National
By-election Bombshell! Justin Trudeau’s Liberals lose safe Toronto riding
Benefit of hindsight
Feel free to start coming back any time, big guy
Well, of course I saw it coming all along. What kind of fool could have imagined the Liberal in Toronto — St. Paul’s had any chance?
Hang on. I’m just getting word that I didn’t see it coming. In fact, as recently as Monday night I wrote a post I’ll be hearing about until the cows come home. Sorry about that!
Here are the actual final results, barring any recounts, which may not happen because Conservative Don Stewart’s margin of victory, while slim, is too large to trigger an automatic recount.
Congratulations, Don Stewart! I never doubted you’d win. Hang on. I’m just getting word that I doubted you’d win as recently as last night.
Things will now start to happen quickly. Expect Liberals to work their way through four of the five Kübler-Ross stages of grief before lunch. Denial will come easily, benefiting as it does from long practice. Acceptance may take longer.
The Paul Wells newsletter is fun reading even when I’m calling the results of a by-election wrong! Imagine how much you’ll enjoy it when I’m right about something!
In part this is because on paper there isn’t that much to accept. The day’s news is not earth-shaking and, in isolation, should not be taken as definitive. It’s true that by-elections are strange events, though if you add them together they do have some predictive power. It’s true that Leslie Church’s long service as Chrystia Freeland’s chief of staff turned out to be more of a hindrance than a help, a data point whose implications the Deputy Prime Minister won’t want to think much about today. It’s true the Liberals didn’t even try all that hard, if by “didn’t try all that hard” you mean “they tried as hard as they possibly could, my God they tried so hard, my God.”
But a single off-season defeat in a riding the Liberals have, in fact, previously lost during the Paleozoic era is not a larger thing to accept than, say, a punishing loss to Ireland and Norway in a Security Council vote at the UN. Or the loss of two senior cabinet ministers in a controversy in which the ministers who quit were radiantly, obviously in the right. Don’t take my word on that, incidentally: ask David Lametti, who agreed with Jody Wilson-Raybould but managed to keep his job anyway. For a while.
A single by-election defeat is not a larger thing to accept than the prime minister’s documented history of slapping on dark makeup for social occasions, a habit that stretched from junior college to young adulthood. It’s not a bigger deal than firing your finance minister during a global fiscal calamity so you can replace him with somebody who knows less about money. It’s not evidence of poorer strategic thinking than the choice of Parliament as the venue for dismantling a new Conservative leader, given that Parliament has long been where Justin Trudeau and most of his government perform worst.
It’s not a bigger deal than mocking monetary policy during an election campaign. It’s not a big new development, compared to the Prime Minister’s reluctance to meet his own cabinet ministers to discuss business, an oddity of his management style that’s been documented in a growing number of books (look out for Marc Garneau’s this fall!).
The prime minister has been on the ropes before, so to speak, and all those trials have made him the man he is today. Or rather, I suppose, his response to them has. I have no particular advice for Justin Trudeau today, or to the party he leads with the unstinting consent of its members. I screwed up last night by sending a column before the facts were in, so I’m feeling a little sheepish this morning. I’ll let Liberals decide what to do next.
As recently as two summers ago, I used to give them advice. It amounted to this: Notice when something you’re doing isn’t working. Change it. Make sure people see you changing it, so you don’t look quite so full of yourself. Rinse and repeat.
That post from 2022 ends:
“Don’t worry. He won’t take this advice either. Whatever the Liberal leader does on his return from the sunless south, it probably won’t resemble anything we’ve mentioned today. He’ll probably keep doing what he’s been doing. With the same results.”
Let me read to you
My excellent short bestselling book, Justin Trudeau on the Ropes: Governing in Troubled Times, is now an audiobook, narrated by the author, who is me. Here it is on Audible. Other platforms soon.
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Here’s the story of the book, if you’re just catching up. Here’s an episode of my podcast with guest host Vassy Kapelos interviewing me about the book. Paper and ebook editions remain easy to find and buy, for yourself or friends.
We decided to make the audiobook some time after we published the, uh, more booky formats. It’s a response to surprising and gratifying demand. It’s also a promissory note: If this belated audiobook edition finds an audience, it won’t be my last.
There’s a school of thought that says there’s not much demand for nonfiction Canadian audiobooks. Here’s your chance to confound the skeptics. Thanks as always for your support.
From LifeSiteNews
Bill C-254 would give a maximum two-year jail sentence for people who deny or downplay claims that there were mass graves at Indian Residential Schools.
A new bill looks to give jail time to people who engage in so-called “Denialism” and question the media and government narrative surrounding Canada’s “Indian Residential School system” that there are mass graves despite no evidence to support this claim.
The private members’ Bill C-254, An Act To Amend The Criminal Code, introduced by New Democrat MP Leah Gazan, would give out stiff penalties to deniers, saying the bill is needed to “end Residential School denialism.”
Gazan said that her bill is for all “Residential School survivors and our families.”
She said that so-called “denialism is spreading, twisting facts, denying genocide and reigniting harm,” adding, “It is not only hurtful, it is dangerous.”
Bill C-254, should it become law, would give a maximum two-year jail sentence for people who “other than in private conversation willfully promotes hatred against Indigenous people by condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian Residential School system in Canada or by misrepresenting facts relating to it.”
The bill does read that exceptions are given for people who “establish the statements communicated were true” or if the statements are “relevant to any subject of public interest.”
This is not the first time Gazan has tried to get such a bill passed. A bill she previously brought forth that sought to criminalize the denial of the unproven claim that the residential school system, once operating in Canada, was a “genocide,” lapsed after an election was called.
Last year, retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht said Canadians are being “deliberately deceived by their own government” after blasting the former Trudeau government for “actively pursuing” a policy that blames the Catholic Church for the unfounded “deaths and secret burials” of Indigenous children.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, John Carpay, founder and president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), blasted what he said are “false” and “virtue-signaling” displays of “truth and reconciliation” goals pushed by the federal government and media when it comes to indigenous “land acknowledgments.”
In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some Canadian residential schools. The reality is, after four years, there have been no mass graves discovered at residential schools.
However, as the claims went unfounded, since the spring of 2021, over 120 churches, most of them Catholic, many of them on indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada.
Recent polling has shown that over two-thirds of Canadians want some kind of proof of the “unmarked graves” before believing the claims that Indigenous children were secretly murdered and buried at residential schools by Catholic clergy.
$3.97 BILLION Cut From Veterans Affairs. Cannabis Benefits Slashed. Hypocrisy in Full Bloom.
They’re quietly dismantling the only lifeline veterans have left. The federal government just carved $3.97 billion out of Veterans Affairs Canada’s budget.
That’s not trimming fat, that’s cutting into the bone and burning the body.
And as if that weren’t disgusting enough, they’re also slashing medical cannabis reimbursements for veterans from $8.50 down to $6.00 per gram.
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The same medicine that’s keeping thousands of veterans alive through PTSD, chronic pain, and TBI recovery gutted by bureaucrats who’ve never had to bury a friend who lost the battle at home.
I testified in Canada’s first veteran suicide study and I warned them. I sat in front of Parliament and told them this would happen. I told them this LAST WEEK. I told them veterans were being failed by their own government ignored, delayed, and dismissed until they broke.
The study exposed it the chronic failure of the liberal veteran system. Suicide rates among veterans were higher than the national average. VAC systems were drowning in paperwork and apathy. Those who found stability through medical cannabis were finally regaining their lives.
So what did this government do with that data?
They buried it then cut the funding anyway.
This isn’t mismanagement. It’s betrayal with a signature and a smile while they wear a poppy and pretend to smile for photo ops. Jill McKnight and Mark Carney need to be held accountable for this. Canadians will DIE. Make no mistake.
This week, cannabis providers like MyMedi.ca confirmed what Ottawa buried in bureaucratic language:
“The Federal Government released its potential new budget, which includes a proposed policy change reducing the Veterans Affairs Canada reimbursement rate for medical cannabis from $8.50 per gram to $6.00 per gram.”
That’s a 30% cut to a life-saving medicine. It forces veterans to downgrade their treatment or pay out of pocket, the empty pockets that is. Standing in food bank lines and now having to find medicine on the black market to be able to function.
To justify it, the Liberals cited “declining market prices.” Let’s get one thing straight, recreational weed is not medical cannabis.
Medical cannabis is pharmaceutical-grade regulated for purity, potency, and consistency. It’s prescribed by doctors, not dealers. It’s the difference between numbing your pain and healing from it. Cutting that is like telling a diabetic to use cheaper insulin or less of it because the government found a “better price.”
It’s criminal, make no mistake.
Every November, the liberal government stands at podiums wrapped in poppies, preaching about “honouring our heroes.”
Then, when the cameras turn off, they quietly gut the budget that keeps those heroes alive.
They say they’re increasing “overall government spending” by $141 billion over the next five years. Yet they’re carving out $4 billion from the very department that’s supposed to prevent veteran suicide.
They can find billions for consultants, media subsidies, and overseas virtue projects but not to keep veterans from killing themselves. That’s not just hypocrisy. That’s moral rot and our government needs to be dismantled, held accountable and re built.
This is what corruption looks like, it’s just in polite Canadian form. There doesn’t need to be a bribe to call it corruption. Corruption is when a government pretends to care while quietly dismantling the systems that hold lives together.
Corruption is cutting medical support for veterans, then gaslighting the public with talk of “efficiency.” Corruption is using Remembrance Day for photo ops while veterans wait years for their disability claims.
Every one of these decisions sends a message – You were useful once. Now you’re expensive.
Every dollar cut equals blood on their hands and it will be your fault.
I will tell anyone who wants to join: don’t.
They will leave you to die, and step over your body to hand an immigrant your benefits the ones you fought your whole career for. This isn’t abstract. This isn’t about numbers on a spreadsheet. Every cut means, longer delays for mental health treatment. More vets turning to opioids or alcohol.
More suicides that could have been prevented. More suicides, MORE SUICIDES, MORE SUICIDES!!!
And when those suicides happen, the same politicians will stand at the next memorial and talk about “honour” while wearing crocodile tears.
Fucking liars.
Veterans aren’t asking for charity. We’re demanding the promises that were made.
If this government truly cared, they’d fund what works, not gut it. What they just did says everything. They’d protect cannabis access, streamline claims, fund the psychedelic assisted life saving therapy and actually listen to the data from the studies they commissioned.
Instead, they’re too busy protecting their image.
This isn’t about politics anymore. It’s about integrity. A country that forgets its warriors doesn’t deserve to be called free.
We fought for this land, bled for it, and came home to a system that’s now turning its back on us. No more quiet compliance. No more polite outrage.
Somewhere in this country a country that used to look and act like Canada a veteran won’t make it to morning.
A family will lose their loved one. Children will grow up without a parent. And the void they leave will never, ever be filled.
It won’t be because they were weak. Not because they didn’t try every minute of every day just to keep breathing.
It’ll be because a country that sent them to war and keeps sending kids to wars built on lies refused to bring them all the way home.
Canadians veterans are officially being left to die.
And the liberals are holding the knife.
KELSI SHEREN
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