Go ahead, coffee is probably good for you

Coffee must be one of the most-studied substances on earth. There are no end of articles and studies claiming to provide proof that coffee is good for this or that, or bad for the other. Often these claims are in direct conflict with each other, so we still don't really know if it's good for you or bad for you on balance. Most people probably have a vague idea that it's slightly bad for you, but not so bad that you need to give it up (maybe just limit it a bit). And that may be just about right.

While it's pretty much uncontested that coffee, and specially caffeine, stimulates the central nervous system and increases alertness, there is also some pretty convincing evidence that coffee is also good for long-term brain health and cognitive function and as protection against dementia. 

A recently-published large longitudinal study and meta-analysis out of Harvard suggests that a daily intake of two to three cups of caffeinated coffee or one to two cups of tea have a protective effect on the brain and result in statistically-significant reduced dementia risks and improved cognitive function. Decaffeinated coffee had no such benefits. Note that these are just observational studies, and so can only uncover associations and not definitive proof, but they are consistent with many previous studies and meta-analyses.

So, unless you suffer from caffeine sensitivity or acid reflux or are excessively prone to sleep disruptions, go ahead have a couple of cups of java (or tea). Don't get carried away, of course, but equally don't be swayed by some of the reports of coffee's more iniquitous effects.

The suggestion that Canada needs nuclear weapons is ludicrous

Luckily, hardly anybody listens to retired Canadian General Wayne Eyre these days. That's just as well because otherwise we may be tempted to take his advice on pursuing a home-grown nuclear weapons program, just in case, "if we decide to go that way", as he says. He says that Canada will never have true strategic independence without it own nuclear deterrent.

Boy and their toys, eh? Eyre clearly didn't spend too much time thinking about what would be involved in such an undertaking. Others have, and it's not pretty.

To acquire nuclear weapons, Canada would need a site for enriching uranium or (more likely) reprocessing plutonium, and build hightly secure factories there. Then, it would need huge investment in delivery systems (missiles), and a remote, geologically appropriate place to test the weapons, without which it would not be a credible deterrent. All this would costs hundreds of billions of dollars, and take many years, a project comparable to a moon landing program according to one American senior official.

But that's not all. Canada is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has a global reputation as an internationalist peace-keeping country. Pulling out of the NPT and developing nuclear weapons would radically re-brand the country, and put it in the company of countries like North Korea, Israel and South Sudan. Its reputation would never recover.

So, thanks for your input, General, but maybe in future, just keep it to yourself. And please, stay retired. Thankfully, Defence Minister David McGuinty was quick to dismiss Eyre's suggestions, and most other commentators seem to agree.

Hungary's Orbán says the EU is more of a threat than Russia

Victor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, is on his heels just two months before the April 12 general election. Polls suggest that his anti-Europe Fidesz party is trailing the pro-EU Tisza party of Péter Magyar. Hungary has been a member of the European Union since 2004, long before Orbán came to power, but the membership has been far from cordial.

Orbán being Orbán, he is doubling down on his anti-EU campaign rhetoric and, during a campaign speech today, he went so far as to suggest that Russia is not Hungary's enemy, the European Union is: "We must get used to the idea that those who love freedom should not fear the East, but Brussels".

Orbán has long been an apologist of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has even supported him in his occupation of Ukraine. He maintains that it is not clear who attacked whom in 2022. He has many times acted as a spoiler in UN decision-making, especially where financial support for Ukraine is concerned. He has also become a leading European acolyte of Donald Trump. In return, the EU has frozen billions of euros of funding to Hungary because of Orbán's dismantling of democratic institutions, his erosion of judicial independence, and the widespread corruption in the country that he has fomented.

Europe is desperately hoping that, come April, this ongoing thorn in their side will be banished once and for all. Anyone who can publicly claim that the EU is more of a threat to freedom than Russia is very much more than just a loose cannon.

Un-curling-like language at the Winter Olympics

I couldn't help but smile at the indignation and outrage at the Winter Olympics mens curling competition, as the Canadian team is once again accused of cheating by opponents Sweden.

Curling is still considered, I suppose, a gentleman's game, and has no truck with newfangled ideas like video replays and what have you (although the handles of the stones are now electronic and give a green light when the stone is correctly released before the "hog line"). But Sweden's Oskar Eriksson accused Canada's Marc Kennedy of "double-touching" the stone, i.e. giving it a little tap with a finger after release. 

Most curlers would say that there is little or no way this could actually help the shot - given that it is still 100 feet from the rings - but it is technically illegal if spotted. In this case, it was not spotted, and when the referees did spot-checks after the allegations, no transgressions were identified (surprise!). Canada went on to win 8-6.

As much as the allegations of cheating, though, the outrage was mainly for the "unsportmanlike" language used on the ice sheet. Eriksson's accusations were muscular and vigorous, but Kennedy's defence was events more so, concluding with "just fuck off" and "I don't give a shit". Most un-curling-like language!

Despite Kennedy's vigorous claims that he has never ever done such a thing, video replays do show him doing exactly that thing. The Switzerland team also accuses him of the same in a previous match. Hell, even the Canadian women's team is getting in on the act. Canada is definitely the bad guy here. 

Kennedy has since been given a verbal warning for his language, and umpires are paying special attention to possible cheat moves as the competition approaches its climax. It all seems a bit disingenuous, though. They should hear the language routinely used in the average hockey game!

Oh, how dating has changed!

Thankfully, it's been 40-odd years since I've had to anything that might be described as "dating". I'm not sure I could bring myself to enter into the modern way of doing it (i.e. using an online app).

I was a bit taken aback, though, at an article about how many women are approaching the process these days. Maybe this is sixth-wave feminism or something (is that where we are?), but it doesn't sound particularly healthy to me.

Apparently, many women, especially financially-independent women, now expect men to pick up the tab on the first, and even subsequent, dates. Gone are the days when women wanted to be seen as equal by paying, or at least splitting, the bill. (Other research suggests that 45% of Canadians expect the bill to be split evenly, with 24% expecting the man to pay, and another 24% saying it should be whoever initiates the date.)

This is nothing to do with traditional values and deferring to the stronger, wealthier sex, or anything like that. This is a purely transactional approach about seeing "what they're bringing to the table in a potential relationship". More specifically, these women argue that there is still a "gender wage gap" where men typically earn more than women and should therefore contribute more to a relationship, and there is still a "beauty tax" where women are expected to pay more to meet societal standards of beauty. They may (or may not) pay on a second or third date to "signal my interest back to him".

Wow. Now, call me old-fashioned, but personally, I'm not particularly sure I'd wanted to be dating a women who thinks that way. I'm not really interested in a woman who feels she has to meet societal standards of beauty, and wants to be subsidized for it. It seems like a very cold and calculating approach to something that should be warm and fuzzy.

However, the article does go on to question why such an attitude has come about, and the answer is probably dating apps. The ease and availability (and also the transactional nature) of app dating has led to a sea change in attitudes, compared to the happy-go-lucky approach of my day, where you just happened on someone in a pub or a party, or you trailed after someone for months on end like a love-sick puppy.

Frankly, it doesn't really surprise me that studies show that fewer people than ever - just 8% of over-18s - are actively dating. Among the reasons put forward are a challenging job market, especially for younger people (and the concomitant decision to focus.on careers first and relationships later), the cost of living in general, a genetal sense of hopelessness about the state of the world, and, yes, "dating app fatigue and choice overload". Quite.

I know I couldn't face it. Let's hope I never have to!

US businesses and consumers are bearing the burden of Trump's tariffs

Remember, when Donald Trump first started bringing in tariffs wholesale at the beginning of 2025? It seems like a lifetime ago, I know, but we were all trying to get out heads round why he would want to do that, and how it could possibly work out the way he say it would. In the end, we concluded that it just wouldn't, and that American industries and households would end up bearing the burden of what what were essentially just taxes under another name.

A year later and Trump is still singing the praises of tariffs, although he is now using them more as bully tactics to punish any country that disagreed with him on any issue, not just trade. So, American tariffs are less about the economy and more about, well, Trump, and his political agenda. But clearly they do have an economic impact too, even if it's not the one Trump describes. And who is beating the burden? Yup, American industries and households.

A comprehensive new report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concludes that upwards of 90% of the tariffs imposed by Trump on imported goods are borne by American consumers and companies. So, unlike in Trump's version of the world, foreign exporters did not lower their prices at all, resulting in the whole incidence of the tariffs being borne by the USA. In the technical jargon of the report, "there was 100% pass-through from tariffs into import prices". 

An estimated 30% of the increases in import prices were absorbed by US businesses though reduced profit margins, but fully 70% were passed on to consumers in increased retail prices. According to Federal Reserve officials, much of the overshoot of the 2% inflation target can be laid directly at the door of Trump's tariff policy.

Surprised? Me neither.

Do Trump's disapproval ratings indicate the beginning of the end?

If you agree with those who say that all we can do with Trump is to wait him out - you may be interested in how his popularity rate is looking these days.

The Silver Bulletin agglomerates presidential approval ratings from a whole host of raw polls, and gives a good overall picture of presidential popularity and trends. Trump's overall approval/disapproval rating (approval percentage minus disapproval percentage) is currently -13.7%, very slightly better than a week ago, but still very much worse than earlier in the year. The last time Trump's approval rating was positive was back in March of last year, and approval and disapproval ratings have gradually diverged ever since, albeit with occasional blips and reversals from one week to the next.

On individual issues, the story is pretty much the same: on the economy -16.2%, on trade -16.9%, on inflation -25.2%, and on immigration -12.1%.

Do you take any comfort from that? With Republicans worried about the mid-terms in nine months time, and some Republican members of congress finally starting to question their unthinking loyalty to Trump and his policies (for example, six GOP members defected to support a Democrat motion against Trump's tariffs on Canada), is this the beginning of the end for Trump? 

Well, probably not, frankly. But we can indulge in a bit of schadenfreude if it makes us feel better, can't we?

No, there is no epidemic of trans violence

It had to happen. After the horrendous mass shooting in the small town of Tumbler Ridge in northeastern British Columbia, right-wing influencers and agitators are really pushing the transgender issue.

The shooter, a psychologically troubled 18-year old, transitioned from male to female about 6 years ago. That might just have been an incidental factoid in the case, but there is a rampant anti-trans movement, particularly in the United States, that wants to milk it for all it's worth. There is a whole load of misinformation out there about trans people, and specifically about their violent tendencies.

A common claim is that trans individuals are much more likely to be killers than any other demographic. Elon Musk on X was just one of the more influential voices sharing this view. Many previous mass killings have been blamed on trans gender identities by these anti-trans activists even when gender was clearly not an issue. Now they have a shooting where the perpetrator was in fact a trans woman, and they are making hate-filled hay. 

No doubt Donald Trump will get in on the act when he gets his shit together: the chance to bash Canada AND the trans community will be just too much for him to resist. The Trump administration is already looking into ways to ban transgender Americans from owning guns, and Trump scion Donald Trump Jr. has claimed, unscientifically and incorrectly, that: "The amount of shootings they have completed or attempted likely pales in comparison with any other radical group, based on how small a group they are. Can't be close!"

Of course, in reality, the vast majority of mass shootings are carried out by white cis men, the same demographic as most of the anti-trans social media conspiracy theorists making the claims. Studies show that about 98% of mass shootings are actually carried out by men, most of them white (in proportion to the general population). The Violence Prevention Project concluded that 97.5% of mass shooting were by cis men, 2% by cis women, and 0.5% by trans people. A Poynter analysis calculated that 0.17% of mass shootings in the USA (6 out of 3,399) were perpetrated by trans individuals. Factcheck.org arrived at an even smaller figure of 0.1%. This is much lower than the 0.5-1.6% representation of trans people in the general US public (in Canada, 0.33% of the population officially identifies as transgendered or non-binary). I'm sure there are many more such analyses if you look.

Haters will hate, as they say. This incident will probably fuel the haters for years to come.

Olympic chutzpah or hubris

Lyndsey Vonn is one of the most successful downhill skiers ever, and is looked on as almost god-like within the sport. Since her latest performance at the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, she can now add "most controversial" to her lengthy list of achievements.

Vonn is now 41 years old and has not raced competitively for years. But, for whatever reason - call it chutzpah, or call it hubris - she wanted more. Then, she suffered a ruptured ACL ligament during practice just 9 days before her Olympic race, which would have ruled most normal people out for months. Vonn, however, chose to race anyway, and wiped out spectacularly just 13 seconds into the race, resulting in a shattered leg and requiring her to be airlifted out of the ski resort.

Cue the controversy. Many people opined that she should have known better, and had no business taking part in a top-level race with a torn ACL. Her fellow Olympic skiers, however, rushed to support her decision, arguing that she is a grown-ass woman and capable of making her own decisions, however inexplicable they may seem to the rest of us. One or two are even arguing that the crash was not due to the ruptured ACL at all, just a freak accident that could happen to anyone anytime, which seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

My first reaction was firmly in the former camp: "What the hell was she thinking?" But, on reflection, maybe her supporters are right too: it was her call, however ill-advised. Maybe she denied some young greenhorn a chance for their first Olympic experience in her solipsistic quest for vainglory. Maybe she disrupted the competition unnecessarily. But that was her right, arrogant and presumptuous though it may be.

Interestingly, there was another (similar but less dramatic) example of iffy decision-making later in the Games. Dutch speed skater Joep Jennemars was expected to medal, but was (accidentally) impeded during a crossover by a Chinese skater and noticeably slowed down, resulting in Wennemars missing out on the medals. The unfortunate Chinese skater was disqualified, but Wennemars was offered the chance to do the race again, on his own, half an hour later.

Wennemars could have declined - easy for me to say! - putting it down to experience. These things do happen in the sport; all speed skaters know that, and most have experienced it at some point in their careers (although not necessarily in an Olympic final!) But Wennemars chose to re-skate, without an opponent to pace himself against, and still tired after his first race. Predictably, his second race was even slower than his first, and everyone was left dissatisfied, especially Wennemars.

Should he have accepted the re-skate? Probably not. But it was his decision to make, and these are ultra-competitive people, remember, unwilling to accept "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". They didn't get to the elevated levels they enjoy today by giving up, on anything, ever. These are almost superhuman individuals, and they live by their own rules.

Why does Health Canada take so long to approve new drugs and procedures?

Health Canada is always very slow to approve new drugs and procedures, but in this case they have been almost criminally dilatory. 

Canada has just approved the OraQuick HIV self-test, a ground-breaking at-home oral HIV test, that doesn't require any blood testing and delivers results in as little as 20 minutes. It was approved in the United States way back in 2012, recommended by the World Health Organization in 2016, and is currently in use in 60 countries. It doesn't take the place of a definitive physician-administered blood test, but it is an easy and non-invasive initial assessment that might encourage a person to seek more official help on a timely basis.

So, why is Canada so late to the game? After all, HIV is still rife in Canada, especially among the Indigenous populations of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, even if it doesn't make headlines any more.

According to a prominent urban health scientist, suppliers needed proof that there was a market for the test in Canada (why should that be a consideration for technical approval?), and Health Canada needed assurance that it "reached its standards" (60 other countries seem happy that it is safe and efficacious). Neither of these excuses seem convincing or compelling reasons for 14 years of delay and procrastination for a valuable andcost-effective health procedure.

Trump has a hissy fit about new Canada-US bridge

Canada is the target of yet another late-night Trump outburst and, as usual, he is woefully poorly-informed and mistaken. 

This time he is taking issue with the new Gordie Howe International Bridge between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan. The US$4.7 billion (C$6.4 billion) bridge, that Trump himself fast-tracked, is now very close to completion and opening. The Windsor-Detroit crossing is the busiest international border between the two countries, and the new bridge will ease border snarl-ups, particularly as the ageing Ambassador Bridge is no longer up to dealing with such a volume of traffic.

According to Trump, though, "they own both the Canada and the United States side and, of course, built it with virtually no US content".  He further whined, "What does the United States of America get - absolutely NOTHING!" (Well, nothing except improved trade infrastructure, and effectively for free!) And finally, "I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them ... with all that we have given them we should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset."

Prime Minister Carney had to phone the old man again to explain that, actually, Canada paid for the bridge in full, even though it is publicly owned jointly by both Canada and the state of Michigan under the Canada-Michigan Crossing Agreement. Canada is allowed under the agreement to use tolls collected from the bridge to offset its costs and, once the costs are fully recouped, subsequent toll revenue will be shared between Canada and Michigan. It has all been agreed amicably between the two parties; Trump has no need to involve himself, as several Democratic Michigan lawmakers agreed. Furthermore, Carney patiently explained to Trump, the bridge was built by Canadian and American workers using Canadian and American steel.

And, anyway, what has the United States "given" Canada (apart from a headache)? The guy lives in his own fabricated little world, doesn't he? His ignorance is mind-boggling.

Bu could Trump actually stop the bridge from opening? Probably, either by revoking the previously-granted presidential permit, or by claiming a national security emergency. US presidential powers are ridiculously broad and deep, as we have seen, although using them in this case would put Trump in direct conflict with a US state, which would lead to some stiff legal challenges. Michigan officials have indicated that they will fight any attempts to stop the bridge opening, but legal challenges have never concerned Trump before....

UPDATE

It's no coincidence that, just mere hours before Trump's objectionable and unhinged post, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with American billionaire (and major Trump donor) Matthew Moroun, whose family has for decades owned and operated the old Ambassador Bridge crossing, the ageing facility that will be largely replaced by the beautiful new Gordie Howe Bridge.

Gordie Howe Bridge between Windsor and Detroit

Lutnick, who as we know is thick as thieves with Trump, then spoke with his boss by phone, and clearly passed on whatever incorrect story he was given by Moroun. The rest is sordid and embarrassing history. It turns out that the Moroun family have made several attempts to get the Gordie Howe Bridge construction stopped over the last few years. This is just the latest. 

The fact that Lutnick and Trump will sink to these depths of corruption should surprise no-one. Because, make no mistake, corruption it most surely is.

Meanwhile, until the new bridge fully opens, Windsor City Council is encouraging Canadians to use the Windsor-Detroit tunnel instead of the Moroun-owned Ambassador Bridge. Elbows up, eh?

Carney explains why he still considers himself a climate change leader

Apparently, Mark Carney still sees himself and Canada as a leader on climate change.

In an interview just a couple of days ago, one reporter put it to him starkly: "Along with cutting the EV mandate, you've cut the consumer carbon tax, weakened a commitment to the oil and gas emissions cap, you're exempting Alberta from clean-up energy regulations, and abandoned a promise to plant two billion trees. Do you still consider yourself a leader on climate change?" 

Yow, pretty damning stuff! How did Carney respond? "Absolutely, I consider Canada a leader on climate change, and I'm focussing on climate change results and solutions". Wow. I can feel the cognitive dissonance creeping over me as I write.

To his credit, Carney went on to enumerate what he sees as his justification for his claims, namely: tax relief and support for the entire EV production chain, incentives for consumers to adopt EVs, tightening (two-fold, he says) Canada's greenhouse gas emissions while giving the auto industry flexibility as to how they achieve that, and a plan (to be announced) to double the capacity of Canada's clean electricity system. He also said that the liquid natural gas (LNG) coming out of British Columbia, which he has been encouraging and facilitating, is among the cleanest LNG in the world (for what that's worth), and it is also being twinned with carbon capture and storage technology (albeit largely unproven and unbuilt).

So, credit where credit is due, the guy talks a good game. But let's not be fooled, what he is proposing and talking up is really not as effective or direct a solution to climate change as the various policies he has just abandoned (and even those were not sufficient). I have a lot of respect for Mr. Carney, and I believe he is doing a reasonably good job in most respects under very trying circumstances. But on the environment and climate change, he is absolutely guilty of pulling the wool over our eyes. (If you want to see what you actually need to do to make EVs a mainstream option, look no further than Norway.)

UPDATE

This also comes as the Canadian Climate Institute warns that the country is not in track to meet any of its climate change and carbon emission goals - not the 2026 interim target, not the 2030 Paris Agreement commitment, not even the long-term 2050 zero-emission goal. The reason? "A slackening of policy effort over the last year, marked by the removal or weakening of climate policies across the country". A year, let's be clear, when Mark Carney was in control.

Hard data seems surprisingly hard to find. As of 2023 (the latest data available, for some reason, and long before Carney was involved), Canada had only achieved a 9% reduction in emissions from 2005 levels, while moat other G7 nations had achieved reductions of around 30%. Even the USA managed 17%, although that was before Trump took the reins, to be fair.

Southern America has turned into an Orwellian nightmare

Many Trump supporters, particularly in southern states like Texas, are starting to feel the effects of the constant ICE immigration raids. 

If you ask them, they say they still fully support Trump and his immigration and border security policies. But they are starting to understand just how reliant the southern US economy, especially the construction trade, is on immigrant labour. So, now they are starting to complain about the paramilitary-style ICE raids, which has half of the country in a state of chronic low-level fear interspersed with acute panic attacks.

And guess what? It's bad for business. People who still call themselves Trump supporters are monitoring, and contributing to, online group chats which share ICE agent sightings, hurriedly hiding their workers away lest they be snatched and deported. They are erecting razor wire fences around their properties to keep the agents out. 

And yet they will still tell you they support Trump and his border control agenda. Somehow they have disconnected Trump and the ICE raids, and they insist that they know that Trump loves his country, much more than Biden ever did, yada yada.

What kind of a dystopian world are they living in? George Orwell would have had a ball with all this.

Why can't we make beer cans in Canada?

I remember early last year when Trump's tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel were brought in, and there were interviews on TV with Canadian brewers lamenting that the beer cans they imported from the USA were suddenly so much more expensive.

It made no sense to me. For one thing, if Canada produces most of America's aluminum, why do we even buy beer cans from America? Why don't we make our own beer cans with our own aluminum?

I never did find out why, and I've not really thought about it since, until I came across an article today talking about this very issue. It's been nearly a year, and Canadian brewers are still complaining about the cost of American beer cans. And we are still not producing our own beer cans with our own aluminum.

Even now, it's "nearly impossible" to find certain kinds of beer can made here in Canada. "There's actually no Canadian source for a truly Canadian-made tall can". Canada exports aluminum to the US, where it gets manufactured into "can sheet", and then exported back to Canada to be made into actual cans. Ridiculous! But why?

The reason, it seems, comes down to economic efficiency. It makes sense to smelt the aluminum in Canada, particularly in Quebec, where most of our aluminum is mined, because Quebec has very cheap hydro electricity, and smelting is a very electricity-dependent activity. However, it makes more economic sense for the US to produce the can sheets because America has a much larger market it can sell can sheet to. It apparently does not make economic sense for a Canadian company to produce can sheet.

Given the effects of the Trump tariffs, though, it surprises me that it is STILL makes no economic sense. You'd think there would now be an economic case for a Canadian company to produce cans locally, say in Quebec. The demand from breweries across the whole country would surely be sufficient to enable huge economies of scale (we drink a lot of beer!) Yes, there are transportation costs to factor in, and this is one big country. But it just surprises me that no-one has even tried.

Yes, we do need (more) immigrants

Interesting. Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem (which always sounds like a pseudonym to me), at a speech he gave yesterday at the Empire Club of Canada, has specifically identified Canada's reduced immigration quotas as a source of disruption to the economy over the next few years.

Macklem said that economic growth and the labour market in Canada is being held back by several factors including US tariffs, artificial intelligence, declining fertility, but also slowed immigration. He explains that fewer immigrants "means fewer new consumers and workers in the economy, which lowers out economic potential". 

This is not the first time Macklem has referred to immigration as an economic boon. Back in October 2024, when Justin Trudeau was first starting to cut back immigration targets after sustained criticism from Conservatives, housing groups, etc, Macklem warned that immigration curbs would substantially impact the central bank's growth forecasts.

It's refreshing to see such an establishment figure telling it like it is on immigration, as Mark Carney follows in Trudeau's footsteps and continues to cut back on immigration targets (probably too much).

Another immigration issue hanging over Mr. Carney is the large number of undocumented immigrants in Canada, estimated at anywhere from 200,000 and 2 million(!) He could follow the lead of Donald Trump in America and deport them by the hundreds of thousands. Or he could follow the lead of Spain, which has once again given permanent residence and eventual citizenship to half a million undocumented immigrants. Several other European countries have also gone this route, as has Canada at various times in the past.

So, treat them as a threat, or treat them as a potential asset? Now would be a good time not to follow Trump.

Alberta demands more say on judicial appointments

Danielle Smith is on the warpath again. Yawn.

This time she is demanding - demanding, I say! - that the province of Alberta have more say over the appointment of Alberta judges, even though the appointment of federal judges in Alberta, as in any province, is the constitutional responsibility of the federal government. She also wants a relaxation of the requirement for bilingualism in the higher echelons of the legal profession because, well, Albertans don't do bilingualism.

It's like she and her administration stay up at night thinking up new ways to nettle the federal government, the pettier the issue the better. It seems that her voting constituency, which contains a fair few Alberta separatists, expect it of her. But, man, is the rest of the country fed up with it!

So, this is a woman who has often complained about the judiciary not doing what she wants, even having the temerity to have different political opinions and worldviews to her. This is a woman who has openly stated that she would like to be able to politically vet judges, America-style (and look how well that system is going...) Alberta judges felt compelled to make a public complaint after that outburst, calling on Smith to respect the independence of the judicial appointment system.

And she expects Ottawa to hand over more control? She's even gone full Trump, threatening to withhold Alberta's funding of.the judicial system is she doesn't get what she wants. She may just as well have said she will impose tariffs if she doesn't get her way. This is Smith's idea of negotiation, collaboration. That kind of says it all. And anyway, it is the federal government that pays the salaries of federal judges, so Smith is talking here about withholding funds for admin help, furniture, cellphones, etc. So, it's a very small gun she is holding to Carney's head, although just her tone alone is nevertheless enough to put the government's back up. I guess she probably didn't think the whole thing through.

Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser has, quite rightly, dismissed Smith's "demands" out of hand, saying, "I'm planning to maintain the process that we have in place, that has independence, that has rigour, that has led to stellar candidates being appointed, including recently in Alberta". Perhaps a little more tongue in cheek, Fraser also quipped, "We welcome the feedback from representatives of the Alberta government ... it's been very helpful".

Is Mark Carney in the Epstein Files?

Well, here's a question I never thought to ask: is Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney mentioned in the Epstein files? It's not an unreasonable question - the files are a virtual who's who of men of influence, although not all of the mentions are necessarily incriminating.

The CBC has done the hard work for me. It turns out that Carney is mentioned quite a few times - particularly during the time of his tenure as Governor of the Bank of England - basically because he was an important figure in the financial world. The mentions are mainly references to events or articles that happen to involve Carney. However, none of the documents show any direct communications between Carney and Epstein, and certainly nothing salacious is even hinted at. 

Yes, there are fake photos circulating on the internet showing Carney on Epstein's private island - of course there are! - but they are just that, proven AI fakes. There are also one or two real photos of Carney at an event in 2013 with Epstein's side-kick and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell - apparently Carney's wife's sister went to school with Maxwell, and anyway Maxwell was ubiquitous in the British social scene of the time - but Carney never had any dealings with her.

So, not a big surprise. Carney seems way too straight and buttoned up to be involved in any of Epstein's or Maxwell's schemes. Worth checking, though.

Dropping Canada's EV mandate illustrates the failings of our auto sector

The way I see it, Canada's decision to drop its electric vehicle (EV) mandate, widely expected to be announced in the next day or two, in favour of a new, less-aggressive system of fuel efficiency standards and credits, represents a failure on the part of the Canadian auto industry - at the production, wholesale and retail levels - as well as, to some extent, the Canadian public.

It's not that the Trudeau-era climate change policies were inherently bad ones, as Pierre Poilievre and the CEOs of multiple automotive companies would have us think. Mark Carney would have supported them wholeheartedly at one time - he was a very vocal apologist of carbon taxes at one time. But Carney is pragmatic to a fault, and not fond of grand gestures and statements of principle (in the way that Trudeau was very fond of them, to a fault).

But our automotive industry just did not put much effort into actively pursuing the EV policy. It just sat back and hoped it would happen of its own accord. And, while some members of the public (like me!) did the right thing - i.e. go electric - for its own sake, most others also sat back and waited for everybody else to do the right thing, which is never going to work. Then, when the Trudeau government started sending mixed messages on its environmental commitments, and when EV rebates were withdrawn, the driving public just threw up its hands and said, "well, what can we do?"

Carney, once a staunch environmentalist, has gradually dismantled (or at least scaled back) most of the progressive environmental initiatives of the previous administration. Scrapping the EV mandate is just another such, although one welcomed by the lazy domestic auto sector. Relying on tailpipe standards would be a return to the pre-EV mandate, pre-carbon tax status quo, which, you might remember, was not particularly effective in reducing our carbon emissions. There is talk of bringing back some EV rebates, but we must wait to see what that entails, just as we need to wait to see how stringent the tailpipe emission regulations will be. (We don't have a progressive US model to follow this time.)

Frankly, I'm not holding my breath.

UPDATE

The new Liberal EV policy, as expected, has scrapped a firm EV sales mandate, although it did restate non-enforceable (and still rather improbable) "goals" of 75% EVs by 2035 and 90% by 2040. This is still much more modest than the Trudeau-era goal of 100% by 2035.

To that end, the announcement details a return of incentive rebates of $5,000 for full battery EVs and $2,500 for plug-in hybrid EVs, although even that modest rebate is set to reduce each year until it reaches $2,000 for full EVs and $1,000 for PHEVs by 2030. The rebates also only apply to EVs with a sales value below $50,000, unless it is a model that is made in Canada (which I guess is fair enough), and then only for imports from a country with which Canada has a free-trade agreement, which disqualifies those 49,000 Chinese EVs a year that Canada recently agreed to. So, pretty carefully-worded.

The package also includes $1.5 billion towards improving the country's EV fast-charging network, given that range anxiety is still perceived as a major barrier to consumers looking to switch to an electric vehicle.

It also installs new supports for Canadian auto workers as the EV transition ramps up, including a "work-sharing grant" and a "workforce alliance", as well as committing $3 billion from the existing Strategic Response Fund and $100 million from the Regional Tariff Response Initiative to help accelerate investment in Canada's auto sector.

Interestingly, the main thrust of the new rules was supposed to be the implementation of more stringent tailpipe carbon emissions standards for Canadian vehicles, but we didn't get to find out about those - they will supposedly be outlined later this year, and will apply to model years 2027 to 2032. So, in a way, the bad news (for many people, and certainly for vehicle manufacturers) has been postponed, presumably lest it rain on Mr. Carney's EV parade. We are told it is supposed to "ultimately lead to emission reductions equivalent to 75% of all 2035 automobile sales falling into the EV category". Except, I'm not really sure what on earth that means (I'm not even sure the grammar is right!)

The auto sector has been generally welcoming of the new policy, although - shock horror! - the opposition Conservatives appear to disagree with pretty much everything in it.

Offshore wind farms may actually help wildlife

Detractors of wind power - the Donald Trumps of this world - and even environmentalists who would otherwise have been in favour, often claim that wind turbines, and especially offshore wind turbines, are deleterious, even downright dangerous, for wildlife and biodiversity. Opponents point to the disruption of the marine environment during construction (and decommissioning) of offshore wind turbines, the distraction of larger fish and whales due to the noise and vibration of the turbines, and the effects of electromagnetic fields around them, although the ramifications of many of these issues are still not well understood or proven.

But data from Europe over the last few years is starting to tell a different story. It turns out that European windfarms in the North Sea may actually be offering new areas of protection for marine wildlife, including for some threatened species like great seals and North Sea cod. The huge underwater turbine towers can provide a home for some species, and reefs of marine life have begun to form on them (the construction of artificial reefs is also a possibility). They also provide protected areas where fishing vessels cannot access, thus reducing the risks of overfishing.

The jury is still out and more research and data is needed, but it is possible that the positive side effects of wind farms may outweigh any unfortunate negative ones.

That Hamas was able to return all hostages is amazing

The news that Israel had received the last of the Hamas hostages came while I was away on holiday. The body of Master Sgt Ran Gvili was retrieved from a cemetery over the Israel-imposed Yellow Line, but Hamas was able to give Israeli authorities details of how and where to find it.

And that's what I find extraordinary: not that Israel and Netanyahu (who is, of course, trying to take all the credit for it) was able to get all 251 hostages back, but that Hamas was able to keep track of them all.

Bear in mind that almost all of the Gaza strip is a hellscape of rubble and collapsed buildings, subject, even now during the so-called ceasefire, to constant Israeli bombardment. How Hamas was able to keep the bodies, and even to keep so many of them alive, so that they could be returned to Israel, is nothing short of miraculous.

Billion of dollars of Canadian federal cheques remain uncashed

Here's a headscratcher: Canadians have left uncashed over $2 billion of cheques mailed out by the federal government.

$2,159,665,155 to be exact. That's a lot of money, particularly given that it was sent to some of the most needy in the country. For example, about $141 million was for the Canada Carbon Rebate, and nearly $43 million was for the Canada Child Benefit.

Only about 8.5% of total federal payments are sent out in the form of paper cheques - most are paid by direct deposit - but some agencies still issue large numbers of cheques. Government cheques never expire, and can be replaced if lost or damaged.

It does make you wonder what's going on, though. We keep being told that huge swathes of the Canadian population are struggling financially, and yet there is $2 billion of free money sloshing around out there, unclaimed, presumably sitting in a drawer or bag. Sure, many poorer people are not well financially-educated. But how hard is it to deposit a cheque into a bank?

Free solo climber completes Taipei skyscraper climb

There's no way I could have watched it live, even with a 10-second delay, but American daredevil Alex Honnold did indeed complete his "free solo" climb of the 101-storey Taipei 101 skyscraper yesterday.

This ridiculous feat, which you can see video snippets of, took him just an hour and a half, which equates to about a storey a minute. The building is a glass and metal monolith, with all sorts of overhangs and other tricky bits, and looks all but impossible to climb. Success was not necessarily assured. But there he was standing on the pinpoint pinnacle waving to the crowds and not even looking tired. Crazy stuff.

Why doesn't the daytime moon look full?

I had a sudden panic today. The moon was way up in the sky, in the middle of the day, i.e. at the same time as the sun was also way up in the sky. So, I thought, "wait, there's nothing in the way of the sun shining on the moon, so why doesn't the moon appear full?"

Well, of course, I'm not the only one to wonder that. And, once it is explained, the answer is obvious.

Yes, the sun is high in the sky, but it is off to one side of the moon as we look at it from earth. The sun is therefore only shining on one side of the moon as we look at it, and so only part of it reflects back to us here on earth. It would only appear full to us if the sun was shining on it straight on (from our perspective).

Phew! Thank god there's a reasonable explanation.

Trump has achived nothing for America and done Putin a big favour

Donald Trump left Davos, Switzerland, with a smile on is face. No-one else did.

That's because Trump thinks he has achieved something great for America, the "framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland", while everybody else is focussed on the damage he has done to the NATO alliance. "It's long-term deal", he says, that "everybody's very happy with". Right. Furthermore, "it'll be forever for Greenland at this point, forever", whatever the hell that means. Trump only spoke with NATO chief Mark Rutte; neither Greenland nor Denmark have had their say yet.

Ironically, Trump achieved next to nothing for America. When he blusters about, "It was an incredible time in Davos", and "We're getting everything we wanted - total security, total access to everything", everybody else knows that he didn't get anything America didn't already have, courtesy of an agreement from the 1950s that Trump seems blissfully unaware of. The US has always been able to place troops, bases and military hardware on the island. Nothing Trump has done has changed that. 

Details of Trump's much-vaunted "deal" remain sketchy and secretive, presumably because they are embarrassing to Trump. The TACO ("Trump Always Chickens Out") moniker has been resurrected, as the US appears to have blinked before Europe.

However, as has been said, the damage to NATO is done. As one professor put it, "NATO is based on shared values and trust. What is becoming very clear to European leaders, and to Canada as well, is that these values are not shared any more. And the trust is simply not there." EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas bemoaned the fact that Europe-US relation had "taken a big blow" over the past week.

Vladimir Putin wants more than anything else to destabilize the NATO alliance. Donald Trump has done that for him, without Putin needing to move a finger. As a Democratic congressman phrases it, "Putin is celebrating this misguided effort to extract meaningless concessions that were more about Trump's needs for an abstract win than American national interests".

Trump's claims about Chinese wind power are WAY off

President Trump is still droning on in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as I write this, already well over his allotted time. And, as expected, there's a lot to take exception to.

Just to take one example of his well-documented habit of citing "alternative facts" (aka "lies"), Trump was on his familiar hobby horse, criticising wind turbines, specifically Chinese wind turbines. He suggested that, although "China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven't been able to find any wind farms in China".

Well, I guess he didn't look very hard. China is host to 11 of the largest 12 land-based windfarms in the world, headed up by Xinjiang Hami Wind Farm and Gansu Guazhou Wind Farm, which are an order of magnitude bigger than windfarms elsewhere in the world.

And China produces more wind power than any other country - a huge 992 terawatt hours in 2024. Second? The USA (despite Trump's best efforts to hobble the industry), which produced less than half as much.

Much else that Trump said during his rambling speech was misleading or just plain wrong. But Chinese wind power was definitely the wrong hill to choose to die on.

Carney should avoid Trump's "Board of Peace" like the plague

Hard on the heels of his provocative, inspiring and distinctly critical speech at Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is apparently seriously considering joining Donald Trump's "Board of Peace", which is supposed to help bring about a just and lasting peace in Gaza (and maybe elsewhere).

While the end goal may be laudable, Carney should have nothing to do with this latest Trump vanity project. The UN did endorse the idea, but what has ultimately emerged is a far cry from what was promised and voted on, in a classic bait-and-switch move by Trump. Indeed, the Board's charter doesn't even mention Gaza!

Just look at the other members of this invitation-only club thus far: USA, Belarus, Azerbaijan, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Argentina, Armenia, and of course Israel (yes, the fox is expected to regulate the hen coop). It's a strange assortment of (mainly authoritarian, as it happens) states. Putin has apparently been asked, and is maybe thinking about it, as are Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, Germany, UK, Paraguay, India, China, Ukraine, Kosovo, Slovenia and Croatia. France's Emmanuel Macron has, sensibly, already summarily refused to be involved in such a group, as have Sweden and Norway.

Mr. Carney should certainly not even consider paying $1 billion to become a "permanent" member of the Board, rather than just a three-year member. (How ridiculous is that? Just how long is Trump planning on stringing this out? What is the money for?). And, thankfully, it seems like he is not thinking about it.

But Carney should follow some of the more sensible countries in not touching the Trump-led Board - what The Guardian calls his "imperial court", and what Trump probably thinks of as an alternative to the United Nations - with a bargepole.

UPDATE

It looked like Carney is off the hook, as Donald Trump publicly withdraws his invitation to Canada to join his ridiculous Board of Peace.

Trump didn't give any specific reason for the disinvitation, but most likely it was a fit of pique over Carney's damning (and less than complimentary to Trump) Davos speech, and not anything more thoughtful and insightful than that. Either way, we should probably all breath a sigh of relief that Mr. Carney doesn't have to involve himself with this whole flawed Trump-dominated enterprise.

Carney outdoes himself at Davos

Well.

Mark Carney just made the speech of his life - "the most important speech in Canadian history", if you believe the National Observer; "Churchillian", say others; "perhaps the best speech ever at Davos", gushes a British commentator - and you can watch it on YouTube, or read it here. It earned a rare standing ovation at Davos.

Appearing at the Davos World Economic Forum, his 16-minute speech - which he actually wrote himself, no professional speech-writers here - laid out Canada's way forward as a middle power in a post-Trump world. And, while he never actually mentioned the word "America", "USA" or "Trump" once, it was very clear what he was talking about.

"The old order is not coming back", he intoned. "We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just." There were many more quotables: "The end of a nice story and the beginning of a brutal reality"; "We're in a rupture, not a transition"; "When rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself"; "The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must"; "To hope that compliance will buy safety - it won't"; "If you are not at the table, you are on the menu"; "This is not sovereignty, it is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination".

Referencing Thucydides and Václav Havel, Carney did indeed outdo himself. Yes, there was some bull in there too. For example, the claim that Canada has the "most educated population in the world" - where did that come from? And asserting "sustainable development" as one of Canada's core values is a bit strong coming from a man who has spent the last year walking back much of Canada's sustainability.

But kudos to Carney for a strong showing from a man who sometimes comes over as a bit "blah".

Spoof headlines or real?

Some of the headlines in today's paper looks like spoofs or satires, something The Onion or This Hour Has 22 Minutes might have come up with.

• Military models Canadian response to hypothetical American invasion
• Canada weighs sending soldiers to Greenland in face of U.S. threats
• US President ties Greenland threats to Nobel snub
• Trump invites Netanyahu to join his Board of Peace

Unfortunately, they are all too real. As a Globe and Mail editorial put it: "It is a time of unthinkable things, that move from impossibility to improbability to reality with disorienting and alarming speed".

Maybe cows are not all stupid

If you thought that cows were pretty stupid, well, you're probably right. But maybe not AS stupid as you thought.

It turns out that cows have joined the relatively exclusive club of tool-wielding animals, in the company of humans, chimpanzees, crows, and maybe humpback whales.

And before we get too excited, it's really only Veronika, a 13-year old Swiss Brown cow that lives on a farm in Austria, essentially as a pet. Veronika, over the years, has perfected her technique of using sticks or brushes to scratch herself in various places. It's not much maybe, but it's enough to get some animal behaviourists quite excited.

All those other cows? Yeah, pretty stupid.I 

The search for an Alzheimer's cure takes a different path

Oodles of money has been pumped into Alzheimer's Disease research over the years, and all we have to show for it is aducanumab, a controversial monoclonal antibody that targets amyloid plaques in the brain (approved on an accelerated schedule for use in the US, but not approved in Canada). The drug had inconsistent and contradictory clinical trial results, and faced significant debate over its effectiveness and widespread hesitation by doctors. Ultimately, it was withdrawn by its manufacturer, Biogen, when they realized they couldn't make any money from it.

Much of the difficulty in making any headway against Alzheimer's is because, thus far, the understanding that Alzheimer's is largely caused by clumps of a protein called beta-amyloid in the brain. This has been the conventional wisdom since the finding was published in a 2006 paper, and that is where almost all the effort towards a cure has been directed. Unfortunately, that paper was found to be based on fabricated data, and was retracted in 2024. Nearly 20 years wasted.

Since this retraction, research has opened up somewhat. Promising research right here in Toronto looks at beta-amyloid proteins not as a destructive abnormally-produced protein, but as part of the brain's immune system. The brain has its own immune system, just like the rest of the body and, when it encounters bacteria or trauma, it fights back, using beta-amyloid as a key contributor. Because the fat molecules making up the membranes of bacteria are very similar to the membranes of brain cells, the beya-amyloid can end up attacking the very brain cells it is supposed to be protecting, leading to chronic progressive loss of brain cell function, i.e. dementia.

This makes Alzheimer's (the most common type of dementia) not so much a disease of the brain as a disorder of the immune system within the brain, or an autoimmune disease. We do have steroid-based therapies against other autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. But this kind of therapy will not work for the brain, but targeting other immune-regulating pathways in the brain may lead to new and effective treatments for the disease.

Either way, though, the search for a cure is pretty much back to square one.

The US wind industry overcomes the MAGA blowhards

As has been reported repeatedly, here in this blog and elsewhere, Donald Trump (and, by extension, his administration, which blindly and unquestioningly follows whatever he says) hates wind turbines, particularly offshore wind turbines. He calls them "losers" and "the scam of the century". No-one is quite sure why he hates them so much - his convenient "national security" argument is far from convincing - but there are theories. 

Anyway, in pursuance of this irrational hate, Trump has issued several edicts banning various wind farm developments off the east coast of America, including some that were all but complete. The states and developers involved have taken recourse to the courts to try to rectify this, and to recoup some of the billions of dollars they have already sunk into these projects.

And they are winning.

Three separate federal judges, including one appointed by Trump, have ruled Trump's decrees illegal and allowed construction to resume on windfarms off the coasts of New England, New York and Virginia.

So, despite Congress stopping incentives and the Republican administration imposing a variety of roadblocks in the way of permitting, the wind industry persists against all odd

What does MAGA really believe about DEI?

An article on Martin Luther King Day includes a quote from a Trump White House spokesperson: "Everything President Trump does is in the best interest of the American people. That includes rolling back harmful DEI agendas, deporting dangerous criminal illegal aliens from American communities, or ensuring we are being honest about our country's great history."

Now there are any number of things wrong with that quote, both in principle, and in the practical way in which those beliefs are being acted on. But the thing that really stood out for me was the use of the word "harmful". In what way is the pursuit of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) considered actually harmful by the MAGA crowd?

Here's what MAGA believes about DEI, gleaned mainly from an AI query and a CNN article:

• DEI actively disadvantages White people and men, attempting to solve past discrimination by creating new forms of discirimination.
• DEI leads to hiring or promoting less qualified minority candidates, shifting the focus from merit to identity.
• DEI fosters resentment and focusses on differences, creating divisions, and turning people into victims and oppressors.
• DEI is redundant in today's post-racial world, where significant racial equality has already been achieved.
• DEI programs are costly, ineffective bureaucracies, filled with activists rather than genuine problem-solvers.
• DEi policies violate constitutional rights, particularly for educators and students, promoting specific ideologies and stifling free speech.

Of course, a lot of these points are merely twists on the arguments for DEI. And I do believe that they are, by and large, "straw men" arguments (intentionally misrepresented propositions), and that a good proportion of the people espousing them just don't like Black people. But I have no proof of that :)

Canada's Supreme Court takes on racial profiling - again

The Supreme Court of Canada is about to re-visit a case that most people thought had been long resolved and closed. 

The case revolves around the right of police officers to randomly stop drivers for document checks, even if there is no actual suspicion of anything illegal. Back in 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that such stops were legal because, although they appear to contravene the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Court ruled that it was a reasonable limit on individual freedoms in the interests of preserving safety on our roads. 

But the Supreme Court decision was far from unanimous, and it has been treated with legal skepticism ever since, mainly because it tends to lead to racial profiling. Yes, such random stops do sometimes yield results, e.g. someone driving after being suspended, etc. But they are clearly open to abuse, particularly racial abuse. 

(Interestingly, random police stops at fixed checkpoints, e.g. to deter drunk driving, are not being challenged. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld their legality. But what really is the difference? Are they not just as open to racial profiling?)

Now, I'm not really sure why police would distroportionately choose to stop Black people. Is it because of a perception that Blacks are more likely to break the law than Whites, either from personal experience or from underlying or systemic racism, knowingly or otherwise? But clearly it is a fact: research shows that Black people are around five times as likely as Whites to be targeted during such "random" stops.

Legal challenges in some  provinces, e.g. Quebec, have occasionally succeeded in striking down the 1990 decision. But governments, both in Quebec and federally, who insist that random stops are essential for road safety - even though there does not seem to be any compelling empirical evidence to prove that - want the matter decided once and for all by the highest court in the land, hence this week's Supreme Court case.

It will be interesting to see the Court's findings. My initial feeling was that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with random stops as a road safety strategy. And, God knows, Canads's roads are pretty scary these days, although the numbers of accidents and deaths being reported in Canada have come down significantly in recent decades, they seem to be on the rise again). And there is no obvious reason to me why Black people should be targeted so disproportionately, but clearly they are. 

So, given that, what is the remedy? Yes, we could say "no more random stops", a rather draconian solution, throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater. But is there really no middle way? I'm not saying that mandatory anti-racism training is the answer - that seems like a bit of a pie-in-the-sky / Kumbaya / Hail Mary kind of solution. But are there no other ideas? Surely, people have spend decades researching this stuff: have they come up with nothing?

Canada's EV deal with China is either the rock or the hard place

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, as is his wont, is portraying the deal negotiated by Prime Minister Mark Carney with China as disastrous for Ontario, Canada, and the universe as a whole.

Along with various union leaders in the automotive industry, Ford has been broadcasting histrionic warnings about Mr Carney's deal to anyone who will listen. The agreement allows the first 49,000 cheap Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) each year into Canada at a much reduced 6.1% tarriff (down from 100%), in return for much reduced Chinese tariffs on our exports of canola (15%, down from 84%), and the removal of other tariffs on Chinese imports of our canola meal, lobsters, crabs and peas.

Many analysts see this as a good deal for Canada - as good a deal as we are ever likely to get with an economic behemoth like China - and politicians in the Prairies (where the canola comes from) and in BC and the Maritimes (where the seafood comes from) see it as very good. Many Canadian car dealers too welcome the move, as do many consumer groups who see a chance for Canadians to get high quality electric vehicles at an affordable price. 

But Ford is fixated on the automotive implications, and specifically the Ontario automotive implications, of the deal, which he sees as all bad. He didn't mince words or hold back in his criticism of the Prime Minister and other premiers, even if his political and economic analysis was predictably naïve. Captain Canada is not big on nuance. He also accuses Mr. Carney of fomenting division between the provinces, something that he himself is guilty of on this and many other occasions.

But does he have a point? Is this "a self-inflicted wound", as one union leader put it? Does it give China "a foot in the door" of our automotive sector, and is that necessarily such a bad thing? Or is this just bull-in-a-china-shop Ford going off half-cocked as per usual?

49,000 EVs is not that many compared to the 264,000 EV (including plug-in hybrid electrics) already being sold in Canada. Compared to the 2 million or so total vehicle sales, it is peanuts (about 2½%). So, it's not really going to have an appreciable overall effect on Canada's car production in the short term, and nothing like the impact of American tariffs on cars in the medium to long term. Certainly, out of China's annual EV production, this hardly registers at all. And it hardly consitutes "flooding" the Canadian market, as Ford claims. 

Most of the motor vehicles sold in Canada are imported anyway. Most of them come from the USA (although much fewer than a year or two ago), the rest from Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and yes, China. (We were importing over 9,000 cars a year from China before we applied the 100% tariff at America's behest in late 2024). Only a small percentage - 9-13% - of cars sold in Canada are actually made in Canada. The rest of the cars built in Canada are exported, mainly to the US. Which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

There's also the expectation, baked into the deal, of future Chinese investment in Canadian-built EVs in the future, something Ford himself has been calling for. And it might just rejuvenate flagging EV sales in Canada since the government grant sweeteners were withdrawn, not in itself a bad thing.

But are they safe? Ford suggests not (although without evidence). In fact, several Chinese EVs were among the safest last year, according to the European New Car Assessment Program.

Mr. Ford's other contention is that Chinese EVs would be "spy cars". As he puts it, in his usual man-on-the-street demotic: "I don't trust what the Chinese put in these cars". Pierre Poilievre, the master of the empty sound-bite, calls them "roving surveillance operations". I'm not sure exactly what Ford and Poilievre think they will be able to do, but any Chinese cars imported will have to be authorized and certified by Transport Canada first. Until that happens, imported Chinese-built EVs will probably be limited to brands like Tesla and Polestar, which we already have. Chinese brands like BYD, Geely, Xiaomi, NIO and XPeng will follow later when authorized. (More recently, Ottawa has specifically announced that it will not allow the Chinese EVs to "spy" on Canadians, by ensuring they do not have the capability to transit information back to China.)

While the deal sets a price goal of $35,000 by 2035, it's unlikely that China's ultra-cheap EVs (like BYD's Seagull) will ever come to Canada, because it would be hard to make them fit Canada's safety and reliability requirements. Plus, selling ultra-cheap cars needs large volume to make it work, which the current deal does not allow for.

He also says he is convinced that any Chinese-made cars would not be allowed over the Canada-US border, although it's not clear on what basis he believes that. (Although no Chinese brands are sold in the US, over 100,000 Chinese-built cars from brands like Volvo, Buick, Lincoln and Tesla are imported from China to the US each year.)

Of course, how the Trump administration will react to the Canada-China deal, given that they expect everyone to follow their lead on Chinese tariffs (as we did over a year ago), is anyone's guess. Thus far, Trump himself has been suspiciously positive, saying, "That's what he should be doing ... If you can get a deal with China, you should do that, right?", and referring to the deal as a "good thing", even if his Trade Representative Jamieson Greer called it "problematic for Canada", and Transport Secretary Sean Duffy warned onimously "I think they'll look back at this decision and surely regret it", the kind of veiled threat that the US routinely deals in these days.

The Canadian movento strike a deal with China was apparently shared in advance with the Americans, including Greer, so no-one was taken by surprise.

This being the year we have to review/renegotiate the Canada United States Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), the stakes are particularly high. But given that we can no longer rely on the USA as being a sensible and reliable trade partner, what choice did Canada have but to look elsewhere? I don't relish dealing with China any more than the next guy, but what's a country to do? Least-worst option? Rock and a hard place?

WestJet bows to customer backlash

A viral 30-second TikTok video of a couple of people dealing with WestJet's new smaller-legroom plane layout seems to have been instrumental in pushing Westjet to reverse their policy.

WestJet had changed the layout of 22 of their Boeing 737s to have an extra row of seats in order, they say, to save customers money. Each economy class seat had a 28" pitch (the distance between one seat and the seat in front), compared to the usual North American  29" or 30" pitch. They were also made non-reclining, or with a "fixed recline design" in industry parlance.

They say that this kind of layout in common in Europe, but Canadians were having none of it, and there was a strong backlash from customers. In fact, so strong a backlash that WestJet reversed their decision and reverted to the old layout, saying " We saw that this was all trending in the wrong direction". 

And social media trends are what it's all about these days. So, here's a rare example of a commercial company bowing to the demands of customers.

Two different culinary worlds

A two Michelin-starred restaurant in the small town of Machynlleth in mid-Wales has been given a failing one-star food safety rating by the Food Standards Agency, which puts it below minimum legal operating standards.

The mandatory checks are to ensure that food is being handled and produced hygenically. The one-star rating means that "major improvement" is needed at the fancy restaurant, which charges almost £500 a head.

The chef is predictably outraged, and says he is not embarrassed by the rating, suggesting that the inspectors just don't understand his operations. "Just because our rules don't fit their rules, they're questioning it", he whines.

The worst part of all this, though, is the reaction of influential food critic Giles Coren. "The normal health and safety things, I think it's fair enough, don't really apply", Coren opined, concluding that the rules "should probably be modernised". Coren whittered on about the special nature of the restaurant: "He is cooking with fire ... he stands there on his leather apron, and it's roaring like fireworks". *Yawn*

The Chartered Insitute of Environmental Health confirms that the rules are not "optional, subjective or old-fashioned", and that "no dining experience, however unusual or exclusive, sits outside the law".

Has the Nobel Peace Prize outlived its usefulness?

Speaking of the Nobel Peace Prize, you have to wonder these days whether it is still relevant and legitimate, least of all useful. No less a personage than Lloyd Axworthy, Canadian one-time Peace Prize nominee, echoes my own sentiments.

The Nobel Peace Prize was inaugurated by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, back in 1895, partly to assuage his own guilt at bringing such a destructive power into the world, and at the fortune he had amassed from the sale of armaments. So, you could say that the Prize was tainted from the get-go. But it was undeniably a worthy endeavour, with its mandate to honour those who have done the most to advance fraternity among nations, reduce standing armies, and promote peace through cooperation and dialogue.

There have been some very laudable winners over the decades, including Nelson Mandela, Liu Xiaobo, Dalai Lama, Andrei Sakharov, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, as well as a bunch of very worthy organizations like the International Peace Bureau, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, etc.

However, the Prize has also seen its share of controversial recipients: Henry Kissinger in 1973, in the midst of America's war in Vietnam; Yasser Arafat in 1994, despite his deeply ambiguous legacy of violence; Abiy Ahmed in 2019, who then plunged Ethiopia into a very nasty civil war just a year later; even Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, who seemed thoroughly deserving at the time, but whose brutal crackdown on the Myanmar's Rohingya minority decades later has drawn international condemnation. And now we have María Corina Machado, despite her support for sanctions and military intervention.

Several US Presidents have earned the accolade - Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama - some more deserving than others. There was a lot of debate about Obama's award, so early in his tenure, before he had achieved much of anything. And now, of course, Donald Trump is trying to lie, buy, bluster and batter his way into the annals. Nobel Laureate Machado has vowed to share her Prize with him, and the leaders of many other countries have promised to nominate him if he will only cut their countries some slack on trade. Under Trump, the Prize has become distinctly transactional.

Each year, when the Nobel Peace Prize nominees and winners are announced, it is met with more and more skepticism. It is hard for the Nobel Committee not to get caught up in global politics to some extent, and global politics is becoming increasingly messy, cynical and noxious. Has the Nobel Peace Prize lost its meaning, then, in a world where law, dialogue, morality and good-faith negotiations hold less and less sway?

Well, as the pragmatic Mr. Axworthy puts it: "Peacemaking has always been a grubby, imperfect business, conducted amid moral compromises and by flawed actors. To discard the ideal because its execution is imperfect would be to surrender entirely to the law of the jungle." Just so.

No, Machado can't "share" her Nobel Peace Prize with Donald Trump

Can Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado really "share" her Nobel Peace Prize with US President Donald Trump?

Well, of course she can't.

After the US's illegal invasion of Venezuela and abduction of President Maduro, Trump decided to install Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as his new puppet president in Venezuela. He dismissed Nobel Peace Prize winner and exiled opposition leader Machado out of hand as lacking "the support or the respect within the country".

But his tone began to change after the wily Machado offered to "share" her Nobel Prize with Trump, knowing full well that the Nobel Prize has been Trump's goal all along (despite his openly militaristic recent actions). He called the offer a "great honour", although he still hasn't contacted Machado as far as we know, and he certainly hasn't done anything about placing her in a presidential position. I think he just likes to be asked...

Whether Machado deserved the Prize in the first place is an open question, especially given her calls for sanctions and military intervention. She is just the latest in the lost of ambiguous prize recipients, as many are asking whether the Nobel Peace Prize has lost its way (or become too caught up in global politics) in recent years. Trump is definitely not going to help that trajectory.

But anyway, she definitely wouldn't be able to share her prize. The Nobel Committee has been very clear about that. They can award a shared prize, if they so choose, but once awarded, it cannot be revoked, shared or transferred. Which make sense when you think about it.

UPDATE

Well, it seems like she gave it to him anyway, regardless of all of the above.

These people!

UPDATE

And, just for good measure, I thought you might like to know when was the last time a Nobel Prize was gifted to someone else.

Turns out he last time this happened was in 1943, when Knut Hamsun, a notable Nazi sympathizer, gifted his 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature to ... Joseph Goebbels. Quite the precedent for Trump to follow.

Is there really an "affordability crisis"?

So, can this be true? I think it probably is. But, if it is, it flies in the face of pretty much everything that politicians have been telling us for years, and everything that most people firmly believe about their own circumstances.

Everyone seems to believe that, even now, prices are through the roof, that it is harder and harder to make ends meet, and that earnings are just not keeping pace with inflation. This is the whole "affordability crisis" or "cost-of-living crisis" that we keep hearing about, whether it be sheepishly from the governing party or with righteous outrage from the opposition

Thing is, though, it's not actually true. Canadian inflation has been hovering around the Bank of Canada's target of 2% for the last year or so, and is expected to fall even further by the end of the year, to around 1.8%. Yes, inflation was much higher from 2021 to 2024, peaking at over 8% in 2022, and we are still feeling the effects of that to some extent. But inflation, in Canada and many other countries around the world, has been effectively tamed.

More to the point, though, data from the Bank of Canada and Statistics Canada, the two most prestigious and reliable sources of financial data for the country, agree that households in every income group, age group and occupational group have seen their after-tax income grow faster than prices over most of the past decade. Net financial assets have also increased for households across all income groups, even when excluding house and pension assets appreciation. In short, we are richer than we have ever been. Data from multiple sources shows that our standard of living has in fact continuously improved recently.

So, why is the cost of living still the major preoccupation of a sizeable majority of Canadians (about 62%), and pretty much everywhere else in the world? Why do we perceive that things are worse than they are, and getting still worse?

Well, the important word there is "perceive". For example, multiple studies have found that consumers' perceptions of inflation are influenced more by prices going up than by prices going down, and most of all by the prices of frequently-purchased goods such as food and gasoline. Their perceptions are also influenced by the rise in house prices, even though inflation only measures the costs associated with housing (utilities, rent, mortgages) and not the price of houses themselves. (In fact, the increase in house prices should make us feel richer, if anything.)

The other thing that is happening is that people's expectations may be overly optimistic, particularly because, although income has grown faster than prices for most Canadians over the period since 2009, it hasn't exceeded prices by quite as much as it did in the preceeding period from 1995 and 2009. (This is a worldwide phenomenon, not just in Canada.) So, if people are comparing their situations with that of their parents, or with earlier in their careers, then they may be disappointed and perceive themselves to be falling behind, even if objectively their situations have actually improved.

Take another circumstance into consideration, namely the ubiquity of social media. Comparing ourselves with others, some of whom may be richer than us, alters our financial reference groups and consumption norms, distorting our perceptions of "normal" and "necessary" consumption and expenditure. For example, many people are buying bigger cars, fancier phones, and travelling abroad more, but if you feel you don't have the money to keep up with these trends, you may well blame the cost of living for not being able to achieve these unrealistic goals.

So, there is a mix of economics, psychology and sociology going on. But the bottom line is that, actually, life has never been so good. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Poilievre.

Meet the Canadian N.I.C.E. Agent

A short sketch on the Canadian improv comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes has gone viral - in Canada and America and even further afield.

Trent McClellan is the N.I.C.E. Agent, targeting American tourists, checking their phones (for baby photos), taking selfies, handing out candies, and scoring hugs.

It's two minutes of wwholesome Canadian fun, and it obviously appeals to many.

Danielle Smith apparently hasn't learned from history

I hadn't really thought about it before, but there are some fascinating parallels between Alberta's almost-certain secession referendum later this year and Britain's Brexit vote in 2016.

In those halcyon and naïve days - pre-COVID, pre-Trump, pre-Ukraine war, pre-AI, etc, etc - British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron merely wanted to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the European Union (EU), mainly to placate a small but vocal majority of ultra-right wingers in his party. He thought that threatening to leave the EU would be a good bargaining tool, and thought, as most people did back then, that there was no way that Britons would be daft enough to actually vote to leave. It was certainly the last thing that Cameron himself wanted.

As we all now know, things didn't pan out quite as expected, largely due to an egregious misinformation campaign by the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. Britain voted narrowly to leave the EU, Johnson became Prime Minister for three wild and largely disastrous years, and Farage lay low for a while before reinventing himself, and is now odds-on favourite to become Britain's next disastrous Prime Minister. How quickly things can go pear-shaped!

Fast forward ten years, and the Canadian province of Alberta is threatening Albexit. Premier Danielle Smith says she is personally against it, and pretty much every serious economist and political analyst has warned that the consequences would be disastrous. All the polls suggest that support in Alberta for leaving Canada is low, around 20%, nothing like the level of support for secession in Quebec back in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

But Smith has for years been using the threat of separation as leverage to press the federal government for special treatment for Alberta, again largely to placate the hard right-wing hawks in her party. She has even made the process of starting a provincial referendum on the matter much easier than it used to be, hoping to squeeze still more concessions from Ottawa from the increased pressure. It now looks almost certain that a vote will in fact be held later this year.

Sound familiar? What could possibly go wrong?

Well, one thing that could go very wrong is Donald Trump, and Ms. Smith doesn't seem to have factored him into her calculations and machinations. America's most interventionist president has made no secret of his desire to annex Canada, and particularly to get his hands on Alberta's oil. It seems likely that the Trump administration would expend a lot of money and effort in any Alberta separation campaign. At the very least, Trump would probably declare any "stay" vote to be unfair and rigged, creating constitutional chaos and uncertainty. 

(Alberta separatists make no secret of the fact that that have already had several meetings with the US State Department, which, they say, is very supportive of Alberta's secession.)

Could this be Danielle Smith's Cameron moment? We (and Alberta) have to hope not. What is it they say? "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."