partner, editor, curator, #PPC
Pronoun: "Your Grace" (aristocratic or ecclesiastical - your call)
SubStack: https://t.co/84MGme2vWp
Apr 8 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Who won the Iran war?
The answer depends entirely on your prior view of Donald Trump. If you did not like Trump, for wahtever reason, prior to the bombardment of Iran, the US and Israel obviously suffered a humiliating defeat there is no coming back from. 1/
If you did not actively hate Trump the answer is rather different. Lists of regime thugs taken out, IRGC bases blown up, missile launchers destroyed, navy and airforce eliminated will be trotted out. 2/
Apr 8 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Marilyn Gladu crossing the floor to sit with the Liberals is not a terrific surprise. Most CPC veterans from Ontario have long since been absorbed by the Ottawa blob. The Libs just need to find the right inducement. 1/
In a sense this is an "Ottawa" problem. People are elected as Conservatives but prolonged exposure to the relic media/civil service/Parliamentary matrix grinds off their Conservative edges until they can slip seamlessly into the Liberal caucus. 2/
Apr 1 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
What's the argument for Canada?
The Canada we are in right now. Not fifteen or thirty years ago, right now.
What is Canada doing right? Anything? 1/
Viewed from a certain perspective Canada leads the world in our commitment to (if not achievement of) social justice, net zero, trans inclusion, MAID, FN Reconciliation, the elimination of hate speech and misinformation and a commitment to a rules based international order. 2/
Apr 1 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
90 billion dollars for a train in 2040 to go from Toronto to Ottawa to Montreal and then, for shits and giggles, Quebec City. Now there is a lot of boondoggle in 90 billion bucks and hey, as @rupasubramanya points out, Canada doesn't have a high speed train. 1/
It's a very cool technology. Makes a ton of sense in places like China where cities of five million people you've never heard of are connected by high speed rail. Cool beans. But it is an old technology. 2/
Mar 31 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
Alberta Independence advocates have easily met the signature threshold on their petition for a referendum. In the middle of an Alberta winter, with almost no media coverage and, in the process, identified the activists Independence needs. 1/
I don't live in Alberta. I live in BC but I support Alberta Independence simply because it may well be the last hope for Canada as a whole to get back on track. Fiscally, culturally, politically Canada has entirely lost the plot. 2/
Mar 30 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
There is a lot of buzz on X about the freak show which was the NDP convention and then the weirdness of the Junos. Both are strange little eco-systems which exist at the extreme margin of Canadian society. 1/
The Junos are, appropriately, named after Pierre Juneau, first Chairman of the CRTC and father of CanCon which required 30% of the content broadcast on radio in Canada to be "Canadian". For all I know that rule may still be in place. 2/
Mar 29 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
Here is the least surprising political outcome ever. 1/
Federally the NDP worked its way from Official Opposition with 103 seats under Jack Layton to irrelevance and 7 seats under Jagmeet Singh. Electing Lewis puts extinction within reach. 2/
Mar 27 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Tristin is on to something here. But I fear this ship has sailed. 1/
The problem here is that the entire concept of an "elite class" largely died with the Boomers because, by their nature, elites are exclusionary and to Boomers that was and remains a mortal sin. 2/
Mar 26 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
Well, not quite yet, but Oz can see it from here. NZ has about two weeks. 1/
The Philippines has declared a national emergency going after price gouging and hoarding. It has about two months supply. Japan has about 8 months in a strategic reserve. 2/
Mar 24 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
As I have mentioned, I don't own a gun, assault style or otherwise. But if I did I don't think I would be complying with Ottawa's "buy back" program. And it appears very few of the 2 million plus Canadians who are supposed to comply, are. 1/
Which I think is a healthy sign. The gun "buy back" program is a terrible non-solution to a non-problem. Legal guns kill very few people in Canada. Most of the gun mayhem is caused by illegal guns in the hands of criminals. 2/
Mar 23 • 14 tweets • 2 min read
The Iran war has jolted the energy markets and, to a degree, has rattled the net zero juggernaut. Net zero was always a scam, but the sudden rise in oil and gas prices exposes that scam. 1/
The net zero flim flam was to "put a price on carbon" which meant inventing ways to tax "high carbon" in order to subsidize "low carbon" with gov't and middlemen taking a cut along the way. 2/
Mar 22 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
I'm watching the Alberta Independence Petition with keen interest. I am pretty sure the Independence folks will get the required number of signatures and likely many more. Then the real work begins. 1/
There are really two threads to the Independence argument: the first is that an independent Alberta would be good in itself. The second is that getting Alberta out of Canada would be a net positive. 2/
Mar 16 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Doug Ford has discovered China and concluded the best way to protect his gov't is to exempt Cabinet and himself from FOIA requests. OK. 1/
In actual fact China represents a serious threat to Canada at a whole series of levels and, perhaps, FOIA is one of them. More basic are things like election interference, security infiltration, diaspora intimidation and so on. 2/
Mar 15 • 14 tweets • 2 min read
From time to time I refer to the Party of Toronto as a pernicious influence on Conservative Party politics. It's a shorthand for the "modernizers" who want the CPC to embrace the "Canadian consensus" on everything from net zero to genderwoo. 1/
Critically, PoT people lean into Trump Derangement very hard indeed. Things like an 84,000 job loss are dropped on the doorstep of the bad orange man. From the PoT perspective the idea that Canada may be a bit broken is traitorous. 2/
Mar 14 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
Sheldon Yakiwchuk @YakkStack wrote about Loblaws being hacked and today he has an important article about Telus losing up to a petabyte of information to hackers. 1/
A year ago London Drugs shut down for three days when it was hacked. Supposedly secure systems are being penetrated regularly and ransom is being demanded for the information by these modern digital pirates. And the problem is likely to get worse. 2/
Mar 12 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Max Fawcett who is generally unreadable on Canadian politics is quite good on NDP politics and wonders if the NDP is heading for oblivion. 1/ nationalobserver.com/2026/03/11/opi…
"Heading for oblivion" is the optimistic take. But for the party's provincial premierships the NDP has reached oblivion with no obvious way back. As Fawcett points out, if its sole Que MP quits it will have no MPs East of Manitoba. 2/
Mar 11 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Canada keeps making the Alberta Independence peoples' arguments for them. 1) Carney is constructing a majority he did not earn by luring weak MPs to cross the floor, 2) the CBC has a black list of conservatives not to put on air, 1/3) Carney wants Canadians to believe that Telesat can string together satellites which will be better than the already operating Starlink network, 4) the Liberals are passing a suite of bills to curb free speech in Canada. 2/
Mar 10 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
@Travisdhanraj's testimony with respect to the CBC before a Commons Committee is important in itself and it confirms what a lot of us had always suspected about the built in bias of the mothercorp. 1/
Deliberately excluding Conservative voices is pretty obvious, slanting stories to reflect the priorities of the PMO is more subtle but there to see. And, bluntly, it is hardly surprising. 2/
Mar 9 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
We're having one last gust of winter, cold front moving through with the temp dropping close to zero and actual snow falling or in the forecast. Just as I get the Vespa on the road. 1/
Living on the Coast means that weather is never a sure thing, a bit of cold air creeps out of the North or the Interior and meets Pacific moisture: boom, snow. It's always a surprise but never beyond the range of possibility. 2/
Mar 7 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
Former BC Conservative Leader John Rustad, now that he is no longer running for the leadership, admitted that there have been no bodies found at the Kamloops Residential School. So far he has not apologized to Dallas Brodie. 1/
The school graves story has a special status in Canadian politics: it is foundational and if you want to remain a mainstream Canadian politician it forms part of the catechism of core tenets which cannot be questioned. 2/
Mar 6 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I like Friday afternoons. Work done for the week. Nice bottle of wine for dinner, boys going off to play magic. Tomorrow we're picking up a total steal of a double wall oven. Given that the current wall oven dates to the early 80s this is an upgrade. 1/
There is much pearl clutching about the Iran war and, no doubt, it is disruptive particularly if you are a European or Asian energy consumer. But the war itself seems to be going well. The Iranian drones and missiles need to be dealt with. 2/
