Canada

If you don't want accusations "going there" (despite constantly doing it to the other parties yourselves with groundless, disingenuous FUD), don't lead the way with your own actions. You, Danielle Smith, have thoroughly disgraced yourself, as does Lisa Raitt and any other double-speaking conservative apologist trying to gaslight away a bald-faced plea for foreign interference.

You asked a foreign -- and currently hostile -- government to act in a manner benefitting your preferred party's electoral outcome. By extension, you implicitly acknowledged that doing otherwise is demonstrating to voters why your guy shouldn't win, and that you want breathing room so voter attention can be redirected. You even sold it in a manner that implied stronger influence over Canada at best, and outright quid pro quo at worst -- literal collusion from our highest office with a hostile foreign entity against Canada.

Neither option so much as entertains the possibility Poilievre could actually be fit to defend Canada's national interests. That's why you like him, isn't it? What is Canada to you but an obstacle to your Oil & Gas masters? Every word of that interview carried layers damning all that Poilievre's CPC and your UCP represent, from values to character to political objectives to even basic loyalty to your own nation and for that matter the ecological future of the planet itself.

I didn't think there could be a Canadian politician worse than Poilievre, yet here you are and this incident is all about you, Smith.

You put yourself on tape directly confessing and doing far worse than everything you and the entire Conservative movement have managed to conjure as insinuations against everyone else combined. You literally betrayed our entire nation for a chance at personal gain. If there's any coming back from that at all, then my faith in the basic cognitive capacity of our average Canadian voter is seriously shaken.

If no laws were broken, there will be new ones named after you.

Resign.
Emigrate.
Shred your passport.
You have no business standing on Canadian soil.

According to a study by the Angus Reid Institute, the final approval rating of now former prime minister Justin Trudeau is 47%, 12 points higher than that of Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, whose favourability sits at 35%

PM says he's available to talk if the president shows respect for Canada's sovereignty

Prime Minister Mark Carney says he still hasn't spoken U.S. President Donald Trump since taking office last week, implying the president is waiting for the results of the federal election — whoever that may be after April 28.

Carney, who was sworn in as prime minister 10 days ago, told reporters Monday he's willing to speak to Trump, if the president shows respect for Canada.

"I'm available for a call, but we're going to talk on our terms. As a sovereign country — not as what he pretends we are — and on a comprehensive deal," said Carney during a campaign stop in Gander, N.L., where he leaned heavily on Canadian patriotism.

In the latest sign of the deteriorating relationship between the two once close allies, Carney's team said Trump hasn't called Carney to congratulate him on becoming prime minister, and hasn't posted anything online either.

Mark Carney has lamented Canada’s lost friendship with the United States as he visited the town that sheltered thousands of stranded American airline passengers after the 9/11 attacks.

The Canadian prime minister’s visit to Gander, Newfoundland, on the second day of a national election campaign comes against the backdrop of a trade war and sovereignty threats from Donald Trump.

“In this crisis caused by the US president and those who are enabling him, we lament a friendship lost,” Carney said on Monday. “In Gander Canadians did extraordinary things for Americans when they needed it. Now, we need to do extraordinary things for ourselves.”

Residents of Gander opened their arms to nearly 6,600 airline passengers diverted there when the US government shut down airspace during 9/11.

In perhaps his most disappointing policy announcement thus far, Carney has indicated he will scrap the Liberal's plan to increase the capital gains inclusion rate. This mildly progressive measure was directed squarely at the passive incomes of the wealthiest sliver of Canadians and would have served as a healthy revenue generator. Instead, it's destined for the scrapheap.

I was stuck in a freezing cell without explanation despite eventually having lawyers and media attention. Yet, compared with others, I was lucky

This is grim:

Renters are twice as likely to spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing than homeowners, according to Statscan data released last year, and the agency has found single-person households broadly to be more likely than other household types to be living in unaffordable or unsuitable housing.

...

The report also found higher rates of “material deprivation” among renters and single-person households. Respondents were identified as materially deprived if they couldn’t afford at least two essentials from a list including unexpected expenses, spending money, small gifts, bills, maintaining a comfortable temperature in their home, transportation and more.

It’s something that’s on Joy Edwards’s mind. The 70-year-old has been living in the same Toronto apartment since the 1980s, when she got divorced. While her rent for a two-bedroom apartment is well below the Toronto average, it eats up 60 per cent of her monthly Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security payments.

Ms. Edwards said she was able to retire by minimizing her expenses and sometimes receiving some food from her church and a local community centre. But with developers expressing interest in her building, she said she worries “all the time” about being asked to leave.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/retirement/article-move-over-millennials-a-third-of-canadas-single-renters-are-seniors/

The office of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is vehemently denying accusations that she asked the U.S. to interfere in Canadian federal politics, as comments Smith made during an interview with an American news outlet earlier this month made waves this weekend.

Any suggestion that Smith asked the U.S. to interfere in Canada's election is "offensive and false," her press secretary, Sam Blackett, told CBC News in a statement.

"The longer this dispute goes on, politicians posture, and it seems to be benefiting the Liberals right now," Smith told Breitbart.

"Let's just put things on pause so we can get through an election," she said. "Let's have the best person at the table make the argument for how they would deal with it — and I think that's [Conservative Leader] Pierre Poilievre."

Canadian banks have a money laundering problem. But it turns out there are worse operators on Canadian soil:

The Canadian subsidiary of China’s biggest bank repeatedly broke the law by failing to review risky clients, report suspicious transactions and respect police production orders despite multiple warnings from FinTRAC about its faulty financial-crime controls, according to the regulator’s findings in confidential documents reviewed by The Globe and Mail.

From the Globe.

They changed the headline on this article. It originally read, "Polievre launches campaign with a pitch to heal, 'a divided country'" which made me laugh because he's spent so much time whipping up the white grievance that carried Trump to power in the US and trying desperately to ride the same wave of populist bullshit with the same message as Trump. When he's railing about the, "woke" and "political correctness" that suggests that we can expect an all out assault of LGBTQ+ rights, brown people, books, and anything else they don't like.

https://youtu.be/R59JmC0u63I

I've got a really big desire to scratch the protest itch.

Archive link to Breitbart article: https://archive.is/UQuX1

Recording link of the quote there's also a link in the article but it goes to Breitbart Soundcloud account :

“Before the tariff war, I would say yes. I mean, Pierre Poilievre is the name of the Conservative Party leader, and he was miles ahead of Justin Trudeau. But because of what we see as unjust and unfair tariffs, it’s actually caused an increase in the support for the liberals,” Smith responded. “And so that’s what I fear, is that the longer this dispute goes on, politicians posture, and it seems to be benefiting the Liberals right now. So I would hope that we could put things on pause is what I’ve told administration officials. Let’s just put things on pause so we can get through an election.”

Pierre would bring would be very much in sync with, I think…the new direction in America,