The Liberal Party National Council met last night, and around 10:30 PM released the rules of the forthcoming leadership contest. The voting ends March 2nd, with the announcement made on March 9th. There will be a $350,000 entry fee (high enough to discourage no-hope candidates), and candidates must declare by January 23rd. People registering to vote in the contest have until January 27th to sign up (remember, the Liberals don’t have memberships you need to buy), and they have tightened those rules to only include citizens and permanent residents, following all of the talk at the Foreign Interference Inquiry.
There are already complaints over social media that the entry fee is too high, meaning the field will be narrow, but that’s kind of the point—this is a race to be prime minister, not leader of the third party like it was the last time around, so you only want serious people, not those looking to build a profile (as far, far too many people do in leadership races). Yes, it’s a barrier to entry, but again, this needs to be a race for serious candidates only. As for the changes to who can register, there were a number of people on social media talking about how they registered their cats to vote, and things like that, because they thought they were being terribly clever in proving a point about how easy the system is to game. The Party spokesperson tweeted out that those fraudulent “memberships” (which they’re not really) will be removed, because again, the point of this exercise is really to collect data to populate a voter identification database, and it’s not too difficult to tell that your pets don’t have voter identification to match to in the system.
Speaking of unserious entrants, backbencher Chandra Arya announced he was running yesterday, and included a list of ridiculous plans including ending Canada’s monarchy, which is not only disqualifyingly dumb, but would mean getting unanimous consent of the provinces to essentially rewrite the constitution to do so. He also speaks no French and dismissed its importance (and good luck with that too). Christy Clark is apparently due to announce her bid shortly, but I did notice that Chantal Hébert was calling her out over social media for refusing to do an interview in French (to say nothing about actually knowing which party she belongs to, as she apparently took out a Conservative membership to vote for Jean Charest in their last leadership race after musing about her own bid for that leadership).
Si @christyclarkbc parle suffisamment français pour débattre avec @yfblanchet dans 3 ou 4 mois, elle n'a qu'à le démontrer en donnant une entrevue. Ce n'est pas sorcier. Ou autrement se consacrer au français plutôt qu'à la succession de @JustinTrudeau … https://t.co/ANCTNC1UtD
— chantal hébert (@ChantalHbert) January 9, 2025
Ukraine Dispatch
Two people were killed in Russian shelling of the town of Siversk in the Donetsk region. Ukraine’s air force says that Russia has launched over 51,000 guided aerial bombs on Ukraine since the start of the invasion. And that oil depot that Ukraine hit near a strategic Russian airfield has continued to burn for more than 24 hours.
https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1877283979574845612
Canada has pledged $305 million (CAD $440 million) in additional military assistance to Ukraine, Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair announced at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Jan. 9.https://t.co/iv9SH7c8Fi
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) January 9, 2025
4,000 North Korean troops killed or wounded fighting against Ukraine, Zelensky claims.
North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces against Ukraine have suffered 4,000 casualties, including both wounded and killed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed on…
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) January 9, 2025