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Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said Wednesday his party will vote against a Conservative non-confidence motion due to be tabled next week — giving the Liberal government enough votes to stay in power and avoid an imminent election.

"Will the Bloc vote in favour of the Conservative motion next week? The answer is no," Blanchet said in French.

"The motion contains absolutely nothing. It essentially says: Do you want to replace Justin Trudeau with Pierre Poilievre? The answer is no," he said.

Blanchet said the Bloc is "at the service of Quebecers," not Conservatives.

Rising British metal stars Green Lung thrilled a sold-out audience in Toronto Tuesday for the band's first-ever show in the city — but on this night, the crowd's biggest round of applause might not have been for the band at all.

It's not like the quintet disappointed — far from it. Seeing the stoner/doom band live feels a lot like what it must have felt like to see Black Sabbath in the early 1970s, with a vivid, unbridled power coupled with dizzying musicianship and occult themes.

But Buffalo resident Jacob Marsh might have stolen the show when he got on one knee on stage at The Velvet Underground mid-set and proposed to his longtime partner, Jared Pease, causing the crowd to absolutely erupt.

Loblaw is launching a pilot program that will see employees at two Calgary locations don body-worn cameras in an effort to increase safety.

"Violent encounters at retail locations across the country have increased dramatically in recent years," explained Loblaw Companies Ltd. in a statement to CTV News.

"By piloting body cameras, we continue to do what we can to protect our customers and team."

The participating Calgary stores are the Real Canadian Superstore in the East Village on Sixth Avenue S.E., and the Shoppers Drug Mart next door.

Former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole said Wednesday he contemplated expelling a Conservative senator from his party's caucus over concerns that the senator was involved in foreign influence.

Testifying in Ottawa before the inquiry into foreign interference, O'Toole said one of his MPs was told by a local mayor that a Conservative senator was actively working on behalf of a Chinese government-owned company.

"There was a member of our upper chamber caucus that an MP brought to me that he had been directly or indirectly promoting or lobbying an interest of a Chinese state-owned enterprise in a riding in Ontario," O'Toole told the inquiry.

Cross-posted from https://lemmy.world/post/19924712

Trump-backed election officials in Georgia are rewriting the rules of how to certify elections in a way that would let Stop the Steal activists obstruct the results — and now, Georgia's Republican Secretary of State is getting involved to try to put a stop to it, New York Times reporter Nick Corasaniti told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday.

Brad Raffensperger, a dedicated conservative, has frequently clashed with former President Donald Trump over his conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen. Trump's phone call demanding Raffensperger "find" extra votes for him is also a focus of multiple criminal cases against the former president.

"The State Election Board in Georgia, which has recently seen a 3-2 majority, right-wing majority take over the board, is passing new rules that are concerning, not just Democrats, but Republicans and election officials, and everyone from the county level to the state level in Georgia that could possibly disrupt the post-election period. We're talking about the certification, the counting of votes, the tallying of votes, and the sending off of electors to the Electoral College," (Corasaniti) said.

More than 100 Republican former national security and foreign policy officials on Wednesday endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a joint letter, calling Donald Trump “unfit to serve” another term in the White House.

Former officials from the presidential administrations of Republicans Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush, George W Bush and Donald Trump, as well as Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama voiced their support for Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in this November’s election. They were joined by some former GOP members of Congress.

The letter said: “We believe that the president of the United States must be a principled, serious, and steady leader.”

It went on: “We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as president and Donald Trump does not. We therefore support her election to be president.”

The Teamsters union on Wednesday said polling shows most of its members back Republican former President Donald Trump's bid for a new term in the White House over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

The 1.3 million-member union said its executive board plans to announce later on Wednesday who it is endorsing in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The union said a national electronic poll of its members from July 24-Sept. 15 showed rank-and-file Teamsters voted 59.6% to endorse Trump compared with 34% for Harris.

Former President Donald Trump has said he would cancel all unspent funds from President Joe Biden's signature climate law if he wins the presidential election on Nov. 5.

But the vast majority of grants will be spent by the time a new president takes office in January, and targeting what remains would be a massive legal challenge, according to Biden administration officials.

The Biden administration has awarded $90 billion in grants to climate, clean energy, and other projects so far under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which amounts to 70% of the law’s roughly $120 billion in total climate-focused grant money and over 80% of what the law made available before 2025, according to administration officials.

A Mississippi town has taken down a Confederate monument that stood on the courthouse square since 1910 — a figure that was tightly wrapped in tarps the past four years, symbolizing the community’s enduring division over how to commemorate the past.

Grenada’s first Black mayor in two decades seems determined to follow through on the city’s plans to relocate the monument to other public land. A concrete slab has already been poured behind a fire station about 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) from the square.

But a new fight might be developing. A Republican lawmaker from another part of Mississippi wrote to Grenada officials saying she believes the city is violating a state law that restricts the relocation of war memorials or monuments.

The city received permission from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to move the Confederate monument, as required. But Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes of Picayune said the fire station site is inappropriate.

Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small Sr. and his wife, La’Quetta, the city’s superintendent of schools, have been indicted on child endangerment and other charges for allegedly beating their teenage daughter on numerous occasions, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office said the indictment was made Tuesday by a grand jury that accused the couple of child endangerment. Marty Small also was charged with assault and making terroristic threats.

Prosecutors said both parents hit and emotionally abused the girl, who was 15 to 16 years old, on multiple occasions in December and January.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear banned the use of “conversion therapy” on minors in Kentucky on Wednesday, calling his executive order an overdue step to protect children from a widely discredited practice that tries to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through counseling.

The governor took action using his executive powers after efforts to enact a state law banning the practice repeatedly failed in the state’s Republican-dominated legislature.

“My faith teaches me that all children are children of God,” Beshear said during the signing ceremony at the Kentucky Statehouse. “And where practices are endangering and even harming those children, we must act. The practice of so-called ‘conversion therapy’ hurts our children.”

Archived link -- https://web.archive.org/web/20240918173900/https://thewalrus.ca/if-pierre-poilievre-wins/?vgo_ee=5NfgX2nW1a1biTgJmiiHi59zZm3gV%2FH3Sb%2BWTqXvQeshjakChPvbh0A%3D%3AI4lwyp%2FdzqWTkdyK0bGDMDMhmKHg%2B9ii

Welcome to the Poilievre Conspiracy Theory Vortex

• THIS PAST APRIL, far-right radio host and supplement salesman Alex Jones endorsed Pierre Poilievre, noting that he is the “real deal” and “is saying the same things as me.” And by “the same things,” he mostly means the legitimization of conspiracy theories about “globalist elites” and the World Economic Forum.

Poilievre Won’t Talk about Private Health Care—but He Should

• When asked by The Walrus about his plans vis-à-vis private health care, his team provided a statement that ignored the questions. It mentioned Trudeau and wait times and the difficulties for ­foreign-trained nurses and doctors in having their credentials recognized. The statement vowed to maintain the 2023 deal on health transfers to provinces and territories, in which the federal government committed to investing $198.6 billion in health care over the next decade. But on private care, nada.

Poilievre Has No Economic Platform

• WITH LESS than a year to go before the writ is expected to drop, Pierre Poilievre’s economic proposals are vague and shallow—and appear likely to stay that way. Though populists from both sides of the aisle tend to galvanize support by arguing the economy isn’t working for everyday people, the left tends to propose precise policy solutions. They promise, for instance, to tax the rich and invest in universal public services. They promise to regulate markets to stop profiteering in basic-need sectors such as nutrition, health care, and housing. They also promise to nationalize natural resources so everyone benefits from them. Say what you will of left-wing populists, but their intentions are clear.