Today's News: Some Election Updates, Signs of the Apocalypse and Trade War Dispatches

Credit Dave Whamond

First, a few quick updates on our elections

Quebec

PM Carney speaks with reporters ahead of Cabinet meeting about the Quebec election: "It's a crucial time for Quebec. It's a crucial time for our country. This is not a time to wait for something a few years down the road. It's a time to act. It's a time for boldness."

- Scott Robertson

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David Cochrane: "The PQ, whether you agree with them or not, they form a political party, they run in elections with the mandate. What's happening in Alberta is a lot of people taking control of riding associations to put pressure on the premier."

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— Scott Robertson (@sarobertson.bsky.social) October 6, 2026 at 7:36 PM

At The Line, Andrew Potter writes

...For her troubles, the CAQ were completely wiped out, with Fréchette even losing her own seat in Trois-Rivières. Meanwhile, the upstart Conservatives, led by former “radio poubelle” shock jock Éric Duhaime, won their first seats and gained official party status with 19 members. Adding to the fun is the distribution of the popular vote. The PQ took only 28 per cent, the Liberals got 24, Conservatives 21, and the CAQ just under 14. The left-wing Québec solidaire needed only 11 per cent of the vote to win their nine seats.
The upshot is that there is now a sharply sovereigntist government in Quebec City, and Mark Carney has yet another problem to deal with. Plamondon, or PSPP as he is usually referred to in the media, has pledged to aggressively seek independence, eventually through another referendum. In the meantime, he’ll spend as much time as possible trying to generate the “winning conditions,” which means picking fights with Ottawa in order to make it clear that Canada doesn’t work for Quebec....
...On the national unity question, there are a few things working in Carney’s favour. The first is the thin popular support for both the new government, and for sovereignty in general. The PQ’s share of the vote is the lowest ever for a new government, beating the 32 per cent that brought the PQ to power in 2012. At the same time, support for sovereignty currently sits around 30 per cent, suggesting Plamondon has a lot of work to do making Ottawa the enemy.
But more than anything, there is Carney’s own popularity. According to a new Angus Reid poll, the prime minister’s approval rating in Quebec is now 67 per cent, notably higher than that of Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet, at 47 per cent. And a different poll has PSPP’s favourability sitting at just 40 per cent.
Ultimately, the reality of the situation in Quebec is that after eight years in power, the CAQ was a spent force, while the Liberals had a new leader who spent a big chunk of the campaign hiding from voters. A PQ victory was the only plausible outcome, and from a national unity standpoint, Plamondon’s position is about as weak as could be hoped for....

BC

The Writ shows Eby's NDP are barely ahead of Doerkson's Conservatives.


I just hope BC remembers how chaotic and messy and small-minded BC's conservative governments have been in the past and likely would be in the future.

BC-ers: I know you didn’t want this election but you do *not* want the BC Conservatives in, unless you want the highest rates for auto insurance in the country alongside Alberta & Ontario. ‘Berta is already trying to switch out of this model because it’s so bad, don’t do it man #BCelection

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— MoleMarg (@goodmoleman2you.bsky.social) October 6, 2026 at 9:57 PM

And this is worth noting for all Canadian politics now

Shannon Proudfoot on Alberta separatists colluding with GOP operatives: "I just don't think we should be under any delusions anymore that anything we're having an internal debate about is ours and ours alone. We have to be aware that astroturfing is constant now."

- Scott Robertson

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Signs of the Apocalypse - a regular round-up of the crazy stuff happening down south

Trump's ideas and goals never have anything to do with principles or ethics or justice or international law. These are just his excuses. I think the world now understands how Trump does things

 1. Trump decides he wants something - money, revenge, power, praise, whatever. 

 2. His minions troll through anything they can find - US laws, international laws, his enemies' social media posts, whatever - to come up with an excuse to get it for him. They often screw it up. 

 3. Rinse, lie, repeat. 

Wrongly indicted, charges dropped, and now we learn prosecutors allegedly knew the Reflecting Pool renovation was failing and they charged David Hearn anyway. I hope he sues their asses off.

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— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) October 6, 2026 at 3:04 PM

Every time we think Trump has hit a new low, he manages to dig deeper

This should outrage every American. This is the president of the United States telling Iran to bomb American cities. I live in Los Angeles, but that’s beside the point. Tommorow it could be your city. My fellow Americans, this is not normal. This is not funny. This behavior should ring alarm bells for us all! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/j-2guzPxwZs

- Maria Shriver

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If there is any confusion after you speak as to whether you are rooting for two american cities to be hit by a nuclear weapon you probably should not be president of the united states

- Adam Parkhomenko

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You can reasonably dispute the meaning of a lot Trump says because he’s so incoherent and inarticulate. But what you can’t reasonably dispute is that he is a sadistic and delusional narcissistic sociopath, at once both psychopathic and psychotic, who is lacking in morality, conscience, empathy, remorse, and impulse control, and whose only concern if a city (in any country, including ours) were to be wiped off the face of the Earth, would be how it affects him.

- George Conway

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The New York Times leaps to the "not immediately clear what he meant" defense

When Trump posted a video of the Obamas as apes the NYT claimed "it was unclear if Mr. Trump was aware" that he posted it

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— Matt Negrin still host of Hardball on MSNBC (@mattnegrin.bsky.social) October 6, 2026 at 8:58 AM

At McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Carlos Greaves takes on the persona of the Trump cabinet:

... we understand why some people are upset about the joke the president told at a campaign rally the other night. However, that’s no reason to lose our collective cool. We, the members of Trump’s cabinet, see no reason to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment simply because the president offered to let Iran obliterate two American cities. He was obviously kidding, like “Wouldn’t it be so funny if everyone in LA was dead? Haha.”
As we’ve said before, the bar for removal under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is quite high. One little remark about approving the deaths of tens of millions of Americans at the hands of a foreign power shouldn’t warrant such a severe response...

Ok, who came up with this one? 😂

- The Mouthy Renegade Writer

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And in the meantime, this is what the Trump administration is actually afraid of. They're losing the war against Iran and hoping America won't notice until after the MidTerms

I think that evacuating strategic bombers from an allied nation 3400 miles or so from the conflict area is probably a bad sign.

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— Michael Stahlke (@michaelstahlke.bsky.social) October 4, 2026 at 4:55 PM

Dispatches from the Canada-US Trade War

This is from the Facebook page A Canadian Outlook  - isn't it a great summary:

Next, here's some good news:

🚨RECEIPTS: 🇨🇦 Economists expected Canada's August trade surplus: $1.55 BILLION Actual: $4.2 BILLION. Largest in more than four years. Turns out threatening Canada economically doesn't automatically make Canada disappear. It mostly makes us look for more customers. 🇨🇦

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— 🇨🇦 🦋LaFerrari17🦋 🇨🇦 (@aperta17.bsky.social) October 6, 2026 at 3:11 PM

I found it unusual and gratifying to see Canadians now debating the nuts and bolts of how our major projects and economic sovereignty ideas should be implemented - we don't all agree with how they should work, but isn't it invigorating to see people actually discussing these projects. Carney has brought us a long way in just a year, hasn't he.

I continue to be concerned that the menu of policy options Canada is considering to protect our economic sovereignty is too narrow and too informed by a world that does not exist. Of course we should be considering nationalizing strategic industries. We are being attacked. Public ownership must be part of our menu of options, not just figuring out we get Blackstone to invest more in Canadian airports (hint: it’s not hard!!). Key quote from this op ed: “There is thus no “dispute”…. Canada and the U.S. want fundamentally irreconcilable things. Canada wants to keep its manufacturing jobs; the U.S. wants those jobs in the U.S…. The steel workers in Hamilton are thus not collateral damage in the trade war; they are the target.” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-ottawa-nationalizing-stelco-steel-jobs-tariffs-hamilton-us-trade/

- Matthew Mendelsohn

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If I were a big-money international investor, I’d be looking very closely at Canada. Almost every other major Western democracy is having a collective nervous breakdown. But not Canada. Sure, Canada is so reasonable, moderate, and reliable that it can be a little boring. But in a time like this? Boring is exactly where I’d want a big chunk of my money to be.

- Dan Gardner

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Truth, this. 

Like Europe, we also have a few people here and there who say they want to break up the country. But even though we do actually vote for them sometimes, we usually just expect they will get us more federal health care transfers.