World Politics and Elections 2025

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The latest minor scandal in Canada is Mark Carney replying to a question about when he last spoke to POTUS with "who cares?" That is not great for anyone in a public-facing position, but he is competent at neoliberal economics and can form and execute a strategy so he could be worse.

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Now Quebec MP and former Greenpeace activist Steven Guilbeault is quitting Carney's cabinet over his attempt to ram an oil pipeline from Alberta through BC and First Nations territory to the Pacific fjords https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/guilbeault-quitting-cabinet-9.6995299

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Chaos in the BC legislature as first 20 of 39 Conservative MLAs vote to remove John Rustad as leader after he lost or expelled five Members of the Legislative Assembly in his first year. Rustad responds that he had 71% support from party members in a recent leadership review and according to the party constitution failing to get a majority in such a vote is the only way he can be removed. MLAs are asking their lawyers if the clause about the leader being incapacitated could apply somehow (and maybe asking friends who know friends in the chemical imports business). https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/livestory/rustad-removed-9.7001990

This morning Rustad was both leader of the party and Leader of the Official Opposition, tonight he is both or neither or maybe one.  The Speaker looked at the legal issues and is thinking of ending the session early.

Meanwhile the head of the Conservative splinter One BC held an illegal event on the University of Victoria campus of the "its ephebophilia not pedophilia" variety (specifically "they have not found hundreds of unmarked graves outside one specific residential school" - this is true but nobody serious argues that residential schools were therefore good for their inmates) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/onebc-uvic-arrest-9.7000919

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Rustad has resigned after sleeping on the issue https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/behind-the-scenes-of-john-rustad-s-downfall-9.7005179 The legislature will return to its seats in February.

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OneBC leader (and former BC Conservative MLA) Dallas Brodie has been removed by her party https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/fate-of-onebc-party-uncertain-after-mla-dallas-brodie-removed-as-leader-11622970 Her style is far-right dog whistles eg. a ban on displaying flags on provincial property other than Canadian national, provincial, or municipal flags (ie. no Pride flags, no immigrants' flags, no flags in solidarity with Ukraine or Palestine) and ending Truth and Reconciliation Day, and extinguishing aboriginal title which was confirmed in 1982 at which time (or shortly before) First Nations were still banned from employing lawyers to defend their rights- they had to train their own, often out of very poor communities a few hundred or a few thousand people

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OneBC is breaking up over a staffer who colleagues believed was tweeting antisemitic, Neo-Nazi, and manosphere ideas and pretending to work for the Trump administration (rating women out of 10 is a pick-up-artist thing) https://thetyee.ca/News/2025/12/16/Othman-Mekhloufi-Far-Right-Poster-OneBC/