How come tariffs are affecting the price of coffee in Canada?

Coffee prices are on the rise, and suppliers are blaming ... US tariffs.

Hold on, you say, the USA doesn't produce any coffee (well, a little bit in Hawai'i and Puerto Rico). Aren't we just blaming tariffs for everything, just like we used to blame the pandemic for everything?

Well, yes and no.

Coffee prices have been rising for some months, even years, largely due to heat, drought, storms and other poor weather conditions in big producing countries like Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam, etc, due to climate change and La Niña conditions. As a result, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that world coffee prices rose nearly 40% in 2024.

But, while most of Canada's unroasted coffee imports come from Brazil, Colombia and Honduras, most of its roasted coffee does in fact come from the USA, mainly because American companies are much more geared up and dominate the supply chain for the whole of North America.

The US, as mentioned, imports 99% of it's coffee (some of which it then re-exports to Canada, Mexico, etc), and it has imposed tariffs on most of its major coffee suppliers: Brazil (50% tariffs), Colombia (10% tariffs, liable to increase), Vietnam (20% tariffs), etc. So, American coffee prices are suddenly more expensive, which manifests as higher prices for countries, like Canada, that imports from the US. 

Big suppliers like Brazil that are strongly affected by US tariffs are also further affecting the supply pricing structure as they hold onto their coffee beans in the hope of future improvements in the tarrif landscape, thereby tightening available supply and worsening prices still further.

It gets even worse: Canada imposed a 25% counter-tariff in US imports (including coffee) back in March of this year, so the already inflated import prices are even higher as a result.

Although a 3c increase on a cup of Tim Hortons is not a big deal, despite the outcry, a bag of coffee in the supermarket has seen a much larger price increase (28% according to August figures from Statistics Canada). Either way, even these combined price increases are not going to mean that coffee consumption will actually go down in any significant way; after all, we are all pretty much addicted by this point. We'll just kvetch more about the cost.

Is Mamdani the saviour of the American left, or its bane?

New York City is going through what might be called "interesting times". And I don't mean the Yankees reeling from a defeat by the Toronto Blue Jays en route to the World Series.

On November 4th, the city votes for a new Mayor to replace the scandal-plagued Eric Adams, and the favourite is not (equally scandal-plagued) ex-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (standing as an Independent after he lost the Democratic nomination), nor the uninspiring and ageing Republican Curtis Sliwa, but the youthful socialist firebrand Zohran Mamdani.

With a double-digit lead in the polls, just over a week ahead of the vote (advance voting has already begun), upstart Mamdani has a clear run to the position of Mayor of America's largest and most important city. As the 34-year old son of Ugandan-Indian immigrants, a Muslim, and a declared democratic socialist, he is perhaps an unlikely candidate for such an important and influential job. But he is a three-term member of the New York state assembly, and no political neophyte. He is smart, charismatic and he positively oozes authenticity.

Mamdani has battled his way to this position on a platform of taxing the wealthy (including a special 5.9% income tax on millionaires, and a sharp increase in corporate taxes), freezing rents, and offering free buses and childcare, an unabashedly socialist stance that seems to have struck a chord with New Yorkers, particularly the younger generation. He has made no secret of his pro-Palestine, anti-Israel views in a city where Jewish money has always spoken very loudly.

He is the epitome of the kind of progressive politician Donald Trump hates and, if elected, he can expect a huge battle with Trump, who has no qualms about interfering in municipal and state politics. Indeed, Trump has already loosed the opening salvos in anticipation of the election, calling Mamdani a "100% Communist lunatic", and has already threatened to cut federal funding to the city should Mamdani be elected. Nothing daunted, Mamdani has lambasted Trump and his ICE agents, saying "His authoritarian administration is waging a scorched-earth campaign of retribution against any who dared opposed him". You can expect the tone of the debate to deteriorate from here.

Mamdani has even set the cat among the pigeons within the Democratic party itself. Neither Chuck Schumer nor Hakeem Jeffries (Democrat leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives respectively), representing the old-school centrist Democratic tradition, have come out to endorse Mr. Mamdani, although New York state Governor Kathy Hochul (herself a centrist, although less old-school) has, and there are signs that rank-and-file Democrats may be moving more towards Mamdani's more radical opinions, and away from the perceived cautiousness of Schumer and Jeffries.

It should be mentioned, though, that Mr. Mamdani is starting to temper some of his more exteme views, as the promise of such a high-profile position beckons. For example, he has apologized for calling the New York Police Department "racist, anti-queer, and a major threat to public safety", and supporting calls for its defunding. He has also said that he would actively discourage pro-Palestinian activists from using the contentious phrase "globalize the intifada", which he once espoused himself.

However, many federal Democrats still worry that a socialist experiment in New York led by Mr. Mamdani might reflect badly on the Democratic Party when it comes to mid-term elections next year. Others, though, wonder whether Mamdani is in fact the face of the future, and maybe a way out of Trumpism. Interesting times indeed.

Ontario anti-tariff ad is not fake, but was still ill-advised

Donald Trump has had another temper tantrum and called an abrupt halt to the ongoing trade negotiations between Canada the US.

The reason this time? A prime-time advertisement on American television paid for by the province of Ontario, using parts of a 1987 national address by then President Reagan, critical o9f tariffs and in favour of free trade. Trump freaked out when he saw the ad, calling it "FAKE" and "egregious", later adding that Reagan "LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY".

Well, I'm not sure he is certain about the meaning of egregious, but the video is certainly not fake, and Reagan certainly did not love tariffs, only using them very sparingly in cases of absolute necessity (e.g. against Japan, which was the occasion for the address to the nation sampled in the Ontario ad). 

The Reagan video clips are quite real. His words are not altered in any way. The only thing that has been changed from the original address is the order in which Reagan's various statements occurred. I'm not sure why this was done - presumably the producers of the advertisement felt the rearranged clips had more dramatic effect - or why the BBC felt it important to explain this in great detail in their investigation and analysis of the ad.

And, of course, some of the address has also been cut out completely, in order to make a 5-minute speech fit a 1-minute ad. But none of the deleted parts negate in any way the import and sense of Reagan's comments. In fact, as the BBC analysis shows, most of what was left out would have made the anti-tariff point even more strongly. So, the claims of the Ronald Reagan Foundation that the ad is "misleading", in some unexplained way, seems incorrect too.

All that being said, I still wish that the ad had not been broadcast, and that Ontario Premier Doud Ford would stop sticking his oar into international politics. He is just making the job of the real trade negotiators harder than it need be. Ford is trying to live upto the Captain Canada persona some admirers have labelled him with, but, in reality, he is just a provincial premier with very limited power and influence, and he really needs to stay in his own lane. Mr. Sensitivity he is not.

UPDATE

Ford has grudgingly agreed to take the ads down, presumably after Mark Carney and his negotiating team had strong words with him.

UPDATE UPDATE

Because Ford didn't take the ads down quick enough (or so Trump says), Trump has not only stopped all trade negotiations, but has slapped an extra 10% tarriff on everything "because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act". 

So, any pretence of American tariffs being imposed for economic or national security reasons has now gone. But, in the absence of a court ruling specifically disallowing them, the tariffs stand, illegal or not.

Once again, Trump called the Ontario ad "fraudulent", "crooked" and "possibly AI", and reiterated his belief that "Ronald Reagan LOVED tariffs". None of that is true, as I'm sure Trump really knows. But what is true is that Doug "Bull in a China Shop" Ford should keep his butt out of sensitive international negotiations. He is not up to the task. *Sigh*

Blue Jays fans get creative

In case you didn't hear, the Toronto Blue Jays are in the Major League Baseball's World Series for the first time since 1993, first game tonight at the Rogers Centre against the Los Angeles Dodgers. It's big deal here - and even throughout the rest of Canada - and thousands of closet Jays fans (including me) have suddenly come out.

Thing is, it's such a big deal that ticket prices for home games have gone through the (retractible) roof. Initial ticket offerings sold out within hours. There have been the usual stories of touts and scammers buying up the much sought-after tickets online and immediately re-selling them at three or four times the price. There have been stories of real fans trying to buy tickets and being booted out at the payment stage under suspicion of being an automated bot (because, yes, that's a thing too, these days).

Resale tickets are going for up to $10,000, even $15,000 a piece. One lower bowl seat was being offered at $32,609. The very cheapest seats are currently selling for about $1,300 on StubHub. Toronto Mayor - oops, sorry, Ontario premier Doug Ford - has been musing about bringing in laws to limit the resale price of tickets by scalpers and gougers for events like these, but that won't help people this week, and once the event is over Ford will probably conveniently forget about all his righteous outrage (remember, he very scrapped a very similar law proposed by the Liberals when he first took office in 2019).

But some people are getting creative about getting hold of the golden tickets.

Flights to LA from Toronto are currently around $400, and you can probably find accommodation there for less than the $280 average hotel price. Given that the cheapest seats to the LA games are much cheaper (around $860), Dodgers fans being much more used to World Series appearances, you could see a game in California for around the same price you can in Toronto, which is kind of ridiculous. Of course, you also run the risk of being finger-printed, arrested, deported, and God knows that else...

Rooms in the Toronto Marriott City Centre Hotel with rooms overlooking the field of play are expensive, at around $4,000 a night (and up), but they can accommodate up to 5 people, so individuals could only pay $800 (and up) each. I doubt those are still available though.

Some people have started up GoFundMe campaigns to accumulate the cash needed for a ticket from generous souls who may or may not know them, one or two dollars at a time, and some of those have well surpassed their goals.

Then, there is something called "district drops", good tickets offered at preferential prices to those subscribing to a Blue Jays promotional text subscription scheme.

And finally, you could just trust to luck and hope for last minute price drops - and I mean VERY last minute - through Ticketmaster, as they look to unload unsold tickets. But given everything else that is going on, and the general baseball hysteria in the city, I really wouldn't rely on that.

I only hope all these people are not disappointed.

Dr. Oz explains MAGA Math

After Donald Trump promised to reduce American drug prices "by 1,400, 1,500%", most people were left scratching their heads. Wouldn't that make them free? Or rather, wouldn't drug companies be paying customers significant amounts to take their drugs? Can you really reduce prices by more than 100% of the price?

He left it to ex-talk show host and now boss of America's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz, to explain Trunp's higher math to us mere mortals.

"The President does the calculation by saying, 'OK, if a drug was $100 and you reduce it by $50, it's 100% cheaper because you're taking $50 off and left with only $50 ... they're equal, so it's 100%' ". Clear?

When asked about how a 1,500% reduction would work, Oz explained, "Well, if you take a drug that is $200 or $240 like we did last week and reduce it to $10, those are the numbers you're talking about". Okaaaay...

Still shaking my head.

Dead Internet Theory sounds entirely plausible

While I am on the subject of inexplicable mass cultural movements, here's another one that seems to have passed me by until now. Dead Internet Theory has been around since the late 2010s, but gained serious traction in 2021. Yes, it's a conspiracy theory, but one with a plausible ring to it, like the idea that we are all living in a Matrix-like computer simulation.

The idea is that, if it sometimes seems like the internet, and the social media part of it in particular, is all so predictable and soulless that it may as well be generated by bots and AI, well, that's because it is. Believers in the theory believe that the vast majority of internet traffic, posts and users are actually bots and AI-generated content, and that humans no longer shape the direction of the inernet.

The theory was propelled into the mainstream by an article by Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic in 2021, in which she talked about an internet that felt "empty and devoid of people" and "entirely sterile", largely because aggressive "algorithmic curation" and "content farms", particularly on sites like Twitter and Facebook, made it feel like the whole internet was comprised of the same threads and memes. And that was BEFORE ChatGPT started...

Backing this up is the 2024 Imperva Threat Research report, which concluded that almost 50% of traffic on the internet now comes from automated bots, most of them so-called "bad bots", involved with transaction fraud, data scraping and harvesting. Of course, that could be fake news too; it's increasingly hard to tell.

So, is the dull commercial slop that seems to make up much of the internet today actually mainly machine-generated? Are most of the people you interact with online day to day actually not humans at all? Is the internet really dead? How would we ever know? Given the mad popularity of viral memes like Shrimp Jesus, Raptor Jesus and Foul Bachelor Frog, does it even matter any more?

"6-7" is just so, well, 6-7

I don't believe I've ever actually heard it myself, but apparently "6-7" is the meaningless phrase du jour.

For some time now, kids have been shouting out "6-7" whenever it seems appropriate (e.g. page 67 in a book, a basketball player who is 6'7", 6 minutes to 7 o'clock) or, increasingly, for no reason whatsoever. Because that's kind of the point of it: it has no point.

According to legend, it started from a tune by Philadelphia rapper Skrilla called "Doot Doot (6 7)", which may or may not be a reference to the police code 10-67, which is used to report a death. Rather than "Doot doot" becoming a catchphrase, which it might well have done, the "6 7" part caught the imaginations of a bunch of young people, and gradually became amplified through TikTok and other social media, as these things do (c.f. "skibidi", "rizz", etc, etc)

Teachers report hearing it hundreds of times each day. It just seems to have tickled the funny bone of young people, and established itself as a kind of shorthand for "cool" and "in", despite, or maybe because of, its complete lack of logic or meaning. It is an example of what linguists call "semantic bleaching", where a word or phrase become completely divorced from its original meaning.

Some teachers have even started using (or deliberately misusing) it themselves, in the full knowledge that it is not supposed to be used by "grown-ups", as a way of defusing and de-legitimizing it, hoping it will just go away as a result.

The outcome of that particular ploy remains inconclusive, but there are rumours that the next craze phrase may be "4-1", again for absolutely no reason.

Trump administration is still trying to prove that climate change is good

In their ongoing crusade to prove that black is white, the Trump administration's latest sally is a report by the Department of the Energy (DOE) which claims that climate change is actually good for American farmers (ah, so they do admit that climate change is happening, then?)

The draft report, authored by a group of fringe "experts" that has subsequently been disbanded under a cloud of controversy, claims that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will help increase the amount of food that farmers can produce. The MAGA-hijacked Environmental Protection Agency is using this spurious report as part of its ploy to reverse the Obama-era determination that carbon pollution is a threat to public health and welfare.

Unfortunately, it's just plain wrong. A group of 85 real climate experts, along with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, have published a comprehensive refutation of the report, confirming that the body of scientific evidence shows that climate change-related extreme weather will reduce crop yields and make food more expensive. Any growing advantage from higher CO2 levels will be much more than offset by crops damage from increasing exteme weather events.

Not that that will unduly worry the Trumpies. Truth and scientific evidence is not their strong suit, and they will doubtless use this discredited report to their advantage. Wait, remind me, how is it to their, and the country's, advantage exactly?

Toronto Blue Jays' improbable last-to-first run

As perpetual also-rans the Toronto Blue Jays clawed their way back into Major League Baseball's World Series after another comeback win last night against the Seattle Mariners, many people are probably wondering,"How the hell did that happen?"

Toronto has pulled off an improbable last-to-first stunt. After a horrible 2024 season, the Jays won the American League East Division this year, ahead of a strong and highly-fancied Yankees team. They also went on to beat the Yankees reasonably easily in the first round of the post-season, before dismissing Seattle in a roller-coaster seven game series in the AL Championship Series.

What's interesting, though, is that they have done it with pretty much the same team as had such a dismal season just a year ago. Same manager too.

This year's stars, like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., George Springer, Alejandro Kirk, Bo Bichette and Addison Barger, all played for the Jays in 2024. They just didn't play that well (Guerrero Jr. excepted). This offensive nucleus just seems to have turned it around this year. 

After a bad season, the Blue Jays had a pretty active time trading at the Trade Deadline and in the off-season. But it wasn't those acquisitions that has made the difference this year; it was the existing roster players. In fact, most of their big trade plays (Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, Roki Sasaki) came to nothing, and one big one they did make, Anthony Santander, proved disappointing, even before his injury.

Yes, they acquired some quality on the mound, with Max Scherzer and Jeff Hoffman, but it has mainly been Toronto's hot batting that has got them where they are today (and, in the post-season, they have even done it without Bo Bichette, who is still off injured).

So, the old guard are getting it done. Don't ask how, just go with it. They now face the defending championship - and huge favourites - LA Dodgers next. Oh, and Shohei Ohtani... But it still feels pretty nice being in the World Series again after all those years (I'm still wearing the 1993-4 sweatshirt from last time).

Should Canada favour China over America?

Prime Minster Carney has been keen from the get-go to reset and improve business relations with China, certainly compared to the frosty (although arguably much more principled) stance of his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. Carney is nothing if not pragmatic, quite happy to throw out one-time priorities like environmentalism in the interests of keeping the voters happy.

In an ideal world, we would not like to be dealing with China at all - it is still a global pariah. What with its human rights record, its aggressive bullying approach to international relations, its unpalatable and corrupt judicial system, its underpayment of workers, its persecution of minorities, its commercial spying, and its political interference, it doesn't really have a whole lot going for it as a trading partner. 

But this is far from an ideal world. If it is a choice between Xi Jinping's China and Donald Trump's America - and, like it or not, that's what it has come down to - that decision is becoming an increasingly tough one. Would you prefer to be mauled by a bear or a dragon? 

Mr. Carney has been pretty cagey when asked for a definitive opinion - understandably so - but he is maybe starting to indicate a preference for China, at least to some extent. Foreign Minister Anita Anand flew to China just this week to retry and repair the soured Sino-Canadian relations, and there are signs that Mr. Carney is seeking a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Xi. Everyone seems agreed that such a rapprochement will be far from easy, for a number of different reasons, but that doesn't necessarily mean it should not be attempted.

Maybe that is the right path to take, the lesser of two evils. At least China doing something about its horrendous climate change and pollution record, while the USA under Trump has pulled back from all such policies. And is Trump's enboldened policy of weeding out immigrants any better than China's treatment of its own minorities? And China does make some very good cheap electric vehicles, again whether you like it or not, and they could single-handedly re-start Canada's stalled push towards electrification and emissions reduction, so should we really be refusing them?

China is starting to look like the future, the US like the past. Certainly, it seems to be a stronger advocate for globalization than the USA at the moment.

Mark Carney's softening towards China is apparently in line with Canadian public opinion. According to a recent Angus Reid survey, Canadians have a much more favourable view of China than they had (27% favourable in 2025, compared to just 10% in 2021, and 16% just earlier this year). However, that does means that 59% still view the country negatively. In terms of trade, though - and this is mainly what has changed Canadians' views on China - 51% say that Canada should focus more on its economic relationship with China, up 15% from 2023, and de-emphasize China's poor human rights record in the process. This pragmatism - some might say callousness - matches Mr. Carney's  own.

What is the right line to take with China, then? Trump and his tariffs (and the various repercussions of tariffs, intentional and unintentional) have put Canada - and China, for that matter - in a very difficult position. Even back in the Biden days, Canada felt obliged to follow suit and slap a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs (and other, lower, tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum), in the full knowledge that China would not take that lying down. True to form, China immediately slapped tariffs on Canadian and pork.

China has made no bones about its willingness to remove those tariffs if Canada removes its own tariffs on China, which sounds pretty reasonable when you think about it. After all, Canada initiated this (albeit at America's bidding), and we really don't want to be the tariff aggressors here. And, frankly, we don't even have much of an EV industry here to protect. It's hard to be in a situation where China appears to be taking the moral high-road away from us. But you just know that any moves to go soft on China will lead to retaliation from the Trump administration. Rock and a hard place? Game of chicken?

And I still wouldn't trust China much further than I can throw it. Ditto India. Mr. Carney is also looking to improve relations with India, which also has its share of human rights and other political challenges, and relations reached an all-time low in 2023 after the assassination on Canadian soil of Indian-Canadian Kalistan activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Do we really want to be deepening ties with a country that engages in that kind of extra-judicial killing and the suppression of a sizeable racial minority in its territory? Do we have a choice?

Probably the best option is the one not stated: align more with Europe. Certainly, it's inadvisable - and always was - to put too many eggs in one basket. 75% of Canada's exports go to the USA, and that is never a good idea. There is no time like the present to rectify that situation. Europe still seems like the most civilized part of the planet right now. Surely, that is the way to go.

In praise of a Canadian domestic automotive industry

Sometimes - well, quite often really - I read an article and think, "Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking!" One such article appeared in this weekend's Globe and Mail, and concerns the Canadian automotive industry.

For decades, Canada has been in what the article cheekily calls an "abusive relationship" with American automakers (i.e. car companies like Ford, GM, and technically European-owned but still very American Stellantis). Time after time, these companies go through bad patches and the Canadian government has to dig into its increasingly empty pockets to come up with billions of dollars in bailouts, in the full knowledge that they will have to do the same thing all over again a few years later.

Time after time, Canadian governments at all levels have put serious money into sweeteners - bribes, basically - to encourage behemoth American companies (and, to a lesser extent, car companies from other countries) to invest in Canadian factories, parts production, battery plants, etc. This kind of "corporate welfare" is endemic, and nowhere is it quite so pervasive as in the auto industry.

And now, of course, the whole industry is subject to the whim of one person, Donald Trump, and you know he's not going to do us any favours. So, here we go again, hand into the government pocket.

Now, I get it, the car industry is a big employer, particularly in Ontario, and that is probably the single biggest reason for all the billions in corporate welfare paid out over the years (that and the power of the auto sector unions). It directly employs about 130,000 people, but up to 600,000 in total by some counts when including the supply chain, dealerships and other related industries. Even this pales into insignificance against other aggregated industries and services, but it is admittedly a large and important industrial sector.

Specifically, it employs a lot more than the 14,000 or so employed in the farming of oilseed and grains, which is largely why the plaints of the Prairie provinces about retracting the Canadian tariffs on Chinese EVs so that China will retract its tariffs on Canadian canola are going unheard (another reason, of course, is how the Trump administration would react to Canada falling out of lockstep with US tariffs on China). The whole question of whether Canada should be preferring the USA over China, and whether it should be blocking Chinese EVs in particular, is a thorny one, deserving of its own analysis (and which I have looked at elsewhere).

The other thing the Globe article touches on is another question I have been asking for some time: why doesn't Canada have its own car production industry? If Korea can do it, and Japan and Sweden, why can't we? The Canadian auto sector and its unions are constantly reminding us that we have all sorts of expertise and a skilled well-trained workforce here. Why, then, are they all in service to American overlords?

It's partly inertia - that's the way it's always been for the last hundred-plus years, and it's hard to break from that. The whole industry has been developed around the north-south integration and it is (or was) highly efficient. Also, as we now know to our cost, those American overlords are fickle, and really don't care about Canadian workers. They would up sticks and move at the drop of a hat if circumstances dictate, as we have just seen with Stellantis. And, more to the the point, they are in thrall to would-be dictator Trump, and will bend to his will with nary a thought for a hundred years of shared industry development.

Paradoxically, Canada buys about two million cars a year, almost exactly the same number as it assembles, but the cars it makes are almost all sent to the US market, and most of the cars it buys come from the US. Which seems like globalizion madness, except that ther are compelling commercial reasons why that happens. Economies of scale, yadda yadda. (Remember that crazy graphic of how a vehicle produced in North America crosses the border multiple times?)

So, if now is not the time to pursue a Canadian-owned domestic automotive industry, then when? Actually, it has been tried, and failed miserably. "It's just not possible to build a car company from scratch" was the conclusion. The last time that happened was Elon Musk's Tesla, and he had billions of dollars of capital behind him.

Imagine if all those billions in corporate welfare paid out to already wealthy American companies had been ploughed into developing a domestic industry? Well, it wasn't, and so here we are, beholden to our hateful American masters. Such a shame.

Hamas may not be able to find more hostages - the ceasefire should hold regardless

According to the UN, 84% of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed by Israeli bombing (in some areas, like Gaza City, this rises to 92%). Most of the enclave consists of masonry rubble, many metres thick.

And Hamas is somehow supposed to find the remaining 19 dead bodies of the missing Israeli hostages?

Frankly, I'm surprised they have been able to find as many as they have, and to have kept so many alive under the constant bombardment.

I feel for the relatives of those whose bodies have still not been recovered. But to use this as an excuse to continue bombing, as Netanyahu has vowed, just seems wrong. 

I think that Hamas has kept their end of the bargain in good faith insofar as they are able. An end to the hostilities is more important than a handful of individuals. 68,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel over the last two years; how many more thousands are to be sacrificed for the sake of some dead bodies?

That may sound callous, but not half as callous as authorizing further killings in the pursuit of an impossible task.

How Canadian immigration got out of hand, and why we still need more of it

Immigration has been a hot topic in the media for a long time now, and I have commented on it from time to time in this blog, principally on how immigration in Canada used to be an all-party vote-winner, universally approved, while in recent months it has suddenly become a political kiss-of-death, widely derided. 

But I thought that Tony Keller's analysis in the Globe and Mail last weekend was a very good summary of a confusing and often misunderstood situation.

In Canada, public opinion has whipsawed from 68% saying that immigration makes the country stronger as recently as 2019, to almost the direct opposite (64% believe that Canada should taking in fewer immigrants in 2024). (UPDATE: An Environics survey in October 2025 yielded a slightly more nuanced statistic: the percentage of Canadians who think there is too much immigration has been rising rapidly in recent years - from just 27% in 2022 to 44% in 2023 to 58% in 2024 - but 2025's poll actually saw a small decrease to 56%, although this is still a majority).

Before the 2020 pandemic, immigration was one of the few issues where Bay Steeet and the social justice warriors and all the provinces seemed to be pretty much on the same page. Now, and in recent years, the country seems inexorably split.

So, yes, it seems that the Trudeau administration got carried away and mismanaged the file in the years from 2015, and particularly since the pandemic and its aftermath. But, if you remember the labour shortages in the early 2020s and the businesses clamouring for new sources of labour, not to mention sluggish economic growth, poor productivity and chronic underinvestment by businesses, I think you can see that much of this was not just due to misguided Liberal ideology, as Pierre Poilievre would have us believe, but more to a poorly-managed response to an urgent economic need. I firmly believe that a Conservative government would have gone down pretty much the same road, whatever Poilievre might say now. 

It's also true that many, if not most, Western countries experienced much the same thing around the same time: this was not specifically Canadian phenomenon, and certainly not a Liberal phenomenon.

Then, though, the temporary foreign workers program - both the official one and the less official one - got out of hand, as did the foreign students intake, especially in the less-supervised community college system, which apparently didn't even bother to monitor whether students were attending classes or just working multiple part-time jobs. The student visa program turned into an alternative low-wage temporary foreign worker program, eventually growing far larger than the official TFW program. THAT part was botched for sure, and still needs additional controls.

All of this watered down everything that had made the Canadian immigration system so successful and so popular, and we are now witnessing the backlash, largely stoked by a housing shortage, stagnation in real GDP per capita, a post-pandemic spike in inflation that was really nothing to do with immigration but became conflated with it, and a spike in youth unemployment which is also almost certainly not caused by immigration but by a weak economy and, yes, those tarriffs. And, of course, by nefarious politicians.

Like most backlashes, it has been overblown and exaggerated, an excessive reaction to a bunch of poorly-understood perceived problems. Let's not forget, there is still a pretty iron-clad case for substantial immigration, and it would be a huge mistake to decimate Canada's highly successful and necessary immigration system. Rightly or wrongly, immigrants fill jobs that natural-born Canadians can't or won't do, and for less money. Provided there are checks that immigrants are not being abused or taken advantage of, then, as a country with a low (and falling) fertility rate, we still need more rather than fewer immigrants.

The dark side of China's renewables push

Like so many things about China, it's hard to known what to think about its huge investments in renewable energy.

As with electric vehicles, high-speed trains, etc, China leads the world in renewables. It is bringing online each year more clean energy than the rest of the world combined, in fact twice as much as the rest of the world combined! Renewables now make up over half of China's power generation capacity. It also exports vastly more clean tech than the rest of the world, and the top several wind and solar exporters are all Chinese. And - whatever the USA under Trump (or even Canada under Carney) is doing, as it lurches back towards a 20th century reliance on coal, oil and gas - China is not slowing down: it plans to increase its renewable energy production six-fold in the coming years.

And so it should. For the last twenty years or so, China has accounted for the largest share of fossil fuel greenhouse has emissions, and it still has a huge number of legacy coal power stations, although renewables are now starting to replace them. The last year saw the first slight decline in Chinese CO2 emissions.

So, what's not to like? Well, as usual, China being China, anything good is tinged with unfortunate blemishes of bad stuff.

Much of China's renewable resources are in the north and west of the country, including the area in and around Tibet, which it has been illegally occupying for decades. The clear air at high elevations, the abundant sunshine, constant winds and fast-flowing rivers, make for a renewable energy bonanza, and China is developing it at a furious pace. 

Take, for example, a new solar energy development on the high Tibetan plains. Talatan Solar Park is 162 square miles in area, seven times the size of Manhattan, or about the size of Chicago, and still growing. Wind turbines, hydroelectric dams, and pumped water generation contribute still more to the huge amount of renewable power generated in the area. 

Thing is, though, 90% of China's population and the vast majority of its heavy industry and its power-hungry data centres are in the south and east of the country, over 1,000 miles away. Nothing daunted, China has developed a massive network of ultra-high-voltage transmission lines (800,000 - 1,000,000 volts or even higher in some cases) stretching more than 2,000 miles. These transmission lines use direct current (DC) technology, ensuring little or no transmission losses. Huge pylons march across the country, most of it reasonably unpopulated.

But there is some population, and, not too surprisingly, it turns out that a million volts overhead is not particularly healthy. Sparks fly from umbrellas and fishing rods, resulting in numb hands, and there are rumours of people being electrocuted. 

But, this being China, there have been no protests, no official investigations, and no statistics or reports to work with, just vague rumours and some stoic endurance for the national interest. NIMBY is just not a thing here.

Should we, then, laud China's attempts to kick its nasty coal and fossil fuel habit? Well, I guess so, but it must tempered with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Mr. Trump goes to Egypt

Donald Trump is going to Egypt to sign his peace deal. All on his own, as far as I can tell, because Israel won't be there and Hamas won't be there.

Which is pretty bizarre, don't you think?

France may have the most dysfunctional politcal system in the western world

Everyone, in all countries, complains about their political system and their politicians. It just goes with the territory. But, it has to be said, France does it better (worse?) than most.

The latest? President Emanual Macron, who has presided over a veritable revolving door of prime ministers - three in the last year alone - has reappointed the last PM to resign.

Sébastien Lecornu was appointed Prime Minister on September 9th 2025, but he resigned 27 days later, on October 6th, shortly after unveiling a new cabinet. Then, just 4 days later, on October 10th, Macron appointed Lecornu again.

You have to think that Lecornu really didn't want the position - he has said publicly that he only did so "out of duty", not a great basis on which to proceed. And you have to think that Macron had to really persuade him (it would be interesting to know just how). Presumably, Macron couldn't convince anyone else to take the job.

Dysfunctional? Just a bit. And you have to wonder how long this arrangement will last, especially given the circumstances.

Did Trump really make the Israel-Hamas ceasefire happen?

I have been trying to figure out just how much of the credit for the recent Israel-Hamas ceasefire/hostage deal is actually due to Donald Trump. It is being described as the "Trump ceasefire" in most circles, and obviously he is a central figure in it. But it's not entirely clear to me that it would not have happened without him and his bull-in-a-china-shop bluster. Clearly, it required the attention of the President of the United States. But Trump specifically? I don't know.

The best article I can find is one in The Guardian, which describes Trump as a "juggernaut" necessary to bludgeon the deal through, but which also attempts to explain some of the nuances behind his role. 

Other than stroking his delicate ego, the first thing that was needed was to focus Trump's attention to where it could actually do some good, and to steer him away from some of his wilder ideas like US ownership of the Gaza Strip and its development into the "Riviera of the Middle East", for example. Instrumental in all this is the relatively unsung work of Egypt, UAE and Qatar, and even the injection of ex-British PM Tony Blair and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner into the mix. 

Between them, they managed to focus Trump on the real issues. Several missteps by Netanyahu that pissed Trump off - like Israel's ill-advised air strike on US ally Qatar - also helped him to see things from a slightly less pro-Israel perspective.

Either way, this is not Nobel Peace Prize territory, even if the ceasefire holds - and that's a big if, there are still many sticking points remaining, even if the broad strokes are publicly agreed. A tremendous amount of detail work remains to be done, and Trump is very much a broad strokes kind of guy, uninterested in the nitty-gritty of policy implementation. 

It's hard to see the venerable Nobel committee handing the prize to a man who can launch military strikes against the likes of Iran, Yemen, Venezuela at the drop of a hat, and who can happily send American troops into his own country's cities in order to make a make an example of them and to score petty party political points. Surely, motives are important, and Trump's motives in the Middle East are far from altruistic. And does anyone really think that Trump came up with a complex 20-point plan all on his ownsome? 

Anyway, as it happens, this year's shortlist for the Nobel Peace Prize was finalized way back in January, long before Trump involved himself in anything, and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has already been awarded this year's prize. But Trump will still be pissed off, and Norway has been on high alert as a result. How ridiculous international politics has become.

Ford's Ontario government addicted to speed

It's becoming clearer why the Conservative provincial government of Doug Ford is so vehemently opposed to speed cameras in Ontario's cities, particularly in Toronto.

Apparently, Ford's cabinet ministers have racked up no less than 23 automated speeding tickets over the last few years, attracting fines of over $3,300, with several caught doing over 50 kph over the speed limit. One government employee was logged doing 162 kph in a company car (this one recorded by the car's own log, not by a speed trap, as it happens - the staffer in question is still working for the government).

Clearly, the Ford administration in general likes to speed, and does not seem to believe that municipal laws should apply to it. So, although pretty much all Ontario cities that use speed cameras want to keep them, arguing that they are instrumental in reducing accidents and accident severity, Mr. Ford and his buddies are sticking to the line that speed cameras are just a "cash grab" (he calls municipalities that use them "greedy"), and should be decommissioned forthwith. 

They are not a cash grab, Mr. Ford, they are just a way to get unruly citizens, like many members of your own cabinet, to observe the laws of the land, laws that were instituted to protect the vulnerable and the defenceless. Ford, however, does not want to hear this. The car is still king in the halls of Queen's Park.

Marineland should be paying to relocate beleaguered belugas

The saga of the Marineland beluga whales continues, as the financially-troubled Niagara amusement park says it can no longer afford to feed the whales, and is calling on the federal government to bail it out, after years of exploiting the whales for its own profit. In fact, it says it will start to euthanize the belugas if some level of government doesn't come through with funding. Not only is this an attempt at blackmail, it is a complete abdication of responsibility.

The park, which uses whales for entertainment and has already managed to kill 19 belugas and an orca since 2019, is effectively holding the beluga as hostages. It says it had arranged for the whales to be sold to a Chinese amusement park where they would probably be kept in even worse conditions. But the government has (quite rightly) nixed such a move and refused to grant export permits, on the grounds that it would be against the Fisheries Act and Criminal Code to allow the whales to face a future of exploitation, performing tricks in captivity.

The chutzpah of Marineland beggars belief. They should sell every last asset they possess in order to relocate the belugas to somewhere they can live out what remains of their lives in some level of comfort and freedom. Various non-profits and municipalities in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Northern Quebec have made overtures towards taking the whales, but it is Marineland that should be paying for this.

Freedom Convoy leaders given paltry sentences

Nearly three years after the so-called "Freedom Convoy" took over the streets of Ottawamfor weeks on end and made a mockery of the whole concept of freedom, key organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber have been handed conditional sentences - a year of house arrest, followed by six months of 10pm curfew.

So, although they were found guilty of mischief (which is a more serious misdemeanour than it sounds), and counselling others to disobey a court order in Barber's case, and although Crown prosecutors were calling for jail sentences of 7 and 8 years (in line with the impact the two had on the public and the financial costs they caused), they have effectively received a proverbial slap on the wrist from the judge. And, even then, they are considering appealing.

The two ne'er-do-wells and their supporters are probably sniggering behind their hands at such a ridiculously lenient sentence.

Why does Trump hate Portland, Oregon?

Nobody outside of the hardcore MAGA nucleus really takes Donald Trump's rants very seriously. So, when he calls the city of Portland, Oregon, a "hellhole", a "war zone", and a 'war-ravaged" city that is "burning to the ground", most people simply yawned and rolled their eyes.

Yes, there has been a small but persistent protest group camped out outside the Portland ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) facility, protesting against Trump's use of police state paramilitary forces in his virulent anti-immigration push. And yes, there have been a few arrests over the last few months as a result. But this is happening about two miles from Portland's pretty chill and cool city centre. 

And Portland's "army of antifa", blasted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently, turns out to have been a few protesters, about a dozen journalists, and a guy in a chicken costume. Noem's brave rooftop "stare-down" of the threatening mob for the media also turns out to have actually been less than impressive, involving a few desultory protesters milling around in the distance (and the guy in the chicken suit).

And, far from Trump's claim that Portland "looks like World War 2", the biggest of the protests amounted to about 100 people. (The Fox News footage he was referencing actually spliced in, in true Fox News fashion, some footage from a 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.) 

Even Trump-appointed judge Karin Immergut concluded that the Portland protests have been "small and uneventful" for months, and that the Trump administration's claims were "untethered to the facts". She issued a restraining order on deployment of the National Guard to the city, arguing that trump had exceeded his legal and constitutional authority.

Yes, of course there is crime in Portland, but, to put it in perspective, FBI figures show Portland sitting at No. 72 in its survey of violent crime in large American cities, well behind many others, both Republican and Democrat. Furthermore, the FBI stats show that violent crime in Portland has actually improved slightly over the last few years, and violent crime in Oregon as a whole is currently at a five-year low.

So, why would he exaggerate quite so much? Why Portland? It's probably mainly due to Portland's permissive and progressive reputation. The city is every Republican's idea of a loony-left progressive paradise. Its reputation really came to a head during the (admittedly sometimes violent) Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, during Trump's first administration, in the wake of the COVID lockdowns and the death of George Floyd. Clearly, he has never forgotten this thorn in his side from first administration and, as we all know, no-one nurses a grudge like Donald Trump. 

More broadly, it's all part of his plan to tame and subdue uppity progressive cities like Portland, Chicago, Washington, New York, etc. He is even on public record as suggesting that "we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds" for his newly-branded Department of War. From anyone else, this might have been some very dark humour; coming from Trump, it is him thinking aloud, and escalating matters beyond the pale. 

Trump lives in his own parallel universe that he is gradually trying to superimpose over the real world. It's all we can do to resist it.

The backlash against criticism of Charlie Kirk

The dead are irreproachable, it seems, and the backlash against any form of criticism agaist MAGA martyr Charlie Kirk has already begun, even here in Canada. 

A Manitoba cabinet minister was called out by the Conservative opposition and forced to publicly apologize for calling Kirk racist, sexist and transphobic, and a "white nationalist mouthpiece". Now, that is not virulent and offensive in the way that the pretty extreme views  University of Toronto prof expressed about Kirk, which resulted in her dismissal.The Manitoba legislator, it seems to me, was just stating facts. Kirk - a noted proponent of free speech - will have had much worse than that to his face.

The backlash in America is, predictably, even worse, with a big clamp-down on any comments not complimentary to Kirk. JD Vance has actively called for people to snitch on anyone vaguely critical of the new MAGA martyr, Soviet-style. 

Ultra-popular late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was summarily dismissed by the Disney-owned ABC network (after pressure from the administration) for comments that were only slightly critical - actually more critical of the administration than of Kirk - when he said: "The MAGA Gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing there was grieving." 

Nothing wrong with that, just telling it like it is. But Trump and his administration have the bit between their teeth and are making the best of this opportunity (also telling it like it is).

UPDATE

There have been many other such occurrences in the following days and weeks, but one that stands out for me is the resignation of four journalists from three Alaska newspapers after pressure from a Republican lawmaker to change the wordng of an article about Kirk.

Kudos for having the guts to put their morals before their careers, something that cannot be said of the Republican lawmaker (or the corporate owners of the three papers). I hope they land on their feet.

Is there any point in fact-checking Trump's tirades against renewable energy?

It's too depressing to go into all of the various lies about renewable energy and climate change that Donald Trump reeled off at his address to the UN General Assembly yesterday. Among other howlers, he reiterated his unfounded beliefs that renewable energy sources like wind and solar "don't work" and are "too expensive", called the Paris Agreement a "scam" and all of consensus climate science a "hoax", claimed China and Germany are pulling back from renewable energy, called the UN'S assessment of climate change impacts are "exaggerated" and "incorrect" and a "con job", that reducing carbon emissions costs jobs. His solution to all this? More "clean, beautiful coal".

Wow. It's hard to know where to start, but ABC has already fact-checked most of these ridiculous claims and outright lies, so I don't have to. As Trump strengthens his economic stranglehold over the rest of the world, he is more and more forthright in putting forward his own magical and unsubstantiated beliefs about global warming and clearly energy. 

What's still not clear to me is why. Is he really in the pocket of the American coal lobby? I find that hard to believe. Are his views all coloured by the wind turbines just offshore from his Scottish golf course? I can just about believe he is petty enough for that, but hard to think that his whole worldview has been changed by that. Is it just a "conservative" desire to return to the American dominance and global influence of the 1930s (1950s? 1890s?)? Again, it doesn't make much sense logically, but logic is nothing to do with it. People have been trying to psychoanalyze Trump for years, and remain perplexed. 

I guess all we can do is keep fact-checking Trump's nonsensical tirades. We're not going to change his mind; he only listens to himself. But there is a small chance - and I admit it's a small one - that his followers may be swayed by the truth. 

If we admit the truth to ourselves, though, perhaps a more likely outcome is that, if Trump keeps banging on about this stuff, he will persuade more and more people by sheer force of will.

Who was Charlie Kirk anyway, and is he now a MAGA martyr?

 Just so we know who we are talking about here, Charlie Kirk was a highly controversial figure with some pretty extreme right-wing views. 

• He was strongly anti-gay and -trans rights, and encouraged students to report university profs who embraced "gender ideology". 
• He was a strong supporter of gun rights and against gun control, and once publicly opined, "I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment" (pretty ironic, in retrospect). 
• He strongly opposed diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and affirmative action, and believed the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a huge mistake and that Martin Luther King was an "awful" person. 
• Despite supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza, he was vocally anti-Jew, believed in the "replacement theory" conspiracy, and thought that all Jews were  involved in anti-white activities.
• He was anti-Muslim even more than anti-Jew, calling Islam an existential threat to America.
• He was a climate change denier, arguing that there is no scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming, and that it is not important anyway.
• Just about the only thing Kirk was not against was free speech, although he was less supportive of free speech for leftists.

So, this is the person who Donald Trump called "Great, even Legendary". Certainly, he was not a nice guy, and it's no surprise he made a whole boatload of enemies in his short time in the glare of American media. 

Trump administration's claims of left-wing violence not a statistical fact

The Trump administration's narrative regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk is that "it were the left what done it". Because of course it is. They wouldn't miss an opportunity to score partisan points, however demonstrably false such a claim is.

However, they take it further by claiming that most political violence is instigated by the far left, also demonstrably false. JD Vance: "It is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far-Left". Donald Trump: "most of the violence is on the left". And, even worse, abandoning all sense of truth and prespective: "We have some pretty radical groups and they got away with murder".

Setting aside the fact that most Democrats in the USA are barely left of centre, let alone far- or extreme-left, the reality is the direct opposite of what the Trumpites would have us believe. For example, a Washington Post study from a few years ago concluded that "the surge reflects a growing threat from homegrown terrorism not seen in a quarter-century, with right-wing extremist attacks and plots greatly eclipsing those from the far left, and causing more deaths". A report by the Anti-Defamation League shows that over 70% of extremist attacks are fuelled by right-wing ideologies. Even a report by the libertarian Cato Institute found that far-right wing terrorists were responsible for over half of political killings, and the left wing just 22%. A Polish university study of political violence in the US and the world likewise: "far-right extremists have been responsible for more cases of political violence than far-left extremists. As our research shows, their attacks are more violent than those by left-wing extremists". There is more, none of it supporting the claims of Trump and Vance.

But, then, as JD Vance himself accidentally (or not) admitted, he is willing "to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention". Oops.

Some thoughts on our mental health crisis

Another interesting extended article in the Globe today, this one by British psychiatrist Sami Timimi, who specializes in treating children and teens. It seems to some extent to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom and zeitgeist on mental health.

Timimi seems skeptical of the reported levels of mental health problems in Western society, and particularly of the anecdotal reports and claims of individuals. It seems like everyone knows someone who has "mental health issues" these days, whether it be depression, anxiety, autism, ADHD, PTSD, or sometimes combinations of several of these. Like me, Mr. Timimi is questioning the validity of some of these claims, self-diagnoses and even professional diagnoses.

It's almost cool among young people (and their parents) these days to have a mental health condition or two. Even younger children (and certainly their parents) are well-versed in psychological lingo, and sprinkle their conversations with phrases like "the spectrum", "masking", "neurodiversity", "chemical imbalance", etc, with gay abandon. The ease of self-diagnosis using Dr. Google doesn't help, nor does the well-intentioned empathy and compassion about mental health in modern Western society.

Timimi sees this as evidence, not so much of psychological liberation and literacy, as of the tentacles of what he calls the Mental Health Industrial Complex worming its way into the minds of the masses. 

It seems indisputable that the prevalence of diagnosed conditions like depression, anxiety, autism and other mental health conditions, particularly in youth, has snowballed in recent years, and studies reveal a much greater number who see their mental health as "poor" or just "fair" compared to a few years ago. But, at the same time, investment in mental health treatment and research has also surged, and the stigmatization of mental health conditions reduced so mcuh that it is almost considered glamourous amongst some cohorts (like teenage girls). 

So, is the increased attention paid to mental health just not helping, or is it actually making things worse in some respects? Mr. Timimi has his suspicions that the latter may be happening, something he calls the "Treatment Prevalence Paradox". It's a brave move to say so openly, and he risks being ostracized by his own profession. 

He even goes so far as to suggest that the diagnosis of mental health issues, even by trained professionals, is so subjective as to be next to useless. For example, if he tells a patient that "depression is the presence of persistent low mood and negative thinking", that is little better than saying that a pain the head is cause by a headache.  And, unlike with other aspects of healthcare, even once a diagnosis is arrived at, there is rarely a causal agent that can be objectively identified, or even an obvious path of treatment to follow. His frustration with his own profession is palpable.

As for the battery of treatments and drugs offered by the Mental Health Industrial Complex, Mr. Timimi is equally scathing. Rather than rushing for a psychological assessment and medication, he has these thoughts: 

• Don't rush. Being able to tolerate, live through, and even find meaning in, low mood or anxiety is maybe a sign of resilence, not a marker of a disorder. So, don't jump into panic mode and look for an immediate professional diagnosis.
• Don't try too hard. Try not to critically compare your children with others and put pressure on them to conform. They may just be different.
• Don't fear emotions. Expressing (sometimes extreme) emotions and changing emotions is part of the process of growing up, and not a sign of psychological imbalance.
• Don't be controlling. Instead of looking for things that distress you about your child, try looking for things that you like instead.
• Don't obsess about concepts. Constantly using psych-speak like "meltdown" and "masking", and engaging in amateur diagnosis, might just increase your anxiety (and theirs!) about your child's mental health.

Brave and thought-provoking stuff. Mr. Timimi is saying, yes, arm yourself with knowledge, but don't obsess too much about your child's mental health. Sometimes they are just sad or worried; they don't necessarily have depression or clinical anxiety, and they don't necessarily need intervention or treatment.

Where we are with quantum computing

A lot has already been written about the burgeoning field of quantum technology, but a three-page "Field Guide to Quantum Tech" in the Business section of today's Globe and Mail is as good a summary as I have see of what quantum technology is, its promise and its challenges, and where we are with it (we, the World, and we, Canada). 

Thankfully, you don't need to know the details of quantum theory to understand its potential. Suffice it to say, quantum mechanics, the theory,  was developed in Europe in the 1920s, and it was so revolutionary that we are still trying to come to grips with it a century later. Despite its difficult concepts - Schrodinger's cat, spooky action at a distance, "if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics", all that - it has proven to be a remarkably robust and comprehensive model of our real-world physical reality.

The main technology envisaged for quantum technology is quantum computing. At its simplest, while a conventional computer uses billions of microelectronic switches to manipulate the 1s and 0s ("bits") that computers use for even their most complex operations, a quantum computer can take advantage of "qubits", which may be in the form of tiny superconducting circuits, ions trapped in electromagnetic fields, or beams of light orientated in different ways. What makes them special, though, is that, according to quantum theory, they can exist in two possible states (á la Schrodinger's cat), so that they can represent 1s and 0s, but also a mix of both. Under QM, particles can be in more than one place at the same time, and can act as though they are connected even when separated by large distances.

When many qubits are linked together, they can make quantum computers incredibly fast, capable of calculations that would take conventional computers literally millions of years to complete. Not all computer tasks can be accelerated in this way, but potential applications include cryptography (the current model of RSA cryptography, derived by multiplying together two massive prime numbers, would be child's play for a quantum computer - that's also part of the challenge it represents), but also modelling financial risks, optimizing traffic flow or factory production lines, simulating the behaviour of molecules to discover new medicines or better batteries, unspecified military applications, and many other things we probably haven't even thought of yet.

That, at least, is the promise. However, qubits are hard to work with. They typically have to be isolated from the slightest disturbance, often in cryogenic facilities to minimize vibrations and maintain them at temperatures colder than deep space. In order to be "fault-tolerant", quantum systems need to dedicate many more (orders of magnitude more) qubits to protecting and keeping a check on those doing the actual calculating.

Challenges notwithstanding, many, even most, countries are ploughing oodles of money into quantum research (China, of course, is way out in front), and many important breakthroughs have already been achieved. Big hitters like IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Nvidia are investing heavily, although new discoveries (quantum leaps?) are just as likely to come from startups like Quantinuum, IonQ, PsiQuantum and Rigetti Computing in the USA, Photonics, Two Small Fish Ventures, D-Wave Quantum and Xanadu in Canada, or any number of lavishly state-funded outfits in China.

Either way, quantum computers are currently still far from operating at a commercial scale. We may be 5-10 years away from that, or it may be decades. It's not clear when quantum tech might yield big returns, or if it EVER will. A US government competition aims to determine if reliable and cost-effective quantum computers can be developed by 2033, which is seen as a moderately ambitious date (although don't be surprised if that competition gets cancelled by the anti-science Trump administration).

Canada is considered a reasonably major player globally, even if the financial investment in the country is small compared to players like Japan, Britain, USA, Germany, and of course China, whose quantum research and commercialization commitments almost matches the rest of the world combined. Within Canada, quantum research is mainly located in hotspots like the Kitchener-Waterloo- Cambridge triangle in Ontario, British Columbia's Lower Mainland, the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, and the university of Calgary in Alberta.

Even if AI continues to develop to the extent that it too can immensely speed up numerical calculations and simulations, as some suggest, quantum computers can't be ignored, even if only because they have to potntial to render conventional cybersecurity obsolete. Some warn that encrypted data is already being harvested by nefarious agents for later unlocking by quantum computers.

And computing is not the only application the quantum revolution is affecting: the quantum sensing sector is already up and running. For example, quantum effects can be used to improve our measurement and modelling of the Earth's magnetic field, which is crucially used by navigation systems and smartphones. 

Quantum information systems are also already in use for communication and surveillance. For example, there is a form of quantum radar that can spot interlopers without revealing its own presence like conventional radar systems do. Countries across the world are exploring other military potentials for quantum tech.

Quantum stocks took off in 2024, thanks to some high-profile advances in the technology, and many private investors are keen to get in early for the Next Big Thing. In fact, as happened with AI, some analysts are warning that we are probably already in bubble territory, as people are investing on hype alone, without a deep understanding of the technology involved and its potential pitfalls.

We are still coming to grips with artificial intelligence (AI), learning what it can do, dealing with its abuse. It seems a stretch to be thinking about quantum technology too. But it is coming, either slowly or all of a sudden, and we need to be ready for it. 

Charlie Kirk's killer was not a card-carrying Democrat

MAGA Republicans are making the usual knee-jerk reactions and assertions that the shooter of far-right influencer Charlie Kirk was a Democrat, with many of them calling for bloody revenge and even the "end of democracy". I mean, it stands to reason right? Kirk was a rabid and extremely contentious right-winger; his killer must therefore be a rabid leftie, no?

Well, just as the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last year was not perpetrated by a disgruntled Democrat, neither was Kirk's more successful assassin an extreme-left firebrand Democrat. 

22-year old Utah resident Tyler Robinson is not Democrat, or even particularly politically active. His last voter registration was back in 2021, and public records show his political agitation to be "none". He also comes from a conservative family, although one family member asserted that "Robinson had become more political in recent years". But, still, this is a not a rabid extreme-left partisan we are talking about. 

This, of course, was not enough to stop Donald Trump from doubling down on the partisan rhetoric: "We have radical left lunatics out there, and we just have to beat the hell out of them". The next day: "The radicals on the left are the problem, and they're vicious and they're horrible and they're politically savvy." This, of course, is the Trump approach to bridging divides, and calming potentially violent escalation.

UPDATE

When Robinson was asked why he did it, he merely replied that Kirk "spreads too much hate" and that he had "had enough of his hatred". So, nothing to do with his right-wing policies and beliefs as such. Law enforcement officers that presented evidence about Robinson offered no indication that he was involved with any left-wing group, or that he had fallen under the sway of any particular leader.

Nevertheless, The Trump administration are surely going to use this as an excuse to target far-left groups, what Trump advisor Stephen killer calls a "vast domestic terror movement". Miller is not stupid, just slightly unhinged, so he knows there is no such thing, but he is willing to use Kirk's death to whip up a frenzy. "We will do it in Charlie's name", he says. Scary stuff. The spectre of authoritarianism creeps ever closer.

UPDATE

A few days later, Joshua Jahn shot up a Dallas ICE facility. The Trump people are trying to portray that as a partisan attack by the exteme left.

But Jahn too seems to have had no political affiliation to all and is described as "a Boy Scout fron north Texas", with a rather unhealthy love of video games and cannabis (and guns).

Of course, that won't stop Trump from framing him as a "loony leftist".

Brazil's Supreme Court less corrupt than America's

I've not often had much confidence in Brazilian politics, although current President Lula does seem to be somewhat of a calming and civilizing influence. Now, though, Brazil has shown itself head and shoulders above the USA, at least in terms of judicial ethics (not a very high bar, to be sure).

A panel of Brazil's Supreme Court justices has had the cojones to sentence ex-President Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in jail for plotting a military coup after losing the 2022 election. Bolsonaro was quite clearly acting from the Donald Trump playbook when he reacted to the election loss, and Trump was an important model throughout his right-wing populist presidency. But, unlike the pusillanimous US Supreme Court, which is clearly willing to do whatever Trump requires of it, Brazil's maintained its independence and actually voted on the evidence (and there was plenty of damning evidence provided) and brought down a decision according to the law, not partisan politics. The panel's decision was 4-1.

Predictably enough, the Trump administration, lost in its bubble of delusion and misinformation, has expressed its surprise and disappointment with the Brazilian court's decision, calling it a witch hunt and unjust. Trump has already slapped 50% tariffs on Brazil for having the audacity to even put Bolsonaro on trial, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has vowed that there will almost certainly be further repercussions after this latest decision. But Lula seems refreshingly impervious to America's threats thus far.

The trial has gripped Brazil, and this decision may serve to further divide an already polarized country (sound familiar?) Bolsonaro's lawyers have of course said that they will appeal the decision, and keep appealing it until they get the decision they want - also straight out of the Trump playbook - but they may not find Brazil's courts as willing to play ball as America's.

Do the Brits really want to see the Bayeux Tapestry?

French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to loan the UK the famous thousand-year old Bayeux Tapestry as a gesture of goodwill.

Politicians and local authorities are lauding the decision. Conservators and museum people, on the other hand, are warning that the tapestry is way too fragile to transport (and is, of course, irreplaceable).

My first thought was: why would Britain want to admire a tapestry celebrating nearly two hundred years of conquest and oppression by a foreign force? Maybe the Brits are more broad-minded and urbane than I think, but my guess is that M. Macron is being overly optimistic 

Why is it alway men that engage in risky investing behaviour?

If you've ever wondered why it always seems to be guys that do all that investment in cryptocurrencies, meme stocks, sports gambling, even belief in Donald Trump and conspiracies theories, some new research purports to explain it (but fails, in my opinion).

The research, published in the journal Judgment and Decision Making (yes, that's the name of a scientific journal!), identifies something called the "confidence-information-distortion-confidence" cycle. This essentially says that, once men have an initial opinion on something - whether it be choosing a mortgage or insurance option, making investment decisions, choosing a financial advisor or going it alone - they tend to interpret any subsequent pieces of information, whether confirmatory or useful or relevant or not, as support for their initial assessment. Even if it shouldn't rationally affect their decision at all, each new item of information somehow increases their confidence that their original opinion was right. 

You could just call it "conviction bias", rather than the pseudo-science gobbledygook this study chooses to employ. And it's hardly surprising or news, is it? More to the point, it doesn't really explain why men are more affected by this logic blindness than women. But it remains a fact that some 61% of cryptocurrency investors are men, high-risk stock trading tends to be a male province by a two-to-one ratio, and sports betting is male thing by a three-to-one margin.

A study explaining why women are more risk-averse than men might be more useful. I imagine it has its origins in evolutionary biology or child-rearing or something of that sort. These things usually do.

Robert Kennedy Jr. hauled over the coals on vaccines

The US Senate committee investigating the actions and decisions of Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. is riveting America, not least for Kennedy's completely unrepentant fixation on walking back decades - nay, centuries - of research and settled science on vaccination.

He doesn't say so in so many words, but it's clear that Kennedy wants to get rid of ALL vaccinations. For now, he is contenting himself with limiting some important vaccines, including the COVID vaccine (which he calls the "most deadly in history", despite its clear role in saving thousands, maybe millions, of lives) and the hepatitis B and RSV vaccines. The spectre of the spread of preventable diseases like polio and measles running rampant through America once again is by no means improbable. (Florida has already revealed plans to repeal ALL vaccine requirements for schoolchildren!)

Kennedy has already dismissed many members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including its director, as well as the entire panel of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), and replaced them with known antivaccine activists. He is promising many more sackings in the near future of anyone who disagrees with his own wacky beliefs (which is almost all mainstream scientists). Many more have voluntarily resigned their positions, unable to work in such an environment. Even his family members are calling for him to step down, calling him a threat to the health of Americans!

The White House (or at least Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller) has publicly defended Kennedy, who has come under fire from politicians on both sides of the political divide. Miller called RFK Jr. "a crown jewel of this administration", in spite of the growing howls for his removal. Trump himself has remained suspiciously quiet about it all, contenting himself with saying that Kennedy "means very well" (faint praise indeed), and that "I like the fact that he's different".(ridiculous and childish). Trump seems to dither between strongly supporting vaccines and not. For example, he recently deadpanned, "Look, you have vaccines that work. They just pure and simple work. They're not controversial at all." OK.

As with so much that is happening in the Trump administration, it's hard to look away. But it's a depressing and unedifying spectacle to see so much good work (and so many good people) being wilfully destroyed in this way.

Why does everyone now hate Keir Starmer?

Keir Starmer and the Labour Party won a landslide victory in the UK elections a year ago (411 out of the 650 seats available), largely as a result of general dissatisfaction with the Tories' sorry performance over the preceding decade plus. The country, it seemed, was willing to give him carte blanche to follow a new political direction.

But, as I noted just recently, Labour's popularity is now down around 20%, barely above that of the Conservatives, and well behind the far-right Reform UK, which would win with a healthy majority if an election were held today. Luckily, no such election is planned. 69% of voters now have an unfavourable opinion of Labour, and Starmer's net favourability rating has sunk to an all-time low of -46%. In fact, even among Labour voters, his approval rating is -26%.

Now, Starmer has lost one of his most loyal lieutenants, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, who resigned after details surfaced of her failure to pay the proper land tax on a new home, an egregious sin indeed.

And all this is in spite of what seem at face value to be a series of economic wins: trade deals with the US, India and the EU for example, reductions in NHS waiting lists, improvements to school services, etc.

So, how did Starmer manage to make such an almighty hash of it? Why is Starmer so unpopular?

Well, as is so often the case, cost of living issues are the main reason. Inflation is on the rise again, and the cost of electricity, gas and other fuels has risen even faster, with water and sewage costs increasing more than everything. These monthly bills are highly visible and top-of-mind for voters, and are a big influence on people's opinions. Cutting benefits for disabled people and winter fuel cuts didn't help the government's image either.

British business have also soured in Labour. Higher taxes on businesses are seen by many as "anti-growth", and limits imposed on immigration and foreign workers, as well as an arguably  laudable increase in the minimum wage and improved workers' rights, are all seen as increased burdens for small and medium-sized businesses in particular.

Ironically, in a country still reeling from the effects of the relatively flamboyant and bombastic Boris Johnson and even Nigel Farage, Starmer's lack of personality is also holding him back. You'd think the country would welcome a calm, thoughtful leader, but apparently his lack of charisma and his dull, plodding approach to politics is a distinct turn-off for many Britons. Many of his cabinet members are also not well-liked as personalities, and several (particularly Chancellor Rachel Reeves) are perceived as being out of their depths.

There were other contributing factors too - Starmer's initial reliance on, and subsequent sacking of, the unpopular advisor Sue Grey; the acceptance of free gifts ("freebiegate"); and others. After all, Starmer was supposed to be different from Boris and the others, right? 

Polling suggests that there are two types of Labour defectors: those who now prefer the Greens or Lib Dems - younger, predominantly female and better-educated, who largely feel that Labour under Starmer is too right-wing and "not Labour enough" - and those who have switched to Reform UK (really?!, yes!), who tend to be more working class and poorly-educated, and often Brexit leave voters, many of whose main complaint is that Labour has not controlled immigration well enough. 

Starmer's response to this has mainly been to lurch even further to the right on issues like immigration and trans rights, i.e. to chase those who have defected to Reform. But those same polls suggest that only 15% of those Reform defectors say they would consider voting Labour again, while nearly 60% of the defectors to the  Greens and Lib Dems say they might still vote Labour in the future. So, this seems like a bad choice on Starmer's part, and acting more like traditional Labour would probably help them more. It gets complicated, right?

So, predictably, there is no one underlying reason for Starmer's fall from grace, more of a perfect storm of minor factors, none the less damning for all that. What a mess!

Poilievre barking up the wrong tree on immigration

I had really hoped that we were over the gravelly, whining voice of Pierre Poilievre, complaining about every little thing the Liberals do. But it seems we are stuck with him in opposition for a while longer.

Some of the issues he has latched onto are clearly not winners, but Poilievre is willing to argue that black is white and fudge whatever statistics need fudging if he feels that it will pander to his right-wing base. One such issue is immigration.

Poilievre takes a tough stance on immigration, because that's what he thinks his base expects from him. Recently, he called for very hard caps on immigration, and specifically asserted that "We need more people leaving than coming for the next couple years". Even more recently he has called for the complete termination of the temporary foreign worker program, which industry and agriculture analysts say would be disastrous for the country.

But the point is that Poilievre is behind the times, and merely parroting talking points from his failed election bid that are no longer relevant or appropriate. After action taken by the Liberals, net immigration today is pretty much zero, and the Canadian population, once growing at a rapid and unsustainable clip, has already stopped growing. The uncontrolled influx of both overseas students and temporary foreign workers have already slowed to a much more manageable level.

Poilievre, as in his wont, is also misquoting some statistics on immigration, claiming that 105,000 temporary foreign workers have entered the country in just the first half of 2025, while the government's target was 83,000 for the full year. But in fact, most of that 105,000 were work permit renewals, and only 34,000 were new arrivals, well within the target. Similarly, new permits under the International Mobility Program, were well within targets, and not "out of control" as Poilievre claims. 

The Liberals are well into a program of reducing the numbers of temporary residents. According to Statistics Canada, population growth in the first quarter of 2025 was precisely zero, and the government's immigration plan is indeed for more people to leave Canada in 2025 than arrive. Poilievre is hopelessly out of touch.

Canada should be ready to circumvent Safe Third Country Agreement rules

Canada and America have long had a Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), whereby two civilized countries that both have robust protections for refugees agree that aliens and fugitives must claim asylum in the first country they arrive in, whether that be Canada or America, and cannot just pass through America to get to Canada, or vice versa.

That has worked pretty well since the Agreement was struck in 2004. But America under Donald Trump is no longer a civilized country, at least as regards immigration and refugees. Refugees turned back at the US-Canada border now run a very real risk of being repatriated back to the country they are fleeing (or even some other country they have never lived in and have no links with). This may put them at risk of imprisonment or worse for their political views or their sexual identity or orientation, or physical danger from an abusive spouse, etc. This is particularly important given that gender-based asylum claims are rarely recognized in the USA.

Luckily, there is a provision under the STCA agreement that allows border agents some latitude in their decisions. For example, there is an escalation protocol that can be triggered when there is "credible evidence" that someone will face inhumane treatment in the US, or faces a serious possibility of being deported to face torture or death.

Up until now, these "safety valves"  have hardly ever been used. But Canadian border agents should be officially reminded of this option, and they should be much more ready to employ it, lest some of the most vulnerable refugees be left at the mercy of an uncaring and draconian American immigration system.