a Star commissioned poll would turn out this way.

There could be two snap elections in Canada before Christmas.

British Columbia Premier David Eby has already called one for Oct. 24 and Prime Minister Mark Carney is rumoured to be calling another in the coming weeks that would be held sometime before mid-December.

Parliament is back with a substantive legislative agenda that reminds us: Democracy is nothing without accountability. For shame, then, that His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is distracted by internal schisms and online echo chambers.

This fall, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives must gain a foothold. The party’s own MPs know it. Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman told reporters, “This is not the position we want to be in.”

Indeed not.

OTTAWA – Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is pitching a plan to cut federal taxes on diesel fuel and help ensure Canada has affordable supplies of the fuel in the future.

Poilievre says Canada already produces enough diesel to meet national demand, but transportation bottlenecks leave some regions dependent on U.S. imports.

He proposes eliminating all tax on diesel sales until at least Canada Day by extending the full fuel excise tax cut until July 1 of next year and removing the GST from the purchase of fuel.

OTTAWA — Conservative MP Gérard Deltell lauded the federal government for finally springing into action with its Building Canada Strong Act after what he called a decade of “inaction” to get big projects built under former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Deltell, who is the Conservative critic for intergovernmental affairs and One Canadian Economy, said his party agrees “in principle” with the new legislation put forward.

The statement that NDP Leader Avi Lewis posted on X on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur deserves to be reproduced in its entirety, in order to fully appreciate its malignancy and reckless stupidity.

“Tonight Yom Kippur begins, the most sombre moment of the Jewish calendar,” Mr. Lewis wrote. “It’s a time of atonement – a time to grieve those who have been lost, a time to acknowledge and take responsibility for harms we have caused, individually and collectively. For Jewish people, the personal has always been political and the political always personal. This year I’m reflecting on the fact that we failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name. There are many other fronts where I have to do the work of repair. But nothing on this scale.”

He’s good for laughs, so I’m against disqualification.

Phil McColeman stopped as he walked out of Pierre Poilievre’s rally on Sunday and said, “No, no, no.” The former Conservative MP was expressing his displeasure at Poilievre appointing a candidate to run in the next election.

They don’t appear to be in any danger of winning an election so let em roll the dice.

Ontarians tuning in to the news have been greeted with stories of politicians blowing taxpayer money on hotels and facing accusations of serious crimes.

Wouldn’t it be great if voters didn’t have to wait every four years to hold them accountable?

Doug Ford really wants everyone to know that when he endorsed Olivia Chow the other day, it wasn’t an endorsement. Ford had his office put out a statement to that effect late Thursday, about 32 hours after he made the original statement.

Last week, the federal government announced that it’s extending the gas tax holiday into 2027, which is yet another policy that Prime Minister Mark Carney has borrowed from the Conservative handbook. And it isn’t an isolated case, given that Carney zeroed the consumer carbon tax, cancelled the electric vehicle mandate and is working to expand oil and gas capacity.

The Conservative Party’s big tent has been filled with infighting these past few months.

It may not be obvious to anyone who spent the summer in an actual tent, rather than on social media, but fractures are forming within the coalition cultivated by leader Pierre Poilievre.

Fred DeLorey, the chair of NorthStar Public Affairs and a former top party adviser, said it feels like everyone’s trying to “define what is a Conservative.”

I don’t think Poilievre is the real problem so much as the anointed conservative establishment. 

I can’t support a party that fails me on critical issues like Remigration. 

Canada needs an AfD and parliament has to be swept clean.

Alberta’s political Achilles heel federally is its electoral predictability. While provincially the state of affairs has been volatile, shifting from Progressive Conservatives to NDP to UCP in the span of a decade, the province has always given a strong majority of its seats to the conservative party of the day federally.

This tendency has led federal parties to take Alberta for granted. The Liberals don’t pay much attention to Alberta because the likelihood of gaining seats there is slim. Conservative parties don’t pay much attention to Alberta because the likelihood of losing seats there is slim.