A trade deal or future vassalage?

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The back-patting and self-congratulation has already started as word is that there is some kind of deal with the Americans, on certain tariffs, but not actual free trade, and not on any kind of renewal of the New NAFTA. Trump insisted that this means no more trade barriers into Canada for alcohol and for farmers, while Dominic LeBlanc insists that Supply Management remains intact. (Fixing the import quota allocations would actually be a good thing, because the way it’s currently structured is fuckery, and Canada keeps losing at trade tribunals because of it). Premiers did confirm that Carney has asked them to end their booze bans—not that it will stop people from boycotting it on their own accord. But there are other questions that remain, such as Jamieson Greer talking about “digital trade alignment,” and there’s still no word about forestry, or what auto tariffs are going to be. What we’ve heard is that the s.232 tariffs on steel and aluminium are being lowered from 50 percent to 25, but is that really worth it?

We still have no real idea what's in this Canada-U.S deal from last night. There's been a few vague leaks from PM Carney's briefing of the premiers, but now Quebec's premier says a deal is "far from being concluded" and isn't sure she can get behind it.

— Justin Ling (@justinling.ca) 2026-08-20T02:13:16.970Z

There is this weird dichotomy happening between Carney and company talking about diversifying our trade while at the same time pursuing “deeper integration” with the US, as typified by the Keystone XL talk, which just sends even more oil to our captive market. And it remains to be seen just how much Carney is giving up for this temporary relief—and make no mistake, it will be temporary because there is no dealing with Trump, and even if he says he’s got a signed deal, that can implode overnight (and we have seen countless examples of this). I worry most about the likelihood that this gives Trump a win that will let him and his cadre believe that they have figured out the formula for Canadian capitulation, and that this becomes just one more step in pressure that leads to eventual vassalage. There cannot be “deeper integration” that just makes us a resource colony. And all of the Carney apologists are going to be absolutely apoplectic about this notion, but he’s not just giving Canadian businesses time to transition, because most of them have no interest in doing so. Most of them keep hoping that things will go back to the way they were before so that they can continue to be rent-seekers, and Carney has done absolutely nothing to disabuse them of that notion, and that’s a problem, and it’ll be an even bigger problem once we’re a vassal state.

As Goodale' comments here reaffairm, Carney's strategy has always been deeper US integration plus a slight hedge against future bad US economic policy. The belief that Carney's trade diversification and infrastructure projects can balance against closer ties is, and always has been, a fantasy….

— Blayne Haggart (@bhaggart.bsky.social) 2026-08-19T22:38:48.514Z

… b/c in the new normal, stable, mutually beneficial long-term agreements are literally impossible.So long as Carney, Goodale et al hold onto the fantasy that a normal trade agreement is possible & that certainty can be returned to the relationship, Canada will become increasingly a vassal state.

— Blayne Haggart (@bhaggart.bsky.social) 2026-08-19T22:38:48.515Z

What Carney and Goodale and others stubbornly refuse to understand (or don't care) is that trade agreements with the United States today are no longer about negotiating potentially mutually beneficial economic advantages They're tools of domination designed to guarantee subservience.

— Blayne Haggart (@bhaggart.bsky.social) 2026-08-19T22:38:48.516Z

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A brief reprieve from threatened tariffs

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There has been a slight reprieve on the expected imposition of new tariffs, which Trump says has to do with the revival of Keystone XL (which isn’t actually called that anymore). I’m not sure that that accomplishes overall, because it will likely mostly just wind up being trans-shipment for export on the Gulf Coast, and I doubt we have production capacity to fill both that pipeline as well as a second west coast pipeline, and if that means this is an invitation to ramp up even more production in the oilsands, well, that’s yet another climate betrayal by Carney.

Trump says he's pausing the new Canada tariffs for three days because there's a tentative deal which may include reviving the Keystone XL pipeline

— Thomas Seal (@twseal.bsky.social) 2026-08-19T02:20:17.599Z

From PMO:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-08-19T03:14:59.266Z

Earlier in the day, the rumour being leaked was that the Americans were trying to put forward a deal on auto tariffs to lower them to 15 percent, but with a possible base level of 7.5 percent if the American content was increased. The problem, however, is that according to the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association’s Flavio Volpe, margins in auto assembly run around six percent, so they’d still be losing money, so it’s a non-starter. All of this to say that this is dragging out further, and I’m still not discounting yet more capitulation by Carney to get some kind of a “deal,” even though there is no actual deal to be had.

Proxy voting

Mike Moffatt published an op-ed in the Globe and Mail yesterday that expanded on his previous thoughts about proxy voting for parents with children, which is his way of getting around the notion that not giving everyone a vote undermines the one-person-one-vote ethos. I’m not a fan of this particular logic, and I think that his enthusiasm for how mothers would vote better in the interest of their children (as most mothers would be given the proxy vote using CCB rules in his vision) is wildly optimistic or utopian, I do worry that this would essentially be rewarding people with additional political power for having children, even for the sixteen or eighteen years that they have the proxy, which I find a bit distasteful.

More to the point, I worry about unintended consequences. Like how voting rates plummeted after we lowered the voting age to 18, and how people have been wringing their hands about it ever since. One of my particular concerns is that this becomes yet another de facto gerrymander to increase the weights of rural ridings over urban ones, as rural families tend to have more children than urban ones, and this just perpetuates the already egregious problem of rural ridings being artificially weighted heavier than urban ridings, which in turn favours conservative parties in those areas, and that is often a deliberate strategy (looking especially at you, Alberta). Maybe I’m just being cynical, but as much as I can respect Moffatt’s reasoning, I don’t think it survives the test of reality.

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Poilievre’s plan to fuel inflation

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The July inflation data was released yesterday, which means that Pierre Poilievre had something to say about it, and it was…mind-numbingly wrong and stupid. The data were not terrible—yes, it ticked up to 3.0% because of gasoline prices thanks to Trump’s misadventures in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz (and there was also an effect from World Cup tourism prices in there as well), but core measures (which strip out the volatile categories) are all hovering at two percent, and that’s a pretty good thing. This is what we want. Poilievre, however, wants to say dumb things.

In which Poilievre selectively reads this morning's inflation data in order to support his pre-determined but purely bullshit narrative.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-08-17T14:43:12.309Z

For starters, grocery prices. They are actually at their lowest rate of inflation in months, but when you look at the things driving it (fresh fruit, coffee, beef), all of it has fuck all to do with federal deficits. But that’s what Poilievre keeps his focus on. Federal deficits, and taxes. But the thing is, taxes are disinflationary, because they take available spending money out of the system. So, advocating for a continued or larger “gas tax” cut (and to be clear, they’re not all taxes, and won’t equal 25 cents per litre, which is another lie he keeps telling) is actually an inflationary policy. He is literally advocating for what he doesn’t want. Because of course he is.

Poilievre keeps fancying himself an economic genius because he watches crypto bros on YouTube, but he absolutely does not understand anything he’s talking about, and the tax cut/deregulate ideology he espouses got us into the mess we’re in as a society, where the young people he claims to advocate for can’t get ahead. Doubling down on those measures won’t help young people, but he refuses to change his mind, and when your only plan is to betray the audience you claim to be fighting for, well, I’m not sure what to tell you.

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New episodes released early for C$7+ subscribers. This week I discuss the various legal challenges to the different oaths to the King. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-08-17T00:14:10.972Z

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The CBC fails basic civics, yet again

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The CBC has once again officially outraged me. In a short vertical clip for social media, one of their reporters referred to the story about the constitutional challenge in Quebec about the oath to the King, for which she refers to it as the “King of England.”

CBC using "King of England" in the Canadian context. Not King of Canada.There hasn't been a King of England since 1702.FFS, CBC. This is basic civics and you can't even get that right. www.youtube.com/shorts/R5B-N…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-08-14T01:11:30.309Z

For. Fuck. Sakes.

This is basic, grade-school civics. In Canada, Charles III is the King of Canada. Canada has had its own separate and distinct Crown since the Statute of Westminster in 1931. Even more to the fact, England has not had a separate Crown since 1707, when it was merged with the Crown of Scotland to become the Crown of the United Kingdom. In fact, there hasn’t been a King of England since 1702. And yet, here’s the gods damned CBC, using the phrase in reference to the King of Canada, like it’s no big deal.

Even worse was the fact that the clip just uncritically aired the Parti Québécois leader’s completely false claims about swearing the oath to the “King of England” (who doesn’t exist) and that it’s to a “foreign monarch,” which again, hasn’t been true since 1931. Sure, we may time-share the physical person of Charles III, but the King of Canada is not a foreign imposition. These should be basic facts that the national public broadcaster should be able to correct, but chose not to, and presented the PQ’s framing as fact, which it absolutely is not. This is complete malpractice on the part of the journalist in question, her editors and producers, and the CBC writ-large. If they can’t put out accurate information about the basic civics of this country, then what are they even doing?

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-08-13T19:08:01.541Z

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Doing well on the the Rule of Law Index

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Because apparently we’re making it a theme this week, after yesterday’s post I was sent this ranking for Canada under the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, where we’re doing pretty well, in fact. Canada ranks 13th overall in the world, down one spot from last year, in part because we have been dropping on civil justice matters, which is perfectly fair. Breaking it down further, it shows that we are below average on the ability to access and afford civil justice, it being free of discrimination, and that it is not subject to unreasonable delay. This all rings true (unlike certain other ranking systems), in part because civil justice has wound up taking a back seat to criminal matters. Thanks to the Supreme Court of Canada’s Jordan decision, most court resources got shifted to criminal matters in order to avoid a stay of proceedings for unreasonable delay, which means fewer resources for civil matters. That means that those matters are now being delayed even more, and it can be years before you can get a trial date for a civil matter.

If you have paid attention, you would realise that this is almost 100 percent the fault of provincial premiers who don’t adequately resource their justice systems, though I will grant that there have been some resourcing issues at the Federal Court, which doesn’t deal with criminal matters, and those resources are the responsibility of the federal government, but this pales in comparison to the problem in provincially-run courts. Nevertheless, these are solvable problems with more resourcing, if provinces can be arsed to do so, and if the federal government can be bothered to actually apply pressure on them rather than just declare that they’re satisfied that the provinces understand their responsibilities. Clearly, they don’t care, because they know they can blame the federal government, and credulous legacy media needs to stop letting them get away with it.

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For National Magazine, I delve into the government’s new digital privacy legislation, and why there is a great deal of debate over what is being proposed.

My column points out that Poilievre’s ideas for how to secure tariff-free access to the American market are fantastical because they stem from absurdly false notions.

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Our supposed democratic freefall

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Earlier in the week, someone forwarded me this piece about how Canada’s democracy is “quietly eroding” while we all watch the US turn into a fascist hellscape, and they had this chart from the latest V-Dem Institute report on how Canada’s democratic scores are in apparent freefall. It looks dubious, so I tried to do a bit more digging (and spent way, way more time doing it than I should have, because I still have columns to write that I get paid for). Nevertheless, I was left wanting. The Institute doesn’t consider us to be a Liberal Democracy, but rather an Electoral Democracy, but what they define as being required for the “liberal dimension”—well-functioning checks and balances on the executive power by the legislature and the judiciary, and a strong rule of law ensuring that equal civil liberties are respected—all sounds like features that are fully intact in this country.

I tried to dig into their methodology, and apparently, they give five “experts” a survey to complete, and they code the results, based on the five metrics that they define, some of which are supposedly in freefall. The “participatory component,” which saw the second-biggest drop, apparently measures the “extent to which citizens actively participate in political processes, both electoral and non-electoral.  It emphasizes engagement beyond voting, focusing on direct democracy, civil society involvement, and subnational governance.” How has this been in freefall for the past nine years? Electoral turnout figures have been reasonably steady, and how exactly is civil society involvement measured? The “deliberative component,” the largest drop, is apparently the “extent to which leaders provide public, evidence-based rationales for policies; the degree to which decisions are oriented toward societal well-being; citizens’ willingness to acknowledge and engage with opposing views; the success at integrating diverse societal groups into policy discussions; and the extent to which deliberation involves grassroots or independent organization.” Again, how has this been in decline over nine years? If anything, there is more stakeholder consultation, there was a (partial) attempt at incorporating GBA+ into decision-making, and we’re not jailing opposition voices here. How has this fallen so drastically? The report doesn’t say.

The professor who wrote the piece linking to the report cited decades-old complaints about the “centralization of power,” and the “uselessness of MPs,” and so on, but these complaints go back decades, and there has been little material change since then. He lists a bunch of Carney’s bills that are either not passed or just passed, which he is justifiably concerned about, but frankly, most of this legislation is not going to survive court challenges, so again, how is this indicative of some kind of democratic decline? The opaqueness of the V-Dem report doesn’t fill me with any confidence, and this sounds a whole lot like alarmism. Yes, there are problems. Yes, Carney is ramming through bad bills, but they can and will be challenged. This is how a liberal democracy functions. Because we are a liberal democracy, despite what V-Dem may think based on its survey scores.

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The (garbage) Reform Act won’t stop an autocrat

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Over the weekend, the Globe and Mail ran a lengthy opinion piece called “It Can Happen Here,” about how we are supposedly more vulnerable to an autocrat taking power in this country, under our rules, than the Americans were with theirs. I am dubious. While I very much respect the professor who wrote the piece, I worry that there were a few fundamental misunderstandings in some of the points he was trying to make. For example, there is a section about how we don’t have an impeachment mechanism in our constitution, and of course we don’t. Our system operates on confidence as opposed to a fixed clock, so we don’t need impeachment. If the government goes pear-shaped, Parliament can withdraw confidence and the government is out. If a caucus loses confidence in their leader, they can vote non-confidence in him or her at any point, and no, they don’t need the (garbage) Reform Act rules to do so.

Our rules can be pretty effective. For example, when Charles Tupper tried to hold onto power after losing an election, the Governor General refused to make any of the appointments that Tupper wanted him to, so he was forced to vacate the office. Oh, but what if the autocratic PM appoints a lapdog GG? People in serious positions tend to take up the seriousness of those positions even when everyone thinks they won’t. Not saying it’s an impossibility, but so far that’s been the case. And yes, some of our rules are “unwritten,” for which he suggests we need a Cabinet Manual to codify them, but I am dubious there too. Codifying those rules in such a manner invites people to look for legalistic loopholes rather than a principles-based system that makes it easier to point out when someone is trying to do through the backdoor what they cannot do through the front. I also find that the piece very much misread and oversimplified what happened with the whole SNC-Lavalin affair as one of the examples of how power can be abused, because in the end, it was Bill Morneau’s office that was lousy with SNC-Lavalin lobbyists and not PMO, and a more pliant Attorney General was not appointed and didn’t result in the deferred prosecution agreement. (In fact, when SNC-Lavalin eventually pleaded guilty, they got a lesser penalty than the DPA would have stipulated).

My biggest problem with the piece, however, is that it treats the (garbage) Reform Act as a kind of panacea that needs to be more widely adopted. It absolutely does not. What it actually does is put up a bunch of unnecessary rules and barriers to what is a simple vote of non-confidence, and more to the point, it tries to convince MPs that they have lost power over time, or that this will “empower” them when in fact it actually disempowers them because of its formalistic barriers. Yes, we do need to beware leaders who can become autocrats, but the Reform Act will not help avoid that in any way, shape or form.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-08-10T19:08:01.763Z

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On the “need” to be excited about American primaries

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I got a lot of comments over Bluesky yesterday after my post about Avi Lewis, so I thought I would make a couple of things clear. First of all, when I was talking about “big money” in Canadian elections, I was referring specifically to nomination contests (because Lewis was speaking about primaries) and elections. I am fully aware that big monied interests lobby the government and try to influence policy. That’s not the same thing as using money to influence election outcomes. You may think they’re the same thing because of the American framing and context, but it’s really not.

Secondly, the fact that he “needs” to be excited about “democratic socialists” making gains in the US is exactly what I was referring to about pandering to the extremely online crowd. He doesn’t need to be excited, because it has nothing to do with Canada. Nothing. The NDP, as supposed democratic socialists or social democrats (depending on which member of the party you ask) already exists here as a separate party from the Liberals. There is absolutely nothing to be gained in Canada by latching onto these supposed gains, which may very well be for naught. (These extremely online NDP voices were also really excited about the “gains” made by Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, and neither of them achieved any power, and the latter broke his own party and set his successor up for failure). In addition, the “democratic socialists” in the States are promising things that are the norm in Canada, like single-payer healthcare, or social programs that we already have. Being excited because they are trying to do things we already have is weird.

I get that there are people who are excited about Zohran Mamdani, but again, there is no possible application that this can have for Canada, particularly at the federal level, because again, we don’t have an intra-party struggle for ideological dominance happening. The NDP and the Liberals are separate parties. In addition, all of that “excitement” about Mamdani has led NDP leaders in different provinces and federally to take the wrong lessons. Mamdani’s success was as much about a campaign about fixing everyday things for ordinary people as it was about leftwing ideological purity. As a mayor, he can fix things that affect ordinary people, and that’s much, much harder to do at the federal level. Instead, we get Marit Stiles trying to emulate his video style, and Avi Lewis talking about government-run grocery stores with absurd levels of subsidies that don’t make any logical sense. This is just trying to ride on coat-tails for the extremely online crowd, but social media is not real life. I’m not sure that anyone with any authority in the NDP federally or in Ontario understands that, which again, is why I make the observations that I do.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-08-06T19:08:02.228Z

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Avi Lewis more concerned about US primaries

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I wrote a week ago about how NDP leader Avi Lewis is screaming to obscurity and irrelevance the longer he doesn’t get a seat, and lo, he proves to me that he continues to avoid learning a single gods damned lesson from his predecessor. To wit:

https://bsky.app/profile/avilewis.ca/post/3mse6qtrc3c2p

That’s right. He’s exhilarated by a US primary contest. Oh, and “big money” is not a factor in Canadian politics. We’ve had donation limits and have banned corporate money for almost a quarter century now.

Of course there are many factors shaping this shift, most unique to the US.But there is an underlying feeling that we share in Canada, and its importance cannot be overstated.

— Avi Lewis (@avilewis.ca) 2026-08-05T18:45:41.033Z

Yes, this is entirely unique to the US, because we don’t have primary contests, nomination contests are much, much smaller affairs, and WE DON’T HAVE BIG MONEY IN CANADIAN POLITICS!

People are furious with ultra rich, powerful elites.The social contract has been broken. People who work for a wage or salary (not a dividend or bonus) just can’t make the household math make sense.And we’re looking up at the unlimited wealth of the 1% and we are pissed.

— Avi Lewis (@avilewis.ca) 2026-08-05T18:45:41.034Z

Are they? Because a whole lot of Canadians decided they were just fine with Banker Daddy™, and his numbers keep rising in spite of his having proven himself to be a fraud on so very many files.

This groundswell of populist rage is legitimate, and it’s a completely predictable consequence of our economic system and how it has been managed for the last 50 years.The desire to push back against the smug arrogance and creepy impunity of elites is a defining force in politics today.

— Avi Lewis (@avilewis.ca) 2026-08-05T18:45:41.035Z

It will either be harnessed by progressive politics, to balance the scales of society and make a fairer economy for all…Or it will fuel fascism.That’s the choice. And happily, it's up to us!

— Avi Lewis (@avilewis.ca) 2026-08-05T18:45:41.036Z

Yes, it could fuel fascism, particularly because how the populist right and left define “elites” are very different, and it has nothing to do with money. And if he doesn’t realise that, well, that’s a problem.

Which is why I’m so grateful to be doing the work of rebuilding the NDP into a national fighting force for the working class, and to see so many people rushing through the wide-open doors of our movement.

— Avi Lewis (@avilewis.ca) 2026-08-05T18:45:41.037Z

You’re not going to turn the NDP into a federal fighting force without a seat. It’s just not going to happen. Eventually he’ll learn that lesson, and waste a year or two in the process before he does, and then wonder why he’s constantly trying to play catch-up. And then he’ll wonder why his message doesn’t resonate in Canada, because he continues to cater to a very small group of very online people obsessed with American politics, while offering absolutely nothing that is relevant up here. Had he paid the slightest bit of attention to the political fortunes in his own party for the better part of the past decade, he might recognise that fact, but as we can see, he has refused to learn any of those lessons, and so he’s going to keep repeating his predecessor’s mistakes, and wind up in the same place his predecessor did. Funny how that works.

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Hybrid rules are still bad (in case you were wondering)

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Because it’s the summer doldrums, The Canadian Press has decided to check in on the “hybrid” Parliament rules, which are inexplicably still in place, long after the height of the pandemic ended. Well, it should be inexplicable, but for those of us with longer memories, we know that the Liberals were trying to institute these rule changes long before COVID happened, and were never able to get them over the finish line (for good reason!) until COVID, and well, they didn’t let a good crisis go to waste. A lot of them were very committed to the idea that these rule-changes are necessary because of parental responsibilities, and so on. Of course, we now have a handful of MPs who simply don’t show up in Ottawa (one of them was NDP MP Niki Ashton, before she got voted out, but there are others), while we are devaluing the in-person aspects of the job, which cannot be ignored.

I have consistently said this, and I will keep saying it—much of the value of what happens in Parliament are the conversations that happen in corridors, in lobbies, at the sides of committee rooms, that you cannot have online. People underestimate how huge that is. Keeping MPs online also keeps them in party silos, where they don’t see other MPs as human beings, but opponents. In-person meetings and the ability to connect on a human level increases collegiality and decorum. (See: Ending evening sittings in the 1990s and the demise of collegiality). But more than that, there is now a culture of presenteeism where they feel they need to be online all the time, when they should be taking leave for family issues, or medical care, or so on. You can pair votes for absences. You can have someone cover for you at committee. This happened for 150 years, and Parliament functioned just fine. The excuses for why they feel they need this are poor, and it creates more problems than it solves. MPs need to wind down these “hybrid” rules, and end remote voting (because that’s particularly offensive to parliamentary democracy), and engage with one another in person like they’re supposed to.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-08-04T19:08:02.941Z

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  • My weekend column wonders how it was that Mark Carney had become an even worse communicator than Justin Trudeau was.
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  • For National Magazine, I delve into the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision to strike down the law that bars the Ethics Commissioner’s reports from judicial review.
  • My long weekend column looks at the falling crime rates before Carney’s performative tough-on-crime legislation, and points to how credulous he really is.

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