Poilievre struggles to stay relevant on defence, CBC can't say women and more...

At times, being the Leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition can be the hardest job in politics.

Being leader of the opposition is hard, especially when the government does something your voters would generally support. That’s the position that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre found himself in after Prime Minister Mark Carney announced an increase in military funding.

Carney announced that he was boosting military spending by $9 billion, shifting the Coast Guard over to the Department of Defence and making other moves to hit Canada’s 2% of GDP NATO target this fiscal year.

Even though Poilievre never made such a promise during the election, a Conservative can’t be seen opposing more funding for the military at this point. Which left Poilievre and his team saying they will support the government on this move, but they want a budget to be tabled immediately.

It’s a position that allows them to differentiate themselves from the Liberals a bit, but the problem is, the average voter doesn’t care. Most voters, not the partisans who debate politics daily, but the average swing voters who actually decide elections won’t care.

Carney and his team have promised a budget in the fall, as long as he delivers on that; this won’t be an issue.

As I detailed in my Toronto Sun column, the increase in overall defence spending is massive.

I’ve spoken to people who are rightly concerned that the money be spent wisely, because speeding things up could lead to fraud, corruption or just bad decisions. So somewhere between shoveling money out the back door of DND and the slow, plodding ways they normally spend money in buying new equipment will do.

I’ve also been told that we should expect the government point to even more military spending by the time the NATO summit comes around in mid-June. Several NATO members are pushing for 5% of GDP to be spent on defence, Britain’s PM, Keir Starmer, is even talking about preparing for war.

This announcement takes some pressure off of Canada, but not all of it.

Why can’t CBC call pregnant people women...

We are in the midst of an ongoing campaign to erase women from our language. It’s not politically correct to speak out against this, but I’m not going to stop.

My TV was mistakenly on CBC for the Oilers horrific defeat last night and by the end of the game I wasn’t paying attention as the broadcast switched to CBC’s The National. In a story about measles and the danger for mother and child during pregnancy, CBC kept referring to “pregnant people.”

It’s not the first time they’ve done this, and they aren’t alone. As I detail in this post, the Canadian Medical Association Journal has done this, even CTV and other private media outlets.

They can’t say pregnant women, it has to be people even though we all know men can’t get pregnant.

What to read...

Sam Cooper has been doing great work on the issue of fentanyl in this country from the impact on communities, to the super labs, to the money laundering. Most of our chattering classes have been scoffing since Donald Trump said Canada is a problem on the fentanyl front, but others like myself and Sam have looked at the evidence. Over at The Bureau, he’s got a piece showing the Biden Administration raising the issue two years ago.

You may have seen the clips online of our new Minister of Public Safety, Gary Anandasangaree, not being able to answer basic questions on his file. Tristan Hopper documents just how bad it is for National Post, take a look.

Should our health system be looking to improve your quality of life? Jerry Agar the great talk radio host and regular writer for us at the Toronto Sun, says yes, and too often that isn’t the focus, so he’s applauding some changes he’s seeing after two successful knee surgeries.