Do we get an election on Monday, Poilievre and the media, and major PR not projects...

Plus what a beautiful country we live in.

As I’m starting to write this, the sun is just starting to break here in Fredericton as I sit looking out across the Saint John River. The water is peaceful, the scene is calming and joyful and I am thankfully toasty warm inside.

We live in an incredibly beautiful country and I know I’m lucky to travel it - read to the end for a photo of what it all looks like when I finished writing.

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In 2012 I published a book called CBC Exposed that sold about 5,000 copies and showed why we don’t need a publicly funded broadcaster. Well, 2012 is a long time ago and things have changed, the book is out of date and I’ve had people ask me to update it.

That process will take a long time, but this week, paid subscribers will get an updated chapter on CBC’s abuse of taxpayer money and detailing all the extra money they pull in. Updating the whole book will take some time, but to show my gratitude, you will be able to download this updated chapter by the end of the week.

I’ve also fixed the pricing options to Canadian dollars - there were technical reasons this couldn’t happen earlier - but this issue has now been fixed.

Thank you again, all of you, for your support in whatever form that comes in.

Are we headed for an election…

In a minority Parliament there is always the possibility of an election but specifically we have a number of budget votes coming up that have people rightfully wondering.

There’s a budget vote scheduled for Monday evening and I believe the second is slated for Tuesday afternoon. All of this subject of course to the schedule in the House of Commons changing or being adjusted.

Both Carney and Poilievre have their own plans, their own agendas, though I think the Liberals want an election right now far more than the Conservatives do - they’ve told me they don’t want one.

Even with Chris d’Entremont’s dramatic floor crossing, Prime Minister Mark Carney still doesn’t have the votes. BTW, I’ve detailed why the media narrative on this event is wrong here and here.

Will there be more floor crossings?

That’s possible, we know the Liberals have put a lot of time and effort into trying to pick up MPs in all parties knowing this could give them the majority they want without the price, hassle and risk of an election. That said, I think if Conservative MPs were thinking of doing this then it would have happened in the almost two weeks since d’Entremont crossed the floor.

We could have other MPs cross, some abstain, some not show up, but we could also have an election.

Mike Donison is a long time politico, he’s served as a young political staffer, he’s held top positions in the Conservative Party and he was there when Joe Clark’s government fell. As he describes in this video while speaking to a group of university students, no one thought the Clark government would fall on their budget in 1979, it didn’t make sense that they would and then…it happened.

Have a listen.

There is more to this story and the video, if you want to hear more you can click on the X account of Professor Geoffrey Sigalet from UBC Okanagan.

Bottomline, an election is unlikely, but still very possible.

There are 343 individuals working on their own agendas, there own ambition and not just what is good for the party or good for the country, meaning anything could happen.

Should Poilievre pushback against the media…

This is an ongoing debate that arose again after Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pushed back against media questions this past week against d’Entremont. He asked, with a smile on his face and in a good natured way where their stories were about Liberal Party strife be it MP Nate Erskine-Smith being highly critical of the budget or my writing about Liberal MPs being unhappy with Carney and causing him problems.

He joked that he was sure they would be chasing Liberals up and down the hallways of Parliament and would camp outside their offices as they’ve done with Conservatives.

Of course none of that happened and Poilievre’s statements were rhetorical and to a degree mocking. There was some coverage of these things, Vassy Kapelos asked Liberal MP Jonathan Wilkinson about my writing that he was unhappy when he appeared on CTV’s Question Period, but there wasn’t a ton of looking at Liberal issues.

Both parties have trouble on the inside at the moment, I say cover both.

Now, should Poilievre have acted that way when he was holding a news conference. I have no issue with it and wrote that in the Toronto Sun, but others see it differently.

Every Friday morning, just after 8 ET, I join Bill Carrolls show on 580 CFRA in Ottawa, my old stomping grounds. Bill took a different point of view than me, that when Poilievre does this, it doesn’t help him win new voters over, it helps him with his base but keeps swing voters away.

It’s an interesting chat and we really get into it in the second half of the segment.

Major projects or major public relations…

I’m sitting walking distance from the office for the Sisson Mine project and about a 45 minute drive away from the mine itself. This was one of the major projects that Mark Carney gave his prime ministerial blessing to on Thursday of last week as part of his major projects announcement.

The last time the Liberals made this much of a deal of approving a mine was in 2017 when they approved the Sisson Mine project.

This image was all over X after Carney’s announcement.

You will note that the project was supposedly approved eight years ago and nothing has happened.

One of the things that shocked me as Carney made his big announcement last week is that he said these projects on his list may not go ahead, they still need approvals. What is the purpose of these lists then, these announcements?

I keep saying it and some may be getting sick of hearing it, but Mark Carney continues to fail to live up to his own words and his own hype. As I noted in my column in the Sun on this issue, the Americans are taking off with approvals and revamping their economy well beyond tariffs and we are still drawing up lists of projects that may or may not happen.

We need major projects, we need approvals and all we are getting is major PR for Mark Carney on our dime.

Not talking to Trump on purpose…

A bizarre piece in the Toronto Star this weekend claims that “Not negotiating is the new black.”

It’s a defence of the fact that Mark Carney isn’t talking to Donald Trump anymore. That’s not Carney’s choice, Trump cut off negotiations citing Doug Ford’s ad but was noted by Trump’s own team was really about frustration with Canada’s negotiating tactics.

This delay in getting a deal and normalizing relations with the U.S. is costing jobs and keeping regular business investment away, but for the Star, it’s all good.

Carney isn’t worried about not talking to Trump after earlier boasting about being in constant contact, it’s cool!

This is like the teenager, rejected by their crush, pretending nothing is the matter. If it weren’t so serious, if real jobs weren’t on the line, it would be funny, but it’s not.

Such a breathtaking country…

When I started writing this an hour ago, the sun was starting to crack the horizon, now there is no sun, just snow gently falling and making it harder to see the other side of the Saint John River.

Winter is still new this year, I know I will tire of it at some point, but for now, it is beautiful, just like Canada. We have problems with our political leadership, but this country is still wonderful and breathtaking.