Your middle-of-the-week flight of fancy ...
RCMP say they’ve arrested the pilot of a small aircraft that was allegedly hijacked from Victoria and flown to Vancouver International Airport, where other flights had to be temporarily halted.
RCMP in Richmond, B.C., say in a statement that a report came in just after 1 p.m. Tuesday about a Cessna that “had been hijacked” and was on its way to Vancouver.
Dry run or random lunacy?
Why is everyone surprised that Mark Carney is a carpet-bagger?:
(Sidebar: a carpet-bagger is defined as a politician who has no ties to the community or country but does have a ve$ted intere$t in being where he is. It comes from post-bellum United States in which Northerners came to the war-damaged South to make a clean financial sweep. This sounds terribly familiar.)
He lied. Right in our faces. A brazen, self-serving, manipulative, obvious lie that was bound to get found out. Have we lost the capacity to care?
(Sidebar: yes, because Orange Man Bad.)
No, I’m not talking about U.S. President Donald Trump. I’m speaking of Prime Minister Mark Carney. When accused during the election campaign of a conflict of interest over his extensive holdings, he declared indignantly: “I own nothing but cash and personal real estate.” But he lied.
As he did about his “blind trust” being blind. As Democracy Watch notes, “he knows what he put in the trust, chose his own trustee, was allowed to give the trustee instructions such as ‘don’t sell anything’ and the trustee is also allowed to give him regular updates.” As Norman Spector wisecracked, it’s a “venetian blind trust.”
Incredibly, it gets worse. Carney actually holds shares in over 100 firms, from Amazon to Uber. When former finance minister Bill Morneau forgot he owned a French villa, per Jeff Foxworthy’s “If you’ve ever mowed your lawn and found a car, you might be a redneck,” if you ever cleaned up your desk and found a villa, you might be an aristocrat. But Carney’s a liar.
He owns extensive investments, mostly American, on which the potential conflicts of interest across the board, from net zero to tariffs, is glaringly obvious. Including on the digital services tax. It’s to prevent exactly this kind of thing that we have conflict-of-interest rules, however feeble. (Remember when Paul Martin gave his shipping company to his sons to sidestep them?) But Carney doesn’t care. Do we?
Watching the prime minister, who’s notoriously irritated at being questioned in any way, tell a lie to brush off a challenge gives the impression that he’s one of those people whose internal syllogism runs: “I am great; that claim makes me look bad; therefore it is untrue.” And bam! Out it comes without any pause to ponder whether factually speaking it might be true, let alone whether someone is bound to notice. Like Bill Clinton and, yes, Trump. Which surely also raises concerns about his management style.
We saw it during the campaign, repeatedly. He said Canada avoided a recession in 2008 thanks to his brilliant leadership at the Bank of Canada, which … um … declared a recession in 2008. He “suspended” his campaign to deal with big grownup issues then went on “Tout le monde en parle.”
He blustered about sweeping measures to implement internal free trade, then blustered about preserving supply management. And when asked why the Communist Chinese Politburo wanted him to win he babbled, “I have absolutely no idea, and yeah, I have absolutely no idea, and, well, I’ll leave it at that.”
(Sidebar: do you?)
Hardly a trifle, that last one. Like saying “I know” when a protester accused Israel of genocide and then claiming he’d misheard. ...
Oh, and remember how he claimed the formal decision to move Brookfield’s headquarters to New York from Toronto was made after he left the company, even though he’d written a letter as board chair encouraging shareholders to support it? And how he’d “resigned all my roles, cut all my ties” to run for Liberal leader while still among other things chairing the Group of Thirty? He lies chronically, casually and recklessly on everything from personal gain to big political issues and now, we learn, their problematic connections.
It gets worse:
His government’s recently released spending plan shows an increase of 8.5 per cent this fiscal year to $437.8 billion. Add in “non-budgetary spending” such as EI payouts, plus at least $49 billion just to service the burgeoning national debt and total spending in Carney’s first year in office will hit $554.5 billion.
Even if tax revenues were to remain level with last year — and they almost certainly won’t, given the tariff wars ravaging Canadian industry — we are hurtling toward a deficit that could easily exceed three per cent of GDP, and thus dwarf our meagre annual economic growth.
It will only get worse. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates debt interest alone will consume $70 billion annually by 2029. Fitch Ratings recently warned of Canada’s “rapid and steep fiscal deterioration,” noting that if the Liberal program is implemented total federal, provincial and local debt would rise to 90 per cent of GDP.
This was already a fiscal powder keg. But then Carney casually tossed in a lit match. At June’s NATO summit, he pledged to raise defence spending to two per cent of GDP this fiscal year — to roughly $62 billion. Days later, he stunned even his own caucus by promising to match NATO’s new five per cent target. If he and his Liberal colleagues follow through, Canada’s defence spending will balloon to the current annual equivalent of $155 billion per year. There is no plan to pay for this. It will all go on the national credit card.
This is not “responsible government.” It is economic madness.
**
The upcoming fall sitting of Parliament will be a test of Carney’s seriousness about democratic integrity. He should begin by promptly appointing a commissioner to oversee the Foreign Influence Transparency Registry, and by working to clean up the nomination process within his own party. He should also open a cross-party discussion on legislative frameworks that would require parties to close loopholes currently exploited by foreign regimes to manipulate nominations.
Approaching this in a non-partisan manner, and in consultation with other parties, would help restore public trust and send a strong signal to hostile foreign actors: that Canada takes its democracy seriously.
That won't happen.
Canada’s elections commissioner says she has no evidence the result of the federal election in April was affected by foreign interference, disinformation or voter intimidation.
She did not say that there was NO interference.
Words matter.
All of this makes this seem like a breath of fresh air:
Canadians should be asking themselves why it took an American president launching a trade war against us for our federal and provincial governments to finally start addressing our economic problems they should have fixed decades ago. ...
To be sure, most of the promised transformation from our politicians thus far been pledges of future action, and there is legitimate skepticism about how much of it will occur, given the decades of political stalling on these issues in Canada.
But, at least our politicians are finally being forced to acknowledge failings they should have been acting on for decades, which made and continue to make our economy weaker, which they ignored.
That list includes:
— Expanding Canada’s trading opportunities to global markets beyond the U.S. which Canadian politicians have been talking about forever;
— Breaking down barriers to interprovincial trade which Prime Minister Mark Carney and the premiers say costs our economy up to $200 billion annually, a problem our federal and provincial governments created in the first place;
— Streamlining our onerous bureaucratic system for approving national infrastructure projects — a.k.a. “nation-building” initiatives — that has hampered our economy for generations because of red tape and bureaucracies created by the federal and provincial governments;
— Developing the mineral resources of Canada’s Arctic and Ontario’s Ring of Fire;
— Building a new pipeline (ideally new pipelines) to get our vast oil and natural gas resources from landlocked western Canada to tidewater and from there to international markets, instead of selling almost all of it to the U.S. at huge discounts, costing the Canadian economy up to $25 billion annually.
— Properly funding our armed forces so we have the capacity to patrol and protect our land, sea and air borders and to respond with military force to threats abroad — a fundamental requirement of any sovereign nation that wants to be taken seriously in global affairs;
— Paying members of the Canadian military a living wage in recognition of their importance in defending Canada’s interests both internationally and domestically.
— The federal government’s introduction in June of the “Strong Borders Act” to “keep our borders secure, combat transnational organized crime, stop the flow of illegal fentanyl and crack down on money laundering” in response to Trump’s demands.
The failure to address many of these issues up to now has resulted in Canada having the worst record of economic growth over the past decade as defined by real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita — a widely accepted metric of a nation’s standard of living — among the G7 nations.
If nothing changes, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has predicted Canada will have the worst record of economic growth among developed nations from 2020 to 2060.
The irony of Trump’s tariff war against us is that while demonstrably damaging to our economy, it has also compelled Canadian politicians to finally focus, after decades of dithering, on how we can improve and sustain our economy, regardless of what Trump does, much in the same way a hanging focuses the mind.
The key question now is whether our politicians are serious, because rapidly restructuring the Canadian economy will mean making decisions over the span of a few months and a few years that our politicians have ignored not just for decades, but in many cases, for generations.
Could Trump be the best prime minister we've ever had?
The federal government is redefining what poverty is so as to fool the public that voted for it:
A redefinition of Canada’s official poverty line is underway and “will end in Fall 2025,” says the Department of Social Development. Managers said they remain confident they will meet cabinet’s target of a 50 percent reduction in poverty though rates have increased since the pandemic: ‘It will reflect the goods and services required for a modest, basic standard of living.’
Which is what, exactly, as even food is too expensive.
A luxury, one might say:
Top food price increases in Canada since Jan 2025 (ranked by % change):
— The Food Professor (@FoodProfessor) July 9, 2025
→ Strawberries +53%
→ Oranges +37%
→ Squash +31%
→ Beef +30%
→ Carrots +30%
→ Cabbage +29%
→ Roasted or ground coffee +19%
→ White rice +17%
→ Potatoes (4.54 kg) +16%
→ Frozen broccoli +14%
→… pic.twitter.com/BguIiiUX5n
But don't worry.
The politicians' pensions are going to be alright:
Annual pensions for retired MPs averaged $81,140 last year, according to new Treasury Board figures. Payments indexed to inflation went up 11.4 percent compounded in the past two years: “Pensions under the plan are indexed annually to cover increases in the cost of living.”
The Trudeau government introduced the Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) for Canadians without dental insurance and the framework for a national pharmacare plan to help Canadians pay for prescription medicine. Prime Minister Mark Carney has stated that his government will retain both programs, but are they what Canadians want or need?
Dental associations have expressed concern about the CDCP’s administrative burden and sustainability. The plan covers some services for families with an annual net income under $70,000. Families earning between $70,000 and $90,000 pay 40 to 60 per cent of treatment costs.
However, only fees for a designated list of services are covered based on a federal schedule that often pays less than dentists charge in some provinces, requiring patients to pay the balance. Many Canadians are unaware of these limitations.
Dentists also say the CDCP’s current structure is unsustainable. Ottawa allocated $13 billion to cover around nine-million Canadians over five years, or less than $290 for each eligible Canadian per year.
But the health minister reportedly said that patients saved an average of $850 through the program, implying a cost of $38 billion over five years. And millions more Canadians could become eligible because employers are starting to see the CDCP as an opportunity to save money by cancelling employees’ private dental coverage.
Two points are clear. First, instead of Ottawa saying the CDCP is a subsidy, many Canadians have been led to believe it offers full and free coverage. Second, it would appear as though the CDCP is under-funded by the federal government.
(Sidebar: and what did you do to dissuade them of that notion, o vote-seeking government? Nothing. Because if governments fall, censorship bills disappear. You basically used Canadians' stupidity against. Way to weaponise idiocy!)
Likewise, the Pharmacare Act came into law in October 2024 after years of opinion polls repeatedly demonstrating support among Canadians for a national plan to provide coverage for those with no prescription drug insurance and to reduce or eliminate the differences between provincial drug plans.
Starting small, the federal government is providing $1.5 billion over five years to cover contraceptives and diabetes medications. Yet the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that this initial phase will increase federal spending by $1.9 billion over five years, and that assumes that private and provincial plans maintain their coverage levels. Clearly, the government is also under-funding national pharmacare.
Quelle surprise.
What do you think the government was running? A fully comprehensive service that a private dentistry service wouldn't?
You got hosed and the government got installed.
Elbows up, everybody.
It was never about a virus:
Federal compensation for Covid vaccine-related deaths and injuries has nearly tripled in two years, new figures showed yesterday. Managers of a Vaccine Injury Support Program had withheld scheduled reporting of payments for an undisclosed reason: ‘It is still a drug and there are potential risks even if they’re rare.’
**
You know what the Wuhan Institute of Virology didn't have enough of?
Viral samples. So the fine folks at USAID collected 11,000 viral samples and shipped them off to the Wuhan Institute of Virology--the very same lab that gifted the world COVID-19, likely through engineering.
USAID worked with the State Department, which is the agency that inspected WIV and found that the lab didn't even meet the minimum biosafety standards any sane person would expect. That was no barrier to sending the viruses off to the lab.
**
Last month, a massive measles outbreak exploded in Canada, centered in Ontario. With the summer travel season well underway, it's now flaring up nationwide, with my home province of Alberta being particularly hard hit.
This shouldn't be happening. That’s because a vaccine developed over 60 years ago — one that’s nearly 100% effective when properly administered — has largely wiped out endemic measles across the West, including in Canada (since 1998.) So today, the virus almost exclusively infects unvaccinated or under-vaccinated people.
Nonetheless, an October 2024 study in the Canadian Journal of Public Health revealed uptake rates for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) vaccine plunged from 2019 to 2023, with one-dose coverage dropping from 89.5% to 82.5%.
But even as new cases of measles surge, few Canadian officials are willing to address the most uncomfortable reasons behind Canada’s MMR plummeting vaccination rates.
They should be.
But since they aren’t, let’s do it here.
Uncomfortable Truth #1: Federal government mishandling of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout eroded some public trust in vaccination guidance, thereby deepening vaccine hesitancy.
Even before the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in 2021, the Canadian federal government faced justified criticism for issuing absolute public health pronouncements, only to reverse them entirely without transparent explanations.
For instance, in the pandemic's early days, the government featured Dr. Theresa Tam — then head of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) — warning against mask wearing, only to impose mask mandates months later. Similarly confusing guidance emerged when PHAC advised "wearing a mask while having sex," even as provincial governments prohibited mixing with anyone outside one's household.
The federal government also maintained hotel quarantine policies even though there was no evidence to prove the costly policy slowed the spread of COVID, and after alleged sexual assaults occurred at the facilities. The federal government has never acknowledged these types of flip-flops, let alone provided clear explanations for them, which understandably fuelled scepticism and eroded trust in its ability to deliver reliable, evidence-based health advice — even before the vaccines were introduced.
Then, the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was marred by further inconsistencies. After weeks of urging Canadians to accept the first vaccine offered, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) recommended against the AstraZeneca shot. Rather than explaining the rationale or pausing its use, the Liberal government politically contradicted this advice. Much later, the vaccine was withdrawn with blood-clotting risks being attributed to its use. To this day, the federal government has neither publicly admitted these errors nor outlined a plan for how the nation's top vaccine regulators and advisory bodies will prevent such missteps in the future.
Yet, these same officials now feign bewilderment at Canada's declining MMR vaccination rates.
Uncomfortable Truth #2: The federal government downplayed the possibility of rare but serious side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine and mismanaged its vaccine injury compensation program, thereby deepening vaccine hesitancy.
In addition to the incredibly poor mixed messaging on AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine, during the height of the federal government’s push for the public to take COVID vaccines, public health officials went out of their way to push the message that all COVID vaccines were “safe and effective” with “mild side effects”. To date, the federal government has not publicly acknowledged that its earlier guidance now contradicts current clinical considerations, which recognize rare but serious side effects such as myocarditis.
The government's failure to address how these complications were overlooked or ignored during the issuance of mandatory vaccine policies undoubtedly exacerbates vaccine hesitancy today. Put differently, for individuals already harbouring concerns about vaccines such as for MMR, the lack of initial transparency on potential side effects related to the COVID-19 vaccine — or muddled public health messaging — likely reinforced narratives that deterred their vaccine uptake.
A similar inference can be drawn from the federal government's vilification or suppression of public health officials who questioned whether the actual clinical severity of COVID-19 in the general population justified mandatory vaccine policies — especially given the expedited approval of vaccines through processes that typically take years. Likewise, recent revelations of potential widespread misuse of funds in the government's vaccine injury compensation program raise serious doubts about its willingness to support individuals harmed by flawed or incomplete public health guidance.
If the federal government truly aims to combat vaccine hesitancy, it must confront these issues head-on with courage and corrective action.
Uncomfortable Truth #3: The federal government's actions during the pandemic lent credence to narratives portraying vaccines as mere profit-making tools for Big Pharma, abetted by the government itself, thereby deepening vaccine hesitancy.
Between Canada’s federal government paying Novavax $350 million for undelivered vaccine orders, paying Medicago $300 million for a vaccine that never made it to market, to purchasing 32.5 million doses of vaccine worth roughly $1 billion and allowing them to expire, Canada’s federal government does not have a stellar record on COVID vaccine procurement, putting it mildly.
But instead of being transparent about the causes of these failures and putting in place failsafes to ensure such waste wouldn’t happen again, the federal government worked to stop Parliamentary inquiries into the matter. To date, not much progress has been made to fix these problems nor have any significant consequences been levelled. To a vaccine hesitant person skeptical of Big Pharma, these are Big (unresolved) Issues.
Uncomfortable Truth #4: MMR vaccination rates have likely declined in part due to the Canadian federal government's politicization of COVID-19 vaccine mandates and its failure to publicly atone for this error, thereby entrenching vaccine hesitancy.
In early 2021, the Royal Society of Canada released a detailed report that outlined numerous nuanced reasons for vaccine hesitancy among Canadians. It also offered several equally nuanced recommendations on how governments could collaborate with these populations to address concerns, build trust and thereby boost vaccine uptake.
In no way did it blame people for having concerns. Rather, the report approached the concerns of vaccine hesitant persons as valid perceptions that the government had a duty of care to address. But instead of following the report’s guidance, the federal government threw it out the window and ran a highly divisive federal election campaign which focused on denigrating vaccine-hesitant persons in Canada.
Then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dined out on using dehumanizing and politically loaded terms to describe the vaccine hesitant, including “anti-vaxxer”. Trudeau famously went as far as to describe vaccine hesitant persons as “non believers in science and progress” and “racist misogynists".
Trudeau did this in spite of the Royal Society issuing a subsequent report strongly warning against using such rhetoric against members of the public. But the politics of the moment trumped the science for Mr. Trudeau and his fellow Liberals, and as such, their actions prompted many vaccine hesitant persons to dig in.
Things got worse in early 2022, when instead of constructively addressing the concerns of vaccine-hesitant truckers and nipping the convoy in the bud, Mr. Trudeau responded by allowing members of his cabinet (who are now the current prime minister’s most senior advisors) to muse about turning tanks loose on them.
The Liberal government has never issued a public apology for its vehemently hostile rhetoric toward vaccine-hesitant individuals, let alone devised strategies to re-engage this demographic. As a result, it has entrenched a partisan divide in society, where vaccination status is viewed as a political virtue signal rather than a public health objective to be pursued collaboratively.
Uncomfortable Truth #5: The federal government retained the individuals responsible for botched public health guidance as its primary spokespeople, and rather than enacting personnel changes, rewarded them for their missteps — thereby deepening vaccine hesitancy.
Nearly two years ago, I penned an essay arguing that if the federal Liberal government truly wished to rebuild trust in public health guidance, it should replace Dr. Theresa Tam as head of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC.)
Instead, they retained her as a key spokesperson on measles vaccination and awarded her — and other public health officials whose performance has been widely questioned — the Order of Canada. The Minister of Health who served during the pandemic remains in cabinet, as do those ministers responsible for procurement failures and squandered government funds related to vaccine production.
Uncomfortable Truth #6: Post-pandemic federally set high immigration levels have likely had an impact on Canadian vaccination rates.
Canadian federal ministers have very recently used the COVID pandemic to justify the approval of hundreds of thousands of temporary work and study visas.
But those rapidly increased immigration levels have also led to a surge in demand for primary health care services for which Canada’s health care system was ill prepared to absorb.
For Canadians who now face massive wait times for these services, taking time off of work to wait in line to see a doctor for routine vaccines for themselves or for their children can be a difficult task to accomplish.
There is also the problem of spreading public perception that unvaccinated newcomers to Canada comprise the main cohort of people impacted by measles infections. While a 2007 study suggested that 36% of a tested cohort of newcomers had susceptibility to measles, and it’s true that there is no formal requirement for newcomers to be vaccinated against measles prior to arrival in Canada, some data suggests that the current outbreak is primarily running rampant amongst non-immigrant Canadians.
Either way, it’s hard to confirm because neither the number of immigrants entering Canada without measles vaccination, nor the immigration status of infected persons in Canada is publicly reported — something that the government should consider, as health authorities seek fact-driven ways to bring the outbreak under control and address vaccine hesitancy.
Long story short, measles is no joke.
It’s an extremely contagious viral infection that poses significant risks to young children, pregnant women, and immunocompromised individuals, potentially causing severe complications such as pneumonia, brain inflammation, blindness, or even death. The virus can infect a large majority of susceptible people because it is able to linger hours after an infected person passes through a room.
But it is preventable with two doses of a vaccine. So, the federal government, the media, pundits, and academia should be doing everything in their power to address concerns about getting vaccinated — particularly concerns that were caused or exacerbated during the COVID pandemic.
Alternatively, these folks could persist in skirting core issues, tacitly endorsing the dehumanization of vaccine-hesitant individuals by depicting them as uneducated bumpkins unworthy of true governmental accountability — all while measles surges across Canada once more.
Let’s hope that — unlike during the COVID pandemic — sanity and compassion on all of these fronts prevails.
In what universe is cramming millions of unvetted migrants into a country of finite monetary resources and jobs a good idea?:
A federal immigration museum faces recurring deficits amid rising costs and a “shift in Canadian attitudes towards immigration,” say managers. The Canadian Museum of Immigration noted public opinion had changed since nearly a million 20th century transatlantic immigrants landed at Pier 21 in Halifax: “Economic concerns as well as the housing crisis have contributed to an increase in the number of Canadians who think immigration levels are too high.”
It also doesn't help that you are using taxpayer money to push an agenda.
Also:
Federal inspectors this year are on pace to levy record fines against employers for breach of migrant labour regulations, figures show. Steep penalties levied in the first six months of the year followed cabinet complaints that Canadian employers had “gotten addicted” to using the Temporary Foreign Worker Program: “We have gotten complacent.”
Agendas have no place in reporting history:
The one in which the Historic Sites and Monuments Board gets it wrong has to do with the Northwest Mounted Police. Instead of being the heroes of Canada’s westward expansion, they are now to be portrayed in government documents and museums as paramilitary colonialists insensitive to Indigenous cultures.
Really!? Would the federal government rather Canada suffered the American Indian Wars in which European settlement was achieved with the brutal suppression of Indigenous peoples?
Because that is what the NWMP prevented. The original Mounties were formed in 1873 to prevent American annexation of the Prairie West, to control settler violence against First Nations (and vice versa) and to end the devastating impact the American whiskey trade was having on the Indigenous peoples of the Prairies.
It’s a testament to the even-handedness of the NWMP that, after the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana in 1876, the Sioux under Sitting Bull sought (and received) the protection of the Mounties for nearly four years until our federal government pressured them to return to the U.S.
Did the NWMP enforce discriminatory and oppressive laws before their disbandment in 1920. Undoubtedly. But wiping out historical recognition because it is one-sided does not correct the facts, it merely replaces them with another equally one-sided version.
Parks Canada’s new version of the NWMP is as incorrect — or more so — than the old version that ignores First Nations. Parks Canada’s new boss, Liberal Steven Guilbeault, seems as determined to use cultural extremism to do for Canada’s history what he did for our economy through environmental extremism.
Another historical “correction” being proposed by Parks Canada seems more reasonable, but is still being resisted by lobby groups and activists.
At the site of the “last spike” on the Canadian Pacific Railway, driven in 1885 between Revelstoke and Sicamous, B.C., the federal historic committee wants to add to the plaque commemorating the engineering achievement that united the country this wording: “Many workers died building the line including Chinese labourers who played a major role in the construction of the line…” That should be acceptable; it’s true.
But activists have threatened to protest any revision at the site that does not highlight “systemic” discrimination against non-Whites.
Using the Trudeau government’s 2019 policy as a guideline, federal archivists have removed or altered 7,000 pages from government websites, many having to do with historic figures, such as Sir. John A. Macdonald whose views now are deemed politically incorrect.
But half-history is wrong, even if it is meant to correct the faults of past historical telling.
Yes, forest fires DO cost as much as lives:
True costs of wildfires may run to the billions including expenses like lost timber fees and declining tourism receipts, says the Department of Natural Resources. Staff for the first time attempted to calculate the cost of a random selection of forest fires: “Risk of potential impacts from wildfires is increasing.”
With just days left until Sunday’s Upper House election, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and his Liberal Democratic Party are facing bad media poll numbers that suggest the ruling bloc may be at risk of losing its majority.
An NHK poll released Monday showed Ishiba’s approval rating at 31% compared to a June poll of 39%. Support for the LDP stood at 24%, down from 31.6% last month.
If the ruling coalition — the LDP and its junior partner Komeito — loses its Upper House majority, Ishiba would face internal party pressure to resign and kickstart discussions on whether the two-party minority government can convince an opposition party to join it. The ruling coalition also lost its majority in the more powerful Lower House last October.
Polls conducted by the Yomiuri Shimbun and Nikkei showed the LDP and Komeito may end up with less than the 50 seats they need to maintain a majority, with the situation only getting worse with time.
The Yomiuri poll, conducted from Saturday to Tuesday, showed that, of the 32 constituencies with one seat up for grabs, the LDP is ahead in only four, down from seven in an earlier poll.
The party is expected to do better in districts with two or more seats contested. But candidates from the small right-leaning Sanseito party are pulling some conservative votes with their “Japanese First” rhetoric — votes that may have otherwise gone to the LDP.
The Nikkei poll, conducted from Sunday to Tuesday, meanwhile, also showed the LDP and Komeito were struggling more now than at the beginning of the campaign and that they are in danger of falling short of the necessary 50 seats.
The LDP had a strong chance of winning in only five of the 32 constituencies with one seat contested, and is facing tough battles in 13 districts with multiple seats up for grabs, including Hokkaido, Saitama, Aichi and Fukuoka. For proportional representation seats, the poll showed the party could win less than the 18 seats it won in the previous 2022 Upper House election.
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