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Just a collection of some good reactions to this week's events.
First, I think Canada appreciates Carney's budget
I don't think the negativity and catcalling from Poilievre and the trashtalking from Lewis will land with Canadians. Yes, there's corporate stuff in the budget, lots of it, but I believe that Canada needs economic development to support our social progress. and this budget represents both.
Evan Scrimshaw writes
Here's an excerpt from the government press release describing the national plan to end homelessness, starting with a partnership with Manitoba:
Next, more observations about those Cataclysmic Mid-Terms
I don't think the negativity and catcalling from Poilievre and the trashtalking from Lewis will land with Canadians. Yes, there's corporate stuff in the budget, lots of it, but I believe that Canada needs economic development to support our social progress. and this budget represents both.
Evan Scrimshaw writes
...Carney’s budget was always going to be about boosting the growth, and finding new and better ways to do so. Some of them are re-announcements of commitments from the investor summits, some are changes to the tax consequences for the owners of successful new companies to not hoard their wealth in assets and actually pay any amount of cap gains taxes, instead of holding it all in shares that they never cash. But what matters from this budget is not any of that, at least for me - it’s the fact that Carney is using the proceeds of better than expected growth and the war in Iran to do a lot of good and progressive things that will help the people of Canada. And frankly, this is the best Canadian budget in many, many decades because of it.
...The anti-homelessness effort is government at its best, a real effort with a real goal to achieve a real outcome. The scale of the ambition is important, and a clear and discernible goal makes it likelier that even if the whole thing doesn’t happen, serious progress is made. The government obviously hasn’t met its target for eliminating all boil water advisories, but the promise being “eliminate all of them in 5 years” spurred a lot more action than a vague commitment to action at some point on some timeline.
Will the government eliminate it? Who knows, but even failing to achieve full elimination would result in the lives of thousands of Canadians getting better, and that is a worthy aspiration. The problem with Canada is that we’re often too focused on the specifics of a pledge, and too worried about the downside of failing to meet it, and forget to think about all the good we could do. This ambition is something that will help a lot of people, and that’s a good thing.
The Indigenous infrastructure announcement is big money at an important cause too. The problem with the boil water advisories is that successive governments have allowed First Nations communities to become decrepit wastelands, exacerbating all kinds of societal harm and sometimes even being completely unreachable for months at a time. Building the infrastructure to get to these communities, and building the infrastructure in these communities, will enable job creation and better health care and education. Imagine what will happen to Indigenous life expectancy when you can get something resembling 21st Century health care on reserve, or even at least get off reserve to get to a decent hospital.
And then there’s my personal favourite announcement, the $4B cultural fund announced and the tax break for artists. I joked on Twitter about whether the tax break applied to Professional Assholes with Substacks, but in reality Canada should be a country that takes our cultural sector seriously. We’ve spawned one of the biggest cultural hits of the year, we have authors and musicians and actors who routinely break through internationally, and using a small amount of money in the grand scheme of our budget for culture and art is a good thing....
Here's an excerpt from the government press release describing the national plan to end homelessness, starting with a partnership with Manitoba:
...the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, was joined by the Premier of Manitoba, Wab Kinew, and the Mayor of Winnipeg, Scott Gillingham, to announce the first step in delivering that plan: a landmark partnership with Manitoba, backed by over $1 billion in new federal funding. This partnership will help build more than 2,000 new supportive and transitional homes and a new Winnipeg Centre for Mental Health and Addictions.
A national plan built on what works
For decades, governments, communities, and front-line organisations have grappled with homelessness, and their experience has shown what makes the biggest difference.
Homelessness is about more than a roof over one’s head. It is about the help people rely on every day, the stability of a safe and affordable home, and the health care many need, including for mental health and addictions. For too long, these systems have operated apart, and not at the scale this crisis demands. Budget 2026 brings them together around what we have learned works: help, housing, and health.
Help: reaching people early, and staying with them until they find a home
$6.5 billion to renew and strengthen the Reaching Home Initiative and support for veteran homelessness. This funding supports community-led efforts to prevent homelessness, connect people with shelter and essential services, and help them find employment support and a permanent home. Communities will be expected to provide more consistent and timely data to measure the scale of homelessness and track progress in reducing it. $5.5 billion to renew the Canada Housing Benefit to provide direct monthly rental assistance to low-income Canadians, including survivors of gender-based violence, so they can pay their rent, keep their homes, and avoid becoming homeless.
Housing: a safe place to go, from transitional homes to deeply affordable ones
$10 billion through Build Canada Homes to support the delivery of about 25,000 supportive and transitional homes across Canada. The federal government will fund construction, while provinces and territories fund operations and the services residents need to stay housed. This investment will grow as more partners step forward.
Health: care and a home, together under one roof
$5 billion for a new Integrated Supports Fund, delivered through Build Canada Homes, to build facilities that bring housing, health care, mental health and addictions treatment, and other social services together, with public, private and philanthropic partners. The model builds on the success of Toronto’s Dunn House, where residents’ emergency room visits have been cut in half.
$2 billion for the Build Communities Strong Fund’s Health Infrastructure Fund to build new community mental health and addictions treatment facilities and refurbish existing ones.
Starting in Winnipeg
Premier Kinew and community and philanthropic partners brought forward a plan to break the cycle of homelessness, and the federal government responded. ... A home is more than a roof over someone’s head. It is the foundation for good health, personal security, and the opportunity to build a better life. This is what it means to be maîtres chez nous: a sovereign Canada, where we take care of each other, where we create opportunities for all, and where we are free to live our lives as we choose.
Wab Kinew: "The challenge for Indigenous people in Canada has never been that Indigenous people don't know the solutions. Absolutely we do. The challenge has been that we didn't have access to the resources and to the decision-making tables to make that happen."
— Scott Robertson (@sarobertson.bsky.social) November 6, 2026 at 12:28 PM
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Wab Kinew on the cost of not addressing homelessness: "It is borne by the police officer who has to revive somebody, by the paramedic who is run off their feet every shift. The nurse in the hospital, in the emergency room. There is a huge cost to the status quo. The status quo is not working."
— Scott Robertson (@sarobertson.bsky.social) November 6, 2026 at 12:13 PM
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Next, more observations about those Cataclysmic Mid-Terms
One thing’s for sure in the wake of the 🇺🇸midterms. Prime Minister @mark-carney.bsky.social’s decision to walk away from the trade talks was absolutely brilliant. Let’s not rush back now. If need be, we can wait two more years and keep forging ties with the rest of the world. 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦
— David Hamer (@davidhamer1951.bsky.social) November 6, 2026 at 9:53 AM
Some observations about America's new blue maps:
— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) November 6, 2026 at 9:26 AM
Posts about the new generation of Democratic leadership
BREAKING: The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee says Democrats have officially won a majority of state legislative seats nationwide, flipping more than 500 seats across the country.
— Adam Parkhomenko (@adamparkhomenko.bsky.social) November 6, 2026 at 9:34 AM
“Now, for the first time, thanks to this election, people in states that otherwise haven't had any exposure to Democrats, other than the caricatures of Democrats they see on Fox News and rightwing media, are going to be exposed to real Democrats.”
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) November 5, 2026 at 2:55 PM
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Rob Sand is now governor of Iowa, and he's not taking any guff from MAGAs trying to shitpost about him.In 2023, US Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) blocked Joe Biden's nomination of district attorney Scott Colom to the US District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. Now Scott Colom is about to take Hyde-Smith's Senate seat away. I love the smell of Karma in November.
— Dr. Jack Brown (@drjackbrown.bsky.social) November 5, 2026 at 1:51 PM
I'm disappointed to learn images of me modeling for Prada are circulating. Because this shot from Italian Vogue is much better. Buy a shirt here: store.robsand.com
— Rob Sand (@robsandia.bsky.social) November 6, 2026 at 12:01 PM
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Chuck Hubbard, who just scored one of the biggest house upsets last night in ousting Granny Demon from Hell Virginia Foxx, apparently opened nearly every campaign event with this anecdotes about protecting the rights of his lesbian daughter. He's delightful
— ESG Hound (@esghound.com) November 4, 2026 at 6:16 PM
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Andrew Sullivan writes
... A vote this huge is more than a repudiation. It’s the American equivalent of a vote of no confidence. In a parliamentary system, you’d be gone in a couple of weeks, because your legitimacy has collapsed.... Every day that passes reinforces your unfitness. You can’t make a speech that isn’t full of ever-weirder digressions, sudden bursts of strange sounds, and bizarre non-sequiturs. Dementia is clearly nipping at the edges of what passes for your brain. You never tap the wealth of solid intel your office provides, relying instead on social media rumors and wild hunches to make increasingly erratic judgment calls. Your body is a mudslide; you’re wearing visible diapers; you can’t even walk in a straight line anymore. And no one believes or should ever believe a word of what you say. Worse than that: with you as president, no one can believe anything America says.I wondered about this too - "Après moi, le déluge"
Of course, today you went into fight mode. Making Stephen Miller your chief of staff after this catastrophe of an election is classic Trump. Fight! Fight! Fight! But responding to this election collapse by picking one of the key architects of the immigration overreach and the war is effectively telling the American people to go fuck themselves. It’s clinging more closely to the people and policies the American public just voted decisively against. It’s politics as bad as the politics that lost the election. And you still don’t get it.
You really think “owning the libs” this way still works? You think you can get away with this kind of shit over the next two years the way you have the past ten? I wouldn’t be so sure. The spell was just broken. Try ramping up a war that was just resoundingly rejected by the American people — and see what happens. Try sending ICE goons out on the streets now. There will be crowds in the streets, a 20+ approval rating, and even many Republicans ready to vote for impeachment....
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