Racial Weapon Laws

10/1/25 Toronto Sun:

WARMINGTON: You can bring mini axe to rally — as long as you are sacred firekeeper

Toronto Police removed the handcuffs and returned the hatchet to the man in an orange shirt with no charges... 

Even if the public has an axe to grind with the decision, Toronto Police stand behind their call to return a hatchet to a protester they had in handcuffs.  

Officers determined the axe was ceremonial and not used as a weapon or to threaten anyone,” Toronto Police spokesperson Stephanie Miceli said. “There are no grounds to lay charges.” 

The article goes to explain:

Sa’d said it was later explained to her the man was a “traditional firekeeper” but she did note there was no traditional fire-burning anywhere in sight.  

Admittedly irritated at first, she acknowledges it’s not only purportedly legal in the Criminal Code of Canada to carry around a hatchet as long as it’s not used in a crime or for defensive purposes, under city of Toronto rules, there is also special status for Indigenous sacred fire and firekeepers. 

Canadian Government Makes California Look Smart

6/23/25 Toronto Sun:

"Only in Toronto would swimming pools be closed because it's too hot

But with temperatures hitting 34C, a decision was made to lock the doors and let the kids look through the fence at the cool water in pools"

Can you think of a better place on a hot day?  Apparently,  they thought it was too hot for staff.  Get in the pool!

Those Prairie-Canadians Are Getting Uppity

Canada's national government has been doing its best to get to Net Zero by many methods including high carbon taxes.  Saskatchewan has long relied on coal for power.  Wind power sometimes drop to zero and solar power era reliably drops to zero on some poorly understood schedule that is probably an oil company conspiracy. 

6/18/25 PipelineOnline.ca:

"REGINA, ESTEVAN, CORONACH – For years, the conventional coal-fired power industry in Saskatchewan has been living under a death sentence, one to be carried out in four years, six months and 12 days from now. Federal regulations proclaimed the end of coal-fired power generation in Canada by 2030 as a way of reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions to combat anthropogenic (manmade) climate change.

"On Wednesday, June 18, the Government of Saskatchewan issued a stay of execution, as it were. On that day, Minister of Crown Investments Corporation Minister and Minister Responsible for SaskPower Jeremy Harrison sent a letter to SaskPower workers, informing them that instead of shutting down its coal fleet, SaskPower would be rebuilding it, and operating it for years to come, as a bridge to nuclear power generation. That eventual nuclear adoption would lead to net zero emissions by 2050. That letter was also forwarded to Westmoreland Coal, which mines the lignite coal for Saskatchewan’s three coal-fired power stations."

Saskatchewan

5/27/25 Saskatoon StarPhoenix:

"Unified Grassroots recently launched a petition to hold a sovereignty referendum that has garnered more than 4,000 signatures. For the petition to be successful, it must generate the signatures of around 125,000 adult residents.

“I’m not going to be condemning individuals that are having discussions about the future of their province and the future of our nation,” Moe said on Tuesday in Saskatoon."

This Was a Surprise

If Alberta secede from Canada, they have more rights to pipelines to the ocean than they do now.  The U.N. Law of the Sea includes:

"PART X

RIGHT OF ACCESS OF LAND-LOCKED

STATES TO AND FROM THE SEA

AND FREEDOM OF TRANSIT"

Yes, Canada would be required to grant Alberta access to pipelines to the ocean, something Canada will not allow the province of Alberta.

Canada Seems to be Breaking Apart

I am seeing claims on YouTube that Quebec's premier is calling for separation.   5/29/25 CTV also reports:

"Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge wasted no time in boasting after the adoption of his new law that will give Quebec its own model for national integration.

"He says the legislation will relegate Canadian multiculturalism to the “dustbin of history.”

“Multiculturalism no longer applies on Quebec soil, finally! (…) It’s a model that has always been harmful to Quebec,” Roberge declared Wednesday at the National Assembly.

"According to him, under that model, the state takes it upon itself to allow newcomers to retain their culture and language of origin.

“That’s Canadian multiculturalism. We live alongside one another,” he explained.

"His new law — inspired by interculturalism — aims to signal to immigrants that they are “arriving in a state with its own model of integration” and that they must accept Quebec’s social contract, which is based on values such as democracy, the French language, gender equality, and secularism.""

Keep in mmind that Canada's heavy-handed bilingual requirements are a heavy burden in parts of Canada where there are few French speakers.   If Quebec is going to tell immigrants French or else, why should the rest of Canada keep playing this game?

More evidence of the coming split.  5/27/25 CTV:

"King Charles III had barely left the country as the National Assembly unanimously adopted a motion on Tuesday to cut all ties with the monarchy.

"The motion was tabled by PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon after Question Period, on a red-letter day in another parliament, Ottawa, where the monarch delivered the Speech from the Throne for the first time since 1977.

"The PQ motion was adopted unanimously, with 106 votes in favour and no abstentions. Even the federalist Liberals, who are more attached to Canadian institutions, voted in favour, as did the CAQ government benches."

"

Saskatchewan Next?

YouTube videos are beginning to show up discussing Saskatchewan having a secession referendum.  Premier Moe is taking the same cagey approach as Premier Steel of Alberta: he is not supporting secession but he is supporting a vote on it.  

I suspect two provinces leaving would encourage Quebec separatists voting on again on this.

Alberta and Saskatchewan as independent nations makes little sense except if they had a free trade arrangement with the U.S. and participation in NORAD.  I am not sure how much they could contribute.   They could buy a small number of fighters (perhaps given by us) and participate in North American Air Defense.   Central Canada would be pissed,  but loss of Quebec might make the whole discussion moot.

She Almost Sounds Like Trump

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's speech implying that either Prime Minister Carney work with Alberta to reduce federal abuse of Alberta or face the prospect of secession.   If so, I expect Saskatchewan next, and maybe Manitoba.   Three of them could perhaps be a viable nation called perhaps Maple Prairie but individually they would probably better off adding stars to our flag and enjoying lower taxes, no tariff access, gun rights (and she addresses that question in her sppech), and a free market approach. 

Canadian Politics

 I follow Canadian politics because:

1. They are closest ally, in spite of current posturing.  What affects them, affects us.

2. They are also closest ally geographically.  Unsurprisingly, they are culturally quite similar as much as many Canadians bristle at the idea.

3. They are a reminder where saying PBS(eh?) or NPR(eh?) destroys a nation's political senses.

4. In spite of Trump's needling them about becoming the 51st state, we would not want all of Canada.  Imagine California with more severe transphilia.  You think I exaggerate? 4/24/25 National Post:

Ontario’s top court has ruled the province must cover the cost of a penile-sparing vaginoplasty for a transgender resident who does not identify as exclusively female or male and who wishes to have both genitalia.

Article content

Article content

In a unanimous decision released this week, a three-judge panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal confirmed a lower court’s ruling that the novel phallus-preserving surgery qualifies as an insured service under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan....

The legal battle between K.S., whose sex at birth was male, dates to 2022, when the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) refused her request to pay for the cost of surgery at a Texas clinic to construct a vagina while sparing the penis, a procedure this is not available in Ontario, or anywhere else in Canada.

Wow! This almost makes ordinary sex-reassignment seem normal by comparison.

You doubtless saw that the Liberals won the election a couple days ago.  More precisely, they have enough seats to form a minority government.  In a parliamentary system, if no party gets a majority, they can combine with other minority parties to form a majority coalition.  

Minority coalition governments are not terribly stable.  My favorite example was in 1933 Gemany, where one small minority party was convinced that could keep control over the leader of the bigger minority party, the guy with the brush moustache.  

The Liberals will either coalition with the New Democratic Party (NDP) which is even more insanely left than the Liberals, or Bloc Québécois (BQ), a left-of-center Quebec separatist party.  The net result is more the crap that made Biden so popular here, but magnified considerably.

The map:

Source: By Eric0892 - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=157434617

The Conservative Party (think RINO with snow) did very well in parts of Ontario, all of Saskatchewan, much of Manitoba, and all of Alberta.  Surprisingly, many parts of British Columbia (the parts with more bears than people) also voted Conservative Party (CP).  If you did not learn the provinces' names and capitals in elementary school, I am sorry.  Time to learn.

Also interesting is that younger voters went CP and they had their largest growth in MPs in years.  Boomers are the LP voters.

The western provinces resent several things:

1. They have vast reserves of oil shale, which the Liberals intend to make unavailable through a net zero policy.

2. They are blocked from building pipelines to any seashore for sale abroad.

3. High tariffs will cause great damage to them for exports to America and the increased cost of American goods.  Look how close those provinces are to American states with similar geography and culture and how far away Ottawa is.

3. They are taxed very heavily to subsidize the poor Atlantic provinces and greedy Quebec (think the DC swamp speaking French).

4. Alberta strongly resents the Canadian Wheat Board which screws wheat farmers out of their profits.

5. To a lesser extent, the national gun laws.  My impression is that many of the westerners would find New York State gun laws as of 2022 acceptable but even that is too lax for the Liberals.

There has been an incipient separatist movement in some of the prairie provinces for some years.  The recent election is pumping energy into this.  Alberta Premier (roughly the same as a state governor) Danielle Smith has in some way that I do really understand (tabled means something different in British legislative language than it does here) arranged to lower the signature requirement for a referendum from 20% of voters to 10%.  This makes a referendum petition for separation much easier.

Strictly speaking, Canada is a confederation, and a vote of province at referendum is enough.  This threat may get the LP to treat the prairie provinces better.

There is talk of independent nationhood, perhaps in union with other breakaway provinces.  Some Albertans would like to add another star to our flag.  Lower taxes, no tariff barriers with the U.S., freedom from the Canadian Wheat Board.

I would welcome Alberta, Saskatchewan. and Manitoba, all of which would likely be pretty centrist additions.  We would become an even larger oil and natural gas producer, more wheat, more people that want to be left alone.