Canadian Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has never done a single thing except to complain about Canada being broken and to vote against everything the government has done or proposed to do to make things better for people. His current platform is just a flip-flop containing a few things he never actually wanted in the past, and he would probably change his tune about them in the near future. I don’t trust him.
Continue readingI’m seeing a lot of Canadian Conservatives make claims about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) being “funded by the Liberals.” In fact, it has existed as a Crown Corporation since 1936 through every single Liberal AND Conservative government. Such people might also be interested to know that it broadcasts just as many Pierre Poilievre (Conservative leader) ads and excerpts from speeches/interviews as anything else. Speaking of Conservatives, why is Alberta Premier Danielle Smith asking Donald Trump for help in getting Poilievre elected? She might as well skip the middle man and ask for Russia’s, China’s, and/or India’s foreign interference more directly.
$100,000 is now much too low of an annual salary threshold for Ontario, Canada’s annual, public sector “Sunshine List.” In 2024, a total of 377,666 public sector employees made at least that much, up from 300,680 in 2023.
Continue readingI have traditionally voted for Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), because that is the political party most closely aligned with my progressive beliefs and values. However, I have recently switched to supporting the somewhat more centrist Liberals, because the flip-flopping of the Conservatives’ Pierre Poilievre from criticizing Canada as being broken, obsessing about axing the carbon tax, and loving/aping Trump to “Canada First … For A Change” (whatever the f$%k that means) is just ridiculous.
Continue readingI’ve now set up a new-to-me computer: a Dell “one litre” mini, but it was refurbished and updated by Canada Computers. That’s just my first step in limiting the amount of money I give to US companies.
Continue readingJoe Biden had a bad day last week, but is he generally now less mentally sharp to the point of being unfit for office? I don’t know, but the one who is demonstrably unfit for office is the constantly lying, usually incoherent, insurrection-fomenting, totally fake “Christian,” completely-immoral convicted felon.
Our choices in Canada (in 2025) are not great either, because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (“Liberal”) has been quite disappointing, and Pierre Poilievre (Conservative) is a Donald Trump-lite, misleading, plan-less dufus who will almost immediately try to reverse a bunch of things. I hope the Conservatives are held to a minority government (at best), and Poilievre turns into even more of the whiny baby he already is when the Liberals, NDP, etc. hold them in check and make sure we keep things like the moves towards pharmacare, dental care, climate action, and so on.
Pierre Poilievre wants to subvert democracy by invoking the notwithstanding clause of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms in order to advance a draconian, unconstitutional, law-and-order agenda. I know that the Liberals aren’t perfect and that the vastly-increased capital gains tax will affect a lot of people, including people who think they’re a lot further away from the top 1% than they are. However, there’s no way this joker’s party is better. Despite protestations of speaking and acting for “the people,” the Conservatives will probably get a majority in 2025 with only around 38% of the popular vote. The people want dental care, pharmacare, affordable housing, and a lower cost of living, but Poilievre has no useful plans whatsoever and won’t be able to deliver anything that most people actually want.
CBC News Network is constantly interrupted by ads telling me that my government health insurance doesn’t cover enough and Kurt Browning telling me that as a homeowner 55 or older (only one of those things is true for me) I should get a reverse mortgage to help pay for things.
A federal budget is always going to be a compromise, but increasing funding for the CBC, keeping on track with moves towards universal dental care and pharmacare, improving the situation of affordable housing, and paying for various things by increasing taxes on the wealthiest 1% seem perfectly sensible to me.
I’m not completely happy with the Liberal government, and it is the NDP that has helped get certain things done. Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are being totally disingenuous about addressing affordability. Yes, the carbon tax is a challenging scenario, but please do not let them make that the only election issue. We’ll be very sick of hearing about it long before the fall of 2025.
I’m in the middle of a two-week vacation fill-in on a nearby rural route. It pays for 5.5 hours per day, but there are so many flyers (which have to be collated with the letter mail) that it’s averaging 7.5 hours, which also includes parcels. Then, I found out yesterday that I won’t be back on my usual 4-hour suburban route next week, and I was supposed to be on that one until August. They apparently want me to “reach out” to other post offices to find more assignments. I have no idea what they’re doing, have been doing this for about ten months, and still have no permanent status, benefits, pension, or route of my own.
Hilariously, these several plow-dudes plowed their way to work this morning in their snow-plow-fitted pickup trucks and then switched over to their industrial-strength snow plows.
“Meta Plow, that’s their name; that name again is Meta Plow.”
Durrell Bowman 