Exilian

Just some notes:

The BC forestry industry is in crisis after 150 years of management by people whose only disagreement was how much of the money from cutting down all the trees should go to the workers, and how much to the bosses. The crisis was hurried by climate change which allowed the Mountain Pine Beetle to spread north and eat the pine plantations laid out after clear cutting.  Climate change is also killing the local and imported cedars which need cool summers with some rain not a month or two of no rain. CBC on structural issues (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/british-columbia-forestry-future-pine-beetle-1.6712576) CBC on a speech (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-timber-industry-change-exhausted-forests-1.6693769) Tyee (https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/01/18/Running-Empty-BC-Forestry-Crash/)

The BC salmon fisheries are in trouble too, some people blame parasites spreading from open-tank fish farms, climate change is probably a factor too

A few homeless people in BC are dying because they take shelter in dumpsters and the garbage trucks don't check that anyone is in there before dumping the dumpsters into the compactor

The police have released a bit more information about the twin brothers with semiautomatic rifles who robbed a bank and shot six police officers before dying CBC (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/saanich-shootout-what-we-learned-1.6721683)

Alberta PM Danielle Smith is throwing a temper tantrum (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/smith-just-transition-jobs-claim-lies-beyond-truth-1.6720064) that the federal government is preparing a Just Transition Act to help oilfield workers change industries as those jobs go ("what do you mean we can't extract more and more fossil fuels forever?")

And the federal health minister is saying louder and louder "provinces, it would be a really good idea to require people to wear N95 or better masks on public transit and in public indoor spaces" (the PM and co rarely let themselves be seen in a mask any more though; but at events such as Davos there are rigorous infection control measures to keep powerful people safe)

Canadian companies are getting caught up in the fashion for layoffs

Former Liberal Finance Minister Bill Morneau has a book out which says the same things that anyone else who left the Trudeau government unhappily says (that Trudeau does not care about the details of policy (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bill-morneau-book-politics-trudeau-1.6716834) just about how something will look or how voters will react).  Moreau was implicated in the We Charity scandal and spent five years as Trudeau's Minister of Finance so give me a policy wonk, lord, but not yet!

And there will be a provincial election in Alberta which will probably end the United Conservative Party government after one term

Edit 2023-01-22: Oh, and a second Liberal cabinet minister got caught hiring a close relative (or a senior advisor's close relative) to do "communications" (https://paulwells.substack.com/p/rules-are-for-bad-people). In this case, its not obvious that the relative provided any services for the money.  The names are Mary Ng and Ahmed Hussen and both are still in Cabinet and in parliament.  If this sounds like the We Charity scandal, where Trudeau gave a large sole-source contract to a scam charity which had paid members of the Trudeau family generous speaking fees, you have a good memory. Global News summary (https://globalnews.ca/news/9419625/hussen-spent-77k-constituency-funds-on-pr-help-from-foodie-firm-munch-more-media/), the figures involved are about $93,000

Edit: and the government of Canada has reached a 3 billion dollar settlement with 325 First Nations over the destruction of lives, language, and culture at the residential schools https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/residential-school-band-class-action-settlement-1.6722014

A Liberal MP, the former Sport Minister, is criticizing the government for neglecting her push for more protection for athletes against abuse within sports https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/kirsty-duncan-abuse-sport-trudeau-1.6727658 (here is one example of a current scandal, cw: child abuse (https://www.macleans.ca/longforms/gymnastics-abuse-scandal-canada/))

The latest trouble between Daniel Smith and the old media is a report that she tried to interfere with the prosecutor's office during and after the blockade at the border crossing at Coutts which ended in a number of heavily armed individuals being arrested and charged with conspiring to kill police officers https://www.cbc.ca/news/editorsblog/cbc-stands-by-coutts-story-1.6728100

The federal government has had to withdraw its proposed bill banning new handgun sales after making a series of amendments which broadened it to include a wide range of rifles.  There was pretty wide support for a handgun ban in Parliament (you could debate its merits as a policy) but quite a few Canadians own long guns which can hold more than 5 rounds.  Unfortunately, we are probably not going to follow up on this by collecting and sharing more data about the firearms used in crimes, because nudging the federal bureaucracy into motion is hard and proving how many firearms used in crimes come from the USA could create political difficulties.

Needles to say, Pierre Polievre and the usual suspects in Alberta are gloating.

John Tory the mayor of Toronto will resign after a newspaper learned that he had an affair with a staffer.  He decided to get ahead of the story by calling a press conference, saying what he had done, and saying that he planned to resign.

Kind of interesting that someone with a conservative political background, as Tory seems to have, was still winning over 60% of the vote in a city as big as Toronto last year: that feels impressive/unusual?

I'm tired and I don't understand electoral politics but Rob Ford amalgated Toronto proper with the suburbs to get a base of reactionaries.  I get the impression that John Tory is more or less an honest conservative not a radical or a crook.

The BC government is planning to rush out a lot of legislation to deal with the crisis in housing prices, grocery prices, and availability of medical care.  And a local new media organization, the Capital Daily, is in crisis after the journalists refused to promote the owners' other businesses in the news section and the owners fired four of the seven journalists.

The first First Nations woman in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia has resigned complaining about name-calling and defamation by the opposition (https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/02/23/Melanie-Mark-Quits-BC-Politics/) especially by white male MLAs.

Three Canadian Conservative MPs had lunch and a photo shoot with a MP (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Anderson) for the aggressively xenophobic Alternativ für Deutschland https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/poilievre-christine-anderson-vile-racist-1.6759453  Spiegel describes her as an activist for the anti-Moslem PEGIDA movement.

The federal Liberals are trying to even further reduce migrant-driven migration into Canada by removing the loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement which lets people who entered Canada from the USA outside a regular border crossing appeal for refugee status (normally if they entered the USA first they can be sent back because the USA is a 'safe third country').  The main obstacle is that US lawmakers are distracted and the law was already a good deal for xenophobic Canadians (its much easier to get to the USA from desperately poor or violent places than to get to Canada). 

In terms of immigration policy, the biggest difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives is that the Liberals are consistently for continued large immigration by workers (especially if those workers are precarious or kept out of the best-paid jobs by not recognizing their training) while factions of the Tories are more broadly against immigration or especially against Moslem immigrants.  The Liberals don't have a broad philosophical commitment to let people seek shelter in Canada, but a narrower instrumental belief that some kinds of mass immigration are in the country's or the party's interest (always governed by what their pollsters tell them voters want).

Edit: and the Vancouver Police allegedly shot an unarmed man with rubber bullets within seconds of stopping him (it turned out that they had stopped the wrong person) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-police-shoot-man-mistaken-identity-1.6762370  Some Canadian police forces have a culture of using less lethal weapons instead of words (rather than using them instead of firearms)

People who follow news sources I don't follow are talking about allegations that the government of China tried to interfere in the 2021 federal and 2022 Vancouver elections.  Their favourite in the former was allegedly a Liberal minority government, the later was a Chinese-Canadian candidate (possibly the winner who won 51% to 29%).  I think the ultimate source is a CSIS report passed to the Globe and Mail, the more centrist of the two big Toronto papers.

None of my sources say what this interference allegedly consisted of  ::)

Justin Trudeau has pulled out the old Liberal playbook by announcing an investigation chaired by a {former Supreme Court Justice - former Lieutenant Governor - former Governor General} who is connected to the Prime Minster and the Liberal Party via {a position at the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation - ...}

Edit: not bad CBC story on the operations of the Hong Kong Triads in Canada since 1997 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-dragon-lord-probe-book-1.6783063

Edit: and a related story on Indian government relations to Canada https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/india-foreign-interference-public-inquiry-1.6784676 (see also Air India Flight 182 Bombing (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/air-india-flight-182-bombing)).

The CBC has a half competent story on how American handguns are smuggled into Canada https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/the-path-of-a-gun  It needs more on the backgrounds of the dealer in Canada and the victims of the various shootings in Canada.

"In Ontario alone, pistols from the United States made up 90 per cent of all crime-related handguns traced by police in 2022, with Texas as a leading source state, according to the Ontario Provincial Police."

Edit: and

QuoteLiberal MP Han Dong, who is at the centre of Chinese influence allegations, privately advised a senior Chinese diplomat in February 2021 that Beijing should hold off freeing Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor (when they were held while the US was attempting to extradite a Huawei executive from Canada), according to two separate national security sources.

Both sources said Dong allegedly suggested to Han Tao, China's consul general in Toronto, that if Beijing released the "Two Michaels," whom China accused of espionage, the Opposition Conservatives would benefit.

https://globalnews.ca/news/9570437/liberal-mp-han-dong-secretly-advised-chinese-diplomat-in-2021-to-delay-freeing-two-michaels-sources/

A BC Liberal MLA expelled from caucus for being a climate-change denier is now head of the very small Conservative Party of British Columbia

QuoteRustad, who says he's pro-freedom, pro-trucker and is fighting to end vaccine mandates, says he expects the Conservatives under his leadership to challenge the NDP and Liberals.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/john-rustad-leader-bc-conservative-party-1.6797879

And the Public Health Officer has switched from encouraging infection control measures to telling that this spring should be a time of renewal and hope and that "People need to get back to doing those things that are important to us and being with others." (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/covid-spring-uptick-1.6796026)  That is a choice I guess.

Ontario cryptocurrency swindler Aiden Pleterski was allegedly kidnapped and beaten by people who wanted some of the money he had collected https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/crypto-king-pleterski-kidnapped-1.6790615

The owner of Twitter's latest way of getting attention has been applying the state-owned media designation to public media in democracies.  Former Federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has thoughts and is convinced that the CBC is currently partisan Liberal https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/tom-mulcair-why-all-the-fuss-about-twitter-s-description-of-cbc-1.6360448  They have spent many more words on internal drama in the federal Greens than on possible Chinese interference in the 2019 federal election.

This CBC story on the dysfunctional nature of parliament is not bad in what it takes for granted https://subscriptions.cbc.ca/newsletter_static/messages/politicsnewsletter/2023-04-09/

There is a big strike of federal public-sector workers in Canada right now.

Alberta will probably call a provincial election on 1 May.  The story about Danielle Smith trying to get prosecutors to lay off a pastor who violated public health measures is still in the news.

The AB election has been called for 29 May! https://www.elections.ab.ca/elections/albertas-next-election/  The opposition has started the laborious task of clipping out the ridiculous things she said in her previous career with podcasts and talk radio as recently as 2021 (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/danielle-smith-adolf-hitler-netflix-rachel-notley-1.6836160) and saying "gee isn't that foolish, disturbing, or dangerous?"

Recent protests against logging are not the first time police did shady things in rural Vancouver Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Goodwin).

A typical large Canadian fraud has collapsed https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-mortgage-clients-worry-about-life-savings-1.6837491 https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/victoria-mortgage-brokers-firm-under-control-of-receiver-as-lawsuits-pile-up-6962648

Are there many polls or predictions for the Alberta election?

Astonishingly it is close https://338canada.com/alberta/ but I am with those who suspect that Danielle Smith and the UCP will get turfed out.  Danielle Smith is not good at sticking to a script and looking like a safe pair of hands.

Smith tried to interfere in the legal proceedings against a pastor who violated public health rules early in the COVID pandemic.  She seems to think that she has the royal power of pardon like a US president or state governor.

Hm, yes - fingers crossed, then.

For James: I have said that the biggest constitutional problem in Canada is that the PM has become a kind of elected dictator who can only be controlled by parliament and can often dodge that.  One NDP MP wants to formalize some of the rules around confidence motions.

Edit: story on parliamentary procedure reform https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/blaikie-confidence-prorogation-analysis-wherry-1.6845378

A good example of Danielle Smith's challenges: UCP candidate who hangs out on crazy right-wing social media like Smith does opens her mouth (this time it was about trans kids and sex education (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/ucp-candidate-will-not-sit-in-caucus-if-elected-after-comments-on-transgender-children-smith-1.6847252)), Smith eventually disavows the candidate, but people have to ask "why is someone with those opinions running in your party?"

One of the basic problems of the UCP is that it mixes a right-wing party-of-power with a wing that absorbs far-right American media unironically.  The later won't accept compromises with physical or political reality, but they sound like nuts to ordinary voters.

QuoteOne of the basic problems of the UCP is that it mixes a right-wing party-of-power with a wing that absorbs far-right American media unironically.  The later won't accept compromises with physical or political reality, but they sound like nuts to ordinary voters.

I think this is increasingly a trend in the UK conservatives. They've often managed to square this circle in the past by doubling down hard on areas of being horrible that actually do have electoral traction - most notably being anti-immigration - and by the fact that the British tabloids are more cannily focused towards electoral success for the right than US Talk Radio is. But I think the new wave of "anti-woke" and anti-trans stuff from the Conservatives is, whilst in many ways very British (UK transphobia has very noticeable differences in tone to its US equivalent), a signal that maybe the Tory right actually are moving away from the sort of cynical but effective electoralism that they've managed to sign up to at least for the last decade and a half. The US right can get away with this via extreme voter suppression and cooping big chunks of voters up in exceptional closed media environments, a mental cell whose walls are talk radio, Tucker Carlson, ultra-politicised churches, and a country sufficiently big and car-centric that social contact with "the other side" is simply very unlikely for a lot of US Republicans. The right AFAICT can't replicate that in the UK, Canada, or Australia quite as effectively.

I was having a conversation last night with po8crg about this wrt the British far left, and the problems of and for parties that demand that you accept a wholesale world view rather than just selling you some policies they think you might like without demanding your ideological coherence. Some factions of the right of the US Republicans are kind of in that mould: they're whole-worldview parties more than usual political factions and that's an incredibly difficult thing for parties elsewhere to replicate (though it has horrifying staying power when it does: look at some of the old religious parties in the Netherlands which stick around reliably).

We are probably going to see because Pierre Polievre is more likely than not to become Prime Minister by 2030 (its possible that the Conservatives do not get the most seats in the next federa; election and the party tosses him out again but it would be very unusual if the Liberals form two more governments after eight years in power).  He has not spent his previous career rambling on podcasts about how getting vaccinated is succumbing to the charms of a tyrant but he shouts about things which get the far right on social media excited.

There are probably Liberals who have a cunning plan to pass the reins to Chriystia Freeland or similar but even if Justin Trudeau cooperated, transitions like that are difficult for a party known for corruption and indecision.  I think its a bit easier if the party is relatively popular and has successes to boast of.

The United Conservative Party of Alberta has won by a few thousand votes in a jurisdiction with millions of residents.  Because first past the post is awful, that gives them a solid majority.

Quote from: dubsartur on May 30, 2023, 05:32:33 PM
The United Conservative Party of Alberta has won by a few thousand votes in a jurisdiction with millions of residents.  Because first past the post is awful, that gives them a solid majority.

Uch, that's sad.

It looks like my new source mislead me and the actual vote was pretty close to the final share of seats (but many ridings were very close) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Alberta_general_election

The saddest things is that the right in Canada in general, and in Alberta in particular, have no answer to "if we keep burning fossil fuels to the end of the century, the planet will become unlivable for farming and civilization as we know them."  They have no plan but they just keep throwing temper tantrums to avoid easier changes today. 

Former Conservative Party of Canada head Erin O'Toole has given a speech warning against irresponsible rhetoric and embracement of online hate and conspiracy theories https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/erin-otoole-leaving-politics-social-media-1.6877453

Perhaps the kind of thing he is thinking about is the grandparents in the BC interior who interrupted a primary-school sports event to accuse one of the contestants of being trans and demand that she produce ID (https://globalnews.ca/news/9765882/couple-kelowna-track-meet-incident-central-okanagan-schools/) on the basis of not looking femme enough.  They totally got that from corporate social media or far-right outfits like Fox News and Rebel Media.

While the population of Canada reaches 40 million, the Supreme Court of Canada has approved the Safe Third Country Agreement (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/supreme-court-ruling-safe-third-country-agreement-1.6878870) (ie. the "migrants from Latin America stay in the USA we don't want you here" treaty)

The case against mortgage broker Greg Martel who owes investors $226 million CAD continues.  Martel assures the courts that he will return to Canada and answer complaints real soon now.

Looking back at the Canadian Politics 2019 thread: the Liberal government has pledged to phase out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies which was already in their platform in 2015.  They have decided not to separate the offices of (partisan) Minister of Justice and (non-partisan) Attorney General even though that would have avoided the SNC Lavalin affair when the Attorney General said no and there was no way to pressure her off the record.  So decarbonizing and structural reforms are still not priorities.

The government is also pushing interest rates higher and higher in the apparent belief that inflation is basically caused by people borrowing money to bid for scarce resources, rather than COVID, extreme weather, an aging population, and the RU-UA war taking goods and labour out of the market without reducing demand.  In the USA this policy is probably behind a lot of the strange behaviour of web service companies this year, in Canada the effects are harder to see unless you know someone who is renewing a mortgage and saw the payments triple.  In my province there is still a serious housing crisis, local governments are finally enabling more construction after being pushed by the provincial government which threatened to take away their power to zone.  But it takes time especially because of lumber shortages and labour shortages (and because capitalists want to build giant glass condo towers rather than eg. row houses or modest sized apartment buildings).

Wildfires are bad in many parts of Canada this summer too.

As an example of local news, here is a case of fighting over who should pay to raise a weir to keep a river viable during climate change (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/as-river-levels-drop-people-on-vancouver-island-say-a-weir-would-help-them-adapt-1.6912797).

Maybe I should not post this because its not local, but Macleans has a longform piece about a wealthy out-of-provincer infringing on beach rights in Prince Edward Island (https://macleans.ca/longforms/pei-beach-battle/) and the big question whether it matters given the rate of erosion.

Quote from: dubsartur on August 05, 2023, 07:21:07 PM
...capitalists want to build giant glass condo towers rather than eg. row houses or modest sized apartment buildings).

This is one of those things I just don't intuitively get. Not why capitalists want to build those things: presumably luxury housing = more profit per unit building space, especially condos where it's also not as if you can fit more families into the space, you're just maximising the wealth of who you're selling to. What I really don't get is why even rich people want to live in giant glass monstrosities. They look horrible, they can't have good heat regulation (I guess probably what they have is expensive AC), and they just seem like an inconvenient mess of a way to live.

It's also being reported prominently by the BBC that Trudeau is having a go at Facebook for refusing to serve news in response to a profit-sharing-with-news-providers law? I don't think I realised Canada had one of those now.

Quote from: Jubal on August 21, 2023, 10:38:28 PM

Quote from: dubsartur on August 05, 2023, 07:21:07 PM
...capitalists want to build giant glass condo towers rather than eg. row houses or modest sized apartment buildings).

This is one of those things I just don't intuitively get. Not why capitalists want to build those things: presumably luxury housing = more profit per unit building space, especially condos where it's also not as if you can fit more families into the space, you're just maximising the wealth of who you're selling to. What I really don't get is why even rich people want to live in giant glass monstrosities. They look horrible, they can't have good heat regulation (I guess probably what they have is expensive AC), and they just seem like an inconvenient mess of a way to live.

It's also being reported prominently by the BBC that Trudeau is having a go at Facebook for refusing to serve news in response to a profit-sharing-with-news-providers law? I don't think I realised Canada had one of those now.

I didn't know that people relied on Facebook for regional and national news!  Canadian news sites are mostly usable if you use an ad blocker and a script blocker, unlike German and Austrian news sites.

One way of looking at Canadian federal and provincial governments is as institutions which create and sustain monopolies and monopsonies in order to have an industrial economy in a large, thinly-populated country.  There are three or four major telecommunications companies which all offer the same poor, expensive services for example, and Canadian military shipbuilding is all funnelled through a handful of companies in the Maritime provinces with well-connected owners who hire workers in the right ridings even when plenty of European or East Asian companies could do better work faster and cheaper.  The remaining for-profit Old Media organizations and the CBC have some leverage with this government, they got a subsidy law written which quietly excludes the small online-first outfits which are probably the future of critical reporting but lets the owners of the big outfits keep extracting money for a few more years.   I would guess this was part of the same program.

Many wealthy Indo-Canadians and Chinese-Canadians like big blocky houses that look like fortresses in beautiful locations.  You would have to ask them or their architects why they build them like that.

QuoteI didn't know that people relied on Facebook for regional and national news

I mean I'd guess that 20-25 percent of the populations of a lot of western countries rely on Facebook for news at this point from the sorts of usage figures I've seen. Which, yes, is terrifying.

Meanwhile here is some local news about obstacles to building more housing https://www.capitaldaily.ca/news/provincial-funding-and-simpler-bylaws-in-sight-for-secondary-suites (https://www.capitaldaily.ca/news/provincial-funding-and-simpler-bylaws-in-sight-for-secondary-suites)

Canada has a lot of systems which basically need more officials per capita to handle routine business (the courts for example).

Its still the August/September pause in news where everyone is on vacation or starting their kids in school or attending party conferences.  Reporters are trying to make stories out of the Tories doing well in the polls, but the federal government does not have to call an election until 2025.

Macleans has a longform piece on Danielle Smith the MLA for Fox News and premier of Alberta https://macleans.ca/longforms/unsteady-reign-danielle-smith/

A CBC story about Mounties who let themselves in to a home to serve a traffic ticket and surprised the homeowner coming out of the shower (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/man-walked-naked-out-of-shower-found-mountie-in-his-bedroom-lawsuit-says-1.6965872).  It was a topos on the early episodes of Midsommer Murders from 1997-1998 that the police protagonists picked locks, bumped doors, and otherwise entered without a warrant by every means short of breaking.  How does police conduct where you live compare?

MP Elizabeth May is trying to get the right clearance to access the evidence for the CSIS report on Chinese interference in Canadian elections.  Right now its a government report and a series of newspaper stories, and neither can be independently verified.

Oh, and two of the 87 BC MLAs have changed parties: one defected from the former-BC-Liberals to the Conservatives (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-united-mla-bruce-banman-defects-conservatives-1.6965473) for usual incoherent ideological reasons, and a BC NDP MLA was expelled from the party (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mla-adam-walker-ousted-1.6969885) after a human-resources complaint.

Edit: And wow, the PM just accused agents of the Indian government of murdering a Sikh separatist in Surrey, Greater Vancouver in June https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-indian-government-nijjar-1.6970498

Edit: as part of the slow-news season, some former elected officials are founding a new federal party with vibes like the American technocrats https://www.centreicecanadians.ca/team  Its really hard to get anyone from a new party elected under First Past the Post and even harder without a regional base (one founder is from Alberta, the other from New Brunswick).

Edit: on a podcast, a Globe and Mail reporter says that they were about to publish a story accusing the Indian government of assassinating Hardeep Singh Nijjar when the PMO got ahead of the story

So, Canada has been in international news a lot recently, due to the tensions with India and the recent standing ovation the parliament gave with a guy who turned out to have been in the SS. And the CPC seem to now have a chunky lead in the polling averages I can see.

Presumably the Liberals don't want an election under current circumstances, but nor do the opposition centre-left, so it's unlikely to happen until 2025 unless the Liberals' fortunes reverse or the Liberals start doing badly enough that the NDP/Greens think they can gain by pulling the plug somehow?

Quote from: Jubal on September 25, 2023, 11:38:31 PMPresumably the Liberals don't want an election under current circumstances, but nor do the opposition centre-left, so it's unlikely to happen until 2025 unless the Liberals' fortunes reverse or the Liberals start doing badly enough that the NDP/Greens think they can gain by pulling the plug somehow?

I think that orthodox advice would be for the Liberals to wait for the next scheduled election, do things which will have visible effects in Canada over the next two years, and consider switching PMs.  Especially since they already called an early election in 2021.  But basically the PM can do whatever he wants unless the opposition defeat the government in a confidence motion.

I am too tired and too busy to have thoughts on what they are trying to do to the extent that anyone can see that yet.

I don't know the story about parliament you are talking about, but past news stories have said that a number of Eastern European nationalists emigrated to Canada after 1945 without being honest about their activities from 1941 to 1945.  Like many other people with guilty consciences, they want to be called Heroes of the Fatherland and Victims of Communism.  A few German war criminals were able to shelter in Canada too.  So its an ongoing issue. 

Edit: Geman Wikipedia on the SS division and how its members tried to redefine themselves as Ukrainian patriots from 1945 onwards https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/14._Waffen-Grenadier-Division_der_SS_(galizische_Nr._1)

Edit: WaPo on the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar which eyewitnesses say involved at least four people in two cars and two gunmen on foot https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/09/25/hardeep-singh-nijjar-killing-video/

QuoteI think that orthodox advice would be for the Liberals to wait for the next scheduled election, do things which will have visible effects in Canada over the next two years, and consider switching PMs.  Especially since they already called an early election in 2021.  But basically the PM can do whatever he wants unless the opposition defeat the government in a confidence motion.

Yes, that'd be my expectation. As I understand the Liberals are in a minority so the opposition could force an election but only if they all were willing at the same time, and the left-opposition are unlikely to want to trade a liberal minority for a conservative majority government.

Here's the news of the recent incident with the Ukrainian-Canadian former SS member:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66919862

The MP has resigned as Speaker of the House. 

Here is another journalistic account of how members of the Galician SS ended up in Canada http://espritdecorps.ca/history-feature/the-rcaf-officer-who-brought-hitlers-waffen-ss-to-canada  The most similar previous scandal from this government was the time when Justin Trudeau found something nice to say about Fidel Castro when he died (there are a lot more live Canadians who were victims of the Castro regime in Cuba than victims of the Galician SS in Ukraine).

But I am not interested in speculations about stupid self-serving tactical maneuvers like calling an early election given that only one person and his self-appointed advisors have the power to do that.  And I don't like commenting on hot-button issues of daily news on the permanently recorded Internet.

Edit: I think this federal government is limited less by its lack of a solid majority than by its reluctance to decide between opposing interests in the public (and by the occasional clueless statement or act of corruption).  You can't both make housing more affordable and maintain the value of real estate.  They are moving forward on some big policy issues but I don't have the time or energy to figure out what they are and summarize them.

Ottawa journalists used to say that this government is also very centralized with decisions emanating from the PMO, and centralization leads to slow or thoughtless decisions.

I am sure the PM would like to have a majority, but if he had one he would go back to dithering and triangulating and asking the haruspices polls for guidance.

The Prime Minister's Office looked at the polls, with the Tories at more than 40% support (enough for a majority), and decided to exempt heating oil in the maritime provinces from the federal carbon tax for the next three years (= until after the next election).  The problems are that the whole point of the tax is to encourage people to stop burning fossil fuels, and that if you make one exception to win a few votes, you will be asked to make others.

OTOH people back in the day said that the carbon tax had been written to exempt many sources of emissions to keep big companies and sectors happy.  So one more exception may not be the end of the world.

I think similar things will be popping up fast in Western Europe, where governing parties are really struggling with hard rightwing backlash to environmental policies. It's rather depressing.

Last year Macleans had a post on the lost young man who deliberately ran over a family of Moslems in Ontario https://macleans.ca/longforms/an-act-of-evil/  They talked briefly about how terrible people use the Internet, social media, and old media to rile up people to violence (or just fill them with resentment of others).  Just remember how people like the John Birch Society used pamphlets, or the old fascists and communists and Hutu Power used radio and newspapers.

Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
The Power groups believed that the national radio station, Radio Rwanda, had become too liberal and supportive of the opposition; they founded a new radio station, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). The RTLM was designed to appeal to the young adults in Rwanda and had extensive reach. Unlike newspapers that could only be found in cities, the radio broadcasts were accessible to Rwanda's largely rural population of farmers. The format of the broadcasts mirrored Western-style radio talk shows that played popular music, hosted interviews, and encouraged audience participation. The broadcasters told crude jokes and used offensive language that contrasted strongly with Radio Rwanda's more formal news reports.[105] Just 1.52% of RTLM's airtime was dedicated to news, while 66.29% of airtime featured the journalists discussing their thoughts on different subjects.[106] As the start of the genocide approached, the RTLM broadcasts focused on anti-Tutsi propaganda. They characterized the Tutsi as a dangerous enemy who wanted to seize the political power at the expense of Hutus. By linking the Rwandan Patriotic Army with the Tutsi political party and ordinary Tutsi citizens, they classified the entire ethnic group as one homogeneous threat to Rwandans. The RTLM went further than amplifying ethnic and political division; it also labeled the Tutsi as inyenzi, meaning non-human pests or cockroaches, which must be exterminated.[107]

Doesn't that sound a lot like many popular vlogs and podcasts and far-right talk shows today?

Edit: also a longform piece on a Canadian guru who has been discovering that his disciples' spiritual path goes through his bed since the 1990s https://macleans.ca/longforms/john-de-ruiter/ (namedrop of the Aga Khan Foundation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_khan) which the P.M. got in trouble with)

And the US government has accused the Indian government of trying to arrange the murder of Indian citizens in the USA and Canada https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-unseals-indictment-sikh-killings-1.7043428

Someone leaked the Intercept (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept) a document from last April in which the Indian government tells its consulates to take "concrete measures" against a list of supposed Sikh separatists in the USA and Canada.  Hardeep Singh Nijjar was on the list. https://theintercept.com/2023/12/10/india-sikhs-leaked-memo-us-canada/

The new Speaker of the House is in trouble for recording a video in praise of an outgoing Ontario Liberal official in November, thereby engaging in partisan activity while holding a non-partisan office.  The Liberal Party of Ontario is strictly speaking not the same party as the Federal Liberals.

Another example of how Canadian journalists are bad at seeing the story when it is right in front of them.  In 2018, when the previous US administration tried to have a Huawei executive extradited from Canada to the USA, the CCP arrested two Canadians on espionage charges, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig.  They were released in 2021 after.  Paywalled sources now report that in November Spavor sued the government for having Kovrig pass on information from his activities in North Korea to Canadian intelligence, causing the Chinese government to think he was a spy.  And apparently Spavor goes jet-skiing with Kim Jong-Un! So you have a probably wealthy guy whose main activity is trade and tourism with North Korea and it gets presented as a faceless story about a political pawn.  Talky Canadians often overlook Canadian characters, thinkers, and drama to focus on US personalities, thinkers, and drama. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Spavor

There is even some hockey hooliganism.

Quote
In 2017, during a qualifying match between the North and South Korean women's ice hockey teams for the 2018 Winter Olympics, Spavor was assaulted by South Korean security officials as he tried to display the North Korean flag.

AFAIK Canada does not have an agency for foreign intelligence.  CSIS is more counterespionage and the RCMP had those responsibilities hived off after some of their scandals.

Although this government engages in multiple military operations overseas, the Canadian Forces are not in great shape with 150 year old problems (procurement which is very slow and expensive), 30 year old problems (sexual assault and harassment), and a new problem (lack of personnel and senior officers who do things like shooting ducks on a suburban canal and smuggling firearms (https://www.saltwire.com/halifax/opinion/scott-taylor-another-rcaf-officer-charged-100914037/)).  Well regarded minister Anita Anand was recently moved from the Minister of Defense to President of the Treasury Board which suggests that the PM is not interested in changing things.