The news today was pretty grim – Iran War blockages until summer so the world economy is toast. But there were some pretty good “zingers” today too!

Carney in the House
“a premier who picks up my phone call” Ouch!
Pierre Poilievre: This Liberal P…

King Charles’ US Visit
Irony dies as King Charles speaks to Congress:

TL,DW: It was a good speech, apparently written at least partly by Charles himself. And both Democrats and Republicans enthusiastically applauded its themes of democracy, rule of…

Carney’s anniversary
Its been a year since Carney was elected, so he is doing interviews and here’s a good one:

TL,DW (too long, didn’t watch): Its a good interview covering a wide range of topics – the Sovereign Wealth Fund, the Iran War, the need to…

We had quite a year this week.  Sunny and warm, then windy, then a foot of snow!  Anyway, it looks like its all over now – we might actually get some Spring around here soon — so here are my Sunday Funday posts.But first, a short d…

I have said for years the secret of Trump’s appeal is that his followers worship him as The Golden Calf – because he has no philosophy of his own, he can just reflect his followers’ own grandiose autocracy combined with racist superiority. And they lov…

The Dunning-Kruger effect is when incompetent people do not have enough knowledge to know that they are incompetent, nor do they recognize competency in others. They don’t know what they don’t know.
Right now, we’re seeing the Dunning-Kruger Effect in …

I think Canada needs to understand that the CUSMA negotiations are likely doomed.

Trump no longer has the mental capacity to handle “the art of the deal” – as Iran and the rest of the world are now finding out. And Trump will always blame his vic…

Its getting real now, isn’t it.
I mean Canada’s attempt to renew CUSMA so we don’t lose our minds or our souls doing it, so Trump will get a win without Canada getting a loss. And Mexico, too.
Carney has now set up an Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. …

I expect anyone who follows Canadian politics – and, hopefully, even some who don’t – have watched Mark Carney’s Forward Guidance video released on Sunday:

The video has had more than 430,000 views on YouTube, and 7,000 comments – no wonder Carney rel…

It’s being called Schrodinger’s Blockade tonight, because nobody knows anymore whether the Strait of Hormuz is open or closed or both at once.
“You put your blockade in
You pull your blockade out
You put your blockade in
and you sail it all about
Do t…

Comments about Poilievre v reality

Chantal Hébert: “The issue is not if the old Pierre Poilievre would be back, but when the old Pierre Poilievre would be back, and that is basically what everyone was watching this week.” – Scott RobertsonRead on Subs…

From Phillips’s Newsletter Getting a Grip on all of Trump’s Wars?Our son follows a “This Week in World War 2” podcast and when I hear it I am struck by the scattered complexity of that war – events going on simultaneously in theatres in Europe, Uk…

Cartoon by Greg Parry, The Tyee

First, Carney and Poilievre were jousting in the House on Wednesday and I think Carney unhorsed him.

View on Threads

Next, Carney and the Cabinet are moving rapidly to take control of Parliamentary committees, so legislation won’t get delayed endlessly anymore.

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One thing we will need to watch — as Leni Spooner discussed in the post I excerpted last night, we will see increasingly unhinged Carney-bashing now from MapleMAGA and fellow travellers around the world.

…A minority government can be waited out. A majority has to be actively discredited. That is why the pressure won’t ease now that the threshold has been crossed. It will intensify.
Poilievre’s “backroom deals” framing in the hours after the results came in is the early domestic signal of what that looks like. Floor crossings are a legitimate subject of democratic debate — and a routine feature of Westminster parliamentary democracy. But framing them as betrayal rather than as the exercise of individual parliamentary conscience that Westminster tradition has always recognized is something different. By-elections are direct democratic contests. Framing both as illegitimate is the same playbook as the content farms, applied at the level of official opposition rhetoric. The goal is identical: generate enough confusion about the legitimacy of the result that the government spends its political capital defending its right to govern rather than governing.
….the fabricated Carney — hostile, illegitimate, anti-American — is going to get louder, not quieter, precisely because the real Carney now has the parliamentary ground to stand on.
…Mark Carney is not the person the content farms have been describing. He is careful, consistent, and on the public record. The Davos transcript is available from the World Economic Forum, or here from Between the Lines Canada coverage. The bridge conversation is in mainstream news coverage. The gap between the documented record and the fabricated version is wide and measurable.
He now leads a majority government. That changes what Canada can do at the table — every table. It does not change what the pressure campaign will attempt….

Former MP David Graham is more specific about what to expect:

…[when] the three new MPs are sworn in…the motion to restructure committees is tabled, and until it is dealt with, the House of Commons will all but cease to function as opposition-controlled committees continue to assert their majorities while they still have them, and opposition parties performatively fight tooth and nail in the chamber to prevent that from changing. In an instant, legislation will come to a grinding halt. Committees will become completely dysfunctional until their restructuring is complete.

In order to end the impasse, the government will be obligated to bring in closure, forcing an end to the debate and bringing about a vote on the motion which, from a practical standpoint, is inevitable in the circumstances.

In that moment, the opposition will begin screaming bloody murder. They will claim that the Mark Carney government, which crossed the line into a majority through last night’s by-elections, bringing them to a majority endorsed by a majority of Canadians in polls, is somehow illegitimate. They will claim that the government is abusing its new-found power, and is somehow anti-democratic. They will accuse the government of stifling debate.
With it all, Pierre Poilievre will get what he actually wants: an end to any form of accountability. Facing a majority, he can exercise his one skill — to oppose with impunity. There will be no need to negotiate, no requirement for Conservative members to suddenly find themselves facing technical problems while trying to vote from behind the curtains to prevent an unintended election. His team will no longer have a reason to compromise on legislation or find a way to make committees work.

He will get what he craves most: a toxic Parliamentary work environment where all collaboration and compromise can come to an unceremonious end. And, with it, the prospect of three years of unhinged badgering of the government in an attempt to break their honeymoon.

To get to this point, Poilievre has chased four members of his own caucus out through his obstinance. Chris d’Entremont, Michael Ma, Matt Jeneroux, and Marilyn Gladu all abandoned the Conservatives for the Liberals between November and April, joined by Lori Idlout who crossed from the NDP in the same period. Without them, this majority would not yet exist.

When Marilyn Gladu and Lori Idlout both cross the floor to join the same Liberal caucus, you know the government is on to something. At the Liberal convention in Montreal, nobody pretended that what is happening in the United States is normal, or that things will ever go back to the way they were. It has given partisans on all sides a serious degree of pause, an opening to become serious.

There is a palpable sense that the country is bigger than any one political party, that the moment we are living requires a certain gravitas that the normal cut and thrust of our politics does not offer.

In normal times politics often degrades into a team sport rather than a values proposition. The Conservatives in particular make the whole game of politics about the unity of their team — their tribe, even — take precedence over any deeply philosophical purpose beyond helping that team.

This time, it is different. In the face of unprecedented foreign threats, Canada has itself become the team. Members of Parliament and Canadians in general with diverse backgrounds and values are coming together with a unity of purpose.

For the Conservatives who still back Poilievre, the American threat is not visible. It is not viscerally understood in the way it is through the rest of Canada. They cannot see it, because the MAGA movement remains integral to the Conservative team; it is precisely who they want to help.

As they continue to see our national politics as little more than a domestic team sport, where winning is their only objective and that at any cost, they will do everything in their power to make Parliament dysfunctional. They will try to paint the Liberal government as illegitimate and undemocratic, and do everything possible to prove it.

The now-majority Liberal government will have the power to act decisively in these unprecedented times, but the spirit of unity that is driving the country forward will be under constant attack. There will be little in the way of the much-needed constructive debate that would be offered by an opposition that is offering an alternative rather than an obstruction. The unhinged toxicity that we experienced from the Conservatives through the Trudeau years will be back with a vengeance, but this time the stakes are higher

While Carney’s majority government can get down to the serious and difficult work required, Poilievre’s team sees running Canada as little more than a game….

So expect to see even more of this kind of trivial stuff, and we’ll have to respond:

I am so fucking sick of useless conservatives doing nothing but trashing the other side. Carney advised AGAINST Brexit and they didn’t listen, but he stayed to help with the fallout. I’m sick of their lies.

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— anita72.bsky.social (@anita72.bsky.social) April 15, 2026 at 9:11 PM

Why can’t they pivot away from the rage-farming, and this “perennial loser” strategy?

BECAUSE.THAT’S.WHO.THEY.ARE.

Sour, miserable, pathological liars with nebulous morals, who will say ANYTHING that they think will buy them a vote. It’s embarrassing and pathetic.

#cdnpoli

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— Audric Moses 🇨🇦 (@audricmoses.bsky.social) April 14, 2026 at 8:26 PM

Dale Smith always pushes back so well:

If this lying doofus bothered to read the StatsCan report, the lowest point of those exports was because auto plants were on extended shutdown to retool production lines. They have since restarted and exports are back up.

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— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) April 8, 2026 at 8:31 AM

But here’s something Poilievre really needs to understand better – Canadians know our politics are NOT just a domestic team sport, not anymore.

The Bookworm Carl Spitzweg 1850 I found several “good reads” today and a few good posts too, so I thought I would share them.
About Carney

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Éric Blais at the Toronto Star (gift link) tut-tuts about Carney-mania
…Mayb…

Mark Carney is showing the world how to do politics better:
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The CBC At Issue panel tonight couldn’t find much to criticize about Carney’s wins – except for their lingering regret that they won’t have an election campaign to talk …

What a week

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A bit of humor for you to brighten your day.[image or embed]— Texas Paul (@realtexaspaul.com) April 11, 2026 at 11:41 AM

Some people open their mouths only to change feet – I guess Naomi Wolf …

They’re back! Hooray!
They’re back! Damn…
Because for a few days we had Moon Joy. But now that the astronauts are safely back, its back to doomscrolling I guess. When I saw this Finding Nemo photo 🠅 on Threads tonight, it really spoke …

MP Gladu enters Liberal Party Conversion Therapy, by Graeme MacKay “Whither the Liberals?” after the Gladu crossing The At Issue panel tonight (with Rob Shaw from CHEK TV Victoria)

TLDW: “If Gladu is accessible to the Liberals, then who isn’…

Comic roundupI found lots of good comics about Wednesday’s events.

Gladu’s vote puts the Liberals on the cusp of majority
Like many Liberals, I don’t like Gladu nor do I respect her. But at this dangerous point in Canada’s history, with Trump thr…

It used to be called “brinksmanship”
What Trump did to the world on Tuesday used to be called “brinksmanship” during the Cold War.
Now its just called TACO Tuesday.

It was a stupid and dangerous tactic then, and its even more stupid and dangerous now …

Rumours of floor-crossings Ten might be crossing the floor? Wow. I would expect that idiotic “justify your shadow cabinet job” email didn’t go over very well. View on Threads

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Artemis II Briefing
Fascinating t…

In honour of Easter weekend, a bunch of “Last Supper” pictures.
First, the original, by DaVinci:Next, the tributes:House MDMel Brooks:Lost season 6 cast:The Sopranos:MASH the movie:Dilbert universe:Family Guy:South Park:The Simpsons:The Jokers:

A boy …

About Poilievre and his inept leadership Two months ago, people predicted that Poilievre would win his leadership vote but actually be weakened by his experience. Now, that is proving to be the case. Stunts like flying to Europe and chatting with …

Conservatives talkingA lot of the news I read today was just various Conservatives talking. So here they are:
Doug FordThursday in the Toronto Star Premier Doug Ford is appealing for political “certainty” in Canada ahead of contentious trade negotiatio…

Starting December 26th, Canadians travelling to the United States by air, land, or sea will no longer be able to opt out of having their photo taken at the border. The new rule, announced by the Department of Homeland Security, will make facial biometrics mandatory for all non-US citizens when entering or exiting the country. […]

On October 1st 2022, the Government of Canada removed all COVID-19 border measures such as required proof of vaccination, random testing, and mandatory isolation for high-risk travelers. For the first time since early 2020, the Canadian border is operating under “normal” conditions. For example: Americans interested in visiting Canada no longer need to download the […]

As of April 1st 2022, the Canadian border will no longer require a pre-arrival negative COVID-19 test from fully vaccinated travellers entering or returning to the country. Previously, a rapid antigen test or a PCR test indicating a person does not have COVID was required by border authorities. This rule change should encourage Canadians to […]

After being closed for nearly 19 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, on November 8th 2021 the United States land border officially opened to all fully vaccinated Canadians. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has announced they will be staffing their border at pre-pandemic levels, but warns that wait times may be longer than in […]

On August 9th 2021, Canada opened its border to all fully vaccinated Americans allowing tourists from the United States to visit the country once again. The US border remains closed to Canadians, however, and American authorities recently extended the border closure until September 21st citing COVID-19 transmission rates south of the border as well as […]

Most Canadians are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Consequently, Canadians are starting to think about international travel again, and are beginning to research possible vacation destinations. This leads to the question, which countries can a fully vaccinated Canadian visit? As of July 2021, Canadian citizens who have received two doses of the Pfizer, Moderna, or […]