Hello Lucy Watson, National Durector of the federal NDP

I was watching the At Issue Panel on CBC News Thursday night. The discussion concerned which Parties have what stakes in voting for or against the Budget Bill. The conclusion was that there was incentive enough for all the other parties to oppose Marc Carney’s Liberal budget.

My question would be to Canadians: how many voters want a no confidence vote six months after an election?

The Parties should be very careful what they ask for. Canadians will not want another federal election in these perilous times. Any Party that is foolish enough to trigger an election will be punished at the polls. This has happened to the NDP before and the most at risk right now are the NDP 7 MPs. The truth is the Carney government was voted in because of NDP members who saw no other safe alternate to a Poilievre deep right catastrophe. We will not appreciate our painful sacrifice being taken lightly. 

There has been a lot of chatter in the various newsletters from non-profit organizations speculating that cuts to the deficit will involve cuts to services for Canadians. However, I have heard PM Carney say clearly and precisely that cuts are to be found within the administration of government departments to reduce duplications and inefficiencies, including mention of cutting back on the hiring of consultants. And clearly and precisely he has said, more than once, that this will specifically be in order to protect services for Canadians and clearly and precisely has listed healthcare, childcare, dentalcare and pharmacare as those services. In addition, he has committed the government to housing the unhoused, the most vulnerable in our society, and re-establishing solid plans for affordable and social housing. These are NDP causes and NDP MPs should be voting for them. 

There has been a lot of talk that we should all be disappointed by the PM’s lack of a grand Climate Action Plan to replace the cancelled carbon tax. I am beginning to suspect that there will not be an announcement of a big bold Climate proposal. He called the carbon tax divisive and it was because the Conservatives saw it as a lovely big bullseye just waiting for the usual conservative lies and manipulations that twisted the attack on carbon into an attack on oil companies and provincial revenues. So not another glitzy, poorly promoted Plan ahead, but instead I expect that every government request for proposals will contain climate action requirements, like heat pumps and solar panels in every new housing project. I know we are disappointed about the delay with an EV push, but let me tell you that just up the road from us Honda is still building a new facility adjacent to its current plant, even though they announced that their EV expansion would be delayed. This was in light of Trump’s meddling in an agreement that wasn’t broken for either country, my words, not theirs.

The other worry has been over indigenous protections in nation building projects. I also expect that every project that infringes on indigenous territories will contain requirements that respect tribal rights to fair royalties, to environmental control, and to training and employment opportunities for the people.

Canadians are not celebrated as risk takers. We may not welcome a growing deficit thrust upon us by outside influences, but we need to see this not as a deficit but as an opportunity, an investment in the future of Canada. More workers with sustainable good paying jobs, more Canadian resources kept at home building Canada’s economy, and stronger Canadian companies, all this means more revenues paid into the federal coffers to offset these expenditures

We are living next to an old rogue elephant on a rampage. The gamble is not in moving ahead, the gamble is what will happen to us if we don’t. 

Warm Regards, Rosalind

To protect the environment of their treaty lands and unceded territories, First Nations have been opposing new dirty mining projects. They know the dangers all too well from the cancerous history of the Alberta Tar Sands development and the continuing water contamination of Grassy Narrows in Ontario, still destroying people’s lives with mercury poisoning. Ford sounds like he is implying that they can have economic security or they can have environmental rights but they can’t have both. This is the perennial story of the failure of Canada, so in thrall to the prosperity of resource development that we recklessly contaminate our air, water, and land, destroying our future. If First Nations can halt that destruction, more power to them. Even if it results in shutting down Ontario with another Idle No More strike.

https://www.thetrillium.ca/news/indigenous-rural-and-northern-affairs/ford-apologizes-for-hat-in-hand-comment-about-first-nations-10836455?utm_source=Email_Share&utm_medium=Email_Share&utm_campaign=Email_Share

Freedom United reports:

Right now, children as young as six are being forced to dig cobalt out of the ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo which ends up in Tesla’s batteries. 

These children are not simply working to survive. We’re talking about children coerced, trafficked, or trapped by debt into digging through narrow, hand-dug tunnels with no safety gear. Many are injured. Some don’t make it out.1

“I saw a boy younger than me buried alive in a tunnel collapse,” one survivor said. “His parents never found his body.” — Cobalt Red, Siddharth Kara2

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893248/red-cobalt-congo-drc-mining-siddharth-kara 

[2] Siddharth Kara, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives (St. Martin’s Press, 2023)

©2025 Freedom United is a registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.

Human Trafficking Search.5400 Glenwood Avenue, Suite G-01, Raleigh, NC 27612 USA

He says he supports the working class while he is systematically forcing the middle class into poverty. He wants them all broke and broken and uneducated to give the M/B have available cheep labour like countries in Asia and Africa. They will at some point be grateful for any job because they will be the lucky ones who are able to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. Those who aren’t working will have nothing. This may sound harsh yet if you consider the consequences of his behaviour, what else can you conclude but that his economic reset is doing exactly what he intends? When he says that little girls don’t need 34 dolls, at the root of this thought is that Americans are obviously making more money than they need if they can throw it away on dolls and pencils. It would be better for the his economy if they got paid less.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/may/04/maga-soft-eugenics?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

https://mailchi.mp/nationalobserver/fzgiupp07g?e=82514c1ad6

I wanted to share with you Chris Hatch’s list of newly elected and re-elected Members of Parliament who are strong, vocal environmentalists. It gives me hope that climate action will not be pushed down the list of urgent issues. So many items are on that list that are vitally important, but without meaningful climate action eventually nothing else will matter.

New MPs:

“Prime Minister Mark Carney. A woke globalist from central casting. A long-time climate advocate, married to even more of a climate advocate. An international envoy on the topic appointed by the UN. A double central banker famous for prodding the titans of finance on their duties to future generations. A global player who’d been arguing the vast majority of fossil fuels need to stay in the ground. And who literally wrote the book on Value(s). “

Shannon Miedema “will represent Halifax for the Liberals. … She shepherded the city’s climate action plan from conception through implementation. … a former president of the Young Naturalists Club of Canada … she rocked her riding with 63 per cent of the vote.”

Gregor Robertson, “former Mayor of Vancouver, founder of Happy Planet and farmer … Before his election as mayor, he was a provincial NDP MLA, so with his victory in Vancouver Fraserview-South Burnaby, he’s completed the trifecta and now been elected to all three levels of government under three different party flags. Robertson was a driving force behind Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Plan … He went on to work for global coalitions of mayors for climate action and then joined Carney’s campaign to revive Canadian environmentalism. He and Miedema are being mooted by those in the know as likely cabinet members.

Eric St. Pierre, BQ, “lover of electric school buses, … executive director of the Trottier Family Foundation for the last nine years. The foundation has supported loads of worthy climate projects across the country … St-Pierre also leveraged his role to co-create a number of other initiatives, including the Climate Champions Initiative, mobilizing $450 million in new climate philanthropy. He also co-founded Low Carbon Cities Canada and will be the new député for honoré-mercier on the Island of Montreal.”

Patrick Bonnie: “Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner … ran for the Bloc Québécois. … elected to represent the riding of Repentigny. … led Quebec’s climate and energy campaign and has over a decade of environmental campaigning experience,” according to “Caroline Brouilette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada (CAN-Rac), “noting that the Bloc endorsed CAN-Rac’s policy proposals in full.”

Returning MPs:

Elizabeth May: “reelected in her riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands by more than seven points over the Liberal candidate and 14 points over the Conservative … started as an environmental lawyer in 1983 and got her first government gig in 1986 — policy advisor to the environment minister in the Mulroney government … was central to the team that landed the 1987 Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer. … she may be a lone Green voice, but she won’t be a quiet one.

Leah Gazan “calls herself “ProudLakota” online, and she’ll be back representing Winnipeg Centre for the NDP. Gazan introduced the Climate Emergency Action Act and it was her motion that forced Parliament to recognize the atrocities of the Indian Residential Schools as genocide. She’s been a tireless advocate for missing Indigenous women and girls and a key advocate for the Red Dress Alert system.” Alexandre Boulerice, NDP Québec, “a reliable climate advocate, will return representing Rosemont-La Petite”.

“Adam van Koeverden is back for the Liberals after winning the new Ontario riding of Burlington North-Milton West … [last term] advocating for a Youth Climate Corps and by the end of the campaign, all parties except the Conservatives had promised to stand up a Climate Corps program.“

“Nathaniel Erskine-Smith was reelected in the Toronto riding of Beaches-East York. … one of the few to openly defend the carbon tax beyond its bitter end. “The lies won,” he wrote in February. “We failed to defend it successfully … We should all be embarrassed that we've let shameless politics kill a system that cost-effectively reduces pollution and ensures the poorest are overwhelmingly made better off.” “

Steven Guilbeault, previously Environment Minister following a long career as an environmental activist, “reelected overwhelmingly by voters in the Montreal riding of Laurier-Sainte-Marie. Guilbeault beat his nearest opponent by over 33 percentage points.”

Johathan Wilkinson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources in the previous government, representing North Vancouver-Capilano, “such a stubborn advocate for cleantech that he’s still driving a hydrogen fuel cell car around North Vancouver.”

Chris Hatch closes by saying “It’s hard to imagine being an elected representative these days. And that’s the point of offering some gratitude this week. We’ll get back to regular programming and crapping on the politicians soon enough. But, for now, in this moment of relief, thank you to all you who stood up.”

According to CBC news, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and wannabe Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre has just campaigned on a promise of ‘100 days of change’ while speaking to a Saskatchewan audience.

PP has been accused of mouthing trump-speak memes and

talking-points before this election and seems determined to continue to the bitter end despite the best efforts of his handlers. All things considered, it is even more tone-deaf as Trump closes in on 100 days of illegal, incompetently conceived, disastrously destructive changes that are jeopardizing the health and financial security of every American — except the M/B class. Canadians have even more to lose if a Conservative-gone-rogue plans to gut our social safety net in order to bribe us with our own money. Having an extra $1.32 a day from tax cuts won’t buy me anything that is worth the dental benefits discount I now receive. Two days might buy me a nutritionally-challenged can of chicken noodle soup, but, let’s face it, if that can of soup is going to mean the difference between one meal and no meal, you aren’t earning enough to get a full or any tax-cut. If PP doesn’t understand even the simplest consequences of his change change change plans, does he even know where it is he is planning to lead Canada? Down the garden path?

Change is not a platform. You can’t take a promise of change to the bank and expect cash back. Good change is good. Bad change is bad. I wonder does Poilievre even know the difference?

I just finished watching the Mark Carney interview on The Professor G Pod on YouTube. Well done on both sides. Intelligent probing questions, articulate, insightful knowledge-based answers. Like his interview with Jon Stewart, this is the format that best shows who he is and what he values. The current, and in nine days one prays, future Prime Minister of Canada knows what he is talking about, knows how to lead in a crisis, knows how to provide for Canada’s future with sensible, doable policies and fully formed action plans. He talked about three first priorities: 1. Integrating 13 provincial and territorial economies into one strong economy, bringing Canada more economic value than trading with the United States has in the past. 2. Building over a million homes for Canadians with the federal focus on putting Canadian resources to work, providing affordable housing, focusing on fast tracking more trades workers, 50% funding of development charges, and GST relief. 3. Making new trading and security agreements with like-minded countries. He also talked about moving our military spending to Canada. He talked about Canada being a member of the Coalition of the Willing in support of Ukraine. He talked about global economics and about how Canada’s diversity is our strength and how this will attract workers from the United States.

That interview was a solid 47minutes of facts, except for the last three questions that told us everything we need to know about Mark Carney as a human being. Watch it and then, for the love of Canada, go vote for your Liberal candidate.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/03/25/news/freeland-tesla-rebates-gaming-system

He didn’t seem that concerned which makes me wonder: 1. does he not understand the problem? 2. does he not intend to hold elections ever again? 3. does he not realize that getting Canadians personally involved was a monumental mistake?

Why does trump want Canada and why will the Republicans, maga or not, have to finally refuse him?

Why? The six largest sovereign states in the world are 1. Russia - 6,601,667 sq.mi.; 2. Canada - 3,855,100 sq.mi; 3. China - 3,705,410 sq.mi; 4. United States - 3,677,647 sq.mi; 5. Brazil - 3,285,862 sq.mi; and, just in case you were wondering, 6. The country a continent of Australia - 2,988,900 sq.mi. (Wikipedia: List of countries and dependencies by area) Even a trump can figure out that if you add Canada’s 3,855,100 sq. mi. to the United States’ 3,677,647 sq.mi. you get 7,532,747 sq. mi., which makes you Ruler in Chief of the biggest country on Earth by almost a million sq. mi. Best yet, you beat out Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s, ann idea which must just thrill trump no end. How sweet is that?

You might have noticed over these many years that trump’s abuse specialty is mean girl nasty digs, like name calling, verbally attacking family members and threatening them by proxy, poking and prodding with his nasty little tongue until he finds the week spot, everybody has a weak spot, then piling it on. If we had been flies on the wall at his meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, I think we would have seen trump in full out mean girl action, then Bingo! he finds the tender spot. He says “ Why not just make Canada our 51st state? It would be doing you a favour. No more tariffs. Would that make you all happy?” He probably started out just niggling Trudeau for fun, big joke, a threatening to steal his favourite toy level of bullying. But then Canadians went mad, mocking him, copying his hat idea, being disrespectful when they should be thanking him for spending all that money saving their sorry asses. We have seen it over and over again, trump’s addled shrinking brain comes up with an incredibly stupid idea, but the more people tell him how unworkable it is, the more he doubles down. Besides what a coup, taking over Canada without a whimper when P.P. gets elected, while Putin is bleeding men and money trying to pacify Ukraine and China still hasn’t taken back Taiwan. That makes him the smartest leader of the biggest country on earth, The Winner!

But … why not? The trump thinks Canada elects their Prime Minister, and will soon elect the name calling, slogan spouting, truth twisting Poilievre in a walk-over. But other than maybe petroleum, NATO spending, and water flows downhill, he doesn’t know anything about Canada. Polls don’t tell the whole story. Canada is a three party system. Conservatives only win when the Liberals and NDP are running neck and neck, not because there are more Conservatives voting. Most Canadians prefer our low crime rates and strong gun control, an armed forces noted for its peacekeeping services, our comprehensive social safety net, Old Age Pensions and the Canada Pension Plan to help save for retirement, Unemployment Insurance, monthly Child Tax Credits, supported childcare, and a Medicare system that doesn’t punish you for getting sick.

Most Canadians would be considered progressives by most Americans. Most Canadians, especially if unwillingly transformed into residents of the 51st state, would never register as Republicans, even long after trump is dead and buried. Creating the state of Canada would be like adding another blue California to the ballot, with roughly the same population and adding the same number of Democrat Representatives to the House. The red states would rightly become the neverending minority. Let’s face it, sorry and all that, but it is never going to happen, certainly not as long as the Republicans hold the trifecta. Even they wouldn’t be that clueless.

1. Canada’s population, now estimated at 40 million, tends to be one tenth of the US pop. Canada’s Covid death toll was 60,000. There was approximately, not ten times, but rather twenty times that number of American Covid deaths. Trudeau was the best PM to steer us through Covid. Masking, lockdowns, free vaccinations, listening to the advice of scientists and health experts, plus the $2,000 a month subsidies for people laid off during lockdown brought Canada through the Pandemic in better shape than many countries. The Truckers Convoy to Ottawa further unified all Canadians who were not anti-vaxers. Now we have taken back the Canadian flag from them. Amazing hiw the people who yell Freedom the loudest, are the most careless about others rights.

2. Covid assaulted our public health care system, which had been weakened by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government cost-cutting prior to Trudeau becoming Prime Minister. There were simply not enough nurses and support staff in the hospitals and Long Term Care Homes to deal with the onslaught of seriously ill and dying patients. In provinces with poorly enforced regulations and minimal inspections of LTC facilities, the elderly were dying in appalling, heart-breaking conditions, until military health units were called in. A number of doctors and many hospital nurses retired after Covid, exhausted and demoralized. They have not been adequately replaced by Conservative provincial governments, like Ontario’s that has promised to fix health care each election but fails to deliver. The provinces badgered the federal government for more Medicare funding then further broke the system to justify paying American-styled for-profit health services companies up to three times as much for joint replacements and other surgeries, while public hospitals have limits placed on the number of surgeries that can be performed annually. I could be too severe, but as I understand it, in Ontario the extra federal funding went into reserves that then payed every taxpayer a $200 tax rebate just before the most recent provincial election. Bribing us with our own money.

3. By the way, former Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is now Chairman of the International Democracy Union, IDU, a global support group for right of centre to right-wing conservative parties (Wikipedia). Some members are currently in government like the GOP, while some are still in waiting, like the Conservative Party of Canada with Poilievre as its representative. The IDU members seem to have a problem settling on ac definition of democracy.

4. Canadians are good at forgiving and forgetting. We now have close ties with Germany and Japan. We recognize that it took only one third of Americans to carry maga, trump, and the 2025 bible to the White House. We went through the trucker convoy’s occupation of the streets in front of the Parliament buildings so we know people can be easily led astray by montebanks and opportunists. We are just waiting for the magas to come out of their massive group trance and the Democrats to get the House and Senate back in order. We may not be trusting BFFs anymore, having realized the need to watch our backs and expand our social circle, but we have friends and family across the border, and we wish them the best. We are well aware of who the villain is.

I believe Poilievre is acting out his anti-tariffs, anti-trump position with trump’s full approval and collusion. The first time this seemed obvious was when the polls started to turn and then again when the polls showed the Liberals definitely in the lead and the Conservatives in a nose-dive. Each time trump has said, “Poilievre is being mean to me”. But then he says “that’s okay, I don’t care”. No red face, no invective, no retaliation, no petty little name games, even with a name that would lend itself to that, P.P. And then trump says he would rather go up against the Liberals than the Conservatives and the next day that is Poilievre’s talking point. Almost as if he was prepared in advance?

As the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, the currently named Conservative Party of Canada was a member, and the GOP still is a member, of the IDU, the International Democracy Union. The IDU, according to Wikipedia, “is an international alliance of centre-right to right-wing political parties. Headquartered in Munich, Germany, the IDU consists of 84 full and associate members from 65 countries. It is chaired by Stephen Harper”. Where the members are governing parties, (as listed in Wikipedia) some appear to be centre right and currently stable like New Zealand, but other governments mentioned, like Romania, USA, and Serbia, appear to be having trouble with their definition of democracy, as I understand it

But this is a very dangerous game if you can be shown to have caused the crash or that you had insider knowledge of a spectacular rise in value. Remember Martha Stewart who got just a little stick tip? Illegal insider trading can result in jail time and fines, scaled to the severity of the offence.

To recap: if someone knowingly tanks a stock or the whole stock market or even just causes a dramatic dip in values, then buys the stock at bargain basement prices, then reverses their actions that caused the dip or the crash so the stocks rebound to their previous value or even a buoyed value and then sell at the top, fortunes are made and lives are ruined. Look at a diagram of the markets’ highs and lows over the past months. What would you call that? And who are the insiders making fortunes on every dip and rise? Maybe everything else is a distraction and this is what explains the on again off again tariffs? Just another scam.

There is now an American version of HIGNFY with people from the Daily Show as the regular cast, also available on YouTube. And Saturday Night Live gets better ratings when politics is the narrative. Can we still tell the difference between entertainment and reality, especially when we are used to watching “reality” TV shows that aren’t fully scripted until they hit the editing room. Then think of all the political thrillers you may have watched over the years. Designated Survivor especially comes to mind. Trump is more and more like a Bond villain. His actions are pure evil but his behaviour and appearance are so over the top it was hard to take him seriously, until it wasn’t. Even his first term was mostly one big joke because he made constant promises but achieved nothing except for the tax grab for his fellow billionaires. Otherwise it was regular infrastructure announcements that never happened by a man still dressed as the star of a “reality” TV show. Some of trump’s voters used to say things like he is so funny, he is just saying that to be funny, he doesn’t mean it, or, biggest lie yet as it turns out, he cares about us. Now, none of what he does is funny. He cares about no one, even his children and grandchildren are just supporting actors and his wife is paid for appearances as the FOTUS. People, families will be out on the streets, crime will definitely rise because people will have no hope, children will begin dying of malnutrition like in other countries we see in the News. All brought to us on the same screen as late night talk shows, Saturday Night Live, and The Apprentice. Funny once, not funny anymore. It’s time to take this clown seriously.

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This whole sorry episode explains the behaviour of trump’s children. If your father’s stress release is to explode in tirades of furious invective against whichever child is near-by, they would each just be grateful when someone else is in the line of fire: classic abused family dynamics. The children clearly developed their own survival mechanisms. Ivanka the perfect. Tiffany the rebel. Donald Jr condemned to be the wannabe bully and slayer of marmots. And Poor Eric, the family sacrifice, the one who was not fast enough to recognize the warning signs and disappear from view, so the usual butt of his father’s pent up fury.

The awful thing is that trump thinks this behaviour is one of his powers and, even worse, you could tell that he was enjoying it, publicly yelling at the man that others laud as the hero of the free world. Great television, he said. Just being the hero of, in his mind, the powerless fools and patsies that he so easily manipulates, can’t be as gratufying. He wants respect and fearful gratitude from European leaders. He wants to be king of the western world with all his subjects quaking in their boots whenever his reptilian gaze turns in their direction. Well fuck you drumpf, that story has already been written and the folks of the Shire won.

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