SpankyMcFarland

Perhaps they can. They do nearly everything well. I happen to think Australia is a more realistic standard for us to aim for.

Donald Trump has been engaged in blatant law-breaking all his adult life. Fraud is as intrinsic to his identity as bronzer. Just read the NYT on his family’s litany of tax evasion going back decades. His company’s accountant went to prison way too late. Any MAGA fan who criticizes the propriety of Carney’s financial arrangements needs to have a long talk with the man in the mirror.

Our health system is in trouble, no doubt, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Once you manage to see your GP and get past the teeming multitudes in the ER, good care still awaits. We have wonderful hospitals, eleven making a recent list of the world’s best 250 with TGH at number three which is really impressive. VGH is at number 144. https://rankings.newsweek.com/worlds-best-hospitals-2025 Many other excellent institutions didn’t make the list such as Foothills in Calgary. A relative of mine was at death’s door after a four year battle with lung cancer. He was put on the targeted therapy drug Tagrisso which costs a small fortune. The result was miraculous. He enjoyed five more years of good health with his family. I can remember when lung cancer was a diagnosis that gave you months to live. Our biggest challenges lie in the ER and primary care. Patients in the ER need to be immediately triaged. Of course, a big driver of the ER crisis is a lack of primary care. That has to be addressed with far more urgency. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we need to expand a separate for-profit private sector in Canadian health care.

The gold bugs weren’t a large social movement. Social media has brought a lot of distrust together and amplified it. Crypto may be a fad but human alienation from an increasingly automated economy is only going to grow.

It’s still a factor, though.

It’s difficult for me to accept America’s betrayal of Ukraine, Europe and liberty. I feel I’m going to wake up any moment and escape from this nightmare.

Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland are micro-countries compared to ours. They don’t have the challenge of delivering care across a subcontinent. The country I’d like us to match is Australia, similar in magnitude, politics and culture with an indigenous population that has special challenges. We’re falling behind them too. They have a mixed system of public and private care.

The lesson so far is that they haven’t been prepared to go beyond their tribal base. It’s not exactly news that 40% wouldn’t be enough this time.

The electoral mood has switched from angry to frightened. Have the Tories really addressed that?

Poilievre has to sparkle tonight but he would have been better off establishing a warmer persona before this and ‘reluctantly’ going into full snark mode in the debates. As it is, any sharpness now may deter some of the voters he needs against his reassuring, avuncular opponent.

Sir, have you no decency? Will you ignore criterion as the singular form of the noun?

This night wasn’t just about attacking the Liberals of course. Poilievre needed to depress the BQ vote and Singh needed Poilievre to scare people on healthcare. Carney won by not losing.

They’ve got the seats and they’ve got the polling numbers.

I keep on mixing up the Greens and NDP in my head which shows how far the NDP have fallen.

It’s a matter of opinion. I just feel Ford comes across as warmer than Poilievre or Carney, less liable to criticize or correct.

That would elevate Poilievre and give both him and Carney more time to speak which is not what Carney needs, obviously.

You can get French lessons in both of those countries.

The Green co-leader is blaming Tory and BQ supporters for the decision: It looks like the Greens never intended to run all those candidates.

If I was harbouring dreams of leading the country I’d be taking French lessons every day. Carney should have been at this years ago. Both true. His imperfect French is well known to everybody. He just has to avoid saying something ridiculous which can easily occur.

It’s going to be tested more rigorously in a debate where multiple people are sniping at him at once. Even in English, he sometimes takes a long time to answer questions and can pause in the middle of a sentence for what seems an eternity. He wasn’t chosen for his eloquence. Blanchet could easily switch to incomprehensible remarks and turns of phrase to show Carney up although that might backfire.

Trump is a lawless fraud who has been stiffing anybody near him all his life.

The Greens failed to meet the criteria to qualify. If they’d been let in the PPC should have been allowed too. I can’t see how this benefits Carney at all. The fewer the candidates, the more attention on the French lessons.

He’s a likeable extrovert which is the best place to start as a politician. In addition, he has an everyman persona despite his privileged upbringing. When brother Rob ran against Miller you wouldn’t have guessed who was raised in modest circumstances.

Do you think he could ever lead the federal Tories? His mix of policies is clearly highly successful at the ballot box but he’s burned a lot of bridges in this campaign.

This growing alienation created the opportunity for the current charlatan in the White House. It’s nearly all bad.