Author: Dennis

Here’s Hoping…

A lot more needs to fall into place before Quebec independence is a done deal, but with any luck we may finally bring decades of frustrating indecision to a solid conclusion.

But the immolation of the Quebec Liberals only solidifies the likelihood that the Parti Québécois will sweep the province’s 2026 election. Once in power, PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon has promised he will be pulling out all the stops to hold a third referendum on secession from Canada. Quebec’s incumbent government, led by the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) under François Legault, is currently plumbing new depths of unpopularity.

Going To The Dogs

At first glance, I thought I was looking at a parody account. But it’s a real thing, complete with a central figure who seems to be channeling Timothy Treadwell.

The non-profit Vancouver Foundation is one of B.C.’s oldest charitable contributors, and in its most recently updated list of grant recipients, it lists a $300,000 grant for a “Decolonial Dog Sanctuary,” a project described as a “form of land-based re-occupation.”

The sanctuary’s overseer is Teresa Brown, who lives on site and is described in Vancouver Foundation grant documents as a “Wilp Matriarch and Hereditary Representative of the territory.”

Brown has said she had limited knowledge of dog care before starting the sanctuary, but believed that aggressive dogs could “evolve into versions of themselves that thirst again for love.”

 

Dairy Farmers Uber Alles!

It’s no surprise that the US sees Canadian supply mismanagement as a major trade irritant; I sincerely hope they don’t back down in trade talks this time around.

Washington’s trade representative says a coming review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade deal will hinge on resolving concerns about Canadian policies on dairy products, alcohol and digital services.

Like clockwork, the water carriers for Big Dairy are falling in line:

Carney said Canada has been clear about its intention to protect the supply management of agricultural products. “We continue to stand by that,” he said at a news conference in Ottawa with Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Elbows Down!

Since existing port facilities don’t have the capacity, I fully expect that someone will soon suggest that we access magical new export markets by shipping through Churchill. This is what Canadian exceptionalism actually amounts to: the stubborn insistence that we’re entitled to our dreams no matter how hard reality smacks us in the face.

But a recent announcement from one of Canada’s most successful natural resources exporters, saying that future exports will soon be shipped to overseas markets from a port in the state of Washington instead of Canada’s west coast, has raised fresh questions about whether some key Canadian ports even have the capacity to handle any more of those diversified goods. Any bottlenecks or other inefficiencies would only be magnified if exporters are able to hit Carney’s recent target that Canada will double non-U.S. exports over the next decade.

The Numbers Game

It’s pretty hard to believe that a deficit could be literally twice what you estimated in the space of a few months, but Wab’s got one thing one his side: average John Q. Manitoba voter probably couldn’t care less. They just want the free stuff to keep coming.

The Manitoba government’s deficit for the current fiscal year is expected to reach $1.6 billion, more than double the $794 million estimated in the spring budget, the province’s second-quarter report released Monday showed.

There Was Significant Shrinkage…

More evidence that the marginal consumer is tapped out as shrinking economies continue to experience declining demand for commodities like oil. Is the concept of an oil pipeline from Alberta to coastal waters even viable at this point?

Even with a recent decision by OPEC to hold production rates steady through the first quarter, the International Energy Agency said last week that it now expects 2026’s oil glut to reach 3.8 million barrels per day.

On the water, crude tankers at sea are now holding more than 1 billion barrels — a figure that has steadily risen over the past few months as sellers have had a harder time finding buyers willing to take the oil.

Clinging To Myths

Far from sleepwalking into an unmitigated disaster, farmers appear to have adapted quite well to the challenges posed by climate change. Or maybe climate change was just a fiction all along. Note how routine advances in crop genetics and machinery design are presented as responses to climate change as opposed to something that the ag industry, driven by the profit motive, has always done.

Spring wheat, used to make high-quality bread, yielded 58.8 bushels per acre this year, according to the government data release. That’s a gain of 77% from 30 years ago, based on a three-year average. Canola yields nearly doubled, reaching 44.7 bushels per acre, also based on a 1994-1996 average.

While most climate ⁠science paints a bleak picture for global food supply, with a study in Nature this year forecasting ‌up to 40% reduction in North America’s wheat harvest by 2100, the agricultural experts Reuters interviewed said that with climate adaptation strategies the prairies can continue to produce bigger and bigger crops in the future.

Job Shredding

As is typical of mainstream financial media reporting, you need to scroll to the bottom of an article to see a comment by David Rosenberg regarding Canada’s recent unemployment numbers. I suppose putting the comment at the top would have raised too many eyebrows.

While Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey is telegraphing a jobs boom, its Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours (SEPH) is telling a different story, said Rosenberg, founder and president of Rosenberg Research & Associates Inc. In the latter report the number of employees receiving pay and benefits dropped by 58,000 in September. For the first time in five years payroll employment was “completely flat,” he said.

“In a sign that there is more slack in the Canadian jobs market than meets the eye … if we were to superimpose the SEPH employment trend on the LFS (household) survey, the unemployment rate would be 8.2 per cent, not 6.9 per cent — and that would be the highest since May 2021,” said Rosenberg.

 

Money For Nothing

Sometimes comedy just writes itself. Why would sovereign governments who are in effect their own bank need to set up another bank to coordinate armament purchases? It’s as clear as mud exactly what these functionaries will be doing much less how that will “solve” anyone’s financial problems.

At least five Canadian cities are vying to host a new defence-oriented world bank that could create up to 3,500 jobs, the National Post has learned. Announced this past spring, the DSRB could solve financial problems for countries, including Canada, that are under pressure to increase military spending. The bank will be owned by its member nations, which would capitalize the bank so it would get a triple-A rating it could take to the bond market to raise money.

National Disunity

While some aboriginal communities welcome the prospect of roads and mines in the so-called Ring of Fire zone in Ontario, some clearly don’t. They prefer to live in a “pristine” wilderness that for some reason is not pristine enough to provide clean drinking water for thirty years.

The province has released a Ring of Fire ad that uses Ford’s slogan from the 2025 election: “Protect Ontario” and makes a sales pitch on development. “What about protect Neskantaga?” Marcus Moonias says. “I’m so mad about it.”

“I almost threw my television at the wall,” he says about the commercial.

Bigger dreams are starting to enter Mamakwa’s mind. He thinks one day a First Nation political party could hold the balance of power in Ottawa, like a Bloc Québécois of the north.

Uncritical Unthinking

Save your money. What you are likely to be subjected to is hardly worth the tuition.

Take these lines, from the opening of a master’s thesis recently accepted by the University of Toronto, for instance: “I also wrote this paper for myself, because I needed an explanation for my own existence. It became a method of explaining why I don’t exist yet,” wrote Narisa Vickers.

Moving on from the author’s existential crisis, Vickers’ thesis is titled, “Female Dopers, Gender Fraudulences, and Racialized Bodies: The Misgendering of Imane Khelif.”

Predictable Behavior

With the Bloc Quebecois now falling into line with its ideological soulmates on the west coast, how much life is left in the Memorandum Of Understanding?

Blanchet offered his help to B.C. last week — seeing that the MOU was negotiated without the province’s input and offers to relax key climate policies such as the tanker ban — and Eby’s team and his quickly came into contact to coordinate a virtual meeting.

Blanchet said they quickly agreed that, on certain subjects, they were on the same page.

Money For Nothing

If college athletic broadcast deals are undeniably a win/win proposition, why doesn’t tuition fall accordingly? Likely because revenue from them isn’t used to offset tuition, but rather gets funneled into a college spending spree. These outfits are so much like government you barely notice the difference.

The Fed’s spigot of easy money and credit have fueled the conditions for financialization that contributed to the astronomical revenue increases witnessed in sports programming. The low interest environment paralleling the rapid increase in coaching salaries allowed companies such as Disney to significantly increase its debt to capture a coveted monopoly on SEC programming. Further, the demand for a piece of the college athletic pie, coupled with athletic department necessity to finance their competitive arms race, have led to investment firms seeking direct deals with American universities.

 

Collateral Damage?

Needless prosecution of a victimless crime, or a case of “the law is the law“?

The administration’s sudden expansion of immigration arrests in Chicago meant Guzmán was in the government’s custody for about 34 hours. She was kept in a holding facility that was intended to house people for only a small fraction of that time… Even though she was still trying to produce breast milk for her daughter, Guzmán had limited access to food and water at the Broadview Processing Center and was never provided a breast pump. She said she was never assessed by a medical professional while in the government’s custody. Guzmán was left to manage the pain of her C-section recovery as well as her Type 1 diabetes with the supplies she had in her backpack at the time of her arrest.

 

Protection Racket

Well, that response  took all of about ten minutes to develop. Maybe fifty percent unemployment across the country would change their attitude, but I’m not too confident about that.

Assembly of First Nations chiefs voted unanimously on Tuesday to demand the withdrawal of a new pipeline deal between Canada and Alberta, while expressing full support for First Nations on the British Columbia coast that strongly oppose the initiative.

The resolution also urges Canada, Alberta and B.C. to recognize the climate emergency and uphold the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

 

Much Needed Relief

While ending such needless mandates is welcome news, the administration also needs to end the Obama era mandates for essentially zero emission diesel engines as well. They force buyers of highway tractors, farm and construction equipment to shoulder the cost of tens of thousands of dollars in useless ingredients.

The proposal would significantly reduce fuel economy requirements, which set rules on how far new vehicles need to travel on a gallon of gasoline, through the 2031 model year, according to a White House official and several people familiar with the plan.

Update from Kate.

Money For Nothing

Yet another example of what happens when a bunch of politicians scream “emergency” and a gullible John Q. Public largely falls for it. This reminds me of a Seinfeld episode where Kramer tries to explain to Jerry what happens when a company makes a bad investment decision: “They just write it off, Jerry!”

Ontario wrote off more than one billion items of personal protective equipment at a cost of $1.4 billion since 2021 and is now burning expired products, the province’s auditor general found.

The province signed long-term contracts for PPE between October 2020 and April 2021 that locked it into buying 188 million surgical masks annually. Yet it only distributed 39 million of those masks last year, or 21 per cent.

Navigation