Poilievre's Plummeting Polling

The CPC is polling just a hair below 30%, and Pierre Poilievre's "favourability" as next PM is now tied with "Undecided" at 18%.  Add to that, another CPC MP just announced they are leaving elected office - the 7th MP to leave caucus since last year's election. 

I'm not sitting here writing this to gloat over the smouldering ashes of Poilievre's leadership career.  Frankly, that's not the point at all.

No, this is about the much more bizarre reactions I am seeing online to this.  Instead of seeing CPC supporters rationally saying "hey, this isn't working, we need to make changes", a lot of them are doubling down - getting angry at Carney instead.  I see comments like "how come nobody's talking about the departures from the Liberals?", or "Carney's done nothing for Canada".  

I don't actually care what your opinion of Carney is.  I don't particularly like Carney, but I also really don't like Poilievre.  So what?  

The issue is that ever since the election, Poilievre has been on a downward spiral in his personal popularity.  That has dragged the party down in the polls as well.  Polling at 30% is getting down to the CPC's "core base support" - meaning it's mostly coming from the prairie provinces.  A look at 338 Canada's current projection map supports that conclusion.  

Yes, I know - land doesn't vote, people do.  But look at that map for a moment - outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the CPC simply doesn't hold a whole lot of support - it's concentrated in the Prairie provinces mostly.  This is very much reflective of the problem we saw for years with Reform and Canadian Alliance (Reform, with different logos).  While they swept the Prairie provinces, they struggled to make real inroads.  Under Poilievre, a party which garnered its largest proportion of seats in years in the 2025 election is now set to retreat to its old stomping grounds as a "Prairie rump party".  

Great ... you'll have secured the Prairie provinces, where apparently getting elected has more to do with the colour of your shirt than anything else.  At this point, people in Ontario and Quebec have made it pretty clear where they stand, and it's not with Poilievre.  

But the problem for the CPC doesn't end when Poilievre resigns as leader.  Like Andrew Scheer, it seems he's likely to stick around as MP, and will continue to be a drag on party perception unless he simply goes quiet.  

The problem the CPC is now facing is in fact the same fundamental problem that makes Alberta's UCP so toxic:  policy wise, it has been taken over by a highly radicalized fringe movement.  A new leader not only has to deal with that fringe, but they somehow have to find a way to shift the party's direction away from the far right.  I am not convinced that is likely to happen.  I don't see anyone in the CPC's "front line" that is capable of not only sounding reasonable, but in fact being able to redirect the party away from the Trumpian cliff Poilievre has set it hurtling towards. 

Journalists Missing The Picture

I woke up this morning to CBC's Jason Markusoff and The Toronto Star's Richard Warnica talking about Alberta separatism on the Front Burner podcast.  As I listened to the discussion, I found myself getting increasingly angry at the fact that neither of the two speakers seemed to have a clue what is really going on, and were "puzzled" by the apparent lack of a full throated federalist campaign against the separatists.

There is an answer here, and it's not the one you think it is.  If you are expecting a "Federal Prime Minister vs Separatist Premier" grudge match as we've seen in past Quebec referendums, you're misunderstanding the picture on the ground in Alberta. 

Anti-Transgender Hate Arguments

So, the other day, I ran across a new anti-trans group here in Alberta (shocker, I know).  This one calls itself "Women and Girls Alberta".  As you might expect, they make the usual assortment of arguments as to why transgender women have to be shoved out of society.  

Now, a few things caught my attention, and I think warrant a moment or two of my time to comment on.  

First is their discussion about crime and in particular violence towards women.

The opening assertion here is that recognizing trans women somehow erodes women's safety.  I want to be clear here:  I don't think anybody is here to discount the impact of violence on women - least of transgender women.  There's a "yabbut" here though: they are going to proceed to claim that transgender women present unique dangers to women because ... they had a penis once. 

There are a series of claims made in this type of argument to establish alleged danger, and I'm going to go through them and explain the problems with the claim and the evidence upon which that claim is based.  

Alberta, BC, and Ottawa All Walk Into A Bar ...

This is mostly going to be me processing yesterday's announcements in Alberta and BC.  I haven't quite worked out what I think of it all yet, and maybe by the end of this I will have come to some kind of conclusion ... I'm not sure.  What follows is going to be, at best, slightly ordered stream of consciousness writing.  

So, what was announced?  Well, basically, BC got a whole bunch of Federal funding for some major infrastructure projects with a guarantee that the Tanker Ban would remain in place; and Alberta got a commitment to build what amounts to a third line along the TransMountain pipeline route.  

But that's far from the whole story here.

Charter Challenges Of An Anti-Transgender Law

This is part of a series on potential paths of legal challenge for anti-transgender laws in Canada: 

1. Anti-Transgender Laws Are Jim Crow Laws
2. Legal Challenges of an Anti-Transgender Law

In the first post of this series, I claimed that anti-transgender laws are in many respects about segregation and humiliation much like the racist Jim Crow Laws were.  Yes, I realize that the US legal environment is quite different from Canada's - the point here is to draw a comparison that I think is broadly understood by most. 

In this post, I will explore several avenues through which the law can in fact be challenged, both in the presence of, and in the absence of, the invocation of the NotwithStanding Clause (S33).  

Anti-Transgender Laws Are "Jim Crow" Laws

This is part of a series of posts sketching out legal paths for challenging anti-transgender laws in Canada.

1. Anti-Transgender Laws Are Jim Crow Laws
2. Charter Challenges of an Anti-Transgender Law

Laws do not exist in a vacuum - the cleverest of legal arguments are often decoupled from the human experience and day to day lives of people.  Therefore, laws must be understood in the context of the society in which they exist, as well as the legal frameworks in place. 

"Jim Crow" laws were laws passed in various states to create a segregation between white people and people of colour in the United States.  These were the laws that forced black people to sit at the back of the public transit bus, or required them to use specific bathrooms (sound familiar?) or drinking fountains.  They also enabled businesses to refuse service to people based on such characteristics. 

I would hope, that in today's world, such laws are seen as the injustices they are - laws designed to target people based on characteristics - humiliating, segregating, and ultimately criminalizing their existence.  In today's Canada, S15 of The Charter specifically prohibits that kind of legislation.  

Anti-transgender laws are, in this writer's opinion, very much the "new Jim Crow" laws.  Largely they are based on ginned up fears of the "dangers" that the targeted group represents for society.  I'm going to walk through why these laws should be invalidated in Canada, and I will do so by deriving a possible test that could be used to objectively identify a "Jim Crow" law, regardless of whom is targeted. 

The Smith Referenda In October

Albertans face a daunting prospect on October 19 - not one, but 10 referendum questions that they will vote on.  On the agenda are a passel of manufactured issues ranging from "control over immigration" to "appointing judges", all topped off with a whipped turd froth of a separation question. 

There are good reasons to be skeptical of all of these referendum questions.  Not the least of which is the complexity of them.  Each one is lengthy reading on its own, and is crafted to confuse the average person reading them.  My intuitive reaction is to suggest that on the basis of the wording being less than clear, that it is utterly appropriate to vote 'No' on the first 9 questions and "A" on the separation question.   That is basically voting for status quo.