Yes, there is still a war in Gaza

In case you were wondering, due to the almost complete absence of coverage in the mainstream daily news cycle, there is still a war going on in Gaza. Or rather, there is an ongoing genocide going on it, because "war" presupposes two sides engaging each other.

In fact, the war in Gaza is probably as bad as it has ever been, but it hardly makes an appearance in the news because it's no longer, well, new. (Similar to the ongoing war in Ukraine - yes, that one's still going too.) 

The latest dispatch describes how the World Food Program agency, which has been providing much of the hot meals for the beleaguered people of Gaza, has now officially run out of food because Israeli forces are still enforcing the closure of all crossings from the outside world into Gaza. Food stockpiled during an earlier ceasefire has all but run out, and 2.3 million Palestinians are starving. Thousands of tons of food supplies are currently stuck at the border crossing.

Remember much earlier in the war, when there was great international outrage at the Israelis blocking access to food supplies? Well, that is happening now, and in fact this is the longest closure Gaza has ever faced. And yet it is hardly being reported. Israel says it has to enforce the blockade because they can't risk food supplies being siphoned off by Hamas, something of which there is no good evidence anyway, but I think we know their real motives.

Oh, and Palestinians continue to be killed in large number by Israeli bombs, 78 in just the last 24 hours. The Israeli military issues short-notice orders to residents of particular towns to leave (to where?), and then proceeds to blow up what remains of the housing stock there. Like I say, not really a war, more of an ethnic cleansing.

Liberals are aping rhe Conservatives to get elected

With the federal election up for grabs next Monday, and the two top parties almost neck-and-neck in the polls, it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell the Liberals and Conservatives apart.

Part of Mark Carney's strategy when he became Liberal leader last month was clearly to try to steal Pierre Poilievre's thunder by adopting a bunch of Conservative platform policies and claiming them as his own. Thus, within days of assuming the leadership, Carney vowed to scrap the consumer carbon tax and to walk back unpopular plans to increase the capital gains tax inclusion rate. 

On many other issues, from housing to pipelines to maternity benefits, the two parties are now pretty much in lockstep, regardless of their previous stances, as the Liberals pull out all the stops to try to be all things to all people. 

This is partly a ploy by the Liberals to distance themselves from any policy that might remotely be considered to be unpopular or controversial, but it is partly to take away any vote-winning advantage from the Conservatives. It makes sense that the Liberals try to remove as many policy objections as possible, and to try to make the election more about individuals than platforms. That way they can take advantage of many people's instinctive dislike of Pierre Poilievre, and their apparent trust in Carney to deal with the Trump administration.

It has been quite a successful strategy for them, marked by a miraculous come-back in the polls from about 25% behind to 5% in front (although softening in recent days). But it's most disconcerting to see the Liberals espousing populist policies they once vociferously objected to, and it doesn't really feel very good, I have to say. But if it's the only way to ensure that Pierre Poilievre doesn't get his greasy mitts on power, then I will go along with it.

I have to assume that both candidates are deliberately steering their platform policies towards the centre in order to get elected, and that, once elected, their true colours will come out. Thus, Poilievre would almost certainly veer sharply towards the right if elected - of that, I have long been convinced. The best I can hope is that, once elected, Mark Carney will also revert to form and veer further to the left, re-establishing his concern for the environment among other things, which seems to have been all but abandoned during this election campaign.

That is my hope. But that's not how politics is supposed to work.

Toronto gets a(nother) new area code

It used to be that you saw a 416 area code, and you knew that a caller was from Toronto. Well, that's still true, but in addition Toronto is getting yet another area code as the region starts to run out of new phone numbers to accommodate its burgeoning population.

After the old 416 code, 647 was allocated to Toronto in 2001, followed by 437 in 2013 when that still wasn't enough. Now, starting this month, 942 will also be a Toronto area code. 

It's getting to the stage that it's hard to remember all the codes, so it's not so easy to see that you have local call coming in or an international spam call.

Tories wilfully misinterpret Liberal research document

You may have heard a rather deperate Pierre Poilievre talking about it, or read some hyperbolic inflammatory pieces by various right-wing outlets. Canada's conservatives seem to see it as a kind of Hail Mary pass that might arrest their precipitous decline in the polls in the run-up the next week's federal election.

I'm referring, of course, to a policy document published by Policy Horizons Canada, a "foresight organization" that explores trends and possible future scenarios for the government, with a view to helping it develop robust and resilient policies to deal with potential future problems.

As Poilievre sees it, "The report paints a terrifying picture of a spiral of economic depression and cost inflation. What they are anticipating on the current trajectory is a total meltdown, a societal breakdown in Canada if we stay on the current track". 

Other right-wing politcal hacks, like Rick Bell or David Staples or Michael Higgins, paint even more garish pictures, choosing to deliberately misinterpret the report's function.

This particular report, entitled "Future Lives: Social Mobility in Question" explored the possibility of a scenario whereby Canadians may find themselves stuck in the socioeconomic condition of their birth and even face downward social mobility in a 2040 world where post-secondary education may no longer offer a path to social mobility, and where expanding AI has shrunk the value of human labour.

It is not, as Policy Horizons is at pains to point out, a prediction of the future under current or future Liberal policies, as the Conservatives claim. Rather, it is just one scenario that may or may not transpire after the efforts of several different governments over the next 15 years. And kudos to the Liberal government for even trying to look that far ahead, given the uncertain times we live in!

So, the report is nothing to do with the Liberals' "current trajectory", whatever Poilievre & Co would like you to think. This is the Conservatives clutching at straws as they face down another potential electoral loss.

The argument against religious and "philosophical" vaccination exemptions

Kudos to Globe and Mail health columnist André Picard for once again telling it like it is, this time regarding the morality of vaccinations.

The column begins by noting that, first California, then New York, have already passed laws over the last ten years disallowing parents from refusing vaccinations for their kids on so-called religious or philosophical grounds (an exemption on medical grounds remains for those with severe allergies to some ingredients of vaccines, or severe immune deficiencies). 

I had no idea this had been pushed through - in 2015 and 2019 respectively - I can imagine it was pretty contentious. Both states were reacting to major measles outbreaks, mainly among religious (Jewish) communities.

Well, Ontario is currently going throught its worst measles outbreak in three decades, with its origins in the vaccine-resistent Mennonite community. Isn't it time Ontario passed such a law, along with a determined educational effort to win over the vaccine-hesitant?

As Mr. Picard explains, it is currently way too easy to claim an exemption from childhood vaccinations on religious or "philosophical" grounds. But resistance to vaccinations is not a tenet of any major religion; religious anti-vaxxers are just making their own interpretations of religious beliefs, usually something along the lines of they feel it interrupts the divine plan for a person's life, or it is interfering with God's will in some ill-defined way. The "philosophical" objection is even more woolly, usually to do with "parental rights" to decide what is best for their own children.

Freedom of religion is one thing, but it was never meant to exempt people from their societal obligations, such as protecting the health and well-being of children (their own and others'). As has been codified in major court cases, the state cannot tell you what to think, but it can tell you what do, especially where it involves the greater good of society. Religionists and libertarians hate that, but it's true. 

Personal beliefs do not supersede the public good or the laws of the land. Just as we don't allow patents to beat their children, or marry them off as minors, just as we insist on seat belts in cars to save lives (remember the fuss when that was instituted?), we should not be allowing those with anti-science views to harm others. We should not be mollifying the selfish and the self-righteous at the expense of the general populace.

The truth about Canada's debt ratio

The Liberal government has, for years now, made a virtue of the fact the Canada has the lowest net-debt-to-GDP ratio among G7 countries.

The Conservative opposition, predictably, say that this is misleading, and a better measure is the gross-debt-to-GDP ratio, in which Canada appears as, not the worst, as they often try to insinuate, but somewhere in the middle. 

Conservative mouthpieces like the Fraser Institute, for example, can smugly claim that "we're deeper in debt than Ottawa tells us". But that is at least as disingenuous as the original Liberal claim. Both parties are cherry-picking data to suit their political ends.

What, then, is the truth behind it all?

Firstly, it is worth looking at what "net" and "gross" actually mean in this context. Gross debt is the total public liabilities held by a country (federal, provincial and municipal), including things like Treasury bonds, public service pension liabilities, etc. Net debt is gross debt minus public financial assets held (land, buildings, financial assets like pension plans, etc). Which you consider the better measure of a country's financial health seems largely to be a political decision: there is merit in both measures.

In comparative terms, Canada is indeed a leader in net-debt-to-GDP: its ratio in 2023 was just 14%, compared to Germany and USA (both 95%), France 99%, Italy (129%) and Japan (161%). This is in large part due to the substantial non-government investments of the Canada Pension Plan and the Quebec Pension Plan.

In gross-debt-to-GDP, Canada had a ratio of 107% in 2023, less than France (111%), USA (123%), Italy (135%) and Japan (249%), but less than UK (101%) and Germany (63%). Not a bad showing all in all, and below the G7 average. It is also projected to improve by 2029, putting it second behind only Germany in the G7.

There are those who argue that net-debt-to-GDP ratio is actually a superior measure of a country's financial health and strength. Whatever you think about that, it's certainly a stretch to argue that Canada's public debt is out of hand and that it's all the Liberal government's fault over the last ten years.

So, did Pope Francis change the world?

With the death yesterday of Pope Francis, the conversation naturally moves to his legacy and whether he actually made (or indeed could make) any difference in the real world.

It seems undeniable that Francis, a humble and modest individual by papal standards, was something of a radical firebrand (again by papal standards). He was not afraid to involve himself in messy political and social issues. He worked to challenge and change Catholic orthodoxy, for example through his progressive comments on climate change, homosexuality and gender issues, migration and refugees, indigenous people, divorce and nuclear weapons, incurring the wrath of the more conservative wing of the Catholic establishment in the process. 

Some activists, of course, thought he didn't go far enough, and that he squandered his position of power and influence, and it's true that he steered clear of issues like abortion, clerical abuse, celibacy and women in the priesthood, among other issues that he might have been expected to weigh in on.

He even sought to redefine and modernize the role of a pope in the modern world. As popes go, he was a breath of fresh air, especially after the stuffy, traditionalistic and reactionary papacies of John Paul and Benedict who preceded him. He had a sense of humour, and the irony would not have been lost on him that almost his final public engagement was with US Vice-President JD Vance, who embodies pretty much everything he railed against during his 12-year papal tenure.

Did he change the world, though? Despite being the leader and spokesperson for the estimated 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide, it's not at all clear that anything he did or said has moved the needle on anything important in any sphere of life. Sure, he may have made some gay Catholics feel a bit better about themselves, and he may have caused a few people to think more seriously about their carbon footprint. 

But, however nice a guy he may have been, and however pure his motives, how can he be said to have actually made the world a better place? He may have changed the Catholic Church (and about time too!), but he didn't really change the world.

As we speak, a real live Conclave is about to take place to elect a new pope. During his tenure, Francis elevated a lot of younger, global-south bishops to the status of cardinal, so it will be interesting to see whether another progressive is voted in to continue Francis' work - a BLACK pope, even! - or whether there is a conservative backlash from the Italian/European base to vote in one of their own, to arrest the madness, as they see it.

Alberta thumping the tub again

"Proud Canadian" Michelle Smith has been playing the secession card during the current federal election, all while maintaining that she will not interfere in the federal vote. "A referendum on Alberta's independence is an inevitability", she says, trying not to interfere.

Her mentor, Preston Manning, has likewise inserted his oar, claiming in a Globe and Mail interview that "a vote for the Carney Liberals is a vote for Western secession - a vote for the breakup of Canada as we know it".

However, it's all smoke and mirrors because Albertans don't really want to secede. A new Angus Reid poll suggests that only 30% of Albertans (and 33% of Saskatchewaners) would consider separating from Canada, whether to join the USA or to go it alone.

So, this is just Alberta stoking up dissent. In fact, interfering in the election.

Trump imposes tariffs on uninhabited islands

Canada, unexpectedly, seems to avoided the worst of Trump's tariffs. But countries across the world are having to deal with them, including some rather bizarre ones.

Heard Island and MacDonald Islands are external territories of Australia, although closer to Antarctica than to Australia. They are tiny, uninhabited, barren piles of volcanic rock, covered in glaciers and home only to a colony of penguins. They are only accessible by a two-week boat journey from Perth, and it is believed the last time they were visited by people was some ten years ago.

But even these little islands - among the rewmotest places on earth and not even countries in their own right - have not escaped the attentions of Donald Trump's zealous tariff administrators. They too will see tariffs of 10% levied on any goods exported to the USA. This is because, the World Bank shows them as having exported US$1.4 of "machinery and electrical" goods to the US in 2022, although no-one seems to know quite what this might have been, given that there are no people and no buildings on the islands.

Are the penguins engaging in some clandestine business ventures that Australia knows nothing about? Anthony Scaramucci, Trump's ex communications chief, and now a vocal critic, quipped, "These penguins have been ripping us off for years". Good for the Trump administration for spotting this.