Canadian Convulsions > Is Canada turning into the wild, wild west? This weekend voted 'yes'

 

— Colby Cosh

NP Platformed

The Opposition leader, Pierre Poilievre, newly restored to the House of Commons by the voters of Battle River—Crowfoot, Alberta, made some public remarks defending the use of force against burglars by homeowners. The Justice Minister Sean Fraser, sensing an opportunity but perhaps failing to read the proverbial room, replied indignantly on social media:  

 

“This isn’t the Wild West..."

His quip was followed by a weekend of appalling crimes across the country, some of them in fact having a disturbing Wild West flavour, darn the luck. 

In Vaughan, Ont., a homeowner died from “trauma to his body” (?) after armed burglars broke into his house and threatened his child. This incident is not to be confused with the four armed and masked men storming a house in Markham, Ont. And in Welland, Ont., an enterprising solo practitioner broke into a home and allegedly sexually assaulted a toddler. (A neighbour told the National Post that the accused had previously been convicted of a similar sex offence against her son, had received an 18-month prison sentence and had been turned loose in 12. Real solutions!) 

 

In London, Ont., which isn’t the Wild West, there was nonetheless a gunfight downtown that involved at least 11 rounds being fired. Guelph, Ont., which also isn’t the Wild West, got off easy, although the 80-year-old woman beaten unconscious in broad daylight didn’t. Renfrew, Ont., isn’t the Wild West, but two people allegedly broke into a hotel room to bear-spray the occupants and steal stuff. In west-but-not-wild Abbotsford, B.C., a house was riddled with bullets while its occupants slept. There have been a few apparent arsons, possibly involving homicidal intent — Richmond Hill, Ont.; Windsor, Ont.; and a fatal one in Edmonton in which a shouting match may have been ended, unanswerably, with a Molotov cocktail. Of course, I don’t know whether you could really say Edmonton isn’t the Wild West. A woman here was shot to death in her SUV over the weekend on the city’s historic main drag, Jasper Avenue. 

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Canadian Convulsions > 100+ Names on ballot contesting Pierre Poilievre - a new Canadian record and disgrace

 

If this was happening to a Liberal candidate, it would be front-page news every day. But Canada's far-left media speaks not a word as democracy is disgraced again.

More Than 100 Candidates Now Running Against Poilievre, Breaking a Canadian Record

Chandra Philip

7/19/2025|Updated: 7/19/2025

The list of candidates running against Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in an upcoming Alberta byelection has now grown to more than 100, setting a Canadian record.

There are currently 108 other candidates listed for the Battle River-Crowfoot riding as of July 19. The vast majority of the candidates are running as independents as part of a protest movement about Canada’s electoral system.

Or, at least, that's the excuse. More than likely they are being supported by any one of several people or groups who don't want the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament where he is so effective.

The byelection was called after MP Damien Kurek stepped down to allow Poilievre to run and win a seat. Poilievre lost his riding of Carleton in the recent federal election, which was similarly targeted by the protest movement with 90 candidates.

The Longest Ballot Committee (LBC) said it wants to organize about 200 candidates for the Alberta riding. The LBC was created to protest Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system. In the Carleton riding, ballots were almost a metre long, and had to be folded several times to fit in the ballot box.

The group also organized for 77 candidates to run in the Toronto-St. Paul’s byelection in June 2024. The move resulted in voting delays.

The movement originated with the satirical Rhinoceros Party of Canada, founded in 1963. Some of its policies include making “sorry” the official motto of Canada, and naming “illiteracy” as the third official language of the country. The party has also said it would open “tax havens” in all provinces, and allow advertising in the House of Commons and Senate.

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Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault has previously said he has concerns about the protest movement creating a challenge for those with language or accessibility barriers to vote.

Last year, he recommended amendments to Bill C-65, which would change the Elections Canada Act, to prohibit voters from signing nomination papers for more than one candidate. The bill was terminated after Parliament was prorogued in January 2025.

Candidates not associated with the LBC have criticized the movement, including Poilievre, who called it “unjust” and “unfair” during a recent town hall meeting in Stettler, Alberta.

He said that Elections Canada could stop the LBC tactic by implementing new rules, including requiring every candidate on the ballot to have 1,000 unique signatures from community members. He also said that nobody should be permitted to sign a petition more than once.

“[This would] would make it impossible for 200 people to go out and have their names piled onto the list,” he said, noting that only candidates who are truly running for office should be listed on the ballot.

Libertarian candidate for the Battle River-Crowfoot riding Michael Harris said the movement was “a coordinated mockery of the democratic process” and that it drowned out “real debate.”

Elections Alberta said nominations for candidates in Battle River-Crowfoot close on July 29, with a full list of candidates to be released on July 30.

Canadian Convulsions > 142,000 patients left B.C. ERs untreated last year

 

Nearly 142,000 patients walked out of B.C. ERs

untreated last year

B.C. Conservative Freedom of Information request uncovers troubling 6-year trend showing numbers up 86% from 2018 to 2025

Mark Page
a day ago

More people than ever are leaving B.C.'s emergency rooms without receiving care, according to documents. (File photo/Black Press Media)

The number of people entering a B.C. emergency room and leaving without being seen by a doctor rose 86 per cent from 2018 to 2025, according to documents obtained by a freedom of information request filed by the B.C. Conservatives.

"And the numbers don't seem to be plateauing at all," said Brennan Day, the Conservatives' critic for Rural Health and Seniors' Health.

In the 2018/19 fiscal year, 76,157 patients left without being seen. By 2024/25, that number had risen to 141,962. During that timeframe, the total number of patients seen in emergency rooms did rise, but by only about 13 per cent, increasing to 2,595,219 in 2024/25.

The worst performers were Island Health, where the number of patients leaving without care more than doubled, and Fraser Health, where the number nearly doubled. 

Waits of more than eight hours are not unheard of in B.C., and the median time spent in the province's ERs last year was four hours and 13 minutes, according to a recent study by MEI, a think tank.

Day pointed out that while some people may leave because their sickness has subsided, that does not mean they don't need treatment.

"Everybody's had a random pain that, if you wait eight hours, it goes away," Day said. "It's not to say that the underlying cause of that pain is not serious. So, it's pushing people away from the health care system."

Health Ministry says people will not be turned away

The Ministry of Health blamed an increasing number of people seeking care and an uptick in sicker patients. A statement from the ministry also said that people who are the least sick are the most likely to leave, and nobody will be turned away if they want care.

"When patients first arrive at the ED [emergency department], they are triaged and seen based on acuity," an emailed statement from the ministry said. "The sickest patients are always seen first. Patients are never turned away from the ED."

The statement added that certain patients, such as those experiencing chest pains, are encouraged not to leave before being seen.

The ministry is working to hire more doctors and nurses — including a highly publicized campaign to attract workers from the U.S. — and increased the number of acute care beds by 7.9 per cent in 2023. Some health authorities have also made average wait times available online this year to "help patients and their families make informed decisions about accessing care."

Doctors of BC, the advocacy organization representing the province's physicians, provided a statement to Black Press Media saying that it has been calling for an emergency department stabilization plan for some time to address broader dysfunction within hospitals.

"Emergency department overcrowding and long wait times can be symptoms of problems in other areas of the hospital, and solutions often require that these issues be addressed as well," the statement said. 

The organization contends that while the province's recent efforts to recruit U.S. doctors and fund a new medical school at Simon Fraser University are helpful, more needs to be done.

Day wants the province to pressure the federal government to speed up visa processing for international doctors. He also wants the government to do a better job of listening to its front-line workers, calling the current system in the health authorities a "bureaucratic quagmire."

"The bureaucrats are too self-absorbed in protecting their own positions to listen to the front-line doctors and nurses," he said.

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Liberals Carney plans to mortgage Canada for the next several generations - worse than Trudeau

 

Justin, come back! We found someone dumber than you!

Liberals’ Platform Promises $130 Billion in New Spending, Larger Deficits

Liberal Leader Mark Carney speaks during the French-language federal leaders' debate in Montreal on April 16, 2025. The Canadian

The Liberal Party has released the price tag of its election platform, which comes to about $130 billion in new spending over the next four years while running deficits until at least fiscal year 2028–29.

Realistically, for at least the next four years as well even if everything goes well.

The party released its costed platform on April 19, a day after advance voting opened for four days over the Easter weekend, with election day fast approaching on April 28.

Most of the items had previously been announced on the campaign trail by leader Mark Carney.

New defence spending, housing, and tax cuts are some of the commitments that come with the biggest price tags included in the $129.2 billion spending.

The fiscal and costing plan only includes tariff revenues for the current fiscal year, indicating that $20 billion is expected to be generated in 2025–26 from Canada’s counter-tariffs imposed in response to U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports. These include aluminum, steel, vehicles, and other goods not covered under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

It’s a move that Carney said was deliberate. “We don’t want to rely on those tariff revenues ... so we concentrate them today and will deal with them tomorrow,” he said during a campaign stop in Whitby, Ontario, on April 19.

The costed Liberal platform predicts a deficit of $62.3 billion this fiscal year followed by a lower deficit in 2026–27 of around $60 billion. It forecasts a further drop for the 2027–28 fiscal year to a deficit of $55 billion, and then $48 billion in 2028–29.

“This is not a normal fall update, budget lockup,” Carney said. “We are in the middle of the biggest crisis of our lifetimes, and this is a plan that meets that moment in a way that is very prudent with people’s hard-earned tax dollars, but bold in terms of where this country can go.”

Carney said a government he runs would also tackle spending, saying the Liberal government had been previously “spending too much.”

“We’re going to bring that level of spending growth down from 9 percent to 2 percent,” he said.

I presume he means a 2% increase.

“We will do it in a way [such that] we will not cut any transfers to provinces, to territories, or individuals. We will protect all of those, but we will balance our operating budget over the next three years by cutting waste, by eliminating duplication, and by deploying technology.”

Boosting Military Spending

The Liberals committed to an increase of some $18 billion toward national defence and to meet NATO’s target of 2 percent of GDP by 2030. The spending increase will cover a pay raise for Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members, the platform document said.

Carney’s plan also includes building new housing on bases across Canada and ensuring access to child care and doctors, including mental health services, for CAF members and their families.

The platform also includes money for new submarines and additional heavy icebreakers for the Royal Canadian Navy.

Canada will also buy more aerial and underwater drones to survey the Arctic and the country’s undersea infrastructure and borders under the Liberal plan. Money will also be spent on purchasing Canadian-made airborne early warning and control aircraft and building new deepwater ports to support destroyers patrolling Northern waters.

Housing

The Liberal platform includes a $6 billion investment in a new initiative, dubbed Build Canada Homes, tasked with building and acquiring affordable housing, supportive housing, and shelters, including on public lands.

In addition, Carney’s plan would see over $25 billion in financing offered to innovative prefabricated homebuilders and $10 billion in low-cost financing and capital to homebuilders to build housing targeting middle- and low-income Canadians.

Tax Cuts

The Liberals also reiterated in their platform their earlier pledge to lower the tax rate on the lowest income tax bracket, bringing it down 1 percentage point from 15 percent to 14 percent.

Carney said the cut would come into effect by Canada Day 2025

For first-time homebuyers, the platform makes room for cutting the GST on homes up to $1 million and reducing the GST on homes between $1 million and $1.5 million.

Criticism

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation criticized Carney’s budget plan, calling it “even more irresponsible than the Trudeau plan.”

In an April 19 news release, the group said Carney’s plan will add $225 billion to the federal debt, considering the projected annual budget deficits of $62 billion, $60 billion, $55 billion, and $48 billion over the four years from 2025–26 to 2028–29.

As you can see, there won't be a balanced budget in 2029-30 or any time soon after that. Canada will be heavily mortgaged for the next several generations.

The federation noted that, according to the 2024 Fall Economic Statement, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had planned on increasing the debt by a smaller amount, $131.4 billion, over that same four-year period, with annual deficits running at $42.2 billion, $31 billion, 30.4 billion, and then $27.8 billion.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre likewise criticized the size of the deficits in the Liberals’ election platform, saying it would lead to inflation.

“Amazingly, Carney plans to run EVEN BIGGER inflationary deficits than Justin Trudeau had already budgeted,” he said in a social media post. “This inflationary spending means higher taxes and higher cost of living.”

Poilievre says his party will be releasing its costed platform soon.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said the Liberal platform includes cuts that “could come in health care and services.”

“The Liberals are proposing massive cuts at a time of potential recession, uncertainty, anxiety and worry, and that is the last thing that we need,” Singh said at a campaign stop in Burnaby, B.C., on April 19, where the NDP also released its costed platform.

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