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"This decision now stands as binding precedent. It places real legal constraints on future governments and ensures that the Emergencies Act cannot be repurposed as a political convenience. It restores the act to what Parliament intended: a narrow, exceptional tool, not a blunt instrument against dissent.
The government spent millions defending the indefensible. It lost completely. And in doing so, it handed Canadians one of the most important civil liberties rulings in a generation.
That is worth celebrating.” @cvangeyn nationalpost.com/opinion/chr…
cbcwatcher retweeted
Powerful account by @MichaelKovrig on horrendous torture that is PRC's state sanctioned RSDL
thewirechina.com/2026/10/25/…
The Economist’s Canadian correspondent is Rob Russo, former managing editor of the CBC’s Parliamentary Bureau. After a decade of Liberal fiscal decline, the magazine put Mark Carney on the cover (“Not sorry”) and has run a string of pieces framing him as the model for middle powers dealing with Trump.
Now they’re stuck doubling down on the hagiography instead of scrutinizing the continued high spending, weak business investment, stalled projects, and lagging productivity. Institutional capture meets sunk-cost bias.
Once you commit to Carney clownery, the Economist can't go back @halhod
@zannymb
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon mocks The Economist during a tense exchange after being told he’s sounding like Trump: “I’m not Trumpian. I’m factual.” 🇺🇸
Interviewer: “You’re sounding Trumpy.”
Jamie Dimon: “I’m not Trumpian. I’m factual. I don’t agree with this binary shit that goes on all the time.
I think The Economist is the absolute best, most admirable thing in the world, and you should continue that.”
Dimon delivers the last line with apparent sarcasm, poking fun at the publication while pushing back against the idea that agreeing with Trump on certain issues makes him a Trump supporter.
cbcwatcher retweeted
A much wiser, MLA once told me that as an elected official you have two choices: respect the voters and get to work or get out. Because sooner or later, voters will always figure out what kind you were.
I am glad to hear @LDoerkson confirm he is the former, not the latter…
Lorne Doerkson on Wab Kinew’s comments that the BC results “should concern every elected politician” and that being elected is “a responsibility not to be played with”:
“Well, I don’t disagree. We should all be concerned. British Columbians voted for change last night and for whatever reason they liked the platform that we put forward. … I’ve always been somebody that the moment I’ve been elected I’ve got to work and for me that isn’t going to change. I intend to get to work right away. I intend to work for British Columbia hard because four years comes quick.” @WabKinew @LDoerkson
cbcwatcher retweeted
🪖 Five young soldiers from CFB Petawawa walked more than 150 km through the cold to Ottawa’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Pte. Josh Kane
Pte. Dominic Ferguson
Pte. Nathan Thomas
Pte. Logan Toupin
Pte. Justin Toupin
They did it for their brothers who never made it home from Wainwright and for the ones still fighting in hospital beds.
They knew some of them. They trained with them. They refused to let them be forgotten.
Sgt. Morgan Wong
Pte. Shaun Farrell
Pte. Aidan Goulding
Pte. Hayden Lykkemark
This is what real brotherhood looks like.
🇨🇦 Stand with them. Donate. Share. Remember.
#CAF #SupportOurTroops
CFB Petawawa soldiers walk to Ottawa in support of CFB Wainwright victims ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/cf…
cbcwatcher retweeted
She would know
#REPORT: Former Deputy Mayor Under Olivia Chow, Now Liberal MP Jennifer McKelvie, Endorses Brad Bradford For Mayor. ✅
“He Is the Mayor That Toronto Needs.”
cbcwatcher retweeted
Remember when Ottawa and Toronto conservatives swooned over this guy?
Some of us have a red line and refuse to ignore it.
Spare us the sermon, @WabKinew . You're an intellectual and political lightweight with a record of misogyny and a seriously questionable, immoral history. Shame on Manitoba for electing you. And as the interloper you are, let me remind you that you have no business posing as anyone's moral compass.
We fired an unethical government whose negligence and nefarious "management" has caused irreparable damage– sold out our rights and freedoms, fuelled division, racism and hate, and devastated British Columbia. Full stop.
Be happy for now that we don't have the legislation to grab your buddy Eby to hold him responsible for what he's done to this province.
The scandal is what the NDP did with power and always has.
cbcwatcher retweeted
“You can’t build a provincial economy on whale watching and coffee shops.”
We need to be a province that builds, makes and creates. We need a provincial industrial strategy and we need to get serious about the loss of industrial land to real estate speculation.
Once industrial land is converted to other uses, it is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to get it back. And without that land, where exactly do we expect the next generation of manufacturers, skilled tradespeople and industrial employers to go?
This is one of the most consequential challenges we face in British Columbia, with a lot of damage already done. I hope the new government makes it an urgent priority.
cbcwatcher retweeted
"Britain has decided not to join a global defence bank spearheaded by Canada, as chancellor John Healey prepares to throw his weight behind a separate UK-led initiative to help fill a multibillion hole in the UK defence budget."🤔#procurement
Britain will not join Canada-led defence bank ft.trib.al/MIHmPWL
cbcwatcher retweeted
In his blogpost the once esteemed expert on illiberalism David Dyzenhaus directly implies that Eric Voegelin was a Nazi. But Voegelin was a fierce critic of Naziism and fled Austria for the US after the Anschluss. I guess this is @acoyne’s type of graceful scholarship!
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”—Ferris Bueller
Lorne Doerkson, a backbench MLA, gets a call in the Amsterdam airport on a layover from South Africa.
“The party leader has resigned and you’re the only MLA most of us don’t hate. You’ve been elected the next leader. Do you accept?”
34 days later: “Tonight, BC made a choice, and it is going to be the honour of my lifetime to serve you as your Premier,”
"By one key measurement, Canada is already “the 51st State” that Donald Trump cruelly and senselessly characterizes as being its future.
The World Bank puts the U.S. 2025 GDP per person at $90,250. Canada’s 2025 GDP per person is $55,698. Mississippi, the poorest state in America, sits at $55,877. So Canada’s national average is below the level of all 50 U.S. states.
The Economist bluntly quotes Jean Charest, who was premier of Quebec from 2003 to 2012, as believing that “Canadians may one day thank America’s president for shocking them out of a slumber.” The first sign that may be happening came from British Columbia on Saturday.
As Charest himself puts it, “Trump is now telling us we have no choice but to change.”" @johnfund
✍🏻My dear friend, @johnfund, with an excellent piece on the Conservative victory in BC and the breaking of the TDS fever in Canada. Must read! 🇨🇦🇺🇸
nationalreview.com/2026/10/c…
Full interview where CBC introduced Camosun instructor Daniel Reeve as a neutral political science expert to analyze BC’s new Conservative premier Lorne Doerkson. What they left out: Reeve is a former NDP candidate who worked as a ministerial aide under an NDP government
Here’s the “non-partisan” analysis: He opens by calling Doerkson’s tone “humble” and “sincere,” then immediately undercuts the majority: more than half of voters didn’t support him, so the numbers “don’t quite back that up.” Classic framing of a Conservative win as less legitimate than the seat count
On the campaign, he contrasts Eby’s Trump-focused pitch with the Conservatives actually talking about the deficit, emergency care, and the economy—implying the NDP missed the mark while the right read the room
Then the money quote on Doerkson’s plan: they’ll walk through the budget, declare “it’s worse than we thought,” and impose “a whole bunch of cuts so that we don’t raise taxes and so that we don’t cut health care.” This, he says, is the message meant to “hold that center right to kind of far right coalition together and also kind of pin the problems of his government on the past.”
He later describes Carney as closer to the NDP on fiscal questions, notes the provincial NDP had shifted toward the center, and flags energy/forestry expansion as creating problems with DRIPA and Indigenous consent. On the snap election, he relays an “NDP kind of leaning supporter” who refused to “walk across hot coals” to vote NDP, frames Eby’s call as “here’s the fire. Follow me,” and points to 200,000 previous NDP voters who stayed home
All of it delivered as dispassionate academic insight from a former NDP candidate and government aide. Disclosure by CBC was apparently optional. This is not journalism @CBCOmbud
CBC platformed Camosun political science instructor Daniel Reeve to analyze Premier-designate Lorne Doerkson and somehow forgot to mention the tiny detail that Reeve himself ran as an NDP candidate (and worked as a ministerial aide to NDP Health Minister Corky Evans)
Here’s the “neutral expert” take they ran: “I thought one of the things that jumped out to me is that they are going to go that one of the first things that the premier elect suggested is a financial basically walking through of the budget. And I think that from that analysis, they're going to say, oh, my God, it's worse than we thought. And now we're going to have to impose a whole bunch of cuts so that we don't raise taxes and so that we don't cut health care. And that. That's going to be the financial message that's going to hopefully, from his perspective, hold that center right to kind of far right coalition together and also kind of pin the problems of his government on the past.”
Just another dispassionate academic, right? The same lifelong NDP activist who spent years organizing campaigns and working inside an NDP government is now on the public broadcaster framing the new Conservative government as a cynical cut-and-blame operation aimed at “center-right to far-right” voters. Disclosure optional, apparently
CBC’s mountain of omissions continues @CBCOmbud @BrodieFenlon
cbcwatcher retweeted
I always google any "expert" that @CBCNews puts on the airwaves to see if they have a potential conflict of interest. It's reminds me how they forget to mention that Frank Mckenna works for @Brookfield .
CBC platformed Camosun political science instructor Daniel Reeve to analyze Premier-designate Lorne Doerkson and somehow forgot to mention the tiny detail that Reeve himself ran as an NDP candidate (and worked as a ministerial aide to NDP Health Minister Corky Evans)
Here’s the “neutral expert” take they ran: “I thought one of the things that jumped out to me is that they are going to go that one of the first things that the premier elect suggested is a financial basically walking through of the budget. And I think that from that analysis, they're going to say, oh, my God, it's worse than we thought. And now we're going to have to impose a whole bunch of cuts so that we don't raise taxes and so that we don't cut health care. And that. That's going to be the financial message that's going to hopefully, from his perspective, hold that center right to kind of far right coalition together and also kind of pin the problems of his government on the past.”
Just another dispassionate academic, right? The same lifelong NDP activist who spent years organizing campaigns and working inside an NDP government is now on the public broadcaster framing the new Conservative government as a cynical cut-and-blame operation aimed at “center-right to far-right” voters. Disclosure optional, apparently
CBC’s mountain of omissions continues @CBCOmbud @BrodieFenlon
cbcwatcher retweeted
All I hear when I see this is Mark Carney telling us how we’re so European in Canada.
"Canada continues to struggle with a shortage of nurses despite federal efforts to recruit foreign-trained health care workers, with vacancy rates for licensed practical nurses remaining five times higher than they were nearly a decade ago.
Blacklock's Reporter says new Statistics Canada figures show the job vacancy rate for licensed practical nurses stood at 12% in 2025, compared with 2.5% in 2016.
The findings were published in Canada’s Health Workforce: An Integrated Summary Based On Statistics Canada Data, which examined employment trends and labour shortages across the health care sector.
“Vacancy rates remained highest among licensed practical nurses at 12% in 2025,” the report stated. “This was down from a peak of 19% in 2023, but five times higher than the rate in 2016, 2.5%.”" @WesternStandard @mindingottawa
Carney’s “prudent banker” brand is dead. The PBO just showed the books are being cooked
Debt-service costs are now the fastest-growing federal expense: $25B five years ago → $59B this year (already larger than the Canada Health Transfer) → $83B in five years. Pure interest, paid before anything else
PBO Annette Ryan: the government’s fiscal “anchors” are “more like traffic lights.” Capital spending gets a green light; operating spending is a yellow at best. “Limited fiscal discipline. It’s not stopping spending.”
Real cash borrowing over five years: $733B. New debt from deficits: only $333B. The ~$400B gap is being parked with Crown corporations, loans and special funds—“a step removed from parliamentary oversight.” New risks, she said, and less transparency
The former Bank of Canada/Bank of England governor who once policed balance sheets is now redefining accounting so the headline targets stay pretty while the actual liability grows off-books. Taxpayers get stuck with the interest bill @PBO_DPB
cbcwatcher retweeted
No congratulations for the new premier from the federal NDP leader.
Even the BCGEU congratulated Lorne Doerkson. Although the statement contains a vowel error. #bcpoli
Today broke grey and raw for New Democrats here in BC: last night was a body blow.
This morning I’m sending solidarity and care to all the progressive organizers - within and beyond electoral politics - who have worked tirelessly over so many years in this province.
It is thanks to your unending effort that we have won and defended all our social gains: queer and disability rights, Indigenous rights, childcare and public health, working conditions and unionization, universal public services and more.
None of these victories came without struggle. And that struggle must continue now, to protect them in every way we can.
But not today. Today is a day to feel all the feelings, find comfort and get some rest.
Tomorrow we rise to fight again.
"About one in ten B.C. voters backed the Greens this election. Yet I suspect very few of those well-meaning citizens have taken the time to truly examine what this strain of green thinking entails. It doesn't seek to refine our economic system. It seeks to dismantle it."
Congratulations to Emily Lowan on her victory in Saanich North and the Islands. Running for office takes enormous grit, and whatever the political differences, nobody can deny the sheer hustle and energy her campaign brought to the doorstep. Today is her day to celebrate. Her speech last night spoke directly to issues so many British Columbians are feeling deeply: crushing rents, long waits for family doctors, and the exhaustion of working multiple jobs just to stay afloat. Those anxieties are real, and they deserve real answers.
Where her message runs off the rails, and was on the nose for many, is in the intellectual playbook she chose to summon at the podium.
Invoking the late David Graeber - the anarchist anthropologist and chief theorist behind Occupy Wall Street - Lowan quoted his line that the world is an experiment that “we make and could just as easily make differently.”
It sounds poetic in an election hall, but let’s remember what Graeber’s philosophy actually is. He wasn't arguing for better daycare funding or incremental transit tweaks. He was an uncompromising revolutionary who wrote:
“Direct action is the open defiance of an illegitimate authority... it is an insistence on acting as if one is already free, and in doing so, exposing the violence at the heart of the state.”
This isn't an abstract debate from Zuccotti Park fifteen years ago. Right here in British Columbia, we see this eco-anarchist doctrine (rejected by 90% of voters, btw) playing out in real time, where activist networks deploy blockades to obstruct First Nations who have chosen to pursue economic options, equity ownership, and major project partnerships in their own territories.
That is the most glaring flaw at the heart of the anarchist critique. While invoking Indigenous rights as an abstract slogan, this mindset routinely overrides the actual, self-determined aspirations of Indigenous communities that are choosing economic independence and shared prosperity over perpetual reliance on government transfers.
About one in ten B.C. voters backed the Greens this election. Yet I suspect very few of those well-meaning citizens have taken the time to truly examine what this strain of green thinking entails. It doesn't seek to refine our economic system. It seeks to dismantle it.
At the same time, what British Columbia does not need is an equal and opposite reaction to Graeber-think. Retreating into our own ideological bunkers and answering dogma with hardline polarization is a guaranteed path to conflict, not reconciliation.
You cannot fund community health centres, electrify transit grids, or pay nurses’ salaries with protest theory. Those services are underwritten by royalties, payroll taxes, and the tangible economic engine of B.C. - mining, forestry, energy, ports, and trade.
Tomorrow when La Rose vs HMTK opens in a Vancouver courtroom, an object lesson will be on display of what happens when Graeber-styled thinking occurs in the wild, where the goal is for the tail to wag the dog. I’ll be watching it closely.
I genuinely wish Emily the best as she steps into the Legislature. The transition from movement activist to accountable lawmaker is where ideology collides with balance sheets and physical reality. That’s a transition every British Columbian has a stake in seeing succeed.