Elbows -- Wha?

As long as we've been on Canada, over the weekend there was an event there that seems likely to highlight the unexpectedly major differences between Canada and the US, when Americans had assumed, perhaps ever since there was Canada, that the two countries are basically similar. What we know more or less for sure is that about 4 PM local time, at a Canadian military base in Alberta, there was an explosion followed by a fire that destroyed facilities on the base and caused multiiple fatalities and injuries. A completely unofficial and possibly speculative version of what happened is below:

A catastrophic blast at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright, Alberta has reportedly resulted in multiple fatalities and injuries during a live fire military training operation. According to local sources on base, Canadian Forces personnel had been conducting exercises over several days when an artillery projectile reportedly struck an active natural gas well on the bombing range, triggering a massive detonation. The blast is said to have levelled nearby tactical training buildings, with subsequent fires reaching munitions storage and setting off secondary detonations across the range. The geography and infrastructure; ➟ CFB Wainwright has a documented history of natural gas production, with approximately 180 wells reported on the military property in 2014. ➟ Military range maps identify munitions storage, pipelines and designated live fire danger areas near Peterson Pond. ➟ NASA FIRMS satellite imagery recorded multiple thermal hotspots between Peterson Pond and Jamieson Lake on October 17. Local accounts also describe hospitals activating Code Orange protocols, mobilizing stretchers and preparing for a significant influx of casualties. The reported gas well strike, secondary detonations and hospital emergency measures remain unconfirmed as authorities investigate the incident. Should these reports be confirmed, my thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved and affected.

— Morgan (@MorganC000) October 18, 2026

The key paragraphs:

According to local sources on base, Canadian Forces personnel had been conducting exercises over several days when an artillery projectile reportedly struck an active natural gas well on the bombing range, triggering a massive detonation.

The blast is said to have levelled nearby tactical training buildings, with subsequent fires reaching munitions storage and setting off secondary detonations across the range.

But reports from the government CBC have been sketchy indeed:

Maj.-Gen. Wade Rutland, commander of the 1st Canadian Division of the Canadian Armed Forces, said at a Sunday afternoon news conference that a fire broke out during a high-intensity combat training exercise using live munitions.

Soldiers were throwing hand grenades on a grenade range at the time, he said, while others were in the section range doing a "section attack," where 10 soldiers attack a simulated enemy.

Rutland said it's not yet known what exactly caused the fire. "Quite frankly, it could have been any of that or none of it," he said.

Rutland said heavy wind gusts spread the blaze by a kilometre in less than a minute.

"This was uncommon, rapid, and I certainly hadn't seen anything like it," he said, adding that conditions for most of the day were "within standard procedures to conduct training exercises" with wind gusts below 50 km/h.

He told reporters that range control knew about the fire on the base for several hours, but it was decided that training "could carry on for a certain amount of time."

"This was uncommon, rapid, and I certainly hadn't seen anything like it," he said, adding that conditions for most of the day were "within standard procedures to conduct training exercises" with wind gusts below 50 km/h.

He told reporters that range control knew about the fire on the base for several hours, but it was decided that training "could carry on for a certain amount of time."

Nobody expected a fire, but range control knew about it for several hours and thought it was OK, but who knows what caused it? Probably not hand grenades. Elsewhere, he's quoted as saying,

The fire did originate within the training area and did cross established fire guards before being contained in conjunction with municipal authorities. You may have heard reports of explosions. Certainly, we do not believe this to be as a result of any oil and gas infrastructure nor any outside interference.

So the fire originated within the training area, and they knew about it for hours, but it was completely uncommon. Explosions? What's that got to do with it? Anyhow, King Charles is on boo-hoo duty.

The problem I see is that these are the Canadian armed forces Carney had not long ago ordered to plan for a US invasion, but which is now starting to look like its own worst enemy. Canadians, after a few polite queries, have quickly fallen into line and are passively listening to the halting and contradictory explanations the government is giving them without complaint. The Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, who actually represents the district that includes Wainwright and the base, is expressing his support for Carney.

Alberta Premier Smith, Prime Minister Carney, and even King Charles are flooding the zone with weepy condolences while minimizing the questions that emerge over what looks to be at minimum incompetence and dereliction of duty, and Canadians are copacetic. Frankly, they deserve the country they've got.

Canada Stelco Update

When we last checked in on the Stelco drama a week ago, Canada's Industry Minister Mélanie Joly had given Cleveland Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves a deadline to "share" a plan to retain the Stelco workers for whin he'd announced layoffs. As of last Sunday,

Prime Minister Mark Carney also said last week that Ottawa will "use all powers that we have" against Cleveland-Cliffs as it pursues the Ohio-based company to the "fullest extent of the law."

Stelco Inc. said in a letter responding to Joly that the company will proceed with the layoffs and the government's characterization of the move as a breach of undertakings is "false."

So Goncalves said in almost as many words, "Go ahead and sue." Ottawa's response so far has been not to respond, and people are starting to notice, as we see in the YouTube video embedded above. A reportetr asks Jolie,

What is the government's timeline to either resolve this conflict with Stelco or to pursue legal action?

She responds, "It's a question of days," buit days later, there's still no response. The commentator goes on to characterize the situation as kabuki theatre, and I agree: Goncalves has been saying that if Canada resolves its trade dispute with t\he US, the solution to the problem is seen in the disappearance of the problem, but Carney and Joly are trying to create a distraction, putting up a brave stance to defend 500 jobs, while the dipute has already cost Canada 100,000.

Goncalves's legal position is twofold. First,

"There is no provision in the contract that I have to keep employment at a certain level every single day of the five years," Goncalves said on Sunday. "If that was an imposition of the Canadian government, I would not have accepted."

Goncalves reiterated Stelco's position that the layoffs are a temporary measure until Canada and the U.S. reach a trade agreement, and that the jobs will be restored.

Second,

The U.S. owner of Stelco says the Canada–U.S. trade war changed the conditions behind its employment commitments in Hamilton, Ont.

Goncalves said the ability to sell freely to American buyers was an "underlying condition" of the terms Cleveland-Cliffs accepted when it bought Stelco in 2024.

"I would not have acquired the Stelco if I knew that Canada and the United States would become what they became – enemies in trade," he said.

He made a similar case to Global News: "There's no market in Canada for the amount of galvanized steel we produce in Canada. We need to export… to the United States."

What neither Carney nor Joly seems to have gamed through in this dispute is that legal action against Stelco or Cleveland Cliffs will tie the case up in the courts for years -- the full force of the law may prevail, but it will be long after the hoped-for quick victory that Carney and Joly need. The historical outcome of such legal action isn't encouraging:

Here's what we know from the last time the federal government took the U.S. steelmaker to court.

In 2007, Pennsylvania-based U.S. Steel announced a deal to acquire Stelco, then a publicly traded company, for about $1 billion US, and the company was renamed U.S. Steel Canada.

Major foreign investments must benefit the domestic economy, per the Investment Canada Act. So, foreign buyers must give legally binding written commitments — called undertakings — to the federal industry minister to prove the deal provides a "net benefit to Canada."

At the time, U.S. Steel agreed to several such undertakings, including a three-year commitment to maintain Canadian employment levels, and increase steel production in Canada by at least 10 per cent.

However, when the 2008 financial crisis sapped global demand, U.S. Steel closed most of Stelco's Canadian operations and laid off over 1,500 employees.

. . . According to a summary of court filings compiled by a lawyer at Toronto-based Torys LLP, Stelco argued the undertakings only required compliance at the end of their three-year term, not before.

Stelco also said that per Industry Canada guidelines, its investors should not be held accountable for factors beyond their control, like the unfolding financial crisis.

. . . The attorney general of Canada formally withdrew the lawsuit in late 2011, ending in an out-of-court-settlement before the court could make a judgment.

In other words, the case languished in the legal system for three years, when the government withdrew the suit in favor of a settlment that was less than they wanted. But then that incarnation of Stelco went bankrupt anyhow. Carney's problem is that he needs to see quick results from his "elbows out" strategy, but he's put himself in the position with Stelco-Cleveland Cliffs that he starts out a loser with no way to fix the situation. It sounds like even Canadian media is beginning to wake up to this.

FlyDubai FZ1073 Hijack Updates

The popular YouTuber Captain Steeeve, a retired American Airlines pilot, has a detailed update that's embedded above on the various participant accounts and official investigations into the attempted hijacking of Flydubai Flight FZ1073 last September 30. One of the big stories he mentions, the arrest of two additional Flydubai pilots, is covered here:

The families of two Maldivian pilots have been notified of their arrest in connection with an alleged plot to down a flight traveling from Dubai to Tel Aviv, Israel.

The two male pilots, who are employees of Flydubai, were taken into police custody last Saturday. Adhadhu understands that their families received no information regarding their whereabouts until Tuesday.

However, sources have confirmed that the Maldivian Embassy in the UAE has now officially informed the families that the two pilots are being detained by UAE police.

According to Captain Steeeve, the hijacker himself, Hamam al-Hammami, is an Omanian who shared a residence with the two Maldivian FlyDubai pilots. He also says that the UAE is continuing an investigation, while India is conducting a separate investigation, as the FZ1073 captain, Smit Machchhar, who was badly injured in the hijacking, is from India. The hijacker, al-Hamami, was transferred from Saudi Arabia to the UAE on October 1:

Although no passengers were injured, the incident shines a harsh spotlight on how a co-pilot previously linked to extremist ideology was able to sit in the cockpit of a flight to Tel Aviv, carrying mostly Israeli passengers.

The UAE has described the incident as a "terrorist attack," but has not publicly commented on whether the alleged attacker was connected to any organizations or groups.

A separate report outlines the Flight 93-style atmosphere inside the passenger cabin after al-Hammami was placed in restraints by the passengers:

Eleven days after helping to overpower the co-pilot accused of trying to crash a flydubai flight bound for Israel, passenger Asaf Rajuan wants two flight attendants who were on board to be investigated. He has also called for the two additional pilots who were traveling and who landed the aircraft in Saudi Arabia to be questioned.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, Rajuan said he suspected the attendants had assisted the attacker. He described confrontations with passengers, objections to filming and exchanges between the two men that left him afraid the danger had continued after the co-pilot was restrained.

The September 30 flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, after the co-pilot attacked the captain with an aircraft emergency axe.

. . . Rajuan wants Israel involved in establishing what happened. In our conversation, he kept returning to the crew’s behavior and the difficulty of knowing whom to trust while the aircraft was still airborne.

An earlier report gives more detail on the crew:

The crew of the hijacked flydubai plane shockingly clashed with heroic Israeli passengers who subdued the ax-wielding co-pilot after he attacked the pilot — demanding he be freed, two men who helped secure the terror suspect told The Post in exclusive interviews.

“They were asking us to untie the terrorist — we had no idea why,” said banking executive Tzvika Manes, one of the three civilians who took down the would-be hijacker.

“They were saying to free the terrorist — we got instantly suspicious of them,” said real estate professional Daniel Schlichter, who was sitting in the second row, close to the cockpit.

. . . But after the three Israelis subdued the pilot and restrained him face-down with his hands tied behind his back — first with zip ties, then using headphone wires that Schlicter gathered from passengers.

As he was subdued, Hayoun heard the terrorist cry, “Kill me, kill me” — apparently because he failed in his Jihadist mission, Manes said.

Yet some crew members began demanding that he be freed.

An argument ensued and the Israeli trio shot back that under no circumstances would the suspected terrorist be released.

“They said, ‘You are not God, you are not going to kill him,'” Manes recalled. “We didn’t want to kill him, we just wanted him not to kill us.”

Schlichter, 59, who was also returning from a vacation in Japan with his wife, and Manes both said that the Israelis even gave the wounded terrorist an oxygen mask.

“We wanted him to live so he could be investigated,” Schlichter said.

A power play ensued with the crewmembers insisting that they were in charge of the plane and needed to remain alone in the area directly in front of the cockpit.

The Israelis, fearing the crew could be involved in the pilot’s plot, ordered the stewards to leave the cockpit area and to take seats in the middle of the plane.

“We told them, “Now the policy is we’re in charge and you do what we say,’ ” Manes said.

“We didn’t know what to think, we were in a suspicious mode for every steward.”

A group of passengers, Schlichter among them, escorted the crew members to seats in the fifth or sixth row, away from the cockpit.

“We shouted at them and told them to sit down,” said Schlichter, who has two children and two granddaughters.

The trio then enlisted a “big guy” to guard the cockpit and prevent anyone from entering, Manes said.

Although earlier reports were that the hijacker acted alone, the more recent interrogation of the two Maldivian pilots suggests the investigators aren't taking this for granted.

What's Up With Ilhan Omar?

🚨 JUST NOW: Legal expert Jonathan Turley says that Somali Rep. Ilhan Omar might actually face MORE LEGAL ISSUES for CONCEALMENT — because she is a member of Congress and has been a candidate for office IT GETS BETTER AND BETTER! "The warrant apparently refers also to a conspiracy, which is the darling of prosecutors, and that may be referring to what they allege to be a knowing effort to conceal these facts." "Omar's actually greater risk in terms of legal complications because she is a member of Congress and has been a candidate for office...That status requires her to fill out forms on a regular basis that may make reference to some of these facts...That exposes her to possible charges." Every member of Congress signs financial disclosures and other official forms, year after year. If any of them contain false information, every single one can become a legal problem! The NYT reports the warrant lists false statements, immigration fraud, and conspiracy. And her sister has now been subpoenaed, per new reports from TONIGHT So her case might now be immigration and a COVERUP.

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 13, 2026

There was quite a flurry of activity involving searches and subpoenas surrounding Ilhan Omar over the past week:

Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in Washington, D.C., on Monday morning, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

The search is part of a yearslong criminal investigation by Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. attorney in Minneapolis and the Justice Department, and deals partly with immigration fraud, one of the people familiar with the probe said. The investigation involves whistleblowers, documents and witness testimony, the source added.

A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that Homeland Security Investigations “executed a judicially authorized search warrant” as “part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.”

The statement did not specify that the warrant was related to Omar, D-Minn., or provide further information about the nature of the investigation.

In addition,

On Friday [Oct 9], roughly a dozen subpoenas were sent out in the case, including to her family members, the second person familiar with the investigation told NBC News.

The congresswoman herself was not subpoenaed, the person said, adding that the orders seeking information are tied to a federal grand jury in Minnesota, Omar’s home state. Federal agents also want to talk to Omar’s sister but haven’t reached her yet, the person said.

. . . The investigation is being conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. attorney in Minneapolis and the Justice Department.

. . . One of the people familiar with the investigation said it involved whistleblowers, documents and witness testimony. The probe is examining matters surrounding Omar’s immigration status, including — but not limited to — her birthdate. Omar, who was born in Somalia and moved to the United States with her family in the 1990s, was naturalized when she was 17 years old, meaning she was a juvenile and could be conferred citizenship through a parent.

Beyond the barebones facts of searches and subpoenas, the actual goal of the investigations remains fuzzy. Just the News focuses on her naturalization:

The progressive lawmaker’s birthdate has become a focus of federal investigators, who are examining Omar’s naturalization as a United States citizen.

Allegations that Omar misrepresented her birthdate in order to secure U.S. citizenship were first raised by one of the lawmaker’s political opponents in 2019.

Omar said in 2018 that she received citizenship through her father’s naturalization process, through what is known as derivative citizenship. “I became a citizen actually before I turned 18. My father became a citizen, and so I got my citizenship through that process,” Omar told The Intercept during that year’s election.

Central to the question of legitimate citizenship, the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library had at one point listed Omar’s birthdate as Oct. 4, 1981, which would have made Omar 18 or 19 when she claimed that she received U.S. citizenship from her father in 2000. Only minors can claim citizenship from naturalized parents, yet Omar has long claimed that she was 17 years old when she became a citizen.

After the discrepancy between the dates first surfaced, Omar’s staff requested that her birthdate be changed in the public records shortly after she first entered Congress. “On May 17, 2019, Library staff were informed by Rep. Omar’s congressional staff that her birth year was incorrect and requested that we change it to 1982,” wrote the director of the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library in a 2019 email obtained by The New York Post.

The records have since been changed to say the congresswoman was born in 1982, despite it saying 1981 for the entire time she served in the state legislature, and for months into her first Congressional term.

The Minnesota Legislative Reference Library's entry now includes a caveat saying: "Her birth year [1982] is correct. It is incorrectly reported as 1981 in other sources. As of May 24, 2019, Rep. Omar's congressional staff are working with Wikipedia and the U.S. House to correct her birth year in those sources."

But there may be other issues aa well:

On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced that her office opened an investigation into Omar’s financial disclosures.

Previously, Omar faced allegations about the ballooning worth of her husband’s businesses, which increased from $51,000 in 2023 to between $6 and $30 million the following year. These disclosures were later amended, greatly reducing the valuation, and Omar would at the time blame "an accounting error." The amended congressional financial disclosure, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, now values the Minnesota Democrat's household assets at between $18,004 and $95,000 — a dramatic drop from an earlier filing that listed assets of up to $30 million.

The lawmaker’s 2024 financial disclosure reflected this change, marking Omar’s net worth as high as $30 million, Just the News reported last year. The vast majority of the new net worth valuation came from her spouse’s company, Rose Lake Capital LLC, a venture capital management firm whose value swelled by millions of dollars.

Omar married political operative and venture capitalist Tim Mynett in 2020, following a complicated series of Muslim marriages and divorces. Mynett's dealings have drawn repeated allegations of fraud. For instance,

In fall 2021, D.C.-area restaurant owner Naeem Mohd was presented with an unbelievable investment opportunity.

Two political operatives turned venture capitalists would triple Mohd’s money in just 18 months if he invested $300,000 in their new California winery.

The pair had been paid in grapes by a former client and had hired a well-respected Sonoma winemaker to turn those grapes into profit. They promised if they didn’t pay Mohd the full $900,000 on time, they would tack on 10% monthly interest on any outstanding balance, according to the contract shared with the Minnesota Reformer.

The offer might have seemed suspicious if not for the person making it: Tim Mynett, a well-connected political consultant and husband to U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, whom he married in 2020.

. . . Mohd wired the $300,000 to Mynett and his long-time business partner Will Hailer, with whom he founded a political consultancy called E Street Group in 2018.

But 18 months came and went without Mohd receiving the 200% return he was promised from the winery, eStCru.

Mynett and Hailer only returned Mohd’s $300,000 — about a month late — according to a lawsuit Gill filed on behalf of Mohd in California last fall seeking at least $780,000.

The complaint, which has not been previously reported, claims the pair “fraudulently misrepresented … that estCru, LLC was a legitimate company.”

Other allegations involve South Dakota marijuana entrepreneurs who have also sued to recover investment funds. Omar, soon after her marriage to Mynett, profited hugely by paying his firm for political consulting:

Omar reported spousal income from E Street Group ranging from $100,001 to $1 million in both 2020 and 2021.

In an email to the Reformer, Mynett said he and Will began to pivot from politics to business in order to test advertising strategies that could then inform political strategies. He said they were “incredibly successful” at digital advertising and targeting — skills that could be transferred to business success.

Mynett said he was also confronted with a barrage of harassment and intimidation by “MAGA extremists” since marrying Omar and felt it was in his best interest to get out of politics.

Jonathan Turley suggests in the X post embedded above that Omar's problems cover a range across immigration fraud, false financial statements, and conspiracy, but beyond that, for the time being, we have few other details, except that her current husband, Tim Mynett, strikes me as a very sketchy guy.

What's Going On In Canada Lately?

I'ved been following news in Canada more closely since the trade war started, and a side story has popped up that seems to question the larger Mark Carney blame-Trump paradigm. British Columbia Premier David Eby (pronounced E-B) called an early provincial "snap" election on Septemer 22, scheduled for October 24:

Premier David Eby is making U.S. President Donald Trump and the threat posed by his trade policies a central argument for why British Columbia needs an early election, but experts argue that may be a tough sell to voters.

Eby launched the provincial campaign Tuesday, with an appeal for a fresh mandate to protect B.C. from the economic fallout of Trump’s latest tariffs. Speaking in front of the Peace Arch border crossing, Eby portrayed the coming election as a pivotal moment.

“Families feel these tariffs reaching into their grocery bill. They see it at the pump,” Eby said.

But the NDP already holds a majority in the legislature and Eby called the election with two years remaining in his government’s mandate.

That is creating an awkward political question for the premier at the outset of the campaign, said University of British Columbia political scientist Kathryn Harrison.

“The central issue in this campaign is shaping to be whether we should be having an election at all,” Harrison said.

Under the Canadian parliamentary system,

the federal government and most provinces and territories have enacted legislation setting election dates, usually every four years, one year sooner than the constitutionally set five year maximum life of a parliament. However, the governor general, lieutenant governors, and commissioners still have the legal power to call a general election on the advice of the relevant first minister at any point before the fixed date.

Elections held sooner than the four-year interval are called "snap" elections and are typically called if the party in power thinks it's so popular at that point in time that it can extend its mandate by another four years.

It's hard not to surmise that Eby thought Carney's "elbows out" strategy would be a winner, and he proceeded to make Donald Trump the issue in the provincial election as Carney had successfully done nationally. But it wasn't going to be that easy:

Recent American trade measures have increased economic uncertainty, particularly for industries such as forestry, aluminum and manufacturing, and a government confronting potentially painful decisions can reasonably argue that a renewed mandate would strengthen its hand.

But that still leaves one question unanswered:

Why now?

Trump did not suddenly appear on Sept. 22. The ­Canada-U.S. ­confrontation did not begin this week. Eby’s ­government had not lost a ­confidence vote. It still ­possessed a legislative ­majority and a mandate obtained in ­October 2024.

An Angus Reid Institute survey released in early May found the still-leaderless B.C. Conservatives leading the NDP by 10 percentage points. Eby’s approval stood at 33 per cent.

By September, the picture had changed markedly.

Eby’s approval had recovered to 41 per cent, a ­10-percentage-point increase from its low of 31 per cent in June. The NDP’s 41 per cent was now four percentage points ahead of the Conservatives’ 37 per cent in voting intention.

. . . The Conservatives had spent months fractured by departures and internal conflict. Then, on Sept. 20, Kerry-Lynne Findlay resigned as leader after only a few months in the position. Lorne Doerkson became interim leader.

Two days later, Eby called an election.

. . . Why Oct. 24? Why must an election occur only seven days after municipal voting, rather than later — or not early at all?

The timing imposes a democratic cost of its own.

Local candidates must compete with a provincial campaign for public attention, volunteers, political donations and media coverage. Municipal leaders had urged the province not to overlap the two campaigns.

If an immediate provincial election were unavoidable, that disruption might be justified.

Eby has not yet demonstrated why it was unavoidable.

That is also why Trump should not become an all-purpose answer.

An international crisis does not suspend a provincial government’s obligation to account for its own decisions. British Columbians can oppose American economic pressure while simultaneously scrutinizing their government in Victoria.

Conservative columnist Brian Lilley sums things up:

It’s been well established that Eby didn’t need to call the election when he did. The man still had two years left on his mandate, three if he wanted to ignore the fixed election date and just go by the Constitution, which requires an election within five years of the last one.

Instead, Eby called an early vote.

He was the one in charge. He was the only one who knew for sure that this was coming, and still he had no plan.

When the campaign started, he tried claiming he needed to call the vote to protect British Columbians from Donald Trump. Voters saw past that and realized it was all about him taking advantage of his opposition being in disarray.

But since Monday, he's had a more specific problem:

B.C. NDP Leader David Eby admits his family uses $10-a-day daycare despite not needing the subsidy, while most B.C. families lack access and his government freezes new providers for three years.

Eby made the admission when questioned by a Global News reporter during an election campaign event in Delta on Thanksgiving Monday, October 12.

Just now, David Eby confirms that he has his kids in $10/day taxpayer-subsidized daycare. Approx. only 10% of BC daycare spots offer $10/day daycare. Most families who want in can't get a spot. As Premier, Eby earns $227k/year. Eby's wife is a doctor. Their household income is likely well over half a million dollars per year. We don't resent British Columbians who are successful (we want more people to succeed). But where there are wait lists, surely a wealthy family like Eby's shouldn't be taking advantage of $10/day daycare. Think about a working single mother? David Eby deserves the spot more than her? — Cole Hogan (@colewhogan) October 12, 2026

The YouTube video embedded at the top of this post shows the awkward news conference where Eby says "you don't have to shout at me" to reporters but goes around in circles when they ask him the precise amount of the donation his family made to the day care center beyond the $10 fee.

I think the takeaway is that Canadians are skeptical when their leaders think holding Trump up as bogeyman can serve as a distraction from issues closer to home. Blaming Trump in Canada, after all, is neither here nor there; Trump will never be on a Canadian ballot, but leaders like Eby and Carney definitely are.

A Few More Talarico Questions

On one hand, as I noted in yesterday's update, there now appears to be video evidence that James Talarico was at home during the period he was out of the public eye, and the whole Ohio mental facility atory has been discredited. On the other hand, this doesn't answer the key question of why he was out of the public eye at all, and it doesn't answer the subsidiary question of why his campaign handled the whole episode so poorly.

Matt Margolis at PJ Media quotes two moderate Democrats:

Mark Penn, who served as an adviser to Bill Clinton, weighed in during an appearance on Fox News.

"Oh, this is super odd. There's no question about that," Penn said. "These are the final days of a hundred million campaign, a major effort, one of the most key Senate races, and your candidate disappears for 12, 13 days with no clear word, no messages, no ability to kind of send out some messages, has the flu? This doesn't, this really doesn't make sense."

Former Democrat strategist Dan Turrentine blasted the campaign's handling of the situation.

"My first reaction on Sunday afternoon was that if the allegations of receiving mental help were true, the Talarico campaign would be insane to think they could hide it and deny it. Almost nothing in this day-and-age can be hidden in a major campaign," Turrentine wrote on his Substack. "But on the other hand, I was dumbfounded at, and very worried about, the lack of aggressive pushback from the candidate, his campaign, and outside Democrats."

. . . Turrentine went further in a conversation with Sean Spicer on The Huddle, and his arguments make perfect sense.

"It has made me nervous still today that they have not put stuff, like, I would put my primary care physician before camera," Turrentine said. "'Yeah, he had 103-degree fever, dehydration, and we were afraid he could pass out.' Whatever. I would put the urgent care, like, receipt. Like, you probably paid for something out of pocket on your debit card, your credit card. Like, I would flood the zone to say, ‘You clowns, here is 8 million pieces.’ And the fact that they haven't today still makes me a little nervous,” he said.

. . . [Republican Sean] Spicer acknowledged that individuals have a right to medical privacy but argued that candidates play by different rules. "But you're running for office. Obama put out his birth certificate," Spicer said.

"He could literally take a screenshot of the urgent care and say, 'You numbnuts, look at this.'"

Turrentine had another suggestion. "Put your cell phone records out. Like, that's how the New York tax authorities find out where you were," he said.

Asa I've been saying for a while, forget license plate readers and Flock cameras, video is everywhere, and phones are everywhere. Why it apparently took the Talarico campaign until Tuesday to wake up to the idea that there was video on Talarico's home security is beyond me.

But my questions go beyond even that. How did the campaign let this turn into an issue at all? Even Trump had started to post about it. On one hand, if he had the flu, he could at least have made a zoom call to his campaign about it, which they could have released. Then, when his absence became more and more noticeable, veteran political types should have been aware from the start that there could be bogus claims that he'd checked hinself into a mental facility, had been diagnosed with AIDS, or whatever else.

They should have been ready with receipts the moment that, or any other, bogus story broke. Inastead, they let two days go by that drew attention to the fact that whether he'd done it or not, he looked like the kind of guy who'd check himself into a mental facility.

But this still leaves another question unanswered: whether or not Talarico was home the whole period he was out of the public eye, the flu is still a weak explanation. I tend to lean toward an explanation a few people have offered: like some other Democrats in recent years, he declines in the polls the more people see of him. This happened with both Hillary and Joe Biden, and once the campaigns began to notice this, they found ways to lower their profile. So I'm with the Babylon Bee:

Democrat Strategists Remove James Talarico From Campaign Trail To Hide The Fact That He's James Talarico https://t.co/7AmHsxISij

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 9, 2026

The problem is that the campaign managed to turn something that should have been an innocuous non-event into yet another episode that suggested the guy's a weirdo.

Catching Up With Talarico

I took Columbus Day off yesterdsay, and I haven't posted any update to the Talarico medical saga. The story in brief is that Sunday mnorning, Nick Sortor and Rhein Amacher challenged Talarico to disclose his whereabouts for the prior two weeks or so by 1:00 PM, or they would do it.

Good morning, @JamesTalarico! Would YOU like to reveal where you *actually* were these past couple weeks, or should me and @RheinAmacher do it? Please let us know by 1pm ET today! Thank you for your attention to this matter! 🇺🇸

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 11, 2026

With no reply by the deadline, Sortor posted what appeared to be a recording of a phone conversation between Amacher and a female voice tht identified herself as an employee of the Lindner Center of Hope medical facility in Ohio.

🚨 HOLY CRAP! James Talarico BUSTED for being discharged from a MENTAL HOSPITAL in Ohio — @NickSortor / @RheinAmacher He was at the Lindner Center of Hope. NO FLU!! EMPLOYEE: "He was just discharged." 🤯 Talarico is done. Drop out. He cannot be a United States senator! And he LIED this ENTIRE TIME. Is ANYONE surprised the guy who loves trans kids and drag queens has issues like this? The Senate is not a mental health rehab center! UNFIT FOR OFFICE. Ken Paxton will win. https://t.co/vNWg7n2Kzk

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 11, 2026

The Talarico csmpaign was a bit slow to respond, but it did:

This is a lie designed to promote a pathetic conspiracy theory. Last week James Talarico was home in Austin, Texas recovering from the flu.

— JT Ennis (@jt_ennis) October 11, 2026

By Sunday evening, Talarico had appeared in two TV interciews reiterating the flu story, more or less, and the Lindner Center announced that it had never treated Talarico. This still left questions:

Here’s the problem with the flu cover story. Talarico’s campaign never acted like it had a candidate sick with the flu. With the general election less than a month away, his team went radio silent. Worse, it posted video from old rallies and tried to pass it off as current.

Who does that over a flu bug?

Then there are the inconsistencies. Talarico claimed he was sick enough to need a week of recovery, and in nearly the same breath he complained that he never got one.

“Unfortunately, the campaign made me work from home, so I didn’t even get full days off,” he said.

So which is it? Was he flat on his back drinking liquids, or was he on the clock? If you’re telling the truth, you tend not to contradict yourself. On top of that, Talarico changed his story. When he spoke to the Hispanic Business Council via Zoom, he said he went to urgent care in Dallas. Now it’s his primary care physician, presumably in the Austin area, which is roughly three hours from Dallas.

Scott Pinsker at PJ Media puts the best face on things:

But it’s 100% true that Talarico missed 12 days of political campaigning in the final 50 days of the race. And it’s also true that his flu story is at least somewhat contradictory. . .

Again, not exactly a smoking gun. Barely a smoking match.

If this were a legal case, it’d be laughed out of court.

But it’s not a legal case; it’s a political race — which means its jurisdiction is the court of public opinion.

And in the court of public opinion, the biggest, most compelling, most deeply damaging circumstantial evidence is this: James Talarico looks like the kind of guy who’d use mental health professionals.

By yesterday morning, though, Talarico was running a new ad:

BREAKING: In new ad, James Talarico calls out Joe Biden “for failing us at the border” https://t.co/MgGCUJFy33

— Kalshi Politics (@KalshiPolitics) October 12, 2026

In Saurday's post here, I said, "If I were to theorize, I'd say that his campaign's internal polling has shown a much bleaker picture, and that the various low-T, vegan, and trans attacks have been effective." A new ad where he tries to reposition himself over the border would be consistent with this theory.

But so far, his capiagn has relied on simply denying that he was at Lindner Hope, insisting he was home with the flu, and relying on Lindner Hope at least to confirm that part of the story. The problem is that the story is skechy and not entirely consistent, while video is everywhere, and so are phone records. I'm a little surprised that the compaign didn't just produce phone records to confirm that he was, as he claimed Sunday, working from home.

By the same token, if sleuths like Sortor are still on the case, they ou.ght to be trying to get video confirmation of his whereabouts if they have other ideas. But I think Scott Pinsker has the best read on the situation: James Talarico looks like the kind of guy who’d use mental health professionals. And not just use them, he needs to use them. That guy is wound pretty tight.

UPDATE: CBS News says the campaign has showed it security camera footage placing Talarico at home during the period in question. This is what they should have been showing Sunday.

So Sue Us!

Canada's Industry Minister Mélanie Joly is a stereotypical girlboss who tosses her hair repeadedly in a particularly annoying way. Late last month,

Stelco Holdings Inc. said on Monday that it plans to idle part of its Hamilton [ON] plant in order to "ensure the survival" of the company, as U.S. tariffs squeeze its sales.

Stelco said the decision will impact up to 500 employees.

In a memo obtained by CBC News on Monday, the company said it will indefinitely idle its cold-rolled and coated operations at its Hamilton Works plant, with operations set to begin winding down on Oct. 9.

In response,

Ottawa has given Cleveland-Cliffs until the end of Tuesday to share a plan to keep jobs in Hamilton or face potential legal action. In 2009, Industry Canada sued Stelco's previous owner, U.S. Steel, over job protection. The matter was settled out of court in 2011.

. . . In an email to CBC on Thursday, Gabrielle Landry, spokesperson for Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, said the government would "use every lever possible to defend Canadian industry, protect jobs, and secure our supply chain."

Landry added that the government had offered to provide financial support to sustain Stelco's operations.

"Its decision to reject these practical proposals and continue with layoffs is extremely disappointing," she said.

Cleveland-Cliffs's CEO said, as nicely as he could, "So sue us."

Hundreds of southern Ontario steelworkers facing layoffs will be recalled if Canada and the United States reach a trade deal on steel, the head of Stelco's U.S.-based parent company said Thursday.

. . . He said he has spent more than a year and a half pushing Ottawa for stronger protections against foreign steel imports, arguing that measures adopted so far have helped the hot-rolled steel market but have not gone far enough to protect galvanized steel producers.

. . . The company began issuing individual layoff notices in Hamilton on Wednesday, with about 90 workers expected to receive notices this week, said Ron Wells, president of United Steelworkers local 1005, which represents unionized workers at the Hamilton plant.

. . . "It's a temporary layoff," Goncalves said. "I do believe that one day we're going to have a trade deal, I just don't know when.

"Once this trade deal is reached and we're back and able to produce and sell galvanized steel, we will bring back these people."

Joly replied,

Here is my updated statement on Stelco after receiving their response letter : https://t.co/1nTx4v1Rp4

— Mélanie Joly (@melaniejoly) October 10, 2026

The problem for Joly and Carney is that they're making a big-deal threat to sue over 500 jobs, when the Canadian economy lost over 100,000 jobs in August snd September:

Canada lost 68,000 jobs in September, according to Statistics Canada, marking a second straight month of losses.

The unemployment rate ticked up by 0.1 percentage points to 6.5 per cent, which is where it stood at the start of 2026.

The figures bucked economists' predictions for a gain of 9,200 positions in September. It comes after another surprise last month of 42,000 job losses for August, which snapped a hot streak for the labour market.

. . . [Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce] senior economist Andrew Grantham adds that while some data volatility is likely behind the poor report, losses in manufacturing could be a sign that new tariffs, which came into effect in August, are taking a toll.

The consensus seems to be that the only cure will be for trade talks to resume. On one hand, Carney walked out of the talks just as a satisfactory resolution was about to occur. There will be pressure on Carney to show the pain Canada is now experiening was worth the delay. On the other hand, Trump recognizes Carney's dilemma and is disinclined to ease the pressure:

US President Donald Trump on Monday said he was in no hurry to restart trade talks with Canada, accusing Ottawa of treating Washington unfairly and saying any future agreement would require Canada to be "honest" with Washington.

Trump made the remarks when reporters asked whether trade negotiations with Canada could resume before the US midterm elections. He did not give a timeline for restarting the talks.

"I don't know. Canada behaves very badly with the United States and I don't know," Trump said before boarding Marine One.

Trump is clearly not happy with Carney and is just goinjg to let him stew.

Tala-Freak-Out?

Democrat Strategists Remove James Talarico From Campaign Trail To Hide The Fact That He's James Talarico https://t.co/7AmHsxISij

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 9, 2026

This is too funny to ignore. From NBC News:

After drawing scrutiny for his absence from the campaign trail, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, who had been sick with the flu, returned to the stump in Texas on Friday.

“James Talarico is back on the campaign trail talking to voters at Austin City Limits,” Talarico campaign spokesman JT Ennis said in a statement.

Social media posts showed Talarico walking on the grounds of the festival on Friday.

Via PJ Media:

As time passed, rumors began to swirl. As Matt also reported earlier on Friday, Sara Gonzales at The Blaze, Spencer Pratt, and others claimed they heard unverified tips that Talarico had checked into a mental-health facility after having a full mental breakdown at the end of September.

Just as these rumors hit their peak, Talarico has finally made a public appearance. On Friday, he was seen walking the grounds at the Austin City Limits Festival, talking and taking pictures with other festival-goers. Well, I hope he's not contagious.

Around the time Talarico disappeared, his campaign produced an ad claiming he wasn't a member of the Chinese Communist Party. This ran starting October 3:

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico released a new campaign ad this week directly denying allegations tied to his voting record. "Ken Paxton is lying about my record, even making fake AI videos of me," Talarico says in the ad. "No, I'm not a member of the Chinese Communist Party. No, I don't support sex change surgeries for kids."

The denial follows millions in attack ads from Paxton allies, citing Talarico's 2025 vote against Senate Bill 17, which barred foreign adversaries, including China, from buying Texas land. Talarico's campaign notes he supported an amendment specifically banning Chinese purchases near military bases, and separately voted against SB 667, which restricted state investment in CCP-tied companies.

. . . Does running a direct-denial ad address voter concerns effectively, or does repeating the accusation, even to deny it, risk reinforcing the very claim it's trying to dispel?

This followed a summer of attacks from Paxton:

After Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the state's Republican Senate primary this week, he delivered a run of insults directed at his general election opponent, Democratic Texas state Rep. James Talarico.

"He goes by a few names that you all may have heard of. Some people know him as tofu Talarico. Some people call him six-gender Jimmy. I've even heard some people call him James Talafreako," he said to laughter and cheers. "And others refer to him simply as Low-T Talarico."

Paxton also quickly released an ad that ends with an image of Talarico next to the words: "Radical Talarico: too low-T for Texas."

. . . White House advisor Stephen Miller used "transgender" as an insult, telling Fox News that Talarico is the Democrats' "first transgender Senate candidate." Talarico is not transgender.

"He's clearly transitioning into a female," Miller said. "When Talarico goes in for a blood test, when he gets a physical, blood doesn't come out. Soy milk comes out."

According to USA Today,

With 10 days until early voting starts in Texas for the midterm elections, a new poll suggests momentum may be shifting back in Republicans' favor in two key races.

A new UMass Lowell/YouGov poll, released Oct. 8, shows Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico tied at 45%, with 7% of respondents undecided.

“The last time Democrats won a U.S. Senate race in Texas, Ken Paxton didn’t yet have a law degree and James Talarico wasn’t even born. With the race tied, anything can happen between now and the election,” said John Cluverius, director of survey research for the Center for Public Opinion at UMass Lowell.

Talarico has led Paxton in most September and October polls, sometimes by margins outside the poll’s error.

Videos showing Talarico in his Austin festival reappearance suggest he took a gingerly approach, flanked by two lady staffers, with security surrounding him farther from camera range, and of course, Austin is very friendly territory for him. If I were to theorize, I'd say that his campaign's internal polling has shown a much bleaker picture, and that the various low-T, vegan, and trans attacks have been effective.

The campaign must have come to recognize this late last month, and it gave Talarico himself the vapors. In this context, of course, his disppearance will only give those attacks more credence. Whether his people can ger him fully back on the trail will be interesting to see.

Nidal Hasan Firing Squad To Be Livestreamed

Several days ago, according to the UK Guardian:

Donald Trump has approved the execution by US army firing squad of Nidal Hasan, who was sentenced to death for killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a social media post.

. . . Hasan, a US-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, opened fire on 5 November 2009 at a medical facility in the sprawling military base, which served as a staging point for soldiers to deploy to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Twelve of the dead and 30 of the wounded were soldiers. Hasan was shot and partially paralyzed by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack.

The court that convicted Hasan was told that he was opposed to the US military’s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that Hasan had spoken online with the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida propagandist and American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

This AP article appears to be generally incorrect in what it claims about the Army's execution protocols:

In a post on social media Tuesday, acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle said he scheduled the execution for 1 p.m. on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood — the site where Hasan opened fire killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others.

Telle confirmed in his post on X that Trump had approved the execution on Oct. 2, starting the clock in Army regulations that requires an execution date to be set no sooner than 60 days and no later than 150 days after that approval.

Telle also noted that the execution would be carried out by firing squad, but did not offer details of where on base the execution would take place, what personnel would be a part of that squad or what procedure they would follow.

. . . The procedures for execution in Army regulations do not contain specific protocols for particular methods of execution. Experts said in previous iterations of the firing squad — nearly 80 years ago — one shooter would be given a blank so they all could plausibly believe they had not fired the fatal shot.

. . . Before Hasan’s execution was set for Fort Hood, there was speculation the Army might reach out to one of the handful of states that have recently reinstated the firing squad for use in executions — particularly South Carolina or Utah, where they’ve renovated facilities and established protocols.

. . . It’s unclear if the Army will borrow from the state’s protocol, but it sets out for three volunteer shooters to stand 15 feet (4.6 meters) from the condemned prisoner, who is strapped to a chair. A medical professional uses an X-ray to find the prisoner’s heart and place a target over it. A hood is placed over the prisoner’s head after his final words, and a shade is lifted so the shooters can see their target.

At 3:53 in the YouTube video embedded above, Ryan McBeth discusses the most recent Army protocol for execution by firing squad, which dates from 1944. The firing squad has 12 members and a sergeant. From one to four of the 12 rifles are loaded with blanks. If the initial volley doesn't kill the condemned, the sergeant administers a coup de grâce to the head with a sidearm. The condemned is normally tied to a post, but since Hasan was paralyzed by gunsbhots during his capture and uses a wheelchair, exactly what will be done in his case is unclear. Via CNN, the execution will be livestreamed:

The Pentagon said Thursday it will livestream the military’s first firing squad execution in decades, allowing the public to watch as the man who killed 13 people in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood is put to death.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed in an interview this week to let the public watch a firing squad execute Nidal Hasan at the same base in Texas where he carried out the massacre.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth told far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday, drawing swift backlash from both sides of the aisle.

. . . A public livestream of Hasan’s execution could potentially violate the Army regulations governing military capital punishment. Army Regulation 190-55 specifies the types of people permitted to witness a military execution, and it also bars minors from watching the punishment. But the Army’s provost marshal general — a general who oversees military law enforcement — is permitted to waive provisions of the regulation so long as the waiver doesn’t violate the law or a higher binding regulation.

The President of the USCCB reacted predictably:

“It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War’s decision to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hassan. Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hassan’s actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered,” Archbishop Paul Coakley said in a statement released Friday.

The problem I see is that it's increasingly plain that the enemy is Islam, which is seeking to override Western cultural history, much of which has been influenced by Catholics and Jews. Often it operates via grandly violent massacres, as it did on 9/11, or indeed as Hasan himself undertook. I think one counter to this strategy is equally vivid imagery; this was certainly done in the elimination of Osama bin Laden, and I think it's entirely appropriate in this case.

UK Immigration And Class

"opposing immigration, illegal or otherwise, is a class signifier in Britain, and most middle-class people—including most politicians—aren’t prepared to support a political cause that would see them associated with the lower orders." https://t.co/9RR2YgIby2

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) October 6, 2026

The post above raises yet again the class question in the UK that I keep puzzling over: the upper classes in the UK seem genuinely to resent, maybe even to hate, the working class. As I've noted here several times, this goes back at least to the General Strike of 1926:

The General Strike began on 3 May 1926 when the Trades Union Congress (TUC) called on workers across key industries to stop work in support of coal miners who were facing severe wage cuts and longer working hours.

After the First World War Britain’s coal industry was struggling. Mine owners wanted to reduce miners’ pay and increase working hours to keep their businesses profitable.

Miners’ unions resisted, warning that the proposals would push already hard-pressed workers into deeper poverty.

There was a general fear among the upper classes that a general strike was more than just a labor action, it was a threat of revolution. According to Wikipedia,

The leaders of the Labour Party were troubled about the proposed general strike because they were aware of the revolutionary elements within the union movement and of the damage that they might do to the party's new reputation as a party of government. During the next two days, frantic efforts were made to reach an agreement between the government and the mining industry representatives.

It appears that the Labour Party, which was the creature of the bourgeois Fabian Society, feared the potential revolutionary influence of the general strike, as did the TUC, which essentially lost control of it. At the same time,

the government put in place a "militia" of special constables called the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS) of volunteers to maintain order in the street.

The volunteers, who were bourgeois, also tried to replace the unionized rail workers, although they had no experience at that type of work. Nevertheless, the attitude seems to have been that if the middle and upper classes coulld pitch in if needed, there was no need for the working class, and they saw the whole thing as a lark.

On 6 May 1926, there was a change of atmosphere. The government newspaper, British Gazette, suggested that means of transport into London began to improve compared to the first day with volunteers, car sharing, cyclists, private buses, as well as strikebreakers. A statement on the front page indicated 200 London General Omnibus Company buses 'on the streets'. Only 86 LGOC buses, however, were operating.

The TUC, whoch never had much heart in the strike, nevertheless made a show of "negotiation" with the governnment, but it eventually called off the strike without getting any deal, and the UK bourgeoisie came away with the idea it had won.

Labour gained its first full majority government in 1945, and in succeeding years, it instituted national health care and socialized the coal and transport industries. The problem, though, was that Labour never represented the working class; it was always a bourgeois movement that convinced itself it was promoting working class interests. Thus its first instincts were to keep working class wages down, and it did this by importing workers from the former empire to replace native workers in the newly socialized medical, coal, and transport industries.

There's now discomfort in Piddington, the upscale village that, reacting to the government's plan to locate 1250 male migrants in a nearby former military facility, voted symbolically to leave the UK and become part of the US. One one hand, they don't want to be associated with the working-class anti-migrant movement, especially

the arrival of Daniel Thomas, who prefers to be called Danny Tommo, the leader of the new balaclava-wearing anti-migrant movement Patriot Platform, with an offer to rally his masked supporters, if the site is opened, “to protect women and children” locally.

. . . Andrew Smith, a Network Rail employee from Bicester, was less upbeat: “We don’t want to see masked people like there were in Dover – that’s not really the view of the local people; we are concerned to do the right thing. These people have got to go somewhere, but it has to be properly resourced with the proper facilities.”

Thus bourgeois oppositiun to migration exists only insofar as the migration impacts their lifestyle directly; if the government wants to put them somewhere other than migrant hotels, that's fine, just not near upscale villages. That the government should on one hand stop the boats and on the other send the migrants back is a whole separate issue that doesn't concern Piddington.

It's hard not to conclude the UK will handle this issue no differently than it handled the 1926 General Strike. You can only kick the can so far down the road.

Quebec Election

Almost unnoticed in this week's news was a provincial election in Quebec. Politico had a somewhat obtuse take:

As much of Canada unites against U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war, Quebecers have elected a Parti Québécois government promising a referendum on independence that most of the province doesn’t want.

Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon won a five-party race on Monday night, earning a minority government with just 28% of the vote. The governing Coalition Avenir Québec, which won back-to-back majorities after taking power in 2018, was wiped off the electoral map, a rarity in Canadian history.

. . . Voters in the province wanted change, though they did not give St-Pierre Plamondon the 64 seats needed to secure a majority government, awarding him instead a minority mandate — the fourth in the province’s history.

Carney is Quebec’s most popular politician, with the Angus Reid Institute measuring his personal appeal at 61%. The province’s industries are among the most exposed to Trump’s tariffs. The combination may give the new separatist premier a reason to play nice with the federal Liberals — at least for the short term.

But St-Pierre Plamondon’s arrival could also complicate Carney’s attempts to keep Canada’s premiers united against Trump’s tariff agenda.

I've pointed out here that referenda on secession in Canada are actually a non-issue, because the Clarity Act lets Ottawa set the rules for any proposed secession:

Although the law applies to all provinces, the [1999] Clarity Act was created in response to the 1995 Quebec referendum and ongoing independence movement in that province. The content of the act was based on the 1998 secession reference to the Supreme Court of Canada made by the federal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

It gives the House of Commons in Ottawa the authority to determine whether the questions on any referendum are sufficiently clear, as well as whether any majority vote to secede is sufficiently large. It also requires an amendment to the Canadian constitution for a secession to take place. So far, polling in both Alberta and Quebec suggets that neither province would have a majority of any size in favor of secession, but Parliament would be able to override any such vote in any case.

Such coverage as legacy media has given misses the main point, which the Quebec commentator in the YouTube video embedded above outlines clearly:

People in Quebec. . . understand that they are already a linguistic minority within Canada, and they have been subnjected to mass immigration that is fundamentally changing the makeup of the province. The argument for Quebec independence today, and the argument that will likely be made in the referendum, will be one of nationalism, aka, do we want to continue importing people from the third world who do not share our values and who continue to cause havoc that continues to threaten the French language in Canada?

Quebec is becoming less and less French every day. You go to Montreal now, most people speak to you in English instead of French. Or do we want to preserve the Quebec nation? This is something that concerns people of all poltical stripes in Quebec. The example I often give is I have people in my extended family. . . that are very, very leftwing Quebecers, but that also believe that we need to ban the burka, that teachers should not be wearing hijabs in schools, that police officers should not be wearing turbans. . .

I noted this a month ago:

This parallels another question that's come up in the Canadian trade dispute: Prime Minister Carney insists he was protecting Francophone Canada by rejecting the recent trade agreement -- but observers have made the point that Canadian immigration policy, which involves widespread immigration from India, threatens to flood out Francophone Canada. The Century Initiative, a project with widespread support from the Laurentian Elite, aims to increase the population of Canada, currently 41 million, to, 100 million by 2100. While it has not been passed by the Canadian parliament, current immigration policy there seems generally consistent with it.

In effect, with the native birth rate stable but current residents leaving, this would add 60 millon migrants from India to the current population of 41 million, with roughly 9 million whose first language is French. This would create a far larger language group whose primary language is Hindi or Punjabi, although Canadian Charter Rights (a weaker version of the US Bill of Rights) currently recognize only English and French as official languages.

So current unspoken policy in Ottawa is to dilute the French population anywhere in Canada beyond recognition by importing migrants who speak neither English nor French. It appears that French Canadians have few options to protest this policy -- which seems to be pushing the limits of implied French rights under their "constitution" -- beyond proposing secession referenda, which are feckless enterprises. This is the same non-option that Albertans have. Meanwhile, Like it or not, Canada isn't going to be able to continue on its current path.

"Panic At The Pentagon"?

There's an air of unreality in UK reactions to the withdrawal of US B-1 bombers from Fairford. Here's a "BBC expert":

On Radio 4’s Today programme, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said: “The unexpected mass withdrawal of America’s heavy bombers from RAF Fairford has happened so suddenly, it hints at something approaching panic in the Pentagon.

“There must be concerns in Washington that the US cannot risk catastrophic damage to another one of its high-value aircraft.”

Gardner said the US decision to remove its bombers suggested there was “clearly a new threat on top of the existing one”.

He said: “The US is still heavily bruised about the damage done to its high value aircraft in the Middle East by Iranian precision strikes.

“This must be a huge shock to it that bases in its closest ally, the UK, are not as safe as they thought they were. So they’ve pulled them all the way back to the continent of the United States.”

Gardner said it “will be a loss to the US and an embarrassment to the UK”.

"Former British diplomats" say it's success for Iran:

The withdrawal of US bombers from UK military base RAF Fairford will be seen as a “success by Iran”, amid a series of security threats to Britain, former British diplomats have said.

. . . Former diplomat Edmund Fitton-Brown said Iran could interpret the withdrawal as a weakening of the US deterrent and its alliance with Britain.

“From the Iranian point of view, its already a win if they’re driving a wedge between two Nato allies. They might think we need to do more of this,” he told The National.

The withdrawal showed the “weakening of a US defence position by removing assets from a strategically significant base”, Mr Fitton-Brown said.

Peter Ricketts, who served as the UK’s first national security adviser between 2010 and 2012, said: “I think it's hard to conclude anything other than that this will be seen as a success by Iran.

“Whether it was the intention or whether it's the inadvertent outcome, it is certainly the outcome that they have now forced the US into a public bring-back of their forces from one of their allies,” Lord Ricketts told the BBC. “That what we thought were secure areas in the UK can no longer be considered entirely secure.”

So, those Yanks have gone weak at the knees, right? We're best off without those fair weather friends if a few van dudes send them packing! Except,

Mr Fitton-Brown said the UK’s next steps would be to reassure the Americans that it can handle terrorist threats on British soil, or that the threat represented in this instance was low.

But another UK expert talks to Time:

David Dunn, a professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham, says the U.S. withdrawal from Fairford is “historic, unprecedented, and an indication of the sense of vulnerability” surrounding U.S. military assets abroad.

“Fairford is normally the place during a crisis where America sends bombers to beef up America's military capability and its formal operating bases, whether that's for operations in Europe, like the Kosovo campaign, or for operations in the Gulf through 2003 onwards, or indeed for operations in Iran,” Dunn tells TIME. “This [removal] is an indication of concerns about the safety of those assets in their forward operating bases.”

. . . RAF Fairford is a NATO-designated standby deployment and a U.S. forward operating base for U.S. Global Strike Command, according to U.K. government records. The base, which opened in 1944, has been used extensively by U.S. military aircraft in previous conflicts, including "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in 2003.

The U.S. Air Force describes RAF Fairford as its “preferred” European “bomber forward operating location” and previously said it has used Fairford “nearly continuously” since the base was constructed.

Former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer initially refused to allow U.S. access to U.K. military bases in its offensive strikes against Iran—a move that earned him the wrath of Trump. Starmer changed his position in March, authorizing the U.S. to use bombers based at RAF Fairford to carry ⁠out strikes on Iranian missile sites used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Prof Dunn's implication is clear: the action is "historic" and "unprecedented", because it shows the US can no longer assume the UK can control its borders, but it also comes in the context of Labour's extreme reluctance to honor its NATO commitment. Clearly this represents a practical change in the US-UK-NATO relationship, despite claims that there's been no change:

The US removed its bombers from RAF Fairford partly because of a reported threat of a possible Iranian drone attack against the base, American officials have said.

. . . A third official said the US can deploy the bombers from anywhere, so it made sense to move them out of an abundance of caution.

. . . Asked if there was a "specific threat" that led to the removal of the US bombers, Mr Trump replied: "Yeah I think we can say that. They didn't fly out by accident.

"There were some threats. And rather than tempting the enemy, we'll capture the enemy and beat the enemy. But why should we leave them there? So we moved them around a little bit. Not very far."

. . . It comes after US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the removal of the US bombers was not directly connected to the arrests of five men near the base.

"The Department of War is constantly reallocating resources where they need to be. There are regular rotations that happen as well," Mr Rubio said.

This has a lot to say about the future of NATO, and I'm not sure if the UK is adjusting to it yet.