Canada
Travel (hum)bugs
Many Canadians started to think about travelling to places other than the U.S. when its president began mocking our country and the Office of the Prime Minister. A few of them also made good on those early thoughts after their president claimed his administration would apply “economic force” to force us to become a “51st state” and proceeded to target us with tariffs. There could be other reasons Canadians have decided to forego U.S. travel this year; correlation is not always causation.
In a seemingly effortless attempt to prove incompetence is the silent threat, there was the story about a Canadian being arrested in Georgia for driving with a Canadian driver’s licence, while others were detained after showing up to immigration interviews; that was before the summer travel season began.
There were plenty of stories of business owners, and city or state leaders asking Canadians not to cancel their travel plans as vacancies remained and tourist towns tried to avoid another economic crunch. Despite the additional tourism advertising, travel was down more than 30 per cent year over year anyway as Canadians travelled within their own country, or headed to Mexico and Europe.
That still left a lot of Canadians outside of the Alberta government’s attempt to keep tourism afloat, but last week added another layer; a video that appears to be of a U.S. Border Patrol officer yelling “don’t come back to the U.S.” at a driver with Ontario licence plates just a few kilometres south of the Canada/U.S. border. The incident is being investigated internally.
While I’d like to be all victimized on behalf of my fellow Canadians, I find that I cannot. The driver said the vehicle was behind them, honking, riding their bumper. Then, he pulled up beside them and yelled at them.
Did the purported representative of U.S. border patrol go a little over the top? Absolutely; he took what should have been a stony-faced, eye-rolling moment of self-righteousness, deserving of a one-fingered salute at most, and raised it to a 13, risking an international incident.
There’s just one snag; the Ontario driver was in the passing lane at the time, but not passing anyone, and those drivers are inconsiderate pricks. Keep right except to pass.
Keep right except to pass. All the time. Pass, move back. Keep right except to pass.
If a third lane shows up and you’re in the right lane already, you’re supposed to move to the right lane, not stay in the middle lane, you arrogant fuckwits.
While I’m at it, if you’re driving a transport vehicle, and you stay in the middle lane, I think you should face a 24 hour suspension. If I can pass more vehicles in the right lane of the three-laned portion on the QE2, please know that I have cursed every one of you on my way by.
Don’t even get me started on those douchebags who set their cruise control at 122 and take six minutes to pass someone doing 120. Literally no one has the patience for your quasi-rebellious bullshit.
Yes, the likely off-duty alleged Border Patrol officer went too far, but I can’t find it in me to be all that fussed if a dipshit driver is what sent him over the edge; inconsiderate, dumbass drivers are enraging even if you’re having a good day. Everyone’s a little more stressed and most of us have no excuse for being a complete and utter Hoekstra.
Canada Post looking to end to home delivery (again)
Let’s be real; “getting the mail” is no longer a daily chore for most Canadians. I don’t even have the need to make it a monthly chore, myself — it’s more like quarterly. My bills are emailed, I make payments through mobile banking, and the things that really matter — like a reminder to renew my vehicle registration or driver’s licence — aren’t mailed out, in Alberta, anyway.
Every time they threaten to strike, or actually do, I would place odds on the fact that more people sign up for email delivery, or download an app — as long as they have reliable internet.
If anything, threatening to reduce, or actually reducing, consistent delivery only hurts Canada Post’s ability to vie for a competitive space in the only area that’s growing: package delivery from online retailers. Ironically of course, packages are delivered directly to our homes — unless you live in rural; Amazon doesn’t deliver to legal land descriptions.
Having done a stint at Canada Post (because of course I have) I can say that they’re not exactly embracing high tech (at least in rural). I’ve heard a rumour that urban centres get their mail fully sorted for delivery but in rural it’s just boxes of letter mail that has to be sorted for 3-500 addresses first. Then the magazines/large envelopes. I also had the benefit of getting a newspaper delivery on Wednesdays. They came with address labels, because not everyone got one, and they were never in order.
To this day, I don’t understand how the labels had no order whatsoever. It wasn’t alphabetical. It wasn’t numerical. It was almost like it was a system that was purposefully out of order and it still makes my brain twitch.
All that is to say that even though my own mail isn’t exactly piling up, lots of people still rely on direct mail — including, almost especially, politicians. As I saw someone else remark, if it’s a public service, fund it like one and stop expecting it to turn a profit. It’s a privilege that businesses and government have the ability to reach every Canadian and it should be treated — and funded — as such.
NDP leadership race has two official candidates
B.C. native and longtime party supporter and activist Avi Lewis announced his candidacy, followed by Edmonton MP Heather McPherson. Some say Ms. McPherson has the edge by being an elected official. In the party’s full history, that’s true, but recent history offers an edge to unelected officials. Of the NDP’s successful leadership candidates, Tom Mulcair (2012), Audrey McLaughlin (1989), Ed Broadbent (1975) and David Lewis (1971) had seats in the House of Commons, while Tommy Douglas (1961), Alexa McDonough (1995), Jack Layton (2003), and Jagmeet Singh (2017) did not.
Folks, I only just realized how lovely the last few months have been because the federal NDP has, since 2015, been a colossal pain the Alberta NDP’s ass. Though let’s be clear; it was enflamed by conservative operatives in the UCP and on the opinion pages of our newspapers by our single-celled columnists. Now they’re going to head into a leadership race and the Alberta NDP is going to wear whatever they say. I don’t know either Ms. McPherson or Mr. Lewis, or which direction they will take the NDP federally but I can tell you that a party with no hope of forming government either shoots for the stars or has Elizabeth May as leader for decades.
They push ideals rather than logical policy stances because they can. They will never have to make a tough decision trying to make a policy actually work for a vast nation — they never have to compromise with business, logistics, costs, or revenues — and a lot of things that work well for the NDP base outside of Alberta are kryptonite within.
I mean, “yay, the NDP leadership race is starting.”
CPC stands with the ostriches
Another wild story out of B.C. that for some reason the Conservative Party of Canada decided to put their face on: the niche issue of culling birds infected by H5N1. It’s a 30-second video of Andrew Scheer demanding that the Prime Minister explain why these birds have to be culled when they’re “on a private farm”.
This arose from some anti-rule circles — think convoy-adjacent. If it’s a rule in Canada while there’s a liberal government in place, it’s bad, even if the rules were actually set by our trading partners (like requiring Covid vaccinations to go to the U.S.).
Thankfully, I saw a thread by an avian flu expert.
Basically, we have rules that allow us to trade with others. We promise to do certain things — like cull infected birds immediately so it doesn’t end up spreading to every flock — they promise to do the same, and trade continues.
Allowing the herd to potentially spread avian flu (which happens with birds because even though ostriches can’t fly, unless they’re completely caged, other birds can come into contact with them or their droppings, contract it, and then fly somewhere else and spread it) puts trade at risk.
If it’s bad for trade, it’s bad for our economy, which is why it’s so much more puzzling that the “party of economic stability” decided to hop on board. It only works if no one understands why they have to be culled. Unlike some complex issues, this one isn’t actually hard for liberals to explain so that even the nutters can understand.
U.S.
U.S. Ambassador floats removing pre-clearance at airports to get back at Canadians who aren’t traveling to the U.S.
The U.S. pays for pre-clearance in Canadian airports (as well as other countries); they lease the space and use their own customs officers to staff them. Initially, it was a service to encourage travel to the U.S.; back when they wanted people visiting.
Mr. Hoekstra said they should reconsider the service since quite a few, but not “most”, Canadians have chosen not to travel there.
It could just be some guy talking out of his Hoekstra, but if they decide to save some money by making travel more difficult for those who are still bothering, one could reasonably expect that the added inconvenience will further deter others from traveling, too.
With that being said, I fully expect them to do it because the only thing they seem to excel at is making things worse.
Mr. Trump orders National Guard to “war ravaged Portland”
Last week, Mr. Trump said he was going to deploy troops to Portland for two months to “protect federal property.”
Now, I’m not the only one who thinks Mr. Trump seems like he’s losing his mind, right? Like, he’s been talking about things that aren’t happening for as long as I’ve been forced to tune in, but his fans just call that “trump derangement syndrome.”
In a Sunday morning interview, however, he said something that makes it seem like the people around him might be filling his addled brain with AI slop and other things that aren’t happening for reasons only known to themselves.
“I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place...it looks like terrible.”
KGW8 News, September 28, 2025
I’m just going to point out that according to people who live in Portland, that’s not happening at all.
So, it begs the question: who among the throng of unqualified and incompetent people Mr. Trump has surrounded himself with would consider feeding him false information? And how would anyone in the throng of unqualified and incompetent people Mr. Trump has surrounded himself with benefit from keeping him misinformed and making really bad decisions?
I’m just saying, there’s an out available there.
It looks to me like poor Mr. Trump is mentally unwell and unelected ne’er do wells are taking advantage of him. Since that would be bad for the country, Republicans could possibly stop it, all while still kissing the ring of the man who could have been a great leader — the greatest in history even — if only he wasn’t being taken advantage of by the throng of unqualified and incompetent people he has surrounded himself with.
Sure, Trump might have Congress and the Senate arrested if they tried to impeach him. He could call on his sycophantic followers to camp out surrounding the White House and act as a human shield while he makes YouTube videos and tweets. Sure, those things could happen. Or they could do nothing at all while these people use the National Guard to play army in U.S. cities and sullying Mr. Trump’s name.
What to do, what to do?
Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air
It was a tense week for free speech in the U.S. after the Trump-appointed FCC Chair applied pressure to remove Jimmy Kimmel — more shocking still that it worked.
People cancelled their Disney+ subscriptions. Big names backed away from pre-scheduled appearances. Though I expect the latter might have had greater effect.
Big names bring more eyeballs to the show, which in turn allows the company to sell advertising at higher rates, which makes them more money, and keeps investors happy.
The free speech part was probably just a ‘nice to have’.
Final thoughts
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I'm truly embarrassed for those CPC MPs from the prairies who should have known better. FFS, culling infected flocks has been standard practice for decades, and for good reason. This kind herd behavior is the reason you blow a 25+ point lead.
There’s just SO much going on here at home, and if Elections Alberta doesn’t quit dragging their feet with the Alberta Progressive Conservatives name approval we are in trouble, we ARE headed in the same direction. They’ve GOT to get out there campaigning. She’s going to call an early election, Nenshi just doesn’t have it, in my opinion, BECAUSE our media is complicit. And, Glad our teachers told her to pound sand.