Canada

It’s no secret that electrifying B.C.’s economy, from homes to heavy industry, will require significantly boosting the amount of power the province produces. Now, documents obtained by The Narwhal under freedom of information legislation reveal just how much electricity emissions-heavy industries like liquefied natural gas (LNG) and mines estimate they need to meet B.C.’s carbon emissions targets.

The documents outline the potential for an unprecedented increase in industrial electricity demand, raising questions about where the power will come from, who will pay for it and how it will impact both taxpayers and electricity rates for consumers.

Ten mining, oil and gas and hydrogen projects were seeking almost 33,000 gigawatt hours of electricity from BC Hydro, according to a briefing note prepared for Premier David Eby in March 2024. That’s more than twice the amount of power BC Hydro sold to all large industrial customers in 2024.

In an interview, Energy Minister Adrian Dix acknowledged B.C. is facing a “massive increase” in demand for electricity from non-industrial sources as well. He framed electrification as both a challenge and an opportunity B.C. is well-poised to seize due to its baseload of hydro power.

“This is a huge opportunity for us, we can’t miss it,” Dix said. “This is one of our economic advantages over other jurisdictions and we have to drive.”

The future of the public service is one of the key policy issues of our time in both Canada and the United States.

Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have launched a large-scale, misguided attack on the U.S. federal public service, indiscriminately firing thousands of workers before rehiring some of them because they are essential to nuclear weapons security and other key issues.

There has been pushback from the courts, unions, Democrats and even some Republicans but overall Trumpism has turned bureaucrats into political targets, branding them as part of a “deep state” working against Republican interests.

In a similar vein, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s rhetoric about the public service has been generally negative. For example, his approach mirrors right-wing populist movements in the U.S., framing public servants not just as inefficient but as an entrenched elite wasting taxpayer dollars and actively working against the agenda of right-of-centre elected leaders.

In 2021, Fair Vote Canada marked the 100-year anniversary of politicians promising to move from first-past-the-post voting to proportional representation in Canada. (Dear reader: We are still waiting).

It was surreal to watch this unfold in real time. And it reminded me of an important and eye-opening 2024 report, Disruptions on the Horizon, by Policy Horizons Canada. It identified 35 potential disruptions to Canadian stability.

Number one among the top potential disruptions: People cannot tell what is true and what is not.

I’ve been reporting on right-wing politics over the last decade for PressProgress and have gone deep into the weeds on Canada’s online far-right. We are not simply seeing a rise in “conspiracies” and “misinformation” per se, I think we are witnessing tectonic shifts inside Canada’s conservative movement.

A decade or two ago, this was a movement that revolved around ideas about free markets, small government and reactionary social values. That’s all still there, but for a growing segment of the right, these ideas have been increasingly displaced by a sprawling, conspiratorial metanarrative that imagines an evil global cabal is using technocratic climate policies, authoritarian public health rules and gender-inclusive educational materials to control the world and keep ordinary people in their place—and yes, it is every bit as unhinged as that sounds.

In fact, I’m no longer sure the word “conspiracy” fully captures what’s really happening here.

The first thing you need to understand is that we can draw a direct line connecting the weirdness of B.C.’s 2024 election with the wave of anti-2SLGBTQ+ protests in 2023, the 2022 Freedom Convoy and the anti-public health protests throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. These are all symptoms of the same problem.

This phenomenon is driven by the collapse of traditional media and the rise of digital platforms. Across Canada, including B.C., newsrooms are being decimated by layoffs, local newspapers are shutting down and what remains of our stripped-down media ecosystem is concentrated in the hands of a small number of corporations and wealthy individuals. At the same time, our public discourse is being shaped by mysterious, unregulated social media algorithms that are distorting our democracy in ways nobody seems to fully understand.

Pierre Poilievre’s first days in government would rely on ‘the Mike Harris playbook’

It was an ominous sign. Mike Harris’s government had moved quickly to make dramatic reforms. They had a hundred-day agenda, and they got a lot done: laying off public sector employees, cutting funding to education, slashing social assistance rates, deregulating industries, repealing equity laws, selling off Crown corporations, and empowering the government to impose user fees on public services.

“It’s going to come hard and fast from every direction again,” Evan’s acquaintance said. The groups and communities impacted, as well as the political opposition, both inside Parliament and outside, would have to fight on dozens of fronts at once.

In Canada, the widely adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism has served as a tool to bludgeon and silence those engaged in political activism — the primary goal of which is to halt the mass murder of Palestinian children — as being hostile toward Jewish people as a group.

As Independent Jewish Voices notes on its webpage detailing the numerous faults within the IHRA definition:

“The IHRA definition comes appended with 11 illustrative examples of antisemitism, seven of which specifically focus on the state of Israel, rather than on Jews as a group. The list of examples is intended to conflate antisemitism with criticism of Israel and Zionism.”

[...]

According to Ethan Wallace, a vice president with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), the idea of a trade war helping small-scale farmers has merit.

"The farm to table marketers, the farmers with the roadside stands, the small and medium-sized producers that the market direct to consumer, are the ones that stand to gain the most out of out of all of this," Wallace said. "As consumers decide to buy local, they're looking for those people."

The hope for the industry as a whole, Wallace said, is that those consumers also prioritize looking for Canadian labels in grocery stores.

That's because while smaller operations can benefit from the broadening of their customer base, larger farms that have specialized in products that are often exported won't be so lucky. Crews work to get cut hay into bales and into an awaiting tractor trailer in Thorndale, Ontario.

[...]

Polls have done an about-face in the region, which experts say is fuelled by a historic lean toward the party amid threats from the outside, while the longstanding desire for change has been satiated by a new Liberal leader.

Most recent polling found the Liberal Party has a 21 percentage-point lead in the region, which includes Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Nationally, the Conservatives and the Liberals are neck-and-neck.

The Liberals had fallen behind in popularity over the past two years. The party currently holds 24 of 32 seats across the Atlantic provinces, a decline from the 32 seats it captured in the 2015 election.

cross-posted from: https://biglemmowski.win/post/5796448

People's Party of Canada will not attend, commission says

The Green Party will participate in two federal leaders' debates this month after meeting the minimum requirements to attend, organizers said Tuesday.

https://archive.is/2025.04.01-221630/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2025/03/31/schooled-by-trump-americans-are-learning-to-dislike-their-allies

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith would like to have a tête-à-tête with Quebec Premier François Legault about asserting their provincial sovereignty, according to a letter Smith wrote last month.

"I see an opportunity before us, as the democratically elected leaders of Alberta and Quebec, to chart a path toward a new era in Canadian federalism," Smith said in a March 21 letter penned to her Quebec counterpart, in which she asked for a meeting.

Smith was responding to recommendations contained in a report prepared last year for the Quebec government suggesting ways that province could assert its provincial authority.

On Dec. 30, 2022, RCMP officers in Ste. Rose du Lac — about 210 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, near Dauphin Lake — responded to a call about an alleged robbery in the rural municipality of Lakeshore.

Four suspects — two male and two female — were found at the side of the road on Highway 481, south of Crane River, attempting to get the vehicle out of a ditch. Police say one of the men ran into the bush, while the other three suspects were arrested and charged.

According to the IIU report, police did not go back to search for the fourth suspect because they were understaffed and believed he had been picked up and taken to a nearby home.

On Jan. 4, 2023, the man's family submitted a missing person report. The next day, police found McKay's frozen body in the woods where he was last seen, the report says.

The survey, conducted by Nanos Research for CTV News and The Globe and Mail, found more than two-thirds of people in the Prairies support putting tariffs on oil, natural gas and electricity.

“Well, I think it’s a garbage poll,” Smith said at an unrelated press conference on Tuesday.

“What if we were to ask Albertans or Canadians this: ‘Would you support export tariffs if it meant the U.S. would retaliate by shutting off Line 5 and leaving Ontario and Quebec without gasoline or aviation fuel at all?’ I think you’d get a different answer.”

John Davidson has difficulty remembering the last time Wayne Gretzky visited his childhood home across the street in this small city (Brantford, ON) a couple hours’ drive southwest of Toronto.

Now 85, Davidson still chases away the occasional curiosity seeker, a far cry from the days when busloads of children would pull up, or the time Wayne and his wife Janet showed up with an entourage, three limousines strong. The retired steelworker then lowered his hand to his knee to indicate how long he’s known Gretzky, before saying: “Wayne’s changed a lot since he went down to the States.”

“I always thought the hell out of him,” Davidson said of Gretzky. ”Hate is a terrible word. Dislike is a better word.

“It disappoints the hell out of me. And I don’t think his father would appreciate it either,” he added. “A lot of people are pissed off with him right now because he went and kissed the ring.”