NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has vowed he will help defeat the governing Liberals in a confidence vote when the House returns. The Conservatives, locked firmly ahead in the polls, have been demanding an election all fall, while the Bloc has also recently called for an election early in the new year.

Singh could still change his mind and many scenarios remain possible, such as an opposition party negotiating a big-ticket item into the budget then having a fall election as scheduled, but that's looking less and less tenable.

"It no longer makes a whole lot of sense to cut some sort of a deal and be a partner to the government that you're about to vilify a couple of months later as Public Enemy no. 1," Baran said.

A leadership race would be a hurried affair compared to Liberal party contests in the past. When Trudeau was elected leader in 2013, the race took some six months, though in 1993 the Progressive Conservatives elected Kim Campbell in a contest lasting about three months.

On December 13, the federal government did what many expected and forced striking Canada Post employees back to work. If anyone needed confirmation of the Trudeau government’s utter contempt for workers’ rights and free collective bargaining, this latest back-to-work order is further proof.

This is the fifth time this year that the Liberals have intervened to end a high-profile strike in the federal jurisdiction.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/35345179

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says his party will bring forward a motion of non-confidence to bring down the Trudeau government in the next sitting of the House of Commons.

"The Liberals don't deserve another chance," Singh wrote in a letter on Friday. "That's why the NDP will vote to bring this government down."

cross-posted from: /c/britishcolumbia

Turnout was 16 per cent — significantly down compared to previous federal byelections this year, which saw around a 40 per cent turnout.

cross-posted from: /c/BritishColumbia

The ruling B.C. NDP has announced a co-operation agreement with the B.C. Green Party that Premier David Eby says will "strengthen the stability of government and help deliver on the priorities of British Columbians."

Entitled the 2024 Co-operation and Responsible Government Accord, the document outlines a list of priorities agreed upon by the parities, including health care, affordable housing and the economy.

“I am here to push Canada to stop supplying Israel with weapons, and to make it clear that Jewish people do not want Canada to continue to provide weapons to Israel,” David Mivasair, a retired rabbi who served two different synagogues in Vancouver for about 23 years, told Ricochet. Mivasair’s message to the MPs was “not to listen to the Jewish organizations supporting Israel — they don’t speak for us.”

“When we survived the Holocaust, we learned that this should never again happen for anyone,” she said. “Never again means never again for anyone, and this is happening in our name.

So far, 47 MPs, including NDP Foreign Affairs critic Heather McPherson and Hamilton Centre MP Matthew Green, have agreed to endorse the government’s proposed full arms embargo, Small says.

“We have had some baby steps, but it is not enough, Wasser told Ricochet. “There are still at least 200 permits that have not been suspended for Canadian companies manufacturing weapons going to Israel.”

Misrepresentations are nothing new for Poilievre, mind you. If anything, he’s built the massive lead his party enjoys in the polls on the back of his concerted campaign to confuse Canadians about why they’re paying higher prices for things like groceries and energy. But this particular abuse of the truth is so obvious, so flagrant, and so utterly pointless that it’s worth thinking a little longer about what it says.

This is the real risk of a Poilievre government, one that has multiplied in scale with Trump on his way to the White House. His utter indifference to the truth, and his willingness to weaponize deceit for his own purposes, are traits he clearly shares with Trump. But they will not endear him to the U.S. president, and they will not spare us from his administration’s inevitable wrath. Surrender, after all, doesn’t deter a bully — it encourages him. And every concession to deceit, no matter how small, makes the bigger lies that much easier to get away with.

The best way to protect our cultural and political sovereignty right now is by defending reality, inconvenient as it may seem at times. With Trump in power and our social media overlords increasingly unwilling to do anything to stop the spread of falsehoods and conspiracies on their platforms, we are well and truly on our own here. Our government — indeed, all of our governments — have to step up.

In October, Indigo won an order blocking a website calling for a boycott of the bookseller. The case, largely ignored by the media, revealed a new and unlikely front in the struggle in Canada between the movement for Palestinian liberation and Israel’s powerful supporters, one which could have ramifications for other solidarity efforts.

In August, anonymous activists created the website IndigoKillsKids.ca, which has been endorsed by the Canadian BDS Coalition and other pro-Palestine organizations. The site, borrowing Indigo’s visual style, told visitors to boycott the company, promoted the September 25 day of action against it and offered links to various BDS resources. It was the latest phase in a years-long campaign to boycott the bookseller over the HESEG Foundation — founded and run by Indigo CEO Heather Reisman and her husband, Indigo’s owner Gerald Schwartz — which offers scholarships to Israeli army veterans without family in Israel.

Soon after the site went live, Indigo’s lawyer demanded it be taken down, and two weeks later filed a suit requesting an order for all major internet providers in Canada to block the site. The court granted the request, first under an interim decision issued September 19, and then with a two-year injunction on October 23, effectively shutting down the offending website along with several social media accounts for the foreseeable future. That month, it was reported that Israel’s military had killed at least 16,900 children in its assault on Gaza.

The Indian Resource Council of Canada (IRC) and some Treaty Six Chiefs held a news conference on Parliament Hill on Wednesday, indicating they intend to file a judicial review against the climate policy.

“The impact of this legislation in Alberta and Saskatchewan and Treaty Six territory is severe,” said Robert Black, legal counsel for the IRC.

“The nations in Alberta and Saskatchewan are often remote, and there is a reliance upon high carbon fuels because there's simply no alternatives. There's no process in those reserves to just make better choices, to use mass transportation, because there's a massive infrastructure deficit within community,” he said.

“Then, you combine that with the reality that the rebate system is through the Income Tax Act, and most folks that live and work on reserves are not filing income tax returns. They're essentially shut out from the system to secure their rebates.”

The fact that First Nations weren’t consulted on the federal carbon pricing system breaches the Crown’s duty to consult and, although the carbon price isn’t technically a tax, “it clearly violates the spirit and intent” of on-reserve tax exemptions in the Indian Act, said Gregg Desjarlais, Chief of Frog Lake First Nation and chairman of the IRC board.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/29054149

Moscow’s disinformation is often shared unwittingly by Canadians who don’t know its origin or purpose. Canada needs to fight it with stronger actions.

The Liberal prognosis is grim. For Trudeau to stand a chance, the government will need a major policy pivot. The Liberals could harness some of the populist economic momentum by cracking down on monopolistic practices or opening the telecom sector to foreign investment. Trudeau could make a generational commitment to restoring the dream of homeownership to the middle class. He could articulate his positive vision for Canada, as the nation he described in his father’s eulogy: a place “where simple tolerance, mere tolerance, is not enough.” A nation animated by “genuine and deep respect” for Canadians of all origins, values, and beliefs. A nation we may yet become.

Whether he will do any of these things is, of course, anyone’s guess. For all I know, Trudeau will be swallowed by the anti-incumbent wave after all—or take cover long before it arrives. But we are not the United States. We are not Britain, France, or anywhere else. Our future is unwritten, its outlines discernible in polls, perhaps, but also in the relationship between a father and son, their half-realized dreams, and long, lonely walks through the snow.

The NDP, as the nominal social democratic alternative, finds itself in an almost impossible political position. What progressive gains have been secured over the past several years were no doubt the result of NDP pressure, mostly through the supply-and-confidence agreement. Having recently propped up the government, however, it’s difficult to pivot to a posture of attack. The NDP consequently finds itself treading water.

CBC poll aggregator puts the probabilities of next year's federal election outcomes at Conservative majority--94%, Conservative minority--4%, Liberal government--1%.

I didn't realize things were this bleak.

I feel some deja vu watching Trudeau refuse to step aside (early enough), just like with Biden.

A friend of mine thinks no one really wants to replace Trudeau as Liberal leader, for what's most likely to be a decisive loss.

I posted an article with a headline about Trudeau's GST holiday and $200 checks signalling that he's out of ideas or that it 'smacks of desperation'. Lemmy.ca didn't seem to like it much. But I look at the gesture like, "that's the best you can do for a fighting chance at forming a government?"

I don't like their disinclination to truly represent the working classes, and the general loss of that representation in politics more widely at the moment (eg, shift towards conservativism and authoritinarianism).

Are we just defeatedly marching towards 4 years of a PP government? Realistically, can/will anything be done, even for a greater chance at a Conservative minority, never mind an ABC government?

“Never again,” she said, “applies to everybody.”

The entire Parliament Hill action was solemn, respectful, and peaceful. After about an hour, the police told demonstrators they would have to leave the building, which they agreed to do.

Nonetheless, as some demonstrators were preparing to move the police grabbed them and detained them.

“Canada needs to stop arming Israel and implement an immediate arms embargo.” In Ottawa, over 100 Jewish activists began a sit-in inside a Canadian parliamentary building Tuesday to demand Canada stop arming Israel. Rachel Small, a member of the Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition and a member of the sit-in, says that the Canadian government’s claims that it is halting arms shipments to Israel are obfuscating the fact that Canadian weapons are still being transported via the United States. “We’re here to make sure that they … actually cut off the flow,” says Small. Such protest “is what we should be seeing more of,” adds Israeli journalist and former conscientious objector Haggai Matar.