While the capital-B “Budget” only comes once a year, Canadian Finance Ministers have the leeway to introduce additional budgetary bills in-between their annual budgets. The exact length and depth of these seasonal “economic updates” vary based on the particulars of the day, and while they don’t involve all the pomp and circumstance of a proper annual budget, they are still significant packages of legislation, and votes on these bills are a matter of confidence.

In terms of this Spring Economic Update, the Carney Liberals have presented a plan primarily focused on neoliberal economics and the attraction of private capital, at the expense of the affordability concerns that are heavily plaguing Canadians right now. If you’re one of the people struggling to keep afloat in this economy, don’t expect anything significant to help you here.

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Mind you, there are some measures in this legislation that are good, and likely attract universal support. Streamlining access to the disability tax credit and adding more funding for safe sport initiatives are both nice policies, even if they’re just trimming around the edges of systemic social issues. And promises to fight financial crimes, while vague, would obviously be welcome if they materialize; a ban on cryptocurrency ATMs will cut down on a massive conduit for money laundering.

But there are also less savoury things snuck into this omnibus package, which would likely be controversial if they were presented upfront as their own separate legislation. Without specifying details or limits, the Carney Liberals plan to allow police officers to search through Canada Post letter mail and packages, a second swing at the decried “snooping provisions” of the failed Bill C-2.

And just as vague are their stated plans to “modernise [sic]” airport governance, and delegate air travel complaint resolution to a private organization. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne is openly floating the possibility of privatizing core national assets, increasing my anxieties about the Carney Liberal austerity plan.

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Going into the core economic policies of this legislative package, we see that the balance lies firmly on making Canada an attractive investment opportunity rather than making Canada an affordable place to live. Much touted is the new Canada Strong Fund, an investment vehicle being endowed with CAD$25 billion in public funds, plus additional private capital invested by individual Canadians in some sort of advantaged structure.

Canada’s adoption of a sovereign wealth fund is confusing, as one is typically used to capture tax revenue from natural resources during a fiscal surplus, and then diversify the money into a variety of international assets according to an apolitical strategy. Instead, Canada will be investing borrowed money while in a fiscal deficit, refusing to impose any sort of windfall tax on oil and gas companies in the wake of their profiteering off the Iran War, and the money will go towards major domestic projects designated by politicians, raising questions of the suitability of investments picked.

Further, the idea that the government will back the fund’s returns implies that “major” projects which can’t obtain financing due to their lack of returns will be subsidized by taxpayer dollars. In addition, most Canadians are nowhere close to filling up their TFSA, RRSP, FHSA and other tax-advantaged investment vehicles, if they can even save money at all. Sliding another one of these kinds of subsidized or advantaged accounts on top of the pile is merely a new way to widen the wealth gap, the rich growing their hoard of gold while the poor live paycheque-to-paycheque.

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The Spring Economic Update does have one pro-worker set of policies, if you’re considering the skilled trades. Billions of dollars are being allocated to help ensure more apprentices can actually pass their Red Seal certifications, including a CAD$10,000 lump sum, an additional CAD$400/week income top-up in training, and a CAD$5,000 bonus for those who obtain their Red Seal. While these will address some of the issues that cause people to fail out of the skilled trades, there are other issues that aren’t tied to money, like rampant sexual harassment pushing women away.

And this only helps the segment of people currently trying to break into the trades, without doing much else in the short-term for the working class to address the affordability question. If you’re already a certified journeyperson, this does nothing to increase your wages—indeed, additional competition from others in your trade may lower them—and if you’re not in the trades at all this does nothing to immediately address food or housing costs.

The one token measure that the average Canadian does get in this regard will be a small cut to Canada Pension Plan contributions; according to the Spring Economic Update, an individual earning CAD$70,000/year will now pay CAD$133 less in annual CPP contributions. For such a small reduction in individual payments, I can’t see this slash to the CPP as a positive; taking money away from your own retirement savings is like robbing Peter to pay Paul, and multiplied over an entire generation of Canadians doing the same, there will be a great societal cost.

In conclusion, this legislative package offers very little for the average Canadian. If you’re wealthy and have money to spend, this will help you pull even further ahead, but the rest of us will be left behind as the consequence. It does not appear that the Carney Liberals will take the affordability issue seriously any time soon.

Gerrymandering, the practice by which a political leader manipulates district or riding boundaries to create an advantage for their in-group in winning elections, is a scourge upon democracy. It is in fact the quiet death of a democracy, the degeneration into competitive authoritarianism, where elections exist but are neither free nor fair.

The name itself stems from a centuries-old meme, dating to the early history of the United States post-revolution. In 1812, then-Governor of Massachusetts Elbridge Gerry performed this corrupt practice, and the term “gerry-mander” was originated by political cartoonist Elkanah Tisdale as a portmanteau of Governor Gerry’s last name and “salamander”, since one of the manipulated districts visibly resembled the shape of this amphibian.

And for the Yankee Empire, gerrymandering is indeed as integral to their cultural identity as baseball and apple pie. Frequently, politicians have utilized this tool to rig elections in their favour, packing voters in such a way as to maximize the number of seats they win, while reducing the number of seats their opponents win. Rather than voters choosing their leaders in the United States, it is the leaders who choose their voters.

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And since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 2019 that gerrymandering was not a question that federal courts could adjudicate, there is essentially no legal remedy for voters against gerrymandering. Fast-forward to 2026, and the Yankees have slipped even further into competitive authoritarianism, with Republicans explicitly gerrymandering seats in their states to ice Democrats out, and Democrats now returning the favour in blue states.

Canada, in contrast, has built a consensus at both the federal and subnational levels that riding boundaries should be drawn by an independent body, not merely a multipartisan group but rather a non-partisan group. In the 1950s, Manitoba was the first to delegate the power of drawing boundaries away to such an independent group, and nationally the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act would do the same before the 1968 Canadian Federal Election. This distinction shows the strength of our democracy in comparison to the Yankee Empire’s competitive authoritarian regime.

The only exception to this status quo was a feeble attempt at gerrymandering Prince Edward Island in 2006, where then-Premier Pat Binns’ Conservative government threw out the independently-drawn riding boundaries after they would have caused incumbents to be redistricted. This backfired, however, as PEI would throw out the Binns Conservatives en masse in 2007, flipping the island to a Liberal majority under Robert Ghiz.

Binns’ attempt at gerrymandering failed primarily because it did not actually create much strategic advantage, and voters found it distasteful. But twenty years later, Premier Danielle Smith of Alberta’s United Conservative Party is carrying out a much more advanced gerrymandering strategy, one that is unfortunately very likely to succeed.

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Two days ago, Alberta’s Conservative majority passed a motion in the provincial legislature against a helpless NDP opposition, throwing out the boundaries drawn by the independent commission and creating a new partisan group that will draw alternative ridings. The Smith Conservatives plan to break apart NDP ridings in the urban centres of Edmonton and Calgary, splitting the NDP voters up into new rural-urban hybrid ridings where they’ll be outnumbered by rural voters whom are firmly right-wing.

This rural-urban voter dynamic will increase the effectiveness of the gerrymandering strategy. These new boundaries will not follow any organic divisions of communities or neighbourhoods, but will rather be designed to neutralize voters by pairing them with opposite-minded ones. Furthermore, while right-leaning PEI voters took offence to the gerrymandering twenty years ago and may have broken for the Liberals, Albertan Conservatives today have quite literally zero moral standards, and will vote blue no matter who.

Indeed, while Naheed Nenshi’s Alberta NDP can make their complaints, they have effectively no recourse. The ANDP has already hit a ceiling for seat count due to their limited popularity outside Alberta’s urban centres, and their only victory in modern history involved two right-wing parties splitting the vote, a scenario which no longer exists. If they lose their foothold in Edmonton and Calgary to gerrymandering, Alberta will fully collapse into one-party Conservative rule, with not even the pretense of an opposition remaining.

Premier Smith’s plan to enshrine decades of Conservative hegemony will ruin any notion that Alberta is a democratic society. It will degrade into competitive authoritarianism, where the Notwithstanding Clause is used regularly to violate civil rights, and the only shifts in power will come when one Conservative replaces another. There will be no place for ideological debate outside the confines set by the Party.

This is no way for a society to live…yet it is exactly what Alberta is about to become. And I have no faith that Albertan voters will turn away before it’s too late.

Premier Doug Ford has been on a rather turbulent flight these past few days! After boasting years ago that he refuses to use a private jet to fly, claiming the cost to taxpayers is too high, and after making a point for years of flying commercially in Economy Class so that he could be seen travelling with normal Ontarians, Doug Ford has radio’d air traffic control to alter his flight plan!

Earlier this week, Ford’s office confirmed that they had purchased a pre-owned Bombardier Challenger 650 from the 2016 model year for the Premier’s use. This expense was valued at CAD$28.9 million, and would replace Ford’s previous use of temporarily charted jets, rented in recent years only on the rare occasions where the Premier actually needs to travel far from Ontario.

Ford’s defence of the purchase is that Québec has purchased three Challenger 650s, and the Federal government has purchased six Bombardier Global 6500s. Yet unlike Ontario, who has arranged this jet for VIP travel, Québec and Canada are using their ordered jets for actually important work, like air ambulance service and military operations. There is no comparison between the value of a working jet and a VIP sky limo.

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Needless to say, both the NDP and Liberal opposition in Ontario pounced on this private jet purchase without hesitation, dubbing it the “gravy plane”, a reference to the “stop the gravy train” slogan of Doug and his late brother Rob during their time in Toronto municipal politics as councillor and mayor respectively. Indeed, calling it the Gravy Plane is some of the best narrative-shaping that the opposition to Ford has accomplished during all three of his terms.

Even the staunchly right-wing Canadian Taxpayers Federation put Ford on blast for purchasing the Gravy Plane, with their Ontario Director Noah Jarvis claiming Ford wants to “cosplay the life of the rich and famous” while “ordinary taxpayers are struggling to make ends meet”. This criticism is very potent, as Ford’s government has instituted cuts so severe that our health system is now in crisis mode, and education will become inaccessible to a large swath of the province, all while Ford insists that Galen Weston has a right to gouge us to death on grocery prices.

Even worse, as the Challenger 650 has limitations regarding the runways it can land on, many of the remote airstrips in Northern Ontario, the most justifiable place for the Premier to fly regularly, will not be able to take the Gravy Plane. Considering all these factors, the public blowback against the Gravy Plane was intense enough that the Ford government has made a U-turn midair, and promised to sell the Challenger 650 he just purchased “as quickly as possible.” Thus, the situation is settled, the story wrapped in a nice little bow, nothing to worry about.

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Except for one thing. One teeny, little thing. You see, it turns out the Government of Ontario has never been the legal owner of this jet. Contrary to reporting by the Toronto Star and the CBC and all the international media who cited them, the specific Challenger 650 in question is not the legal property of Ontario, and never has been!

On Twitter, Steffan Watkins, an expert in tracking plane registrations and movements, tracked down the exact Challenger 650 in Canada’s database of registered planes. Since the plane has been identified as being made in 2016, and having been previously registered in two specific places before Canada, Mr. Watkins has identified exactly one Challenger 650 in Canada which matches the profile of the Challenger 650 which Ontario allegedly “purchased”.

In truth, the Gravy Plane has never been registered to the Government of Ontario, but instead to a private aircraft management and chartering company known as ACASS Canada Limited. We do not know exactly what contract has been arranged between Ontario and ACASS, including the actual structure of the deal, because journalists didn’t bother to do the basic investigative work of seeing who actually owns the plane!

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If the people of Ontario are to be the ultimate loser of this transaction, there must be a winner on the other side that we have not identified. Perhaps ACASS is simply managing the plane on behalf of Ontario, or perhaps the plane was never actually intended to go to Ontario in the first place. There is too much about this story that we do not know.

As such, the media cannot wash our hands of this story. There is further investigative work to be done before we can understand what Premier Ford is planning, and we must question the unfounded assumptions that mainstream reporters have run with in their coverage. Until we do, the truth will not be revealed to us.

As most people are aware, even those who are not interested in footy, FIFA is hosting the 23^rd edition of the World Cup this summer in North America, spread across the United States, Canada, and México. And considering the current state of political affairs in the Yankee Empire, there has been some concern over their hosting of FIFA matches, as many temporary visitors from around the world, many of whom are not white, will be forced to contend with the normalized presence of racist ICE thugs in airports and on the streets.

Indeed, people from multiple African countries participating in the World Cup will be forced to pay a USD$15,000 bond to enter the United States for the games. This outrageous sum is not solely for fans, but also extends to players and coaches as well. In regard to Iran, Donald Trump has threatened the “life and safety” of the Iranian team if they choose to attend, and FIFA has rejected Iran’s request to move their games from the United States to México, undoubtedly the safest of the three host countries.

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Yet it is now Canada which falls under scrutiny for creating an unwelcoming atmosphere towards a national football association. On April 30^th, FIFA will be holding their Congress in Vancouver prior to the World Cup, an occasion on which they can conduct their governance of football globally. Regardless of whether a nation has qualified for the World Cup, all national associations recognized by FIFA are entitled to send their delegates to participate in the Congress and have a say in the future of the sport.

As such, it is Canada which must issue visas to delegates attending this international body, an organized event which Canada considers legitimate and participates in themselves. Yet The Guardian reports that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has denied visas to the three primary delegates attending on behalf of the Palestinian Football Association. This is curious, as Canada claims to now recognize the State of Palestine, and these are delegates from a body sanctioned by the Palestinian government, a body which has been a FIFA member since 1998. On what basis does Canada refuse their participation in the FIFA Congress?

On this basis, I reached out to Minister Lena Diab, the Liberal MP who Prime Minister Mark Carney has placed in charge of this portfolio. As I phrased it to her press secretary, “Can Minister Diab conform whether IRCC will allow any Palestinian delegates to attend the FIFA Congress? Are Palestinian delegates from the state that Canada recognizes allowed to attend any international conferences in Canada at all?”

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Minister Diab’s press secretary did respond, in a sense, but insisted to me that without a signed consent form from the three barred delegates, they will not provide details regarding this case. Speaking more generally, they insist that “visa applications are considered on a case-by-case basis based on the information presented by the applicant” and that regardless of nationality, all visa applicants must comply with eligibility and admissibility requirements.

Yet there has been no other case of a country’s delegates being denied the ability to enter Canada for April 30^th’s FIFA Congress. It is only the Palestinians, to public knowledge, that have been treated in this way. Further damning, The Guardian’s reporting indicates that the Palestinian delegation was planning to discuss FIFA’s recent decision regarding matches played in Israeli settlement colonies.

Absent a change in the Carney government’s policy, or absent alternative Palestinian delegates that Canada will allow, it appears Palestine will be shut out of international organizations yet again, one more example of the Palestine Exception. And for all that Canada can claim to “recognize” Palestine, our recognition clearly means nothing when we treat them this way. Today, it is not the United States nor Israel who are closing the door on Palestinians.

No, today, it is us.

With a sweep of all three federal by-elections last night, the Liberal Party of Canada under Prime Minister Mark Carney has officially ascended to the status of a majority government, a first for the Liberals since they fell down to a minority in 2019.

Yet the Liberals of the early Trudeau era, centre-left in disposition, are essentially unrecognizable inside Carney’s aggressively right-wing party. Where the last Liberal majority sought to expand government capacity, this new one seeks to decimate it. And where the Trudeau era saw a focus on reducing inequality, the Carney era is firmly hewed in on making the wealth gap worse.

But most importantly, while the last Liberal majority came through a legitimate electoral mandate, this new one comes through backroom trickery and skulduggery, subverting the will of the electorate in multiple ridings. A new era of Liberal governance is upon Canada, and it’s going to be a rough ride. Strap in and buckle up.

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While Liberals will technically claim they won a majority through these by-elections, it is substantively incorrect. The two Toronto seats are safe Liberal seats which were vacated by a retiring Liberal MP, and thus constitute a hold rather than a flip. In Montréal, legally Tatiana Auguste’s “election” as Terrebonne’s MP in 2025 was voided as invalid by the Supreme Court, but she has nonetheless won legitimately last night, and thus this result can also be categorized as a hold even though her prior holding of the office was illegitimate.

As such, not one of these three by-elections pushed the Carney Liberals closer to this majority. Rather, they were simply filling spaces vacated by previous Liberals. It is solely through the nefarious actions of five floor-crossing MPs, four from the Conservatives and one from the NDP, that the Liberals increased their seat count above the majority threshold.

I have already written in the past about the corrosive effect that all floor-crossings have on democracy, regardless of political ideology. As much as some may insist we vote for an individual and not a party, the reality is that the large majority of Canadians vote based on party, and that they are not voting Conservative or NDP with the intent that this person will suddenly flip over to an opposing ideology.

Further, I have written about the morally odious nature of Marilyn Gladu, one particular floor-crosser who the Carney Liberals have welcomed with open arms despite the filth she’s propagated. This is merely further indicative of the abandonment of basic ethics and principles in the pursuit of the power; for contrast,

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The truth is that the Carney Liberals are attracting Conservatives because they are conservative themselves. Under Carney, massive cuts to the public service would eclipse those under former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper; indeed, Harper once attempted to recruit Carney into his party!

In contrast, the Conservatives outright rejected a floor-crossing from Kevin Vuong, a former Liberal MP accused of sexual assault, on the basis that his presence would be unacceptable. The NDP reject floor-crossing altogether as a matter of principle. The Liberals do not need to do these things, they simply choose to do them, with no regard for the consequences.

While Lori Idlout would seem to be an exception to the ideological motivations of the four ex-Tory MPs, her reasoning is actually worse. She claims that her floor-crossing is motivated by the fact that Liberals will do more for Nunavut if their MP is in government and not outside of it, which implies that the Carney Liberals are holding Nunavut hostage, refusing to support the territory and the Inuit who live there unless they elect a Liberal MP!

That’s not a healthy way for our society to operate. The government of the day has a responsibility to work with MPs on local issues that impact their riding, even if those MPs are not in their caucus. Our society cannot function if half the country gets intentionally spited by the government due to the way they voted! Ideology can be debated, but the Prime Minister is supposed to serve all Canadians, not just the ones who voted for him!

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Mind you, considering that the Conservatives also support an austerity agenda, and the NDP—absent any coming revival under Avi Lewis—are currently a rump caucus, the Liberals already governed largely according to their own whims for this first year under Carney. This majority will mainly have the impact of changing committee appointments, allowing them to prevent debate and accelerate legislation at this important stage between second and third reading.

Nonetheless, just because the previous limits on their power were few does not mean we should remove those limits altogether. In Canada, a majority government is fully insulated from public opinion for several years, able to do virtually anything they want without fear that it will affect their electoral results, knowing the public has a short memory. The Carney Liberals will now rule for three more years without any fear of answering to the public, and they accomplished this by subverting the will of democracy in five ridings.

Canadians did not vote for this majority, but we are now stuck with what it will bring upon us. Carney’s push for right-wing austerity will proceed completely unabated, and the NDP will not have a chance to counter the Liberal-Conservative consensus until 2029.

I’m sure Liberal partisans are very happy. They’ve won power at any cost, as was their goal. The rest of Canada, however, is rightfully skeptical of their motivations. Only time will tell how much damage they do to our country.

Are the stealth capabilities of the F-35 overrated? Will cheap unmanned drones from decentralized launch platforms make fighter jets obsolete? Tune in!

As of yesterday, Prime Minister Mark Carney has attracted a new floor-crosser to his Liberal caucus; Marilyn Gladu, formerly the Conservative MP for Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong since 2015, has now become a Liberal MP. To put things mildly, there is not a single commentator or analyst who would have expected Ms. Gladu of all MPs to become a Liberal, and these events constitute a massive shock to our political system.

Mind you, I have made my criticisms of floor-crossing clear already in previous columns; regardless of whether they benefit my personal ideology and goals, they are fundamentally corrosive to our democratic order. I need not repeat myself, and this column is not about that wider concept. Here, the concern is specifically about one individual, Ms. Gladu, and the fact that she is a morally odious person whom no party should be willing to accept.

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Explaining the problem is a very simple process: we will merely examine all the morally odious things Marilyn Gladu has done and said in her political career, all the reasons Liberals have said you must vote for them against the Tories, and we will ask ourselves what differences could possibly be left between Liberals and Tories?

A professional engineer by trade, Ms. Gladu entered federal politics in 2015 as a Conservative MP, a firmly socially conservative presence. In February 2020, when indigenous protests occurred nationwide in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en opposition to a pipeline through their traditional territories.

Ms. Gladu’s response was to demand that the Canadian military be deployed against Mohawk protestors in Ontario, a bitter echo of when the Canadian military was deployed this way during the Kanehsatà:ke Resistance in 1990, maiming indigenous children to help steal the land for a golf course.

This is who Liberals seek for their caucus? A woman who seeks to use the military for the benefit of white-owned businesses, against indigenous people who assert their basic rights? Just two months later, after disqualifying out of the Conservative leadership race due to failing to meet minimums for fundraising and signatures, she went on public radio and parroted Donald Trump’s false claims that hydroxychloroquine was “nearly 100%” effective at curing COVID-19.

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Again, this is completely incorrect, and going on the radio as a figure of authority to spread misinformation during the pandemic was an extremely dangerous act. The Mayor of Sarnia, contained within her riding, would condemn these remarks and point out that medical experts did not agree. But moving further on the issue of medical malpractice, in June 2021 Ms. Gladu voted against banning queer conversion “therapy”, claiming she was doing so to protect the churches in her riding.

Ironically, those same churches instantly distanced themselves from her, insisting—to their credit— that they do support banning this form of torture against queer children. These pastors do not want to do this to queer kids, and they resent the implication by their MP that they would! Thankfully, the bill would eventually pass by December, but nonetheless Ms. Gladu believes it is legitimate for religious organizations to force queer people to stop being who they are.

And on the topic of abortion, the Campaign Life Coalition of all groups is crowing that with the acceptance of MPs like Marilyn Gladu, Liberals are now moving away from being pro-choice as party policy, and allowing forced birth extremists into their ranks. Are these the groups that Liberals now want to cater to, queerphobes and anti-choicers who want to strip away civil rights?

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not point out that during the Convoy Occupation in 2022, Marilyn Gladu met with the insurrectionist group and pressured former Prime Minister Trudeau to meet with them as well, despite their stated goal being to remove the democratically elected government from power and institute a ruling council over Canada. Do the Liberals now support the Convoy that terrorized Ottawa for weeks?

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If there’s one additional irony, aside from all her morally odious stances, it is that Marilyn Gladu herself proposed this past January that any MP who crosses the floor should be subject to an automatic by-election. She tweeted to a Conservative MP that same month who rejected crossing the floor the words “thank you for being true to the voters who elected you”, and just three weeks ago, claimed that “violating our Charter Rights has become normal” for the Carney Liberals.

Nonetheless, she’s joined the Liberals now, without renouncing any of her previous stances! The Liberal Party of Canada was already indistinguishable under Carney from a Conservative government in regard to economics and foreign affairs, but on domestic social issues the last differences are dissolving away. Any moral limits which the Liberals previously claimed to follow have been abandoned in the pursuit of power.

And with all due respect to the Federal Liberals who are complaining publicly about Ms. Gladu…your words are meaningless, because ultimately you are also okay with this. Protest all you like, but if you keep volunteering for the Federal Liberals, or donating to them, or voting for them, then you are saying “this is okay with me, this is not a dealbreaker” when it very much should be your line in the sand.

The Federal Liberals have no differences from the Federal Conservatives. They will say and do anything in order to gain more power. They have no core beliefs or principles, and have made clear that civil rights can and will be sold out for their electoral expediency. And if you support them, you’re responsible for enabling what comes next.

Recently, the Ontario Liberal Provincial Council, one of the core decision-making bodies of the Ontario Liberal Party, held a meeting. While the Executive Council comprises just the at-large executives and regional VPs, the Provincial Council is a larger body which includes caucus representation, every single riding association president, and a slew of delegates from the Youth, Women’s, Rural and Senior’s commissions.

As per the Ontario Liberal Party’s Constitution—which they are curiously hosting on Google Drive rather than their own website—the Executive Council manages day-to-day operations between meetings of the Provincial Council. If the Executive Council makes a decision contrary to that of the Provincial Council, it is explicitly declared to be void.

This means that individual riding-level democracy is important to the function of the Ontario Liberal Party, even if the Executive Council frequently pretends otherwise. Being the president of any riding association gives you a vote in the conclave that steers the party apparatus. The power is even greater at the present time, where there is no permanent party leader to enforce their will.

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The responsibility of these Provincial Council members is serious, and not to be taken lightly by those who bear the burden. There are basic expectations for how they should conduct themselves in their political activities, as they are role models for the wider Ontario Liberal membership. Further, when they embarrass or degrade themselves or each other, they deal the same damage upon the Ontario Liberal brand in the eyes of the voting public.

That is why the fallout of the most recent Provincial Council meeting should disappoint Ontario Liberals, and delight their opponents. Jordan Kent, the OLP riding president for Oxford, a supporter of Lee Fairclough’s leadership bid, and a New Leaf Liberal, introduced two motions to the agenda for the meeting, neither of which are particularly exciting by themselves.

Firstly, he sought to review the Ontario Liberal Code of Conduct and propose actionable improvements. Secondly, he sought to set a clear timeline for when the next Ontario Liberal Policy Convention would occur. Both of these are reasonable goals, and in my opinion it is more than fair for Provincial Council to direct Executive Council to pursue them in day-to-day operations. Accomplishing these core competencies is an apolitical goal that I would expect of any party, regardless of their ideology.

These motions were sent around before the meeting, with plenty of time for other Provincial Council members to read them. Indeed, in order to be added to the agenda, more than 50% of those attending the Provincial Council meeting needed to agree, and they did! These motions were later passed after fair debate, according to numerous sources I have who attended the meeting in their capacity as voting participants.

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Sources also confirm that Kathryn McGarry, President of the Ontario Liberal Party and former Ontario Liberal MPP and Mayor of Cambridge, complained about receiving professional communications from other Ontario Liberal officials, alluding that it could potentially violate the Ontario Liberal Workplace Harassment Policy. The fact that answering to Provincial Council is her constitutionally-stated job didn’t seem to occur to her when she cast the aspersion of harassment over her fellow party officials.

More disturbingly, numerous smears have been spread behind the scenes against New Leaf Liberals, including Mr. Kent specifically. I do not mean merely that his proposals were criticized and debated, which would be fully legitimate. On his personal Substack, Mr. Kent confirms that in the past he struggled with substance abuse disorder, but also states that he has been clean for the past five years. He alleges, however, that other Ontario Liberals who opposed his motions at Provincial Council have spread rumours about his past substance abuse to imply his participation in Ontario Liberal affairs is inappropriate.

These allegations have been substantiated by my sources, and it is infuriating to me. Substance abuse is not a moral failing, it is a medical condition; addiction is a trap that many people fall into, and when someone is able to maintain sobriety from drugs we should be congratulating them on their hard work. It is completely unacceptable for Ontario Liberals to stigmatize their peers for their health issues. Furthermore, considering how widely prevalent substance abuse is within politics, I would advise these ne’er-do-wells to avoid throwing stones in glass houses.

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Ironically, it is this kind of behaviour which proves the need for Mr. Kent’s motion to reform the Ontario Liberal Code of Conduct. Clearly, some Ontario Liberals are not conducting themselves in a professional and respectful manner, and see New Leaf Liberals and their reforms as a threat that justifies dirty tricks and sinister innuendos.

Ontario Liberals are allowed to disagree with each other, and there will certainly be plenty of that in the enduring Ontario Liberal Cold War between the old guard and reformers. Nonetheless, politicos on all sides of this struggle must learn restraint, and follow some basic rules of engagement in their operations. Columns like this one, detailing nasty and degrading behaviour between Ontario Liberals, should embarrass party members, because rest assured your political opponents are glad to watch you rip each other apart!

Neither Doug Ford nor Marit Stiles are going to stop Ontario Liberals from destroying themselves. If members of the Ontario Liberal Party can’t learn to disagree with each other in a way that is respectful and considerate, they should leave the party, and allow the political project to be run by those who haven’t lost touch with human empathy.

This week’s guest is Matt Kercher, political commentator and Green Party member, to discuss the infighting in the NDP caused by Naheed Nenshi and Carla Beck after Avi Lewis’ victory in the leadership. Then, shifting to the BCNDP, we discuss their abandonment of reconciliation as they push to claw back the hard-fought rights of indigenous people.

Tune in!

It’s moral panic time! Everyone, have a moral panic, our children are at stake! New-fangled technology is going to consume the souls of our youth! Sure, the last fifty times we’ve said this, it was complete bullshit, but don’t worry, this time the moral panic is totally justified and not mass psychosis!

Sigh. Listen, I know that history tends to rhyme, and in many cases I look forward to some of the things that repeat. Nonetheless, one of the tropes of human culture I have the most distaste for is the phenomenon of the moral panic. The public is whipped up into a massive fervour, told that something is irreparably corrupting our youth, and that the only solution is to curtail personal freedoms and embrace authoritarianism.

It happens again, and again, and again, and again. Comic books did not corrupt our children, but after a moral panic they were subject to a strict censorship code that restricted basic artistic expression. Rock and rap music did not corrupt our children, but Tipper Gore made sure musicians would have to put a scarlet letter on their album covers that limited the places the music could be sold. These moral panics can do serious, lasting damage to our cultural framework.

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And just as these moral panics were triggered by ignorant masses fearful of what they did not know, the age of technology has led to a new wave of moral panics. Games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, with cartoonish violence best described as laughable, triggered Congressional hearings in the 1990s. Doom was ludicrously scapegoated for the Columbine Massacre. Significant effort was made to stifle a growing art form for the sake of this moral panic.

Now, the moral panic du jour surrounds children and social media. The ability to talk to people on the internet is now considered a threat to the fabric of the social order. Mind you, we don’t give kids any spaces they can spend time together in the physical world, but now we plan to take away their spaces together in the digital world as well. Countries like Australia have imposed strict age limits on social media, gated by the requirement to break anonymity and show your government ID to prove you are an adult.

Mind you, I have no illusions about the specific problems that individual platforms have with their algorithms and moderation. Meta’s various platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, bear some culpability in the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar. This is a very real and legitimate problem that deserves government action.

But I must firmly reject the concept that online communication is itself a moral harm that the government must curtail. The fact that I can connect with human beings from around the world, and that we can share our experiences with each other, this is a beautiful thing! Through social media, I have made close friends whom I treasure greatly. I fear that those with dissimilar experiences may simply be using social media in the wrong way.

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Nonetheless, the Liberal Party of Canada is now discussing a similar ID requirement for social media in Canada. As will be debated by party members at their convention next month, and as supported by MP Rachel Bendayan, all Canadians would be required to present their government ID to private companies before using any online forum.

And as per the formula for moral panics, this manufactured fear over our children is used to justify stripping all anonymity from the Canadian internet. You will no longer be able to criticize wealthy business magnates or elected officials without attaching your full legal name. While our digital surveillance state is already extensive, this would be an order of magnitude more pervasive, and remove even the illusion of a free and open society.

It is not a coincidence that such policies arise in the current time. Many Zionists have said the quiet part out loud, admitting they believe criticism of the Israeli government should be censored from social media. According to this polling by Pew Research, 59% of Israelis believe that mere expression of sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza should be banned from online spaces.

Indeed, Hillary Clinton has made explicit that she thinks young people are only sympathetic to Palestine because of TikTok, claiming this presents “a serious problem for democracy”. And the so-called Kids Online Safety Act in the United States primarily serves to censor information about the existence of queer people from the internet. It is very clear that the moral panic over social media “corrupting” youth is merely that it will cause kids to learn about things their parents want to hide from them!

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But hey, if parents want to raise their kids in a bubble and shelter them from the basic truths of the world, that’s their prerogative! It’s a terrible idea, one that will permanently warp their child’s social development, but in Canada we legally give parents the power to do this kind of stupid and abusive thing to their kids!

However, let me offer these shit heel parents a friendly suggestion. You see, there is an alternative solution for this problem, instead of asking the government to impose a massive, sprawling surveillance state over the entirety of the internet. This parenting technique works as follows: Since a child cannot afford a phone themselves, their parent must have given it to them, and thus a parent can simply take it away.

If you don’t want your kid to have a phone, don’t buy them one! If you need them to have one for certain things, use the parental controls settings! And if they misuse the device you bought them, act like a real parent and take it back!

It’s very easy, parents. Instead of imposing authoritarian measures across all society, simply take responsibility for parenting your own children! Keep your moral panic to yourself, and stop making it our problem!

The internet is a free and open space, transcending the divisions of borders to connect human beings. The moral panic surrounding social media threatens to destroy this delicate social fabric. If we seek to defend the communities we have built online, the Liberal proposal must be opposed.

On the NDP Leadership, we talk about Avi Lewis’ decisive first-round victory, and the hostile reaction from Naheed Nenshi of the Alberta NDP. Then, on the Billy Bishop airport expansion proposal, we talk about how the Carney Liberals may play along with the plan.

Tune in!

Film: Project Hail Mary — Release: Mar 20^th, 2026 — Format: IMAX 70mm

Waking up from a medically-induced coma on an interstellar craft about to complete its journey through space, Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) does not remember who he is. All he knows when he first explores his ship is that he is the sole survivor, his two crewmates failing to survive the cold sleep to their destination.

Slowly, as Dr. Grace’s memory returns to him, he remembers his mission, if not how he got onboard the ship. On Earth, researchers led by Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) of Project Hail Mary discovered that microscopic life known as “astrophage” has grown in the atmosphere of Venus and spread to the Sun, consuming our star’s energy and warmth and threatening to cause a devastating ice age that will kill billions.

Even worse, this astrophage has spread to other stars surrounding our own, threatening to eradicate the conditions for life across our wider galaxy. But one star, Tau Ceti, is curiously unaffected, and by breeding the energy-rich astrophage, humanity is able to create the fuel for an interstellar ship that can make a one-way trip to Tau Ceti.

There, the crew will attempt to discover what makes their star immune, and hopefully send a solution back to Earth before too much of humanity has been consumed by the ice age. Success is not guaranteed, and it will still take 12 years for their solution to arrive back on Earth due to the limitations of the speed of light. Yet this is humanity’s “Hail Mary” pass down the field, throwing everything into one desperate chance that we might survive. And thus, our hero’s adventure begins.

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Without spoiling any strict plot details, Project Hail Mary is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, famous for their work on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie, the Spider-Verse films, the 21 Jump Street films, and cult classic Clone High. These two know how to mix comedy and drama while maintaining a coherent tone.

The screenplay is written by Drew Goddard, adapting a novel of the same name by Andy Weir. This is fitting, as Goddard also wrote the screenplay for the well-regarded adaptation of Andy Weir’s The Martian, which starred Matt Damon. I find that Goddard grasps the tone of Weir’s work well, and that this tone is a good fit for Lord and Miller’s strengths as directors.

As the film’s plot proceeds, the action fluctuates between the present situation at Tau Ceti, presented in full 1.43:1 IMAX glory, and Dr. Grace’s gradual recollections of his past, filmed in anamorphic 2.39:1. This trick is relatively simple as far as playing with aspect ratio goes, but it works well enough in shifting the mood. However, if you’re sitting in the front half of an 1.43:1 IMAX auditorium, the view during the flashback scenes will require you to angle your neck upwards, or recline your seat back into the legs of the audience member behind you.

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In terms of plot, I find the adventure in Dr. Grace’s present more compelling than the flashbacks to his past that provide context for why he’s aboard. There are some open questions in the film’s plot that are addressed more explicitly in the book, but not only do I think the movie is stronger for eliding over them, I think that the movie would have been better if it went further into obscuring Dr. Grace’s past on Earth.

If the Earth scenes do serve any narrative purpose, though, it’s to show how Dr. Grace finds his purpose out near Tau Ceti, not when he’s bounded by Earth’s gravity. And he finds his community when he finds an alien, “Rocky” (James Ortiz), sent to Tau Ceti by his own people for the same reason as Dr. Grace, to find a solution for the astrophage. They learn to communicate so they can work together to save both their homes, and also the galaxy as a whole.

The contrast of a pessimistic Earth with an optimistic and hopeful cosmos is a striking thematic choice. Dr. Grace has more to fear from other humans than he does from Rocky. He and other Eridians are distinctly not humanoid in any fashion, looking more like spiders made of rocks, but the choice to use practical puppetry and have one of the puppeteers do the voice gives Rocky a visceral physical presence that Ryan Gosling can act off of.

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The buddy film dynamic is very endearing, even if the plot doesn’t have too much depth or nuance. There’s a lot of enjoyment to be derived out of watching two people experience funny and scary moments together while pursuing a shared quest, and I would say this tonal difference is what distinguishes Project Hail Mary from works like Interstellar when otherwise it could be considered too derivative.

If I have any serious complaints, the ending, while good enough, drags on for a bit of time. There’s a moment when it feels like the movie is about to end, and then suddenly it kicks back up only to end shortly after that. With a tighter ending, the film could have cut some slack weight towards the end of the runtime that drags down otherwise perfect pacing.

Overall though, Project Hail Mary is an enjoyable popcorn flick, with lots of emotional highs to fill the runtime with. It is a visual feast, and it would be a disappointment to only experience it on TV at home.

Quito Maggi is the President and CEO of Mainstreet Research, a polling and research firm which he founded in 2010. He is also a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal partisan, well-seasoned in political operations at all three levels of government. This by itself is not a noteworthy thing, and typically people like Quito aren’t the subject of columns.

But in the Ontario Liberal Cold War, Quito has made himself into a story. He falsely claimed that when Nate Erskine-Smith won the nomination to be the Federal Liberal contestant for Beaches—East York over a decade ago, he did so by threatening the permanent residency status of thousands of immigrants.

To be emphatically clear, this is false, and the Deputy Judge at this Ontario Small Claims Court ruled that Quito defamed Nate, that Quito did not take appropriate steps to verify that what he was saying about Nate was true, and that Quito must pay Nate damages of CAD$25,000 plus interest.

Quito, for his part, is asserting his right to appeal to a higher court, which of course he is entitled to. But this continuing legal process, especially at its current standpoint, makes his further activity in the Ontario Liberal Cold War questionable.

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According to reporting from Ahmad Elbayoumi at Policorner, Quito is assisting Rob Cerjanec, the Liberal MPP for Ajax, in the latter’s bid for the Ontario Liberal leadership. To be blunt, I do not see how this arrangement is tenable for Rob, when Quito has been found by Ontario’s court system to have defamed one of Rob’s main opponents in the leadership contest.

And it certainly must be a conflict of interest for Quito’s firm Mainstreet to continue polling races that involve Nate Erskine-Smith. When polling for a provincial by-election in Scarborough Southwest, where Nate and previous candidate Qadira Jackson are both pursuing the Ontario Liberal nomination, Quito showed results claiming that Qadira would win the riding in the general, but Nate would lose.

There are no methodological concerns I have with this poll; my concern is with conducting it in the first place. You cannot lose a defamation lawsuit against a guy, then go work for the political opponent of that same guy, and then release polls about the guy! All three of these things create conflicts for each other!

And in terms of polling accuracy, I would like to see other firms conduct polls in Scarborough Southwest as well, and see what results they get in comparison to Mainstreet’s numbers. It’s always healthy to have several polling firms conduct their own analysis independent of each other.

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But wait, because the Quito story gets more complicated. Yesterday, a random phone number texted a variety of Ontario Liberals, soliciting the following:

Friends, I’m running as the local voice in Scarborough Southwest for the OLP nomination. Help me send Nate back home to the Beach, donate here - Qadira

[STRIPE DONATION LINK]

Reply STOP to opt out

When visiting that link, test donations reveal that the money flows to a Stripe business account, listing the contact info as QadiraJackson.ca, which is her official campaign website, and a phone number with her recording on the voicemail system. This phone number is different, however, than the one listed on her campaign website.

For her part, Qadira has issued a public statement firmly denying that she sent or authorized this text message, and that she does not agree with the hostile tone towards Nate. Nonetheless, if not her, the question is clear: who did send it?

What we know is that the phone numbers from which this text was received are rented out to various people. The header image demonstrates that a year prior to this text, Quito’s Mainstreet Research rented it for their own polling. Others have received contact from the same number for Liberal campaigns, including Chrystia Freeland’s Federal Liberal leadership run.

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While Quito has issued a statement to Policorner claiming that Mainstreet does not own the number and last rented it a year ago, it appears that the number is rented out by Bellwether Technologies, who advertise themselves on their LinkedIn page as “a preferred vendor of the Liberal Party of Canada for direct voter contact” and, most importantly, were founded as part of Mainstreet in 2010.

It is unclear what formal links remain between Mainstreet and Bellwether other than the former contracting telephone contact services from the latter. Bellwether involves Ferd Longo, who is also part of Rob Cerjanec’s leadership campaign according to the same Policorner piece that reported Quito’s involvement.

All together, though, Bellwether should have the capacity to tell the Ontario Liberals who rented this number from them, and how they got the contact information of Ontario Liberal members. Whether or not Qadira Jackson’s team did actually send out this text, the Stripe link as provided is completely non-compliant with Elections Ontario fundraising rules, and the Ontario Liberal Party needs to identify who is responsible, and who is collecting the money.

Finally, as for Quito Maggi? His messy involvement with Scarborough Southwest and the Ontario Liberal Cold War needs to be cleaned up, because there are several conflicts here that are intolerable. And if he will not rectify this of his own volition, the party must step in and draw a line.

The Orchard

News and analysis from an unabashedly progressive perspective, focusing on the intersection of politics, media and corporate power

By Jeremy Appel

Jeremy discusses two of his recent pieces of reporting, one on recruitment of veterans of foreign militaries into Canada on an accelerated immigration pathway, and another on how Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada initially refused comment on the previous piece, claiming that only media groups which claimed the federal media subsidy were eligible to receive responses.

Then, looking to the future, Jeremy tells us what he expects from the NDP Convention and Leadership Contest, which he’ll be covering live from March 27^th to 29^th in Winnipeg! Tune in to tonight’s episode, and subscribe to Jeremy’s work to get his updates through this final week!

Prime Minister Carney’s austerity budget has found a new victim at Correctional Service Canada (CSC), the agency responsible for both the imprisonment and rehabilitation of criminal offenders sentenced to at least two years in prison.

Obviously, this is a very important government responsibility, one which should not have corners cut in its execution. Nonetheless, Carney has demanded that CSC reduce their budget by CAD$132.2 million over the next two years. Considering basic inflation of our currency, reducing the budget without even receiving inflation-adjustments will have significant implications for the quality of our correctional system.

And by their very nature, arbitrary budget cuts will result in arbitrary service cuts. In what can only be described as an April Fools’ joke in horrible taste, the CBC reports that on April 1^st CSC will lay off all the librarians who work with inmates in prison libraries. This move will save merely a pittance, CAD$2.4 million, and it will also severely damage the rehabilitative capacity of our correctional system.

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For those unaware, the librarians who work in prison libraries are the will and the way for inmates who seek to be a better version of themselves. While mainstream discourse has grown cynical of the concept of rehabilitation, the truth is that it is a necessity.

Prison inmates, for all the rights we strip them of, are still people, deserving of basic dignity. Being incarcerated away from society is the punishment, but depriving them of any intellectual stimulation constitutes psychological torture. They need some form of interaction with other people, and something to focus their time on to stay productive.

Eventually, a large majority of these inmates will be returning to wider society, and it is important to make sure these people are prepared to live a normal life among their fellow citizens and not find themselves back in prison. We as a community need to ensure that they can be properly reintegrated into our social fabric. Rehabilitation is as much for their sake as it is for our own.

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When a prison inmate wants to find a book suitable for their reading level and interests, they go to the prison’s librarian, just the same as any of us would go to our public library. And when they need legal information for their own personal proceedings, prison librarians can help them find what matters to their case.

Most importantly, when an inmate is looking to pursue higher education, a librarian is often essential to helping set up program applications and correspondence learning arrangements; prison education programs are shown by studies to reduce recidivism, and also boost employment opportunities once they’re free. While the above resources may all technically be available without a librarian, they are essentially indecipherable without a librarian to guide you through relevant material.

That is what makes it absurd that a spokesperson from CSC told Radio-Canada in the above CBC piece that “many institutions already operate according to a modern library model without a dedicated librarian on site.” That is not a modern library mode, it is a stupid library model!

Could you imagine going to a public library, and there’s no librarian? Nobody to order books or organize the stacks, nobody to give you guidance on what will be useful to you and how to use it, just a custodian to sweep the floors and hit the lights? It’s an absurdity, and if prison inmates deserve libraries—which they do—they certainly deserve a library with a librarian!

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The claim that inmates can simply use “digital resources” wilfully ignores the fact that inmates suffer from restricted access to digital resources compared to paper resources, typically requiring supervision at limited times compared to the prison library’s overall hours. Indeed, inmates typically require their prison librarian to be their advocate in brokering access to these resources.

When you consider the significant damage this will do to inmates in their rehabilitative process, damaging their capacity to reenter society upon the conclusion of their sentence, the fact that this will only “save” CAD$2.4 million makes the whole concept pathetic. Is the federal government, which deals with billions and billions of dollars, going to notice a fragment of a percentage going towards prison rehabilitation programs?

No, of course not. This is not a policy crafted out of fiscal responsibility, it is a policy crafted out of spite and vindictiveness. It is a policy so cruel that it violates the United Nations “Mandela Rules”, the basic standard for treatment of prisoners, adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly in 2015.

There is no justification for what the Carney Liberals are doing here. They must reverse course immediately, and ensure all inmates in correctional services have fulsome access to a well-stocked library, staffed by a trained librarian eager to assist them.

With the ongoing voting for the NDP Leadership Contest—the results of which will be announced on March 29^th—there has been much discussion over what kind of candidate the next leader of the NDP should be. Indeed, I wrote my own ranking suggestion for NDP members just a week ago.

And among centrist, neoliberal political commentators, a consensus has built that if the NDP want to return to success, they need to model former leader Tom Mulcair, and not the people who helped get him removed. Mind you, the latter people would be Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, the power couple behind the Leap Manifesto, and the former of whom is running for NDP leader in this current contest.

But what exactly makes the Tom Mulcair period so idealistic for Liberal and Conservative commentators that they would suggest the NDP return to that era? Certainly, they aren’t very likely to vote NDP, nor are they likely to persuade their audiences in that direction. So if that isn’t their perspective, what is their angle here?

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For context, in 2011, Jack Layton won the largest federal NDP result in history with 103 out of 308 seats (33.4%), before dying tragically of cancer just a few months later. It is no exaggeration to say that Layton ascended to political sainthood, his death triggering a massive wave of public mourning as he received the extraordinary honour of a state funeral, typically reserved solely for Prime Ministers and Governors General.

It would be hard for any person to live up to such a legacy, but Mulcair did get a fair shake from NDP members after they selected him in the leadership contest following Layton’s death. Unfortunately, after his rightward pivot, where socialism was officially purged from the party’s constitution, the NDP crashed in the 2015 federal election, plummeting to just 44 out of 338 seats (13.0%) as the Trudeau Liberals outflanked Mulcair’s NDP on the left. At that point, Mulcair’s time with the NDP was numbered.

In 1988, on the other hand, NDP leader and committed social democrat Ed Broadbent won 43 out of 295 seats (14.6%) in his fourth election as party leader. While this is one seat less than Mulcair, it’s a higher percentage of seats than Mulcair won, and the percentage is what makes these results comparable across a House of Commons constantly increasing in size every ten years.

Broadbent, in steep contrast to Mulcair, was dedicated to the cause of democratic socialism worldwide, deeply involving himself with the Socialist International and hosting one of their summits in Vancouver. His ideological commitments were very firm and sincere, and over his time as NDP leader, Ed Broadbent slowly but surely built up a base of socialist political power in Canada.

And really, despite becoming an NDP MP and leading the NDP for a short period of time, Tom Mulcair was never really left-wing in terms of his ideology or beliefs. A long-time MNA in the centre-right Quebec Liberal Party and a provincial cabinet minister under the premiership of former federal PC leader Jean Charest, Mulcair entertained talks with all three major federal parties before leaping away from provincial politics. This included the possibility of joining Harper’s Conservative caucus instead of Layton’s NDP.

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This, right here, gives the game away in regard to why Mulcair is so attractive to the neoliberal commentariat: He’s not a socialist! He pulled the NDP away from socialism towards his own right-wing ideologies, and the NDP suffered for it! Putting someone like Mulcair in charge of the NDP again would serve the purpose of neutralizing the NDP, or capturing it and twisting it towards the same neoliberal consensus that Liberals and Conservatives are both wedded to.

The question isn’t which ideology will result in a better electoral result, because Mulcair’s “second place” record for NDP results in 2015 is clearly in truth the third place record, below Broadbent in 1988. The intentional choice to highlight Mulcair over Broadbent is based on the ideology of the political commentators who write these opinions. They, as people who do not vote NDP, want the NDP to be more like their parties, rather than remain a committed socialist force in Canadian politics.

I, on the other hand, do not see a reason for the NDP to exist if they are not a democratic socialist party. There are already two major parties that support the neoliberal consensus that Bay Street imposes upon us. Voters understand this, and have no desire for a third party no different from the existing two options.

So I close with one final note for NDP voters: I urge you, do not pick a Tom Mulcair for your next leader. If you want to win seats while remaining committed to your principles, pick an Ed Broadbent.

As was reported in the summer of 2025, while the Carney Liberals claimed to be embargoing arms shipments to Israel, Israeli import data and shipping records proved this to be a fabrication. Under both Prime Minister Carney and Trudeau before him, Canada continues to supply Israel with military equipment while the latter commits crimes against humanity in their campaigns against Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.

That is why NDP MP Jenny Kwan introduced Bill C-233, which would close the loopholes in the Export and Import Permits Act, and subject all countries to equal export control on military equipment based on their human rights record, bringing Canada into proper compliance with the Arms Trade Treaty.

The United States would no longer have a carte blanche exemption to buy Canadian military equipment, and Canada could no longer use the U.S. to launder weapons to countries like Israel that we falsely “embargo”. It is smart legislation that would correct a very real problem.

Rather than have any shame for being caught in their lie, however, the Liberals have instantly flipped a switch in their brains. Not only do they pretend an arms embargo was never their claim, but that doing so would be damaging to Canadian interests, regardless of international law!

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As such, Bill C-233 has failed on second reading in the House of Commons by a count of 295 to 22. The vast majority of Liberal MPs voted against the bill, in concert with the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois, while the six NDP MPs and sole Green MP were joined by just 15 Liberals of conscience.

I do respect those few Liberals who did vote in favour of this NDP bill, and their words in the parliamentary debate are strong. Yet I also have to criticize them for continuing to provide confidence to the Carney government, when they know it is supplying war criminals with weapons! How can they possibly remain in caucus without being hypocrites?

Jenny Kwan, for her part, points out that companies in Canada which produce military equipment will not suffer, as long as they don’t sell to war criminals, and that former Ambassador to the United Nations Allan Rock and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Lloyd Axworthy, who both served under the Chrétien Liberal government, have criticized the U.S. loophole and urged Carney to support Bill C-233 and close it.

But none of this matters to the Carney Liberals, or their Conservative and Bloc allies in this endeavour. They don’t care that the United States and Israel are using Canadian parts for the F-35 fighter jet program, jets which both nations now send ripping across Iranian skies to spread terror. They don’t care that Roshel in Brampton, Ontario is selling troop carriers to ICE that will be used to kidnap people off the streets and send them to concentration camps.

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Current Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand entered the debate right at the end, claiming that Bill C-233 would destroy Canadian industry, weaken our military, and get us criticized by NATO, and that such a bill is “irresponsible”, in her own words. Everything she says is blatantly incorrect, and she is contradicted publicly by criticisms from her fellow Liberal MPs, but she does not care.

Maybe the Carney gang support what Israel and the United States are doing in their respective empires, or maybe they’re just cowards who want those imperialist powers to focus on someone other than us. In either case, both our government and our two recognized opposition parties have chosen the path of open complicity in Zionist and Yankee hegemony.

And that complicity trickles down to us, as the Canadians who elected hundreds of these complicit Liberal, Conservative and Bloc MPs. I was foolish enough to vote for a Liberal MP in my riding, and that has made me complicit in his opposition to Bill C-233. Both myself and other voters must change our behaviour in response to this betrayal.

We cannot continue to allow Zionist and Yankee interests to capture our politicians and subvert them against the interests of the Canadian people. Whether they are the Carney Liberals, the Poilievre Conservatives, or the Blanchet Bloquistes, they have all chosen a morally odious path, and we as Canadians must oppose them politically.

Good news everyone, Doug Ford has new and exciting plans to ruin Toronto’s Harbourfront even more than he already has! Turning Ontario Place into a private spa and a parking garage isn’t enough, you see. His designs are now aimed towards the Toronto Islands’ Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, the dinky little brother of Toronto Pearson International Airport over in Mississauga.

Named after WW1 flying ace and WW2 recruitment director Air Marshal Billy Bishop, the island airport currently only operates regional flights from Air Canada Express and Porter Airlines using the De Havilland Canada Dash 8-400, a small turboprop that seats 78 passengers in cramped conditions with limited carry-on space.

Premier Ford’s proposal would see Billy Bishop’s runway expanded, allowing for regional jets to take off and land rather than just turboprops. The airport is governed by a tripartite agreement between all three levels of government, but Ford has been very clear with Mayor Chow that the province does not need the city’s consent as the city exists as a creature of the province; only the consent of the federal government will be necessary for Ford to proceed.

NoJetsTO, a group chaired by Norm Di Pasquale—who has previously appeared on my podcast—has consistently opposed plans to expand the island airport to jets, years before this current proposal. There is significant scientific evidence that living close to an airport can be damaging to human health, and it would certainly limit Port Lands development, blocking large amounts of housing to clear flight paths.

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I generally agree with these arguments against expansion, but I would actually go one step further. Not only do I believe we should refuse to expand Billy Bishop, I actually believe that with current and future infrastructure in the region, Billy Bishop will become so obsolete that the only reasonable option is to close it entirely, and reclaim the land for public access and enjoyment in concert with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

For those without context, such a maximalist anti-airport plan may seem extreme, but with a little explanation the proposition is actually quite reasonable. With the opening of the UP Express just over a decade ago, Toronto now has a Regional Express Rail link between the downtown core and Pearson International Airport. Service runs every 15 minutes, roughly 20 hours a day, with comfortable train cars that have dedicated luggage racks.

The UP Express has reasonably priced fares with group and family discounts, and it uses the same PRESTO cards as most Ontario transit does, or your debit or credit card if you don’t have PRESTO fare media. The train has multiple stops allowing transfers to Line 2 and Line 5, allowing those in Midtown and North Toronto to easily access Pearson as well.

Compared to the cramped 500-series legacy streetcars and the complimentary bus shuttle that Billy Bishop offers as transit links from Union, and as someone who has gone from Union to Pearson quickly using the UP Express to make my flights, there is absolutely zero motivation for me to ever fly with Billy Bishop. Pearson is far more accessible to people who need to get in and out from the various parts of Toronto.

And even with expansion to jets, Billy Bishop would still just serve smaller regional jets like the Embraer E-Jet family, at most the Airbus A220-100 which required steep approach certification before it could operate at London City Airport in the United Kingdom. The destinations that Billy Bishop serves would not significantly change.

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Mind you, right now, every single route offered out of Billy Bishop is a flight that can also be had out of Pearson, which we have established is easier to get to with your luggage, and features more comfortable jets for travellers. At Pearson, Porter can fly an Embraer E195-E2 rather than the Dash 8, fitting dozens of additional seats while also offering a better passenger experience.

All the international flights from Billy Bishop go to the United States, and if you’re unaware, Canadians have largely abandoned the Yankee Empire as a travel destination due to their general fascist insanity; Air Canada, WestJet and Air Transat all have cut routes to U.S. destinations and reallocated those planes and crews to more popular and profitable places.

Nonetheless, some Canadians are still trying to visit the Yankees, and some Yankees still have to come up here, as much as I may frown upon the exchange. Even with the recent opening of a U.S. preclearance facility at Billy Bishop, you will be better served as a transborder passenger by flying through Pearson, for the reasons elaborated upon above.

And if you’re travelling domestic, in the coming decade you may have a better option than flying. While VIA Rail isn’t currently at the state where I can categorically recommend it over flight in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montréal triangle, Alto High-Speed Rail will be that alternative. Alto plans to reach or exceed a sustained peak speed of 300 km/h along the corridor, roughly double that of VIA Rail, and also to separate the trains from that of CN and CPKC freight traffic, greatly uplifting the train’s reliability.

Obviously, Alto won’t replace flights from Toronto to Moncton or Halifax. What it will do is free up slots at airports along the line. In fact, this is likely the reason Air Canada is part of the Cadence consortium building Alto; they wish to have seamless transfers between air and rail at Pearson in Toronto and Trudeau in Montréal, letting people use a single ticket and have luggage automatically transfer, as Star Alliance airlines like Air Canada currently do with Deutsche Bahn in Germany.

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The ability to quickly get to Pearson is already detrimental to the business case for Billy Bishop; if Alto high-speed trains roll right into the core of Toronto, there will be no reason to fly through Billy Bishop at all. It will be a deadly one-two combo punch, and attempting to throw money at Billy Bishop in this context will go as well as the white elephant project that was Montréal’s Mirabel airport.

We don’t need to waste money on outdated, redundant infrastructure that is already being replaced by better alternatives. We don’t want to burn our cash refitting Billy Bishop only for Alto to come to Toronto at the same time and make demand for the island airport crater into oblivion. Billy Bishop doesn’t need to close today, but I do not see any scenario in which by the year 2040 it will still operate as it does now.

Rather than complain, I’d prefer to embrace the potential that this opportunity brings, and start planning for what reclamation of the airport lands will look like. While the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation settled their legal claim to the land back in 2010, it is still sacred and important land to them as a people; their involvement and consent on any future plans is a moral necessity.

Going forward, we will not need Billy Bishop anymore. The land has much better purposes, that will better suit our growing city. And when the time comes, it will be my privilege to watch them rip it down.

As of this morning, members of the New Democratic Party are now able to submit their ballots in the contest to determine their new leader. In order to vote, you must have been a member in good standing by January 28^th of this year, and those of you who did join or renew your membership in the NDP before this date will rank the various candidates in the order that they prefer them.

Voters are not required to rank all five candidates on their ballot, and indeed if there is someone you don’t want your vote falling down to under any circumstances, you can simply rank 1 to 4, or even fewer if you’re really picky. NDP members should feel no rush to fill out their ballot immediately, as the voting period concludes on March 28^th, the day before the leader will be announced at the final day of the NDP convention in Winnipeg.

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A lot can happen between then and now, and while I don’t see anyone dropping out, it is possible that candidates could cross-endorse each other, saying “rank me as your first, but rank them as your second”, and that may matter to you. But as it stands, here is how I, as an independent socialist unaffiliated with any federal party, would rank the five options available:

No. 1 - Tanille Johnston

“A proud Liǧʷiłdax̌ʷ woman from the WeWaiKai First Nation”, Tanille has a breadth of experience that makes her the Platonic ideal of what a modern NDP candidate should be.

She has worked for 14 years as a registered social worker, including her current senior role with B.C.’s First Nations Health Authority. She has served on the WeWaiKai Lands Committee, and does all of her current work while also being a city councillor in her community. Her platform addresses many of the fundamental inequalities in society, including housing, education, childcare, transportation, with a keen eye to rural areas that have been left out of the equation.

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While normally a lack of French is concerning for federal politics, in her case it is more than justified. She has dedicated her time to learning her people’s language, Kwak̓wala, which is rated as “Critically Endangered” by UNESCO and currently has just a few hundred speakers, primarily due to Canadian efforts to forcefully erase their culture. Preserving and reviving indigenous peoples’ languages is a priority for any federal government that truly seeks reconciliation.

Overall, I’m very excited for Tanille’s future in electoral politics, and I hope to see her accomplish the changes she seeks for this country. I would rank her right at the top of your NDP leadership ballot.

No. 2 - Avi Lewis

Correction: An earlier version of this ranking of Avi Lewis cited the book Seeking Social Democracy by Ed Broadbent, Frances Abele, Jonathan Sas & Luke Savage. While it is a very good book also worth reading, this article meant to instead cite Matt Fodor’s From Layton to Singh in reference to Avi Lewis.

In contrast to Tanille, Avi has been a prominent name in NDP circles for an extended period of time, the son of former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis and esteemed writer Michele Landsberg. Having recently read From Layton to Singh by Matt Fodor, it was remarkable seeing just how many times Avi was asked by members of the NDP to run for the leadership in past contests, and how many times he rejected doing so.

For whatever reason, he’s ready to run for leader now, and he’s certainly made a big splash, absolutely dominating his rival leadership candidates in terms of fundraising, and also gathering his money from a broader base of Canadians. Money shouldn’t dominate politics, but political operations do require capital in order to conduct their activities, and Avi is demonstrably in the best position for this.

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Avi has an extensive background in journalism, as well as deep involvement with the ecosocialist Leap Manifesto that Thomas Mulcair and Jagmeet Singh both distanced themselves from. It is Avi’s open embrace of the socialist label that makes him attractive to me as a candidate; NDP candidates both federally and provincially have been told to abandon socialism for electoral success, but without socialism the NDP has no reason to exist as a party.

Many right-wing NDPers may resent Avi for criticizing them, but I find it refreshing for him to make these intra-NDP debates public. Canadian politics requires an ecosocialist vanguard that will challenge the neoliberal status quo, and take the fight against climate change seriously. These factors make Avi a solid No. 2 choice for your ballot.

No. 3 - Heather McPherson

If Heather has any advantage over her rival leadership candidates, it is the fact that she is already a sitting MP in the House of Commons, and she would be immediately visible to the public. She was first elected as an MP for the NDP in 2019, and in 2021 and 2025 she outperformed every other NDP candidate across the country in vote share.

The fact that she was just one of seven NDP MPs to retain their seat after the 2025 decimation is certainly a mark towards her local electability. And her strong push on Palestinian rights as the NDP Foreign Affairs critics during the Gaza Genocide is a stance that reflects well on her character. Both Heather and Avi have a basic level of French competency that can be expanded upon with instruction and practice.

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In regard to the existential threat of climate change, however, Heather is a clear step downward from Tanille and Avi. She supported the Trans Mountain pipeline, and is overall in support of the fossil fuel industry that dominates Alberta. I understand that this may be electorally successful for her specific Alberta riding, but anti-climate policies will be electorally damaging in Québec, where the NDP must win seats to become viable again.

Overall, I do not appreciate Heather’s comment that her opponents’ policies are “not terribly viable”, and the phrasing of “purity tests” is curious considering it is frequently used by Liberals to criticize the NDP. It is not the job of a socialist party to make excuses for the broken capitalist system; socialists must show the public that a better way is possible. On this basis, I rank Heather below Tanille and Avi, and suggest you put her No. 3 on your ballot.

No. 4 - Rob Ashton

Rob came out of the gate last year with an initially strong showing, a dockworker with decades of experience as a union member, now Canadian Area President of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The NDP has lost a significant amount of private-sector union support in recent years, and someone like Rob could do a lot to pull them back.

I also appreciate that while his social commentary has been limited, he has repeatedly espoused that “division is the weapon of the boss”, telling blue collar workers that debates like trans athletes are stirred up by capitalists as a distraction to divide the working class. I do think that certain groups like trans people and immigrants deserve a more forceful defence in their favour, however.

What immediately took the wind out of Rob’s sails, in my regard, was his Reddit AMA blunder. While campaigning, he criticized workplace adoption of AI for getting rid of worker’s jobs and undermining democracy. Yet when he conducted a Reddit AMA, his campaign used an LLM like ChatGPT or Claude to generate the answers, including an answer describing the way in which he opposes the use of AI!

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As a writer myself, and someone who has done real communications work for political candidates in my pre-columnist career, it absolutely dumbfounded me to discover that his team is incapable of describing their own candidate in their own words. How could he have hired a communications crew that doesn’t know how to write? And how could NDP voters accept someone who goes back on their word about AI this quickly?

Rob’s views are similar enough to Heather’s that his lack of political experience and his campaign’s incompetency put him below her in terms of ballot ranking. I would suggest placing him No. 4 on your ballot.

No. 5 - Tony McQuail

Born in the United States in the 1950s, Tony moved to Canada in 1971 to escape the draft for the Vietnam War, owning and operating a farm and getting his Bachelor’s at the University of Waterloo all before finally becoming a Canadian citizen in 1977. All of this is admirable and respectable, and I’m glad he came here and that Canada welcomed him.

Aside from running repeatedly for the federal and provincial sides of the NDP, Tony also served three terms as a school board trustee in the 1980s, and then worked for a cabinet minister as their Executive Assistant in Bob Rae’s Ontario NDP government in the 1990s.

Ranking Tony at the bottom of this ballot has nothing to do with this valuable experience, but rather his recent attitude during the leadership campaign. During one of the debates for the NDP leadership, when asked whether he would commit to learning French, Tony blatantly said he would not, that francophone Canadians need to use a translator to understand him, but that this is okay because he can speak to “mother nature”, presumably like the blue people from James Cameron’s Avatar.

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This is not acceptable. For Québec alone it is a dealbreaker and a sign of disrespect, but such feelings also extend to New Brunswick and to francophone communities across the rest of the country. These voters fully understand that you may not have perfect fluency—after all, Mark Carney’s French is rough as well—but you need to show the basic respect of putting in the effort, or having a very good reason why you can’t.

Lacking the qualifications of the other candidates, and taking a poisonous stance on the French language, I suggest ranking Tony at the bottom of the ballot. I do still hope that he and all leadership candidates run for the NDP in their respective ridings, regardless of their success in this contest.

Conclusion

Your rankings may very well differ from mine, and not only is that okay, I encourage you to respond to this ranking with your own! It is important for Canada’s socialist movement to have an open and healthy debate over the path forward; indeed, many of the difficulties the NDP have had in recent years are a result of ignoring their grassroots.

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But you may also have various reasons you don’t want to rank a specific candidate at all, and that’s okay too. We all have our dealbreakers, and not every candidate has earned the right to your vote, not even at the lowest ranking. Refusing to place someone in the No 5. slot is itself a powerful statement of your intent as a voter.

However you as an NDP member choose to rank your ballot, all I ask is that you do rank and submit a ballot. If you’re in the position of being a member with the right to vote, you have until March 28^th to do it, and in a contest that could very well be close despite fundraising numbers, it would be regretful to not take the chance to have your say.

And whoever does win the NDP leadership, I hope the NDP can find a path out of the electoral wilderness, and seize upon the renewed popularity of democratic socialism in the public discourse. Because if the NDP cannot fill the left-wing niche, another party will certainly rise to do so in their stead.