Roundup: Poilievre wants an October election. (Good luck with that!)

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Pierre Poilievre called a press conference in Ottawa yesterday, and demanded that Jagmeet Singh end the Supply and Confidence agreement with the government, and that a “carbon tax election” be held by October, which is never going to happen. Even if the NDP withdrew support (which they won’t, because their war chests are low and they think they can still extract things from this government that they can take credit for), the government could continue to survive on an issue-by-issue basis, particularly with the support of the Bloc, who also don’t want an election to happen. Not to mention, the Commons doesn’t return until the 19th, and there are no confidence votes coming up anytime soon that would allow the government to fall—certainly not anywhere close for an October election. Not to mention, with three provinces also holding elections this fall, trying to force a federal election in the middle of them is also a really dumb idea.

Poilievre, the whole while, was doing his best Trump imitation by name-calling (“Sellout Singh” has been a repeated phrase), misogyny (claiming that Chrystia Freeland can’t even work a calculator), whined about a declinist narrative of Canada and how it’s never been as bad as it is today, and then offered some more slogans, before he started badgering and hectoring journalists asking him questions. “But he’s nothing like Trump,” the Elder Pundits will keep declaring, never mind that he employs Trump’s tactics, along with a number of other pages from the Authoritarian Playbook, all the gods damned time.

During one of his responses, Poilievre said that he wants to cut immigration so that it’s below the rate of housing starts, and so on—and this is a dog-whistle. I have my weekend column coming out soon on this very topic, that this kind of rhetoric is directly appealing to the racists on social media who have come out of the woodwork to blame “mass migration” for all of the country’s woes, and this deserves to be called out, and not shuffled under the rug by the Elder Pundits yet again, who refuse to see that no, there is no “good parts only” version of authoritarian populism.

Programming Note: I’m taking the full long weekend off from blogging, so I’ll see you early next week.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine downed two missiles and sixty drones in another overnight attack, while Russian shelling killed a civilian in Kostintynivka yesterday. There are concerns that targeting energy infrastructure will eventually lead to an incident involving a nuclear power plant. Ukrainian forces say that one of their “new” F-16s crashed during a Russian missile barrage, and that the pilot is dead. In Kursk, Russian forces are still not responding to the incursion, Putin washing his hands of the matter, and not pulling troops from other areas of the front-line in Ukraine.

Good reads:

  • Earlier in the week, Justin Trudeau boxed against Olympic bronze medallist Wyatt Sanford to raise awareness of programmes to help youth.
  • The federal government has installed an earthquake early warning system in BC that could give several seconds’ worth of warnings.
  • Using his magical methodologies, the PBO says that electric vehicles are less expensive to maintain, but won’t be adopted widely until prices come down a third.
  • The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board wants to move to swankier digs in Toronto (but the utility and existence of the Board remains an issue in and of itself).
  • The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed (with costs!) Maxime Bernier and Brian Peckford’s challenge to vaccine mandates, like all lower courts before them did.
  • The Ford government invented crime statistics that don’t exist to justify closing some safe consumption sites.
  • Alberta’s finance minister insists he did nothing wrong by accepting free playoff hockey tickets to a luxury booth from a company doing business with government.
  • Here is the behind-the-scenes look at what happened between the BC Conservatives and BC United parties in coming to their electoral agreement.
  • Justin Ling tries to determine why the conflict in Gaza has created much more social polarization than other conflicts in recent history.
  • Paul Wells delivers some deserved sarcasm around the government announcing they will (finally) assemble advisors to deal with our lagging productivity.

Odds and ends:

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