It doesn’t sound like anyone is really contemplating a sweetheart deal.
After my last post I read Doug Saunders’ Globe commentary. It helpfully does not appear to be behind a paywall. Saunders is probably among the most cosmopolitan of the Globe’s columnists, and has spent much of his career working in Europe. He suggests that in practice it’s going to be more along the lines of tinkering with the existing relationship than anything like genuine EU membership:
I am sure Canada would be a trustworthy partner for the EU. But... is the EU really a trustworthy partner for Canada? With France, Germany and Italy all at least far-right-curious, the geopolitics might look different in a few years...
I am sure Canada would be a trustworthy partner for the EU. But... is the EU really a trustworthy partner for Canada? With France, Germany and Italy all at least far-right-curious, the geopolitics might look different in a few years...
I think it's pretty far-fetched to imagine that this Canada-EU link would plug us right into cutting-edge European social democracy, if only because cutting-edge European social democracy pretty much died out in the 1980s, and the far-right is now stronger in a lot of EU nations than it is in Canada.
The main issue is Canada needs trade-partners where the leadership won't change the rules and issue new demands every fortnight.
And Trunp is now simultaneously calling a Canada-EU alliance "laughable", while threatening to declare economic warfare against the EU should they continue to entertain the idea.
I’m trying to follow the Quebec election coming up and I’m not sure how to make any prediction at all. I’m not sure if the PQ can pull it off, since their quite young leader and their referendum pledge may make soft sovereigntist voters uneasy in the current climate with the neighbors to the south. The PLQ doesn’t seem to be going above a certain ceiling, and the CAQ seems to have recovered from near annihilation with its new leader and then fallen a bit. The PCQ might gain seats and play spoilers in other ridings. A minority government might be what Quebec winds up with, but I’m not sure who would be most successful at running one. Any thoughts?
I’m trying to follow the Quebec election coming up and I’m not sure how to make any prediction at all. I’m not sure if the PQ can pull it off, since their quite young leader and their referendum pledge may make soft sovereigntist voters uneasy in the current climate with the neighbors to the south.
Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, the PQ has gone from dismissing MAGA annexationism as a federalist false-flag(so to speak) and saying that nothing will deter them from their referendum, to assuring everyone that there shall be no referendum while Trump rules in DC.
The PLQ doesn’t seem to be going above a certain ceiling, and the CAQ seems to have recovered from near annihilation with its new leader and then fallen a bit. The PCQ might gain seats and play spoilers in other ridings. A minority government might be what Quebec winds up with, but I’m not sure who would be most successful at running one. Any thoughts?
Could be. I haven't been following the election closely at all. Personally, my main preoccupation going into it will be seeing how QS does, because the continued viability of Levesque-style left-wing sovereigntism is an obsessive internal debate of mine. But I don't even know much about their situation at the moment.
It will be definitely a hung parliament with 5 parties, who don't really like each other and without natural allies. Eric Grenier and Philippe J. Fournier do a wonderful weekly podcast on polls etc.
The question becomes who would support them. QS probably would not have enough seats to guarantee a majority. Maybe, if they come second in seats, CAQ could survive a confidence vote. As the current gov't, they have the right after the election to see if they can maintain the confidence of the Assembly.
Personally, my main preoccupation going into it will be seeing how QS does, because the continued viability of Levesque-style left-wing sovereigntism is an obsessive internal debate of mine. But I don't even know much about their situation at the moment.
I think there is a significant difference between QS and the PQ over the issue of multiculturalism.
Personally, my main preoccupation going into it will be seeing how QS does, because the continued viability of Levesque-style left-wing sovereigntism is an obsessive internal debate of mine. But I don't even know much about their situation at the moment.
I think there is a significant difference between QS and the PQ over the issue of multiculturalism.
Absolutely. As witnessed by the 2022 leaders'/co-spokespersons' debate, in which Plamondon demanded that Nadeau-Dubois utter the controversial title of Pierre Vallierès' manifesto for no other reason than to prove that he was willing to do so(*).
That said, if you mean that QS is more multicultural than the PQ under Levesque, I'd argue that's a hard case to prove either way, because the PQ during Levesque's stewardship was not faced with the same sort of cultural issues that we're faced with in 2026.
(*) Everyone can google that at their own risk. I think there's a legitimate case to be made for exempting a usage like that from the general taboo, but I doubt that's the popular logic that Plamondon was appealing to.
Those of us who are Canadian Historians well-know the title.
I skimmed that book a couple of decades ago. One notable opinion of Vallières was that he really hated the cult of St. Jean Baptiste among Quebec nationalists. I'm guessing that's a viewpoint that would majorly outrage most of the people who think they're being valiant defenders of Quebec culture by yelling the book's title at the top of their lungs just to be offensive.
At risk of falling into a trope, I just can't bring myself to call Levesque's nationalism "left-wing". Levesque = Bill 101 and that law was very hard on tbe United Church, who stocked congregations with English-speaking ministers from Ontario, who were cut off from English education rights in Quebec from 1977 until 1985.
At risk of falling into a trope, I just can't bring myself to call Levesque's nationalism "left-wing". Levesque = Bill 101 and that law was very hard on tbe United Church, who stocked congregations with English-speaking ministers from Ontario, who were cut off from English education rights in Quebec from 1977 until 1985.
Well, in fairness, for most of that period, I don't believe that Quebecois moving to most of the anglo-majority provinces, even NDP-governed ones, had a right to education in French, did they?
IIRC, in Alberta pre-Charter, French-immersion schools were the closest French parents had to institutions where their kids could be educated in French. I recall that was not considered by most of them a suitable recourse.
Just did a quick skim. This one's got private-eyes and everything.
I'm no expert, but I get the outside impression that post-Christy Clark BC conservatism is in the same sorta institutional/ideological mal-fluctuations that the federal conservatives were in between the defeat of Kim Campbell and the rise of Stephen Harper.
Stockwell Day's downfall also involved allegations of hiring a private investigator. As I recall, in that case, the spook had something of an "international man of mystery" image(possibly self-styled), which made it all seem slightly more scandalous than it probably was.
And Findlay took her walk in the snow. Will this keep Eby from calling a snap election? Optics may be terrible.
You mean it would be bad optics because he'd be seen as kicking the opposition while they're down? Probably, but I think he could just wait 'till they've finished their leadership race and then drop the writ.
Scott Moe has inducted the phrase "blood potash" into the political lexicon.
While I am sure that various versions of blood [whatever] are common and generally non-controversial items on the list of most nations' imports, it's a helpful linkage to make in regards to a Moscow-allied government as part of the Canada-US trade wars.
In any case, it sounds as if Belarus is unlikely to sign any potash deals with Trump in time to have an impact on the midterms. Prob'ly another case of Trump announcing some half-baked scheme in the hopes that voters will assume it to be a fait accompli.
Scott Moe has inducted the phrase "blood potash" into the political lexicon.
I'll file that in the same place I put "Ethical Oil".
Anyway, Eby called a snap election. I had heard word on the street of it in NDP circles in Ottawa before the announcement. They were putting out feelers for campaign managers.
Scott Moe has inducted the phrase "blood potash" into the political lexicon.
I'll file that in the same place I put "Ethical Oil".
Well, the people who criticized the phrase "Ethical Oil" did so because they thought that there was no way to make tarsands oil ethical, regardless of how bad the human-rights situations in other oil-producing nations were.
Is that your opinion of Sakatchewan potash? Sincere question, because I have no in-depth knowledge of the ethics around its extraction and selling.
I'd say the word is more "cynical", in the sense of seemingly noble actions motivated by self-interest.
At the end of the day, I doubt Canada's human rights record relative to Saudi Arabia's played much role in anyone's decision to buy Canadian oil. It WAS amusing to see Ezra Levant claiming to be outraged about the United Fruit Company's history with right-wing banana republics, when he was trying to promote his boycott against Chiquita in retaliation for that company switching oil suppliers. IIRC, Ethical Oil had people picketing grocery stores.
Ethical Potash looks to be even more of a non-starter, if only because Trump's deal with Belarus likely won't have much impact for the foreseeable.
Rare(?) anti-anti-Trump cartoon in the Hamilton Spectator. Ford is shown in the centre of a darkly bureaucratic "situation room", pointing to a map of Lake Ontario labelled "Lake America", while people in the shadows try to hand an aide papers marked "Hospital Staff Cuts" etc.
AIDE: CAN'T YOU SEE THE PREMIER IS PREOCCUPIED BY THE LAKE CRISIS? HOW DARE YOU!
(*) I think? I pretty much stopped following the old Southam papers after 2001, and I don't know much about their overall editorial stance. Given their ownership by the Aspers(?), I imagine they're the kind of papers that would try to avoid chest-thumping anti-Americanism, but probably be sufficiently reality-based not to back Trump directly on continentalist issues.
Though I wouldn’t necessarily expect editorial cartoonists to follow any particular line.
I remember at least one time in the late 1980s where the Edmonton Sun published an uncompromising half-page editorial on a topic, underneath a giant cartoon pontificating in the most explicit terms the exact opposite opinion. I believe the editorial was local, but the cartoon was by Andy Donato, the Toronto Sun cartoonist.
But that was two sides of a highly polarized issue. What struck me about the Spectator cartoon was that it could be read as right-wing(the tories shouldn't be so anti-Trump) or left-wing(the tories should stop stalling on health-care spending). Though I guess we could split the difference with "Yeah, Trump's a menace to Canada, but what Americans call a particular lake is a nothingburger compared to 26-hour waits in Ontario's emergency rooms."
Just saw a meme, I'm guessing made by either a Canadian progressive or a self-loathing American, contrasting Carney as the leader with a Ph.D in economics who served as the central-banker of two different nations, with Trump the sleazy businessman who bankrupted six companies, and that sure tells us something about the respective political situations in those two countries, doesn't it.
By contrast, I think the usual leftish analysis is that central-bankers are the par excellente examples of the bureaucratic operators enabling the sleazy businessmen. Granted, given the current situation between the two nations, it's probably helpful to have a leader with a background in economics, though it doesn't necessarily have to be the PM himself(an economically illiterate PM could probably do okay if he had a top adviser with Carney's background), PLUS we really don't need to be propagating the idea that economics PhDs and central-bankers can be a priori considered people who will provide wise leadership for the nation.
Anyway, Eby called a snap election. I had heard word on the street of it in NDP circles in Ottawa before the announcement. They were putting out feelers for campaign managers.
Seen some reports that Angus Reid(I think) is showing the public mostly unimpressed with Eby's decision to call an election two months in and with the opposition at an irregular disadvantage.
Obviously, under the rules he can call it for whenever he wants, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea politically. I have the vague idea in my head that governments which pull this particular stunt usually get punished on election day, but I'm possibly leaning too heavily on Peterson 1990 for my canon of examples.
As someone who's been following Smith's political career at least as far back as the early 2010s, she has an odd pattern of appearing fairly impressive for a while, and then just somehow stumbling into absolute shambolism and derailing her career until catching the next wave. The Lake Of Fire from 2012 being just the most notorious case. See also "Danielle Smith and the Calgary School Board late 1990s".
The Lake Of Fire from 2012 being just the most notorious case.
It is sometimes forgotten that for much of the 2012 campaign, it was Alison Redford who was tripping herself up with bone-headed snafus. Right at the beginning, she randomly attacked Smith for having previously(as a newspaper columnist holding no elected office) expressed libertatian views on sex-work legalization, a theme that went nowhere even with people who might oppose legalization. Then a Tory flunky posted something like
"If Danielle Smith cares so much about family values, why doesn't she have any kids of her own?", thus prompting Smith to publically discuss her and her husband's issues with infertility.
The underwhelming public support for Dani Dollars and then the Lake Of Fire revelations were, IIRC, the point at which Smith's victory started to appear something other than inevitable, but even up to election day, a lotta people(myself included) were still assuming Wildrose had it in the bag.
Since Quebec has 5 parties vying for seats in appears that the PQ may get a majority with 30% of the vote. CAQ has dropped to 20% behind the second place Liberals at 23%.
Since Quebec has 5 parties vying for seats in appears that the PQ may get a majority with 30% of the vote. CAQ has dropped to 20% behind the second place Liberals at 23%.
Y'know, I can remember a time in my tweens shortly after I started following the daily news on TV, that I would see the trillium pop up on the background screen and have no freaking clue what it meant.
I think I finally pieced together the meaning after maybe a quarter-to-half dozen times, but I think it's probably the last overlap I can remember between seeing a symbol and not knowing what it represented.
(Unlike the Wild Rose, the trillium IIRC was usually done up in modernist graphics, so I prob'ly didn't even know at first what sorta object I was supposed to be looking at.)
re: the fleur de lis, my main interest was why QS, alone among the parties, forgoes its usage. Could be as simple as not wanting to just copy everyone else. Though of course that party's proponents are the loudest champions of left-wing "civic nationalism" presumably unconnected with any pure-wool sublimated royalism, so I'm wondering if a lot of them would fall somewhere between indifferent or mildly hostile to the symbol, at least to the extent that they wouldn't see a pressing need to include it in their iconography(*).
(*) Just spent a minute or so at their site. Yeah, the f-d-l doesn't seem to be anywhere, except in photos of the Quebec flag taken at rallies. Not sure how that compares with other parties' sites.
QS' actual logo is a version of that sorta mechanized rendition of the "unknown citizen" you see in a lotta places. Stylistically, QS's version more closely resembles the long-standing, multi-purpose icon of the Humanists In Canada, which is a little more physically flexible than eg. the ones seen in the NDP logo from 1984 to 1993.
Comments
After my last post I read Doug Saunders’ Globe commentary. It helpfully does not appear to be behind a paywall. Saunders is probably among the most cosmopolitan of the Globe’s columnists, and has spent much of his career working in Europe. He suggests that in practice it’s going to be more along the lines of tinkering with the existing relationship than anything like genuine EU membership:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-carney-european-union-associate-membership/
Okay, thanks. Some of the more breathless reportage seemed to be emphasizing the supposedly unprecedented nature of the proposed status.
And, yeah, Saunders tends to be pretty level-headed.
I think it's pretty far-fetched to imagine that this Canada-EU link would plug us right into cutting-edge European social democracy, if only because cutting-edge European social democracy pretty much died out in the 1980s, and the far-right is now stronger in a lot of EU nations than it is in Canada.
The main issue is Canada needs trade-partners where the leadership won't change the rules and issue new demands every fortnight.
Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, the PQ has gone from dismissing MAGA annexationism as a federalist false-flag(so to speak) and saying that nothing will deter them from their referendum, to assuring everyone that there shall be no referendum while Trump rules in DC.
Could be. I haven't been following the election closely at all. Personally, my main preoccupation going into it will be seeing how QS does, because the continued viability of Levesque-style left-wing sovereigntism is an obsessive internal debate of mine. But I don't even know much about their situation at the moment.
As long as you aren't a Muslim or other minority that runs afoul of secularism laws, although the CAQ is also in favor of such laws.
I think there is a significant difference between QS and the PQ over the issue of multiculturalism.
Absolutely. As witnessed by the 2022 leaders'/co-spokespersons' debate, in which Plamondon demanded that Nadeau-Dubois utter the controversial title of Pierre Vallierès' manifesto for no other reason than to prove that he was willing to do so(*).
That said, if you mean that QS is more multicultural than the PQ under Levesque, I'd argue that's a hard case to prove either way, because the PQ during Levesque's stewardship was not faced with the same sort of cultural issues that we're faced with in 2026.
(*) Everyone can google that at their own risk. I think there's a legitimate case to be made for exempting a usage like that from the general taboo, but I doubt that's the popular logic that Plamondon was appealing to.
I skimmed that book a couple of decades ago. One notable opinion of Vallières was that he really hated the cult of St. Jean Baptiste among Quebec nationalists. I'm guessing that's a viewpoint that would majorly outrage most of the people who think they're being valiant defenders of Quebec culture by yelling the book's title at the top of their lungs just to be offensive.
Well, in fairness, for most of that period, I don't believe that Quebecois moving to most of the anglo-majority provinces, even NDP-governed ones, had a right to education in French, did they?
IIRC, in Alberta pre-Charter, French-immersion schools were the closest French parents had to institutions where their kids could be educated in French. I recall that was not considered by most of them a suitable recourse.
Just did a quick skim. This one's got private-eyes and everything.
I'm no expert, but I get the outside impression that post-Christy Clark BC conservatism is in the same sorta institutional/ideological mal-fluctuations that the federal conservatives were in between the defeat of Kim Campbell and the rise of Stephen Harper.
You mean it would be bad optics because he'd be seen as kicking the opposition while they're down? Probably, but I think he could just wait 'till they've finished their leadership race and then drop the writ.
While I am sure that various versions of blood [whatever] are common and generally non-controversial items on the list of most nations' imports, it's a helpful linkage to make in regards to a Moscow-allied government as part of the Canada-US trade wars.
I'll file that in the same place I put "Ethical Oil".
Anyway, Eby called a snap election. I had heard word on the street of it in NDP circles in Ottawa before the announcement. They were putting out feelers for campaign managers.
Well, the people who criticized the phrase "Ethical Oil" did so because they thought that there was no way to make tarsands oil ethical, regardless of how bad the human-rights situations in other oil-producing nations were.
Is that your opinion of Sakatchewan potash? Sincere question, because I have no in-depth knowledge of the ethics around its extraction and selling.
I'd say the word is more "cynical", in the sense of seemingly noble actions motivated by self-interest.
At the end of the day, I doubt Canada's human rights record relative to Saudi Arabia's played much role in anyone's decision to buy Canadian oil. It WAS amusing to see Ezra Levant claiming to be outraged about the United Fruit Company's history with right-wing banana republics, when he was trying to promote his boycott against Chiquita in retaliation for that company switching oil suppliers. IIRC, Ethical Oil had people picketing grocery stores.
Ethical Potash looks to be even more of a non-starter, if only because Trump's deal with Belarus likely won't have much impact for the foreseeable.
(*) I think? I pretty much stopped following the old Southam papers after 2001, and I don't know much about their overall editorial stance. Given their ownership by the Aspers(?), I imagine they're the kind of papers that would try to avoid chest-thumping anti-Americanism, but probably be sufficiently reality-based not to back Trump directly on continentalist issues.
Ah, thanks. Would you happen to know if it's regarded as closely aligned ideologically with the Toronto Star?
I remember at least one time in the late 1980s where the Edmonton Sun published an uncompromising half-page editorial on a topic, underneath a giant cartoon pontificating in the most explicit terms the exact opposite opinion. I believe the editorial was local, but the cartoon was by Andy Donato, the Toronto Sun cartoonist.
But that was two sides of a highly polarized issue. What struck me about the Spectator cartoon was that it could be read as right-wing(the tories shouldn't be so anti-Trump) or left-wing(the tories should stop stalling on health-care spending). Though I guess we could split the difference with "Yeah, Trump's a menace to Canada, but what Americans call a particular lake is a nothingburger compared to 26-hour waits in Ontario's emergency rooms."
By contrast, I think the usual leftish analysis is that central-bankers are the par excellente examples of the bureaucratic operators enabling the sleazy businessmen. Granted, given the current situation between the two nations, it's probably helpful to have a leader with a background in economics, though it doesn't necessarily have to be the PM himself(an economically illiterate PM could probably do okay if he had a top adviser with Carney's background), PLUS we really don't need to be propagating the idea that economics PhDs and central-bankers can be a priori considered people who will provide wise leadership for the nation.
Seen some reports that Angus Reid(I think) is showing the public mostly unimpressed with Eby's decision to call an election two months in and with the opposition at an irregular disadvantage.
Obviously, under the rules he can call it for whenever he wants, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea politically. I have the vague idea in my head that governments which pull this particular stunt usually get punished on election day, but I'm possibly leaning too heavily on Peterson 1990 for my canon of examples.
As someone who's been following Smith's political career at least as far back as the early 2010s, she has an odd pattern of appearing fairly impressive for a while, and then just somehow stumbling into absolute shambolism and derailing her career until catching the next wave. The Lake Of Fire from 2012 being just the most notorious case. See also "Danielle Smith and the Calgary School Board late 1990s".
It is sometimes forgotten that for much of the 2012 campaign, it was Alison Redford who was tripping herself up with bone-headed snafus. Right at the beginning, she randomly attacked Smith for having previously(as a newspaper columnist holding no elected office) expressed libertatian views on sex-work legalization, a theme that went nowhere even with people who might oppose legalization. Then a Tory flunky posted something like
The underwhelming public support for Dani Dollars and then the Lake Of Fire revelations were, IIRC, the point at which Smith's victory started to appear something other than inevitable, but even up to election day, a lotta people(myself included) were still assuming Wildrose had it in the bag.
Which poll was that?
Can't believe that fleur-de-lis in a word-balloon logo isn't in the votes for 'em!
Y'know, I can remember a time in my tweens shortly after I started following the daily news on TV, that I would see the trillium pop up on the background screen and have no freaking clue what it meant.
I think I finally pieced together the meaning after maybe a quarter-to-half dozen times, but I think it's probably the last overlap I can remember between seeing a symbol and not knowing what it represented.
(Unlike the Wild Rose, the trillium IIRC was usually done up in modernist graphics, so I prob'ly didn't even know at first what sorta object I was supposed to be looking at.)
re: the fleur de lis, my main interest was why QS, alone among the parties, forgoes its usage. Could be as simple as not wanting to just copy everyone else. Though of course that party's proponents are the loudest champions of left-wing "civic nationalism" presumably unconnected with any pure-wool sublimated royalism, so I'm wondering if a lot of them would fall somewhere between indifferent or mildly hostile to the symbol, at least to the extent that they wouldn't see a pressing need to include it in their iconography(*).
(*) Just spent a minute or so at their site. Yeah, the f-d-l doesn't seem to be anywhere, except in photos of the Quebec flag taken at rallies. Not sure how that compares with other parties' sites.