Mid-Week Post

It's the mid-weekiest!

 

There will never be a new pipeline built in this country:

A Liberal MP and former Trudeau-era cabinet minister says the oil tanker ban the party legislated off British Columbia’s northern coast was out of “huge public demand” and predicts that the debate around the possibility of lifting it will be controversial.

 Karina Gould spoke to reporters on her way into the Liberals’ weekly caucus meeting, while Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith continue to negotiate the terms of a new relationship surrounding energy policy. Smith is pushing for a path for a new bitumen pipeline to run from her province to B.C.’s northwest coast, which would require an outright lifting or carveout of the federal moratorium on tanker traffic.

“It was something we put in place because there was a huge public demand for it and it’s important for us to be able to ensure we’re protecting, you know, really delicate ecosystems, so I think this is an important conversation to be had,” Gould said of the policy on Wednesday.

 

In other words, no.

 

 

You know, if taxes and costs of living weren't so high and people relegated the government to its original intended purpose, being a single voice representing swaths of people and making the trains run on time, people could afford to feed their kids:

Cabinet acknowledges it does not know how many children have been fed under its national school lunch program. Ministers have repeatedly claimed a figure of 400,000 in recounting anecdotes praising the program as a success: “The department does not collect detailed program-level data.” 

** 

“It should frighten us that there are parents who can’t buy their own kids lunch,” he tells a constituent in the video. “(But) the government shouldn’t be your daddy; the government shouldn’t be your mother. We have families, and families should be strong enough to provide for their children, and when they’re not that should break our hearts. … It should not be used as a justification for the government to have even more influence, even more input, even more control over our lives.”

The program is already underway, with $1 billion in funding over five years committed as transfers to the provinces in 2024 — three years after the Liberals first promised it. And the Liberals recently announced plans for more. “Permanent” funding of more than $200 million is set to kick in in 2029.

The response anywhere to Jivani’s intervention, anywhere to his left, in a nutshell: “Oh my God, the Conservatives support children starving at school.” Even among some conservatives we hear the traditional timid refrain: Is this a “winning issue”? Or is the party just making itself look callous? What will the media think? Jivani, unlike many more seasoned Conservatives, seems not to care so much about the potential blowback.

(Sidebar: this is from the government that not only drives up taxes but, when they froze the bank accounts of people who had the audacity to say no to it, laughed at kids going hungry.)

Lunches served at school — paid or subsidized — are hardly a brand-new statist invention. They’ve been around forever, although they’re more common in certain kinds of schools than others. A 2013 Queen’s University study looked at 436 Canadian schools and found only 53 per cent had a cafeteria. (When I was a kid, many of my friends walked home for lunch and back afterwards.) And Jivani concedes in the video that many Canadians will like the sound of a national school-lunch program. Who would argue against it? It’s obviously far more important that kids eat breakfast and lunch (and dinner) than it is who provides it.

But that assumes a national school-lunch program, or even a provincial or local school-lunch program, is the quickest and easiest way to make sure kids are fed. It obviously isn’t, but trust in government, somehow, is a tough nut to crack in this country. Mass pandemic-era supports like CERB weren’t unalloyed successes, but they proved governments at least know how to shovel money out the door when they feel it absolutely necessary.

 

It doesn't matter if the program is needed or effective. 

It DOES matter that it looks like something is being done. 

 

Somewhat related - it's just money:

Ottawa’s bureaucracy has ballooned in both size and cost over the past decade, with newly released Public Accounts showing taxpayers shelled out $71.4 billion for the federal workforce in 2024-25 — a $6-billion jump from the previous year alone.

 

 

Now about that:

New immigrants are no strain on the health care system since many are doctors, Immigration Minister Lena Diab said yesterday. Cabinet’s Immigration Levels Plan will let 1,068,650 foreigners into Canada this year on permanent and temporary permits: “How many doctors are driving taxis?”

** 

The more educated an immigrant is, the more likely they are to leave Canada, a new report on immigration data and patterns suggests.

It comes as the federal immigration and health ministers testified on barriers to attracting immigrants to work in the health care sector on Tuesday.

 

I guess that leaves fewer to do late-term abortions and killing off grandmothers. 

Also:

Toronto, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦

Indian migrants are now out in the streets crying about the sudden cancellation of the Skilled Trades program, acting like the country owes them something and demanding “fairness” and “protection” as if they were promised a future here in the first… pic.twitter.com/tPaInvLN5m

— NATE (@CelticAshes) November 18, 2025

 

 

Let me know when not having a doctor or a disposable income becomes a problem:

A new Gallup poll has found that in the past two years, more Americans want to leave their country than at any other time in the past two decades. And young women are more than twice as likely to want to get out than young men, with 40 per cent saying they’d like to go.

Canada remains the preferred destination for younger American women looking to leave, with 11 per cent of those since 2022 naming it as their top destination, ahead of New Zealand, Italy and Japan, all at five per cent.

 

 

Why is he even here?:

A fugitive wanted for murder in India who tried to sneak into Canada on Sunday has been caught by U.S. border guards.

Vishat Kumar, 22, was allegedly concealing his identity with a fake name and date of birth when he attempted to cross the Peace Bridge from Buffalo, N.Y., across the Niagara River into Ontario.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers say Kumar is the subject of an Interpol red notice issued by India, which seeks his arrest for murder.

Denied entry into Canada, Kumar’s true identity was allegedly discovered on a secondary inspection through the use of biometrics.

 

 

Because of course they weren't:

A multi-million dollar federal art collection will no longer lend pieces after more than 100 artworks vanished, says Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty. Her department has declined to say why police were never called to track paintings, sculptures or photographs that went missing from the Indigenous Art Collection: ‘These are cultural treasures.’