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.