From what I’m seeing on Mastodon, there was some kind of altercation between Ezra Levant and other reporters…

Pure, unsourced conjecture.

• In early April 2025, a rumor began to spread that U.S. President Donald Trump had backed down on tariffs because Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney forced his hand by orchestrating a collective sale of U.S. bonds.

• It is true that Trump paused tariffs after the price of U.S. Treasurys began to drop at the same time as the price of U.S. stocks plummeted, an event known as a synchronized sell-off. In fact, after he announced the pause, Trump said, “bond markets are tricky.”

• However, the claim that Carney had orchestrated the bond sell-off alongside the European Union and Japan was not confirmed. It came from the newsletter of Dean Blundell, a staunch supporter of Carney in Canada’s next federal election and a former “shock jock.”

• Snopes has contacted Blundell, asking him to explain how he came upon this story and to clarify some points from his allegations.

• Snopes also contacted Carney’s office asking for confirmation of Blundell’s claims. Lastly, we have reached out to several fixed income analysts to inquire about the plausibility of such a scheme.

Those requirements are designed to allow Quebec’s provincial party a seat at the table

Certainly, and I’ve already expressed how I feel about that. But I get it - they’re able to leverage the electoral system to their advantage, and have in fact been the Official Opposition at times.

I certainly agree that it’s very questionable to have an explicitly regional party in the federal debates, but for clarity’s sake, the criteria are 2/3 of the following:

• having at least one sitting MP who’s been elected as a member of that party

• having at least four per cent national support in opinion polls

• running candidates in at least 90 per cent of all ridings

After pulling the candidates, the Green Party only meets one of these criteria (the first).

Yeah, from what I’ve gathered from previous articles on the topic, CSIS does not have boots-on-the-ground spies, foreign assets, or the infrastructure to support them.

Then we should be tracking down and firing everyone involved from all parties?

Yup.

In this case, I think there might be a case to be made.

“The prosecutor would be, I think, concerned … if the investigation was still going on behind the scenes, without them being looped in, while they’re trying to prosecute a case,” said Michael Arntfield, a criminologist and professor at Western University who worked for 16 years as a detective with the London Police Service in Ontario.

“If they say they can’t interview him, that to me sounds like they’ve taken direction either from the Crown or from superior officers to not potentially interfere with the prosecution.”

Sure, I just don’t find “everybody does it” to be a particularly compelling argument. Wrong is wrong.

Absolutely. It’s beyond me why someone would be against a hearing taking place, considering a “no” would be practically guaranteed in cases like these.

Carney said they’ve been “reassigned” within the campaign.

Not nearly enough.

Is it safe to say that casual use of the notwithstanding clause has been normalized to the point that there are no real consequences to invoking it any more?

CBC is reporting this as fact, not an allegation - it’s safe to assume that they know exactly who these campaign workers are.

There are also decent reasons not to name them just yet - if they’re low-level staffers, it’s worth trying to get a comment from the Party first, and/or try to determine how far up the ladder this goes. No sense in scapegoating the grunts until the higher-ups are ID’d.

On Friday night, in two Ottawa bars, campaign workers shared how the party was behind this move — how two Liberal Party staffers attended the conference intended for conservatives and placed these buttons in areas where attendees would find them.

One of those conversations was in the immediate earshot of this journalist. A Conservative source overheard the other conversation.

Great, it just became easier to dismiss legitimate criticism of the Conservatives as a false-flag operation.

Brilliant move.

Among the legal organizations’ expressed objections and flaws they contend mar the proposed regime in its application to legal professionals:

• IRCC’s proposed broad powers to inspect and search, based on an IRCC officer’s determination that there are “reasonable grounds to suspect” a violation, and to demand documents from lawyers, without safeguards, as well as the lack of any mechanism to allow lawyers to fully and effectively defend themselves, without breaching established principles of solicitor-client confidentiality;

• unfairness, expense and other negative impacts on legal professionals, and the risk of inconsistent results by needlessly subjecting them to dual regulation;

• failure to respect the fundamental principles of independence of the bar as well as solicitor/client privilege/confidentiality, which are protected by the common law and the Constitution;

• the lack of procedural protections and accountability;

• IRCC’s lack of neutrality vis-à-vis immigration and refugee lawyers who advocate for clients, often in opposition to IRCC and its counsel, including representing in court those accused of offences, including misrepresentation. “Granting the same entity the authority to discipline the very lawyers who challenge it creates a glaring conflict of interest — comparable to allowing Crown counsel to oversee the discipline of criminal defence lawyers,” the CBA asserts in its submission to IRCC; and

• Ottawa exceeds federal jurisdiction by purporting to regulate and penalize lawyers and paralegals doing paid immigration and refugee work, including by naming violators and publishing particulars on IRCC’s website, an interference with a lawyer’s ability to practise law, which is the exclusive preserve of law societies.

The Captain America comics have gotten some good mileage out of that theme over the years - what do you do when the ideals you supposedly represent no longer reflect the actual nation?

If done thoughtfully, it can be an asset, rather than a liability.

As much as I agree that one doesn’t “run for Prime Minister,” and I wish everyone would stop using that phrasing…the party sure as shit should be running to form government.

The article is annoyingly vague, but I guess it’s talking about actual, boots-on-the-ground spies, and the infrastructure to manage foreign agents?

And with that, I think Singh’s goose is officially cooked.

You don’t run an election campaign on supporting another party. You run it on the assertion that you deserve to win.

The headline I posted was the headline at the time - the other verdicts hadn’t come in yet.