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Liberal leadership race guarantees Canadian voters will be guided by a clown show for a while yet

Published

10 months ago

8 minute read

Excuse me if I have to take a break every now and then while I write this to you.  I keep getting a taste of last night’s dinner and I can assure you it doesn’t taste as good coming up as it did going down.  What’s the matter you ask?  Thanks for asking.  It’s not like I feel sick or anything.  It’s just that every time I think about what is happening in Canada I get this automatic gag reflex.

Have you noticed what’s happening lately?  Elections all over the western world are swinging away from the dolts who’ve held power almost everywhere for a decade or longer.  I call them dolts because its WAY more polite than what they deserve and I am a polite Canadian.

Now the dolts are managing to hold on by a thread in some countries and by trickery in others, but in the most important country of all they’ve been exposed as the people who still believe their emotional genders matter more than their biological gender, and what does it matter anyway? because they also still believe the world is going to melt from underneath their electric vehicles. In short, the US has left behind climate alarmism and woke progressivism. In fact the US is running away from the rest of us with increasing velocity.

While China (we’ll come back to China because we can’t talk about Canadian politics without mentioning our Chinese benefactors) adds a couple more coal fired power plants a week, the new/old US President has once again thrown the Paris Accords to the historical trash heap. This time he’s promising to leave it so far behind that even the most frightened climate doomsayer will not be able to see it in the rearview mirror.  Instead the US will produce as much energy as possible by most any means possible.

Now as the lambs sleeping next to the lions, let’s get a few things straight about that President. Because I’m a polite Canadian, FORMERLY I was never be able to mention him without first saying what an a-hole he is.  But now my preamble is this.. nothing.  It matters not at all what I or you or the CPP think of the President.  All that matters is what the President is doing. What’s he doing?  He’s charging ahead at a speed no one has ever seen before.  Everyday he makes the US a bit leaner, faster and more resilient.  Everyday he rips off the Band-Aids of bureaucracy by the hundreds or by the thousands.  While we watch and scorn and deride and forestall the inevitable, he’s showing us the new path that we will inevitably have to follow if we want to live in a first world country called Canada.

But not so fast you say!  In Canada we will do things our own way.  We will be stronger by imagining we can change the weather by paying more for groceries.  When that doesn’t work we will offer to pay more for everything else too.  We may even change THE WAY we pay more for everything.  We just might bring in Mark Carnival to operate the PMO / WEF / CPP / Ottawa thing where we keep sending more money.  It should be easy enough as long as we can convince Mr Carnival to live in Canada long enough to vote here legally.  And being a self proclaimed World Progressive Elitist (dolt for short), Mark Carnival will save the world by changing the consumer facing carbon tax into a corporate facing carbon tax.  That will surely move the higher prices around and in all the confusion we’ll suddenly cool the world off and live happily ever after. Please don’t ask me to explain how that will work.

You know it’s funny how the people taking the shots for Team Canada keep reminding us that the new/old President is more dangerous than anything else we’ve faced since they invented/discovered global warming /climate change. When we look back from this as Americans in a few years from now, some will wonder if perhaps we could have saved the finest country in the world.  Maybe if we wouldn’t have taught our children that early settlers and early educators were racist murderers and instead taught about those who left everything and everyone behind to risk their lives and battle incredible difficulties to build one of the best nations in history.  Maybe if we would have focused on building our economy and recognized that affordable energy (hello Chinese coal plants) is the foundational building block of modern society instead of finding ways to move carbon taxes from one sector to another. Maybe, just maybe we could have saved Canada.

One day all us Yanks will look back and remember how our first unelected Prime Minister, Mark Carnival promised to fight climate change and bash the new/old President instead of cutting bureaucratic costs and taxes and deficits and debt.  Some will realize that was actually a clown show, a distraction. Maybe we could have saved Canada if we would only have focused on reality. But then again, the clown show did appear like a serious thing, until it wasn’t.

In hockey, you take care of the front of your net first.  If you lose focus there you could lose everything.  Just ask a certain American Maple Leaf who momentarily took his eye off what was most important to follow something that caught his eye.  In the real world when we pay attention to the Carnival and pretend the clown show is what it really important we leave the front of the net to pursue climate change, and genders, and everything that doesn’t really matter. Meanwhile the US waits for the pass alone in front of the net. When we pay attention to the clown show and they score the inevitable go ahead goal, we better hope the game isn’t in overtime.

Excuse me. I need a stiff drink of something. I’ve got a brutal taste in my mouth.

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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Environment

Canada’s river water quality strong overall although some localized issues persist

Published on December 22, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Annika Segelhorst and Elmira Aliakbari

Canada’s rivers are vital to our environment and economy. Clean freshwater is essential to support recreation, agriculture and industry, an to sustain suitable habitat for wildlife. Conversely, degraded freshwater can make it harder to maintain safe drinking water and can harm aquatic life. So, how healthy are Canada’s rivers today?

To answer that question, Environment Canada uses an index of water quality to assess freshwater quality at monitoring stations across the country. In total, scores are available for 165 monitoring stations, jointly maintained by Environment Canada and provincial authorities, from 17 in Newfoundland and Labrador, to 8 in Saskatchewan and 20 in British Columbia.

This index works like a report card for rivers, converting water test results into scores from 0 to 100. Scientists sample river water three or more times per year at fixed locations, testing indicators such as oxygen levels, nutrients and chemical levels. These measurements are then compared against national and provincial guidelines that determine the ability of a waterway to support aquatic life.

Scores are calculated based on three factors: how many guidelines are exceeded, how often they are exceeded, and by how much they are exceeded. A score of 95-100 is “excellent,” 80-94 is “good,” 65-79 is “fair,” 45-64 is “marginal” and a score below 45 is “poor.” The most recent scores are based on data from 2021 to 2023.

Among 165 river monitoring sites across the country, the average score was 76.7. Sites along four major rivers earned a perfect score: the Northeast Magaree River (Nova Scotia), the Restigouche River (New Brunswick), the South Saskatchewan River (Saskatchewan) and the Bow River (Alberta). The Bayonne River, a tributary of the St. Lawrence River near Berthierville, Quebec, scored the lowest (33.0).

Overall, between 2021 and 2023, 83.0 per cent of monitoring sites across the country recorded fair to excellent water quality. This is a strong positive signal that most of Canada’s rivers are in generally healthy environmental condition.

A total of 13.3 per cent of stations were deemed to be marginal, that is, they received a score of 45-64 on the index. Only 3.6 per cent of monitoring sites fell into the poor category, meaning that severe degradation was limited to only a few sites (6 of 165).

Monitoring sites along waterways with relatively less development in the river’s headwaters and those with lower population density tended to earn higher scores than sites with developed land uses. However, among the 11 river monitoring sites that rated “excellent,” 8 were situated in areas facing a combination of pressures from nearby human activities that can influence water quality. This indicates the resilience of Canada’s river ecosystems, even in areas facing a combination of multiple stressors from urban runoff, agriculture, and industrial activities where waterways would otherwise be expected to be the most polluted.

Poor or marginal water quality was relatively more common in monitoring sites located along the St. Lawrence River and its major tributaries and near the Great Lakes compared to other regions. Among all sites in the marginal or poor category, 50 per cent were in this area. The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region is one of the most population-dense and extensively developed parts of Canada, supporting a mix of urban, agricultural, and industrial land uses. These pressures can introduce harmful chemical contaminants and alter nutrient balances in waterways, impairing ecosystem health.

In general, monitoring sites categorized as marginal or poor tended to be located near intensive agriculture and industrial activities. However, it’s important to reiterate that only 28 stations representing 17.0 per cent of all monitoring stations were deemed to be marginal or poor.

Provincial results vary, as shown in the figure below. Water quality scores in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta were, on average, 80 points or higher during the period from 2021 to 2023, indicating that water quality rarely departed from natural or desirable levels.

Rivers sites in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba and B.C. each had average scores between 74 and 78 points, suggesting occasional departures from natural or desirable levels.

Finally, Quebec’s average river water quality score was 64.5 during the 2021 to 2023 period. This score indicates that water quality departed from ideal conditions more frequently in Quebec than in other provinces, especially compared to provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan and P.E.I. where no sites rated below “fair.”

Overall, these results highlight Canada’s success in maintaining a generally high quality of water in our rivers. Most waterways are in good shape, though some regions—especially near the Great Lakes and along the St. Lawrence River Valley—continue to face pressures from the combined effects of population growth and intensive land use.

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Agriculture

End Supply Management—For the Sake of Canadian Consumers

Published on December 22, 2025

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This is a special preview article from the:

By Gwyn Morgan

U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade policy is often chaotic and punitive. But on one point, he is right: Canada’s agricultural supply management system has to go. Not because it is unfair to the United States, though it clearly is, but because it punishes Canadians. Supply management is a government-enforced price-fixing scheme that limits consumer choice, inflates grocery bills, wastes food, and shields a small, politically powerful group of producers from competition—at the direct expense of millions of households.

And yet Ottawa continues to support this socialist shakedown. Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters supply management was “not on the table” in negotiations for a renewed United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, despite U.S. negotiators citing it as a roadblock to a new deal.

Supply management relies on a web of production quotas, fixed farmgate prices, strict import limits, and punitive tariffs that can approach 300 percent. Bureaucrats decide how much milk, chicken, eggs, and poultry Canadians farmers produce and which farmers can produce how much. When officials misjudge demand—as they recently did with chicken and eggs—farmers are legally barred from responding. The result is predictable: shortages, soaring prices, and frustrated consumers staring at emptier shelves and higher bills.

This is not a theoretical problem. Canada’s most recent chicken production cycle, ending in May 2025, produced one of the worst supply shortfalls in decades. Demand rose unexpectedly, but quotas froze supply in place. Canadian farmers could not increase production. Instead, consumers paid more for scarce domestic poultry while last-minute imports filled the gap at premium prices. Eggs followed a similar pattern, with shortages triggering a convoluted “allocation” system that opened the door to massive foreign imports rather than empowering Canadian farmers to respond.

Over a century of global experience has shown that central economic planning fails. Governments are simply not good at “matching” supply with demand. There is no reason to believe Ottawa’s attempts to manage a handful of food categories should fare any better. And yet supply management persists, even as its costs mount.

Those costs fall squarely on consumers. According to a Fraser Institute estimate, supply management adds roughly $375 a year to the average Canadian household’s grocery bill. Because lower-income families spend a much higher proportion of their income on food, the burden falls most heavily on them.
The system also strangles consumer choice. European countries produce thousands of varieties of high-quality cheeses at prices far below what Canadians pay for largely industrial domestic products. But our import quotas are tiny, and anything above them is hit with tariffs exceeding 245 percent. As a result, imported cheeses can cost $60 per kilogram or more in Canadian grocery stores. In Switzerland, one of the world’s most eye-poppingly expensive countries, where a thimble-sized coffee will set you back $9, premium cheeses are barely half the price you’ll find at Loblaw or Safeway.

Canada’s supply-managed farmers defend their monopoly by insisting it provides a “fair return” for famers, guarantees Canadians have access to “homegrown food” and assures the “right amount of food is produced to meet Canadian needs.” Is there a shred of evidence Canadians are being denied the “right amount” of bread, tuna, asparagus or applesauce? Of course not; the market readily supplies all these and many thousands of other non-supply-managed foods.

Like all price-fixing systems, Canada’s supply management provides only the illusion of stability and security. We’ve seen above what happens when production falls short. But perversely, if a farmer manages to get more milk out of his cows than his quota, there’s no reward: the excess must be
dumped. Last year alone, enough milk was discarded to feed 4.2 million people.

Over time, supply management has become less about farming and more about quota ownership. Artificial scarcity has turned quotas into highly valuable assets, locking out young farmers and rewarding incumbents.

Why does such a dysfunctional system persist? The answer is politics. Supply management is of outsized importance in Quebec, where producers hold a disproportionate share of quotas and are numerous enough to swing election results in key ridings. Federal parties of all stripes have learned the cost of crossing this lobby. That political cowardice now collides with reality. The USMCA is heading toward mandatory renegotiation, and supply management is squarely in Washington’s sights. Canada depends on tariff-free access to the U.S. market for hundreds of billions of dollars in exports. Trading away a deeply-flawed system to secure that access would make economic sense.

Instead, Ottawa has doubled down. Not just with Carney’s remarks last week but with Bill C-202, which makes it illegal for Canadian ministers to reduce tariffs or expand quotas on supply-managed goods in future trade talks. Formally signalling that Canada’s negotiating position is hostage to a tiny domestic lobby group is reckless, and weakens Canada’s hand before talks even begin.

Food prices continue to rise faster than inflation. Forecasts suggest the average family will spend $1,000 more on groceries next year alone. Supply management is not the only cause, but it remains a major one. Ending it would lower prices, expand choice, reduce waste, and reward entrepreneurial farmers willing to compete.

If Donald Trump can succeed in forcing supply management onto the negotiating table, he will be doing Canadian consumers—and Canadian agriculture—a favour our own political class has long refused to deliver.

The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal. Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who was a director of five global corporations.

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