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Sunday, September 20, 2026

Links - 20th September 2026 (2 - Climate Change)

Meme - Chris Martz @ChrisMartzWX: "Thankfully I have numbers rather than opinions.  The average number of days per year in the U.S. reaching 95°F was ~18% lower during the 60-year period 1961 to 2020 compared to 1901 to 1960.  The number of days reaching 100°F and 105°F have also declined since 1895."
"Conterminous United States Observed Number of Hot Days 1895-2025"

Chris Martz on X - "Zeke Hausfather wrote a lengthy article today trying his best to refute my viral bar chart showing that the average per station number of hot days in the U.S. have actually declined significantly since the start of the 20th century. Hausfather's biggest complaints were that my graph (1) “overrepresents” Midwestern stations and (2) that I did not adjust the temperature data for the supposed Time of Observation Bias (TOBS). On the second point, he is correct, but as it turns out, it makes little difference at all (only a small error). https://theclimatebrink.com/p/hot-days-cold-thermometers Here is my response:
1⃣ The data plotted in my bar chart are weighted by area (which Zeke would have known if he bothered to do any actual research). So, where there are dense station clusters that fit my parsing criteria, I weighted them lower than the others and vice versa. That's scientifically defensible.
2⃣ Time of Observation Bias (TOBS) isn't that big of a factor. Dr. John Christy, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, published a paper in April on temporal trends in high and low temperature extremes in the U.S. since 1899. Christy found that TOBS only introduces an insignificant 4% increase in hot days in the early part of the record, and that,
πŸ—¨️ “π‘Šπ‘’ π‘šπ‘Žπ‘›π‘’π‘Žπ‘™π‘™π‘¦ 𝑒π‘₯π‘Žπ‘šπ‘–π‘›π‘’π‘‘ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘–π‘”π‘–π‘›π‘Žπ‘™ π‘œπ‘π‘ π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘£π‘Žπ‘‘π‘–π‘œπ‘›π‘Žπ‘™ π‘“π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘šπ‘  π‘‘π‘œ π‘‘π‘–π‘ π‘π‘œπ‘£π‘’π‘Ÿ 𝑖𝑓 π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘‡π‘šπ‘Žπ‘₯ π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘‘π‘’π‘‘ 𝑖𝑛 π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘™π‘Žπ‘‘π‘’ π‘Žπ‘“π‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘›π‘œπ‘œπ‘› π‘šπ‘Žπ‘¦ β„Žπ‘Žπ‘£π‘’ 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 π‘–π‘›π‘π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘Ÿπ‘’π‘π‘‘ π‘Žπ‘›π‘‘ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’π‘  π‘Žπ‘™π‘™π‘œπ‘€π‘’π‘‘ π‘Ž β„Žπ‘’π‘Žπ‘‘ π‘€π‘Žπ‘£π‘’ π‘‘π‘œ 𝑏𝑒 𝑒π‘₯𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑑 π‘™π‘œπ‘›π‘”π‘’π‘Ÿ π‘‘β„Žπ‘Žπ‘› 𝑖𝑛 π‘Žπ‘π‘‘π‘’π‘Žπ‘™π‘–π‘‘π‘¦... πΉπ‘œπ‘Ÿ π‘Ž π‘π‘Žπ‘‘π‘’π‘”π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘¦ π‘œπ‘“ π‘‡π‘šπ‘Žπ‘₯ 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 π‘Žπ‘π‘œπ‘£π‘’ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ 90π‘‘β„Ž π‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘π‘’π‘›π‘‘π‘–π‘™π‘’ 𝑀𝑒 π‘“π‘œπ‘’π‘›π‘‘ 0.9% π‘œπ‘“ 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 π‘šπ‘Žπ‘¦ β„Žπ‘Žπ‘£π‘’ 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘›π‘’π‘œπ‘’π‘ π‘™π‘¦ π‘π‘œπ‘’π‘›π‘‘π‘’π‘‘... π΄π‘π‘π‘œπ‘’π‘›π‘‘π‘–π‘›π‘” π‘“π‘œπ‘Ÿ π‘‘β„Žπ‘–π‘  𝑀𝑒 π‘‘π‘’π‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘šπ‘–π‘›π‘’π‘‘ π‘‘β„Žπ‘Žπ‘‘ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 π‘œπ‘“ 90π‘‘β„Ž π‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘π‘’π‘›π‘‘π‘–π‘™π‘’ β„Žπ‘’π‘Žπ‘‘-π‘€π‘Žπ‘£π‘’ π‘‘π‘Žπ‘¦π‘  π‘€π‘Žπ‘  π‘Žπ‘π‘œπ‘’π‘‘ 4% π‘‘π‘œπ‘œ β„Žπ‘–π‘”β„Ž 𝑖𝑛 π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘’π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘™π‘¦ π‘π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘‘ π‘œπ‘“ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘‘ π‘Žπ‘  π‘π‘œπ‘šπ‘π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘’π‘‘ π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘ π‘’π‘›π‘‘. π‘‡β„Žπ‘–π‘  π‘–π‘›π‘‘π‘–π‘π‘Žπ‘‘π‘’π‘  π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘‘π‘–π‘“π‘Žπ‘π‘‘ 𝑑𝑖𝑑 π‘›π‘œπ‘‘ π‘Žπ‘™π‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘ π‘’π‘™π‘‘π‘  𝑖𝑛 π‘Ž π‘ π‘–π‘”π‘›π‘–π‘“π‘–π‘π‘Žπ‘›π‘‘ π‘€π‘Žπ‘¦.”  πŸ”—https://link.springer.com/article/10.100 7/s00704-026-06200-3
And it just so happens that Dr. Christy also plotted the average number of days per station per year reaching 95°F (35°C) in Fig. 16 of his paper. Even with the TOBS accounted for, it does little to change the results I got without applying the TOBS adjustments, nullifying Dr. Hausfather's arm-waving that's dressed up in science jargon and fancy graphics.  At best, my count hot days is overestimated by 4%, which is not a serious error.  The TOBS assumption rests on the belief that COOP station observers didn't know how to reset their min-max thermometers properly, which “double counted” hot days prior to ~1970.   Geologist Tony Heller described this very nicely in an August 2017 blog post, where he wrote,
πŸ—¨️ “π‘†π‘’π‘π‘π‘œπ‘ π‘’ π‘‘π‘Žπ‘¦ π‘œπ‘›π‘’ 𝑖𝑠 90°F π‘Žπ‘‘ 4 𝑃𝑀, π‘Žπ‘›π‘‘ π‘Ž π‘π‘œπ‘™π‘‘ π‘“π‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘›π‘‘ π‘π‘œπ‘šπ‘’π‘  π‘‘β„Žπ‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘’π‘”β„Ž π‘Žπ‘‘ 5𝑃𝑀 π‘Žπ‘›π‘‘ 𝑖𝑑 π‘ π‘‘π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘‘π‘  π‘ π‘›π‘œπ‘€π‘–π‘›π‘”. 𝐼𝑓 π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’π‘Ÿπ‘šπ‘œπ‘šπ‘’π‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿ π‘€π‘Žπ‘  π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘ π‘’π‘‘ π‘Žπ‘‘ 4𝑃𝑀, π‘‘β„Žπ‘’π‘› π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘šπ‘Žπ‘₯π‘–π‘šπ‘’π‘š π‘‘π‘’π‘šπ‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘Žπ‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘’ π‘“π‘œπ‘Ÿ π‘‘π‘Žπ‘¦ 2 π‘€π‘œπ‘’π‘™π‘‘ π‘Žπ‘™π‘ π‘œ 𝑏𝑒 π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘‘π‘’π‘‘ π‘Žπ‘  90°F, 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 π‘‘β„Žπ‘œπ‘’π‘”β„Ž π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘‘π‘’π‘šπ‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘Žπ‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘’ π‘›π‘’π‘£π‘’π‘Ÿ π‘”π‘œπ‘‘ π‘œπ‘’π‘‘ π‘œπ‘“ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ 30𝑠.  π‘‡β„Žπ‘–𝑠 𝑖𝑠 π‘›π‘œπ‘‘ π‘Ž 𝑠𝑒𝑏𝑑𝑙𝑒 π‘π‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘π‘™π‘’π‘š. 𝐼 β„Žπ‘Žπ‘‘ π‘Ž π‘šπ‘–π‘›/π‘šπ‘Žπ‘₯ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’π‘Ÿπ‘šπ‘œπ‘šπ‘’π‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿ π‘€β„Žπ‘’π‘› 𝐼 π‘€π‘Žπ‘  π‘’π‘–π‘”β„Žπ‘‘ π‘¦π‘’π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘  π‘œπ‘™π‘‘, π‘Žπ‘›π‘‘ 𝐼 π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘π‘œπ‘”π‘›π‘–π‘§π‘’π‘‘ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘π‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘π‘™π‘’π‘š π‘Žπ‘“π‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿ π‘Žπ‘π‘œπ‘’π‘‘ π‘‘π‘€π‘œ π‘‘π‘Žπ‘¦π‘ . π‘†π‘œ 𝐼 π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘ π‘’π‘‘ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘šπ‘Žπ‘₯ 𝑖𝑛 π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘šπ‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘›π‘–π‘›π‘”, π‘Žπ‘›π‘‘ π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘ π‘’π‘‘ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘šπ‘–π‘› 𝑖𝑛 π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ π‘Žπ‘“π‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘›π‘œπ‘œπ‘› – π‘π‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘π‘™π‘’π‘š π‘ π‘œπ‘™π‘£π‘’π‘‘. 𝐼 π‘Žπ‘ π‘ π‘’π‘šπ‘’ π‘‘β„Žπ‘Žπ‘‘ π‘Žπ‘›π‘¦π‘œπ‘›π‘’ π‘œπ‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘Žπ‘‘π‘–π‘›π‘” π‘Ž π‘šπ‘–π‘›/π‘šπ‘Žπ‘₯ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’π‘Ÿπ‘šπ‘œπ‘šπ‘’π‘‘π‘’π‘Ÿ π‘€π‘œπ‘’π‘™π‘‘ π‘π‘œπ‘šπ‘’ 𝑒𝑝 π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž π‘Ž π‘ π‘–π‘šπ‘–π‘™π‘Žπ‘Ÿ π‘ π‘œπ‘™π‘’π‘‘π‘–π‘œπ‘›.”   πŸ”—https://realclimatescience.com/2017/08/the-co mpletely-fake-time-of-observation-bias-adjustment/
But when you look at the daily observations (and I do every day because of a research project I'm working on with Christy), you do not typically see duplicate Tmax values, which would be the case if TOBS were a serious problem at large. What you do see are a one-day mismatch between morning and afternoon sites, so Tmax values for the afternoon sites have to be moved back a day for adjustment. But that doesn't change the number of hot days or duration of extreme heat events all that much like Dr. Hausfather (who I do respect) and goons like Dr. Andrew Dessler claim.  To assume that the raw daily Tmax values need some MAJOR adjustments beyond area-weighting (which I did do) and moving them back a day for good measure is to assume that the trained volunteers who took the measurements were complete morons who did not know how to operate their equipment. Given that we built the Golden Gate Bridge, Empire State Building, and Hoover Dam the 1930s, it is difficult to believe that people who were trained to record temperature observations for the federal government couldn't do that simple task."
Climate change hystericists were triumphantly pretending that Hausfather had the final word, of course

15 Examples of Past, Present & Future 'Peak Oil' Predictions
Climate change hystericists confident proclaim that oil demand is going to fall off a cliff. As usual, they have a very poor grasp of history and self-awareness.

Ferries use net zero charging that costs more than fuel - "Ferries have started plugging into the electricity grid at port despite this costing more than burning marine fuel.  Brittany Ferries announced it would plug its ships into an electricity supply during turnarounds at Portsmouth International Port."
Clearly, the solution is to make fuel more expensive

End Wokeness on X - "Yesterday, Governor Inslee (D-WA) said the fire in Spokane was from "climate change". An arson suspect was just arrested"

Ryan Williams Bay of Quinte | Facebook - "One wildfire season exposed Canada’s $200-billion climate hypocrisy: we punished families and industry while failing to protect one of the world’s greatest carbon sinks. Canada has 9% of the world’s forests and roughly 24% of the world’s boreal forest—one of the largest terrestrial carbon sinks on Earth. Our forests, wetlands, soils, farms, peatlands and wood products absorb enormous amounts of CO₂ every year. Canada’s peatlands alone store an estimated 150–200 billion tonnes of carbon. Yet for the last decade, Canada has acted as though the only carbon that matters is the carbon we emit. Instead, governments built policy after policy designed to raise energy costs, delay projects, discourage investment and spend nearly $200 billion trying to reduce emissions that account for just 1.4% of the global total. Meanwhile, we neglected the very asset that makes Canada unique. Forests are carbon sinks only when they remain healthy. When they burn, they become carbon sources. In 2023, Canadian wildfires released an estimated 647 million tonnes of carbon—roughly 2.4 billion tonnes of CO₂—after years of inadequate forest management. That single fire season dwarfed Canada’s annual reported emissions and exposed a glaring weakness in our climate strategy. Meanwhile, global coal consumption reached record highs. Canada blocked LNG projects that could have displaced coal overseas. The world still needed energy—it simply burned dirtier fuel. The Liberals also promised 2 billion trees by 2030. Years later, the program remains far behind schedule. That is the real debate. Not whether climate change exists. Not whether emissions matter. But whether Canada has been measuring the equation honestly from the start."

Meme -  Charles-Henry Monchau, CFA, CMT, CAIA: "Over the past 25 years, Germany has pursued an energy transition by phasing out nuclear power and expanding solar and wind—at a cost of around €500 billion in subsidies.  The result: installed capacity has more than doubled, yet electricity generation has declined. The reason is structural. Reliable, dispatchable power was replaced by weather-dependent sources.  The consequences are severe: rising energy costs, falling competitiveness, and growing pressure on energy-intensive industries.  The key question remains: How do you run an industrial economy on a system that produces less when it matters most?  Source: Staffan Reveman"
"Germany: More Capacity - Less Power
*2025 installed capacity at 236% of 2000 levels but power generation at 87% of 2000 levels*"

Why This CO2 Chart Doesn’t Scare Me - "Someone sent me this chart recently because it was giving them anxiety, and I want to explain why I look at the increase in CO2 and feel no anxiety about climate change.  The chart shows global atmospheric CO2 concentrations going back 800,000 years. Before we started burning oil, coal, and natural gas about 200 years ago, CO2 stayed somewhere between 180 and 300 parts per million for that time period. Today we’re at 426 ppm. Zoomed in on that 800,000-year window, the recent spike looks extreme. And I get why that’s nerve-wracking at first glance. But zoom out further—to hundreds of millions of years—and the picture changes completely. CO2 levels were far higher in Earth’s history: around the time of the dinosaurs they hovered near 2,000–3,000 ppm, and at earlier points they were even higher than that. Over the past hundred million years, atmospheric CO2 has been getting pulled out of the air and sequestered by the planet’s natural carbon cycle... One unexpected positive consequence of that added CO2 is more plant growth. NASA’s own data shows significant global greening since 1980—an increase in leaf coverage equivalent to roughly two times the area of the continental United States. Plants are growing bigger and faster because they have more of what they need to photosynthesize... What I didn’t understand when I was still in the climate movement is that CO2’s warming effect is logarithmic, not linear or exponential—each additional molecule of CO2 added to the atmosphere has a smaller incremental warming effect than the one before it... Zoomed out over Earth’s real history, today’s CO2 levels aren’t unprecedented—they’re actually historically low. What we’ve done is return some previously sequestered carbon to the atmosphere, which is fueling more efficient plant growth around the planet and producing modest, diminishing warming over long period of time. That’s the full picture behind the scary-looking chart."

ClimateCharts on X - "There are many of us who have been pointing this out for almost 10 years. Net Zero = economic suicide. Germany (and now the UK) are de industrializing by choice and destroying the economic opportunities of their citizens"

The Battery Storage Delusion: Limitations for Renewable Grids - "When wind and solar fall short, the battery covers the gap. It's a clean, simple story.  The physics tells a different one. And the gap between the narrative and reality isn't small. Designing a grid around a misunderstanding of what batteries can do doesn't just waste money - it leaves the system more fragile than the one it replaced.   Utility-scale lithium-ion batteries are designed to store one to four hours of power. A 1-gigawatt installation can deliver electricity - but only for that window before it's empty. A 1-gigawatt natural gas plant can run continuously for months... Real-world efficiency compounds this. Manufacturers often cite round-trip efficiencies above 85%. Field data puts actual performance closer to 70% once inverter losses, thermal management, and auxiliary loads are factored in. Most lithium-ion systems also degrade 3-7% annually and require module replacement every six to eight years.   Consider Germany. Covering a typical winter day - 60 gigawatts sustained over 24 hours, with no imports and no dispatchable backup - would require approximately 1.9 terawatt-hours of battery storage. Producing it would demand roughly 1.3 billion tons of raw materials and 850 terawatt-hours of manufacturing energy - mostly from fossil fuels. And it would need to be replaced every decade. A single 1-GWh installation requires about 700,000 tons of mined and processed materials: lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, copper, rare earths. Much of this mining and refining occurs in countries with heavy coal dependence and limited labor protections. Recycling is frequently offered as a solution, but lithium iron phosphate batteries - now dominant at utility scale - lack the cobalt and nickel that make conventional battery recycling economically viable. Large-scale LFP recycling is largely theoretical. "The question of whether a wind-and-battery system is genuinely better for the environment than what it replaces becomes considerably more complicated once manufacturing energy, mineral extraction, and replacement cycles are counted... The problem is the expectation that short-duration assets can perform long-duration functions at a national scale. They cannot. As dispatchable gas, coal, and nuclear capacity retires under policy pressure, batteries are being deployed as if they can fill the gap. For multi-day lulls and seasonal mismatches, they cannot - not economically, not physically, not within any foreseeable mineral supply or manufacturing constraint.  A grid built on that misunderstanding is a grid trending toward higher costs, greater volatility, and deeper dependence on foreign mineral supply chains - all while failing to deliver the reliability it promises."
Climate change hystericists keep denying reality and insisting any clear-minded analysis is "outdated" after a few months, even though across the years they keep coming to the same conclusion (and power bills keep on rising as unreliable "renewables" continue to be forced onto the West)

Britain’s battery boom ‘risks overwhelming the grid’ - "The thousands of batteries being deployed to stabilise Britain’s electricity networks could bring down the grid, government experts have warned.  Ministers have been warned of the risk of a crash if operators all try to charge up their batteries at the same time to avoid an energy shortage.  A report by the so-called Panel of Technical Experts handed to Miatta Fahnbulleh, the new Energy Secretary, said: “Some thought needs to be given to the way battery energy storage systems are likely to behave in a capacity market notice situation, as operators may then have an incentive to charge in advance to fulfil their obligations. This may result in a fast descent into a stress event.” A capacity market notice is a critical warning issued by the National Energy System Operator (Neso) when it spots a looming electricity shortage caused, for example, by low wind.  They have historically been used to tell gas-fired power stations, which are paid to be on standby for such events, to get warmed up and ready.  However, battery operators have recently begun breaking into the same market as the move away from stable generation from fossil fuels makes it more difficult to balance the grid. These batteries must be fully charged to work effectively. The experts raised concerns that operators would spot a looming spell of high demand or low wind-powered generation and start charging up simultaneously in a move that could overwhelm the grid and trigger the very shortage they were trying to avoid. The warning follows a substantial increase in the number of batteries deployed to back up and stabilise the UK’s power networks.  UK power grids have about 7GW of batteries in place with a collective output slightly greater than all five of Britain’s nuclear power stations. By 2030, UK grid battery capacity is expected to exceed 20GW.  This helps grid operators compensate for the sharp swings in generation linked to the expansion of intermittent renewables such as wind and solar. Chris Bowden, the chief executive of SQE Energy, which specialises in grid connection and management for businesses, said batteries offered a genuine benefit because they could respond fast to changing demand.  However, the additional generation also piles further costs on Britain’s household energy bills, which are already among the highest in the world.  Kathryn Porter, at energy consultancy Watt Logic, said: “Batteries are very expensive. A better option is to not build intermittent generation and then we wouldn’t need batteries or the extra grid infrastructure or the backup delivered by the capacity market.”"
Clearly, the UK needs to double down on renewable energy

The National Grid is becoming ever more fragile - "In recent weeks we have seen the grid operating outside safe limits, exports to Europe cut without warning or agreement, dramatic claims from whistleblowers that blackouts are inevitable, evidence that meters are being installed backwards as new equipment is connected to the grid, and total failures of Neso systems forcing engineers to use spreadsheets and telephoned instructions.   At the same time, Neso has been granted permission to reduce its safety margins and been given enhanced powers to impose rolling blackouts.  The maths, as they say, are not mathing.  This is happening at a time when Neso’s job is becoming harder. Huge amounts of solar and batteries are connecting to low-voltage parts of the grid which Neso can neither see nor control – as in the case of solar panels and batteries in home installations. These appear to Neso as variations in demand, so it’s no wonder that Neso’s demand forecasts are becoming progressively worse. This means the grid could fail, not due to a fault or outage of a major source of generation or imports, but because demand was so badly forecast that it did not fall within the possible range of supply arranged by Neso. Now we find there are widespread problems with numbers of windfarms installing their meters incorrectly, something that is likely to be a violation not just of grid rules but also the rules governing the huge subsidies they receive.   Neso committed to checking technical compliance by generator facilities every five years following the partial blackout in 2019. In 2025, six years later, I asked Neso how many of these checks had been completed. The answer was 20, across hundreds of grid-connected generators and battery farms.   At a time when operational standards should be made more rigorous there are worrying signs that standards, margins and regulatory requirements are all moving in the opposite direction... Britain is making it easier to implement blackouts at almost the exact same time that Neso has been allowed to cut its safety margins. Serious questions are being asked about its management of the grid during June’s heatwave.  The safety margin that Neso plans to reduce is the level of inertia it must have on the grid. Inertia is the ability of the grid to resist changes to its frequency (the rate at which current and voltage alternate). If the frequency deviates by more than a small amount from the normal 50Hz (cycles per second) connected appliances and equipment may be damaged. Automatic trip-outs designed to prevent this damage will come into play, at which point a cascading blackout is likely.  If supply and demand become mismatched – as, for example, because power plants go offline, renewable output changes, or demand forecasts are wrong – the grid frequency will begin to rise or fall. If there is enough inertia, however, this will happen slowly enough that Neso can match demand and supply up again and so retrieve the situation. Inertia is provided naturally and more or less for free by conventional gas, nuclear and hydro generators because they are big, heavy spinning machines directly connected to the grid whose speed of rotation is hard to change. Wind and solar do not naturally provide inertia and can only provide synthetic inertia by reducing the amount of electricity they generate. As the proportion of conventional generation has declined, maintaining inertia has become more expensive. Wind and solar plant operators must be compensated for the reduction in their generating capacity when providing synthetic inertia. Neso believes it can safely operate at lower inertia levels by relying on fast frequency response provided by batteries and other technologies.  Perhaps it can, although batteries have the obvious disadvantage of only being able to operate for a sharply limited time – whether they are being charged or discharged. Ofgem’s independent expert was notably less confident than Neso that the risks of operating at lower inertia had been adequately demonstrated and mitigated.  Neso says it wants to cut the inertia requirement to save money, but the savings are paltry – a mere £96m pa, a small fraction of the billions we spend on grid control and balancing every year, and tiny compared with the costs that would arise from a blackout... Unfortunately, when serious concerns are raised about the operation of the electricity system, Ofgem’s approach seems to be to ask the regulated body whether everything is OK, accept the response and consider the matter to be closed. My own attempts to discover the reality of Neso operations through Freedom of Information requests have been turned down on grounds of national security – a decision I intend to appeal... When there are now thousands of small generators and batteries in operation, controlling them on spreadsheets by phone carries obvious risks... In its Strategic Priorities for 2026, Neso lists the following, in order: clean power, decarbonised energy, customer value, customer centricity, digital mindset and people value. Not only does net zero comprehensively trump customer value, there is no mention of security or operability at all.  But it’s not ridiculous for the public to expect the lights to stay on. A blackout is not a tolerable inconvenience simply because, eventually, the lights will come back on. When Spain and Portugal lost power for around 10 hours last April, 11 deaths were reported as directly caused by the outage. Subsequent research identified 167 excess deaths."

Households face higher bills as grid project costs soar 500pc - "A net-zero overhaul of Britain’s electricity grid is at risk of becoming “the next HS2” as projects blow their budgets by almost 500pc, leading to higher energy bills for households.  Ofgem, the industry watchdog, is facing requests for substantial spending increases to build new power lines after a global equipment shortage triggered delays and higher costs.  The extra spending, if approved, will ultimately be footed by households and businesses through their bills and will amount to billions, if not tens of billions, of pounds... Overall, the Government has said some £80bn-worth of upgrades will be needed to realise Labour’s clean power plans for 2030.  But officials have admitted that total spending through to 2050 could reach as much as £240bn as the system is overhauled for net zero.  If that figure were increased by the average amount at which SSE’s project costs are rising, it would hit an eye-watering £920bn.  Network costs are already set to be the biggest driver of household bill increases between now and 2030.  They are set to rise from £207 to £342 per year by the end of this decade, out of a total estimated bill of £1,045 a year, according to the Electricitybills.uk tracker website."

Peter Clack on X - "Growing waves of wind turbine and solar panel retirements starting in the 2030s will expose the massive physical nightmare of continuous renewal and replacement.   Cumulative waste is projected to reach 78 million tonnes for solar panels and up to 200 million tonnes for wind turbines by mid-century.  Because wind and solar have low capacity factors and finite lifespans (15–25 years), generating firm power requires significant overbuilding, backed by battery storage, transmission and costly backup energy.   Replacing this fleet on a continuous cycle guarantees an endless demand for raw materials, mining, and manufacturing.  It creates a replacement loop that will multiply mining throughput for steel, copper, aluminum, silicon, silver, rare earths and composite blade materials. Expanding to multi-terawatt scales will exacerbate existing critical mineral shortages.  Closed-loop recycling at this scale remains largely aspirational as blade composites are notoriously difficult to recycle, with large volumes historically sent to landfills. Decommissioning, and recycling infrastructure lag far behind deployment, most likely leaving behind significant unfunded liabilities.  Ultimately, these challenges will become physical, logistical and economic, reflecting the massive reality behind the ambition of the buildout."

Peter Clack on X - "Dismantling a century of reliable energy infrastructure built on coal, oil and gas risks the ultimate decline of Western society.  The scale of the planned transition to renewables is simply colossal, and it's being led by hardline socialist Antonio Guterres, the head of the United Nations. McKinsey estimates that achieving net-zero by 2050 would require roughly $275 trillion in cumulative spending on physical assets between 2021 and 2050 — an average of $9.2 trillion every year.   An even more limited build-out of new renewable infrastructure carries a nominal price tag in the hundreds of trillions. Yet this massive investment has not delivered a decisive shift away from hydrocarbons.   Coal, oil and gas — the so-called fossil fuels — still supply around 81% of the world’s primary energy, while wind and solar together account for only about 6–7%.  Serious practical obstacles have received too little attention. Wind turbines and solar panels typically need replacement within 20–30 years, creating a continuous loop of construction, dismantling and disposal.   The growing volume of decommissioned blades and panels is already emerging as a landfill and recycling crisis. Intermittency remains unresolved at the scale required for modern industrial societies, and the mining and materials intensity of the transition is both vast and expensive.  Meanwhile, proven reserves of coal, oil and gas remain substantial and could support current levels of use for many decades:
* Proven coal reserves of approximately 1.06 trillion tonnes — enough for roughly 130 years.
* Proven natural gas reserves of around 7,300 trillion cubic feet — enough for well over a century in many estimates.
* Proven oil reserves of about 1.65–1.7 trillion barrels — enough for roughly 50 years at today’s consumption.
 The actual recoverable resource base is likely to be larger still. Land covers only about 29% of the Earth’s surface (and a portion of that is locked under ice), leaving the oceans — more than 70% of the planet — as a still incompletely explored domain for hydrocarbons.  One under-discussed consequence of rising atmospheric CO₂ is the measurable expansion of global green leaf area. Satellite records show widespread 'greening', with CO₂ fertilisation identified as a major driver. This has contributed to higher plant growth across large parts of the planet.  Rushing into an unproven, high-cost energy system at this scale carries real risks: for higher electricity prices, heavy claims on public finances and slower modernisation in the Global South. It is also likely to lock Western economies into a smaller, less competitive and less reliable energy future.  The stakes are just enormous, with no margin for error."

Latimer Alder on X - "It isn't very dramatic, but it is Big News India, the world's biggest nation with nearly 20% of the world's people, has effectively said
> Net Zero - No Thanks!
> 'Climate Action' - count us out!
When such a huge nation refuses to play ball the days of Net Zero are clearly numbered"
Latimer Alder on X - "And back in the real world.... While the EU has been chucking away its industries and jobs in the name of the religion of Net Zero, India has been increasing their emissions by exactly the same amount. In the name of being rich and prosperous. So overall emissions are the same. No Net Zero here!"
Proof that Europe needs to slash emissions by even more to compensate!

Renewable energy ‘puts Germany at risk of major blackout’ - "The Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported that the high uptake of solar energy in Germany had increased the chances of an overload and an electricity blackout like the one that hit Spain and Portugal in April.  On June 20, it said it found that the country’s “power grids [were] under pressure like never before”.  Because of the high dependency on wind and solar energy, power grids were often overloaded because they could not yet absorb the installed capacity, experts said...  Shortly after the blackout in Spain and Portugal, though, Frank Brinkmann, CEO of Sachsen Energie, said: “We are observing that the increasing feed-in of solar power is putting a particularly heavy strain on the grids in certain regions.”  Investments in grid expansion, which are being pursued consistently, were necessary — but even these would not solve the growing problem of unregulated feed-in from additional photovoltaic systems.  Eastern Germany, where Sachsen Energie operates, is a leader in the development of renewable energies, particularly in wind and solar power."

Meme - Alice Weidel: (Translated from German) - "The collapse of German industrial production is the result of green CDU policy. Whoever wants deindustrialization and self-destruction votes for CDU/CSU. Whoever wants the resurgence votes for us, the AfD."
"Germany's Self-Inflicted Implosion. Industrial production has broken decisively from its long-term trajectory.
Industrial production in Germany is ~24% below its long-term trend.
If Germany had kept pace with its 1993-2017 trend, industrial production would be around 24% higher today."

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I watched in disbelief as universities turned on black academics in the name of diversity

Speechless director Ric Esther Bienstock: I’ve seen how cancel culture is destroying universities (aka "I watched in disbelief as universities turned on black academics in the name of diversity")

"It was my daughter’s reluctance to wear a pair of sandals made of embroidered Chinese fabric that made me realise that something had shifted. When I asked why she wasn’t wearing them, she said: “I just feel like there’s a chance I’ll offend someone.” In that moment, I understood that my daughter was coming of age in a world radically different from the one I grew up in, a world where even the fabric on a pair of shoes could feel politically charged. Where self-censorship had become the safest form of self-expression.

That worry is what sent me back to university to make a documentary. Both of my children were about to enrol in higher education, and I wanted to understand the world they were entering. I’ve spent my career running towards difficult stories. Ebola outbreaks. Human trafficking. The black market in human organs. None of it prepared me for a university campus...

Within a day of my arrival at Evergreen, a student informed me – not in anger, almost as a friendly heads-up – that I was a white supremacist. I am a Jewish woman whose mother survived Auschwitz, so “white supremacist” is not generally how I think about myself. But they explained, patiently, that it wasn’t about intent; it was about the system I benefited from by virtue of being white. My views didn’t matter. My identity did.

I saw the university’s president, George Bridges, get accused of a “microaggression” for using hand gestures while trying to calm down a room of angry students. He wasn’t being aggressive. He was just talking with his hands, the way people do. They mocked him, shouted over him and demanded he keep his hands still. Eventually, he did.

What followed was a near 10-year journey across campuses in North America and the United Kingdom. Again and again, I saw complex issues giving way to ideological certainty. A generation was being taught that disagreement was harmful.

Words I thought I understood had acquired new meanings. “White supremacy culture” no longer referred to neo-Nazis but, in some academic circles, now included traits such as perfectionism, individualism and a belief in objectivity, because, so the theory went, these were “white” values. A “safe space” no longer referred to somewhere that protected you from physical danger. Now it could refer to a place where you were protected from ideas that challenged your world view.

As part of my BBC documentary series, Speechless, I spoke with Erec Smith, a black professor of rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania. Defending his belief that students should be taught standard English, he had found himself in conflict with some of his colleagues, who had accused him of upholding the language of white supremacy and suffering from Stockholm syndrome, the psychological state in which a hostage or abuse victim internalises the beliefs of his oppressor.

“It’s a strange feeling to be called a white supremacist by a white person,” he told me. “I went through what many theorists would call a degradation ceremony. The point is not to listen to people but to ridicule them and show other people: ‘This is what happens when you speak up.’ I was called a fascist, but who isn’t these days?”

Tabia Lee had felt the same pressure at De Anza College, in California. Hired as the “faculty director for equity and social justice”, she told me that in her first departmental meeting, when she had suggested that people keep notes and set an agenda, a colleague told her to stop “white-speaking” and “white-splaining”. In workshops, traits such as objectivity and punctuality were ridiculed as being part of “white supremacy culture”. 

She dared to fight back. “What are they expecting of me as a black woman?” she asked. “Are they expecting me to be lazy, to not be on time, to not take notes?”

When she tried to introduce alternative ways of thinking, she said, “the clampdown on me really happened”. Soon afterwards, she was fired. The college’s board said she had taken positions that were “adversarial and hostile” to its stance on social justice, anti-racism and equity.

I also talked to Zack De Piero, a former professor of English writing at Pennsylvania State University, who is white and is pursuing legal action accusing the university of racial discrimination. He was asked to watch a professional development video titled “White teachers are a problem” and was warned that “white supremacy manifests itself in language and writing pedagogy”.

At a session commemorating George Floyd – the black man who pleaded “I can’t breathe” as a police officer knelt on his neck, sparking the 2020 racial-justice protests – staff members were led in a moment of silence, with a small twist. “The challenge for all of us today, especially for white and non-black people of colour, is to hold our breaths just a little bit longer,” a facilitator told the group. “To not give in to our privilege… hold it in for as long as you can, to feel the pain.” De Piero describes multiple workshops and training sessions that he felt explicitly targeted his whiteness as a problem.

Carole Hooven, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, stated on television in 2021 that biological sex was binary, a mainstream scientific position. She also acknowledged that gender existed on a spectrum and that she was talking about biology, not identity. But, within hours, the director of her department’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force had accused her of transphobia. Graduate students refused to work with her, making it impossible for her to teach her course. She eventually retired and later told me she thought about suicide.

The same pattern played out in England. Kathleen Stock left her job as a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex in 2021 after her gender-critical views sparked a student campaign accusing her of transphobia and calling for her to be sacked. Among her crimes was the belief that trans women should not have unrestricted access to women-only spaces. I’ll leave that argument to others, but what struck me was the response to it: not a counter-argument, but a campaign to end her career.

These are not Right-wing provocateurs; they are educators who questioned an increasingly narrow consensus and paid for it with their careers, their reputations and, in some cases, their mental health.

Then came October 7 2023, and its aftermath, a catastrophe with a devastating human cost that I don’t want to litigate here. But it turned everything I’d spent years documenting on its head. Activists who previously had been willing to restrict what could be said, in the name of protecting vulnerable groups, seemed to suspend these principles when it came to anyone who supported even the existence of the state of Israel.

I interviewed Momodou Taal, a British doctoral student at Cornell, in New York state, who was one of the leading voices in the university’s pro-Palestinian protest movement. He told me plainly: “I think Zionism is white supremacy. I think Zionism is a form of racism.” When I asked whether that was too simple a lens for a complicated conflict, he replied: “I don’t understand why there’s a call for nuance when we believe it is racism.” He also said: “We hope through our campaigns that other students become more radicalised.” 

I also interviewed Gwen, a trans student. “I’d say that, as a trans person, I’ve been very lucky,” she told me. “Cornell is a very accepting place. I’ve had much more difficulty being Jewish than I have being trans.”

On other campuses, protesters were filmed telling Jews to go back to Poland. Imagine that same line aimed at any other group – go back to Africa, go back to China, go back to India – and ask yourself how the university would react.

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives began with genuinely good intentions, opening doors long closed to women, people of colour and other marginalised groups. And that work still matters. But in some institutions, DEI shifted from expanding opportunity to enforcing ideological conformity...

One thing I learnt making my film is that once you start silencing people, you don’t get to decide who uses those tools next. Universities are now living with the consequences.

In England, the Government has introduced a free-speech complaints system for universities, with heavy fines for institutions that fail to protect it. It’s a start. But laws can’t fix a culture. You can fine a university for bad policy; you can’t fine a colleague for freezing someone out, or legislate away the instinct to humiliate and cancel.

Universities should be the one place where difficult ideas can be examined without people worrying about damaging their careers. When we teach students that disagreement is violence, that discomfort is harm, that the proper response to an idea you find threatening is to make sure nobody else hears it, we weaken them.

I think about my daughter and her sandals often. She’s not alone. I hear versions of her hesitation from friends, colleagues and students, people who just decide to hold back, to say less and risk less.

During the filming of Speechless, some students told me theirs is a generation simply trying not to cause harm. But I sense fear. And fear is no foundation for a democracy. Because once we decide that some ideas are too dangerous to hear, we have already conceded the argument to the people who would silence us."

 

Left wingers claim "Zionists" are Nazis, so it's no surprise that Jews can be white supremacists too.

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Links - 20th September 2026 (1 - Mark Carney)

How Carney changed rules to allow partisan government ads | Opinion | winnipegsun.com - "Turn on TV or click on youtube and you’ll see them: slick federal government ads, wrapped in flags and patriotism, telling you how strong Canada is.  The slogan is “Canada Strong.” If that sounds familiar, it should. It was the Liberal Party’s slogan in the 2025 election campaign. The party’s slogan is now the government’s slogan. And your tax dollars are paying to broadcast it.  That’s wrong.  Government advertising should tell citizens things they need to know like how to file taxes, how to apply for benefits, or how to stay safe in an emergency.  When it becomes a way for the party in power to promote itself, it stops being a public service and instead becomes propaganda you’re forced to fund.  In 2016, the federal government introduced strict rules requiring all government advertising to be non-partisan. Ads had to be factual and free from political party slogans and identifiers.  That makes sense. Why should taxpayers’ money be used for the government to broadcast partisan slogans?  Those rules held for nearly a decade. But then Mark Carney became prime minister, and the rules suddenly got in his way.  As the Globe and Mail’s Campbell Clark has reported, Carney loosened the rules on partisan government advertising last year. The result is exactly what you’d expect. The Liberals’ “Canada Strong” campaign slogan now shows up in taxpayer-funded TV commercials, and it branded the government’s budget, too... Increasingly, we are seeing a pattern: when the rules don’t suit Mark Carney, he simply changes them.  Consider how he got his majority government. Carney’s Liberals won 169 seats in April 2025, three short of the 172 needed. So he set about collecting opposition MPs.  Five crossed the floor after a concerted Liberal pressure campaign orchestrated by Carney and his cabinet ministers. That’s how Carney clinched his majority. That made him the first prime minister in Canadian history to turn a minority into a majority through enticing floor crossers.  No opposition MP walks across the floor for nothing. The perks of power are fantastic bait, and the Liberals have been happy to dangle them.  The pattern is the same every time. The rules bend to serve the Liberals, never the other way around.  Now consider what the advertising binge costs you.  The federal government spent $78 million on advertising in 2024-25. Carney’s November budget then quietly added another $25 million to the annual limit on its central advertising fund. That’s where your money is going. Ottawa just ran a deficit of $67 billion, massively more than was predicted only a short while ago. Carney has blown through spending projections made just months earlier. Ordinary Canadians are struggling with groceries and rent. And the government is spending millions to buy itself a warm glow during the big game, dressed up in the governing party’s election slogan.  Governments always face the temptation to use public money to make themselves look good. That’s exactly why the guardrails existed.  Carney didn’t just bump up against those guardrails. He tore them down, one by one, whenever they stood between him and what he thought could give him a partisan advantage.  A government that advertises for itself with your money has stopped serving you and started using you. Carney shouldn’t be allowed to use your money for his own partisan purposes."

Gunter: Carney continues Liberals’ historic economic downward slide | Edmonton Journal - "During the first 10 years of Liberal government — the Trudeau years — business investment per worker in Canada fell 18.8 per cent from $20,310 in 2014 to $16,493 in 2024 (inflation adjusted), according to the Fraser Institute.  Over the same period, U.S. business investment per worker rose 31.3 per cent from $23,263 to $30,555, which means U.S. investment levels are now nearly double ours.  If you want to know why our job growth is sluggish, our productivity is falling, inflation is stubborn and the dollar is weak, look no further than the lack of investment. For instance, if few foreigners are investing in Canada, they don’t need Canadian dollars, so the value of the dollar craters. But if you think this was just a Trudeau phenomenon and that Prime Minister Mark Carney (swoon) will turn things around, don’t hold your breath.  Remember Carney had the worst first year of growth of any PM in 63 years. Moreover, business investment continued its decline in 2025. We even slipped into recession at the end of last year and the beginning of this, although we seem to have pulled out of it ever so slightly in the second quarter of 2025.  This prolonged slump has led to fewer new factories, fewer expanded factories and less updating of machinery and equipment. We also have one of the worst performances on research and intellectual property in the developed world. All this together has resulted in less physical productivity per worker and very slow wage growth. (That also contributes to the affordability crisis as wages fail to keep up with rents and grocery prices.)  Despite their boastful ads about Building Canada Strong, it was Liberal policies under Trudeau that directly caused the slump and Liberal policies under Carney that are doing little or nothing to reverse the trend. The Liberals also seem uninterested in or incapable of attracting new private investment. (Have you heard the term “lower taxes” lately?)  Instead, they seem intent on replacing private investment with government subsidies — debt-financed government subsidies.  The new West Coast pipeline from Alberta and the parallel Pathways carbon capture scheme have no private investors, which leads me to think the main costs (upwards of $50 billion) will be borne by Alberta and Canadian taxpayers, even though no politician has had the courage to say so.  Many more of the Liberals’ major projects are likely to follow the same template: Taxpayers pay for the infrastructure, private companies operate the completed ventures. To further understand how counterproductive the Carney Liberals’ strategies are, consider the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit — $1,800 a year per family, ostensibly to counter rising food inflation.  However, the government is doing nothing meaningful to bring prices down. It’s not lowering taxes or tariffs or ending supply-managed agriculture or lessening regulations. All of those might lower retail prices.  Instead, they’re cutting cheques of taxpayer money to help you pay the high cost of their unwillingness to tackle the core problem.  Occasionally, even their subsidize-everything strategy falls apart.  The Liberals are pumping hundreds of millions into new housing builds to help bring down the cost of buying homes. Yet the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimates that fewer homes — single family and multi-units — will be started this year (239,000) versus last year (248,000).  The CMHC has said, and the government has accepted, the goal of 500,000 housing starts a year is needed for the next six to eight years in order to close the gap between housing supply and demand.  Just as with pipelines and groceries, the federal government cannot spend its way to solutions, not even under the Great Mark Carney. Yet the Liberals seem to have no other ideas.  Is it any wonder that Canada has fallen to 13th wealthiest country in the world, behind the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands and other peer countries?"

Meme - Tablesalt @Tablesalt13: "This is what headlines look like when you dont have a government funded media."
Bloomberg @business: "Canadians support Mark Carney's management of the economy, even though he's presided over the worst first year of growth for a prime minister since at least 1963, a poll showed."
"Carney Gets High Marks on Economy Despite Recession Talk, Poll Says"

Canada has gone mad 🍎 on X - "The worse Carney gets, the harder they attack Pierre Poilievre.   Mark Carney has more conflicts of interest than any Canadian Prime Minister in history.  Carney fumbled the USMCA talks... skipped key negotiations while a private citizen showed up.   Caught conspiring against Trump on his British cell phone.   Tanked trade deals because his office "wasn't ready."  Buying German subs, sabotaging Ukraine peace efforts (costing Canada auto jobs with Korea), handing another $900M borrowed dollars to Ukraine, and announcing big defence spending with no clear funding.   Plus $3B to bail out condo developers (and himself?).   Worst first-year record of any PM ever... yet the media obsesses over smearing Pierre.   Are Canadians noticing yet 😏"
Comment (elsewhere): "I love how liberals care about the resume now that carney is here but it wasn’t a requirement for Trudeau"

Christian Heiens πŸ› on X - "Carney still has a 60% approval rating and the Liberals are dominating in the polls.  The lesson here is simple.   You can spend a decade completely destroying the country, tanking the economy, and replacing the native population with millions of Third Worlders, and as long as you endlessly pander to pensioners you can never lose.  Canada is the world’s first gerontocracy."

6ixBuzzTV on X - "Prime Minister Mark Carney says publicly calling out countries on issues like human rights is ineffective as Canada seeks new economic partnerships. “I do see that lecturing countries from afar is an ineffective strategy,” Carney said. “It’s satisfying, but it’s ineffective.”"
Time to slam the US as "fascist" again

Carney's global quest for photo ops comes with crippling compromises | National Post - "It’s a peculiar axiomatic reality of Canadian public opinion. Whenever the popular loathing of United States President Donald Trump is inflamed, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s approval ratings either solidify or rise... Despite what the Liberal party routinely claims, China is not Canada’s second-largest trading partner. Europe is, by far... The EU is on the lookout for allies. Japan, South Korea and Brazil are good prospects. Canada might have been, but that ship has sailed. Our own automotive sector is reeling from Trump’s intention to dismember North America’s integrated economy but Carney’s long-term low tariff guarantee to Chinese EV producers assures an “economic catastrophe” in the Canadian auto sector, says Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association.  “Europe was soft on China,” Kingston says. “Look at what the outcome has been: 90,000 auto jobs lost last year because they’ve allowed dumped Chinese vehicles into their market.”  It isn’t only China that weaponizes its strategic vantage points in the democratic world’s economies, and Canada’s foreign-policy autonomy — and our internal security — is now further hamstrung by the Carney government’s trade and security agreements with the fabulously wealthy ruling family of Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood’s primary global sponsor and benefactor.  Just this past month, Volkswagen’s hopes to save its OsnabrΓΌck plant and its 2,300 jobs by converting to production of components for Israel’s Iron Dome defence system were dashed by Qatar’s objections. The Qatari sovereign wealth fund holds 10.4 per cent of Volkswagen’s shares and 17 percent of its voting rights.  Among the several commitments Canada has made to Qatar in the hopes of convincing the Gulf autocracy’s ruling Al Thani family to double down on its energy investments in Canada is a June 25 memorandum of understanding between Canada’s Public Safety ministry and Qatar’s Internal Security Force. It’s also under wraps, like the RCMP agreement with Beijing’s Public Security ministry.  The deal is supposed to extend Canada’s cooperation on a variety of law-enforcement portfolios, including money-laundering, financial crime and terrorism. This will be unavoidably awkward, owing to the Al Thani family’s conviction that the terrorist front Hamas, the Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, is merely a national liberation movement. Qatar is already notorious in Canada’s national-security circles for the hundreds of millions of dollars it lavishes on the Muslim Brotherhood and its Canadian fronts and affiliates.  Last year, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) published an in-depth study of the reach of Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada, recommending that Canada’s intelligence agencies keep much closer tabs on Qatar’s promotion of extremist ideology and support for extremist organizations in Canada. “It is imperative to assess their level of penetration, areas of influence, and long-term goals in order to effectively manage the risks posed to Canada.”  Second only to Qatar in its support of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ambitions for a global caliphate is Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regime in Ankara. Two weeks ago, in yet another “trade diversification” milestone, Prime Minister Carney announced that Ankara and Ottawa have formally begun negotiations for a free trade agreement.  The Carney government has also embarked on talks for a free trade agreement with the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc, which will require some fancy stickhandling around ASEAN member Myanmar, a brutal and genocidal China-aligned police state. The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force lists Myanmar among only three countries on its blacklist, along with Iran and North Korea.  So it’s all well and good for Canada to be looking for deep-pocketed police state investors and maybe even some customers beyond the United States, at least for now. But the lasting damage to Canada’s national security, diplomatic sovereignty, moral conscience, democratic alliances and international reputation might also be taken into account from time to time."

Mark Carney unafraid to cozy up to dirty dictators | Toronto Sun - "Our Prime Ministerial frequent flyer was on the road again recently. One wonders if he leafed through Dr. Martin Luther King’s first book on the plane. There’s a memorable passage in it: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting is really cooperating with it.”  As such, the places Mark Carney visits are interesting. At the NATO Summit, he spent time with Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan has crushed the free press, systematically undermined Turkey’s judiciary, gone after his political opponents, and violated human rights with relish. He calls Judaism a “genocidal, occupying, expansionist” ideology. He is generally regarded as a monster... Another recent stop on Carney’s world tour was China. China, as is well known, is another unambiguous abuser of human rights. In China, Uyghurs, Muslims, Tibetans, and dissidents — as seen most vividly in Tiananmen Square — regularly face forced labour, mass detentions, religious persecution and brutal political and cultural assimilation. China also, it should be noted, illegally imprisoned two innocent Canadian men, and interfered in our elections in 2019 and 2021.  But there was our prime minister, in convivial meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Carney’s own Privy Council Office said the Prime Minister did not “proactively” — that is to say, at all — raise human rights concerns with Xi. “Topics of human rights and foreign interference were not brought up proactively by the Canadian Prime Minister,” PCO initially admitted, before speedily recanting... The latest stop on Carney’s Human Rights Abuser World Tour was Saudi Arabia, just days ago. Here are some of the things that Saudi Arabia does:
• It hands out lengthy prison sentences, or the death penalty, for social media posts about human rights
• It executes hundreds of people, annually, including minors
• It discriminates against women, and regularly imprisons women who are courageous enough to advocate for basic freedoms
• It keeps thousands of migrant workers ensnared in its kafala servitude system, which is often likened to slavery for its abuses and forced labour practices
• It kills critics — as it did in 2018 with Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered and dismembered by Saudi agents in the aforementioned Turkey
And, notably, 9/11...
All of this — Carney’s dalliances with the ruling gangsters in Turkey, China and Saudi Arabia — is morally wrong. It is the opposite of what a Canadian prime minister should be doing. And it is a repudiation of decades of Canadian human rights policy under successive prime ministers.  Ask Lloyd Axworthy, the legendary former Foreign Affairs Minister and a Liberal. He knows. This writer served on Axworthy’s foreign affairs advisory group in Opposition in the early 1990s (alongside Jean Chretien’s principal secretary Edward S. Goldenberg, who passed away recently). I knew Axworthy to be fearless and principled, and resolutely committed to protecting human rights, here and abroad.  Said Axworthy about Carney’s willingness to play footsie with abusers of human rights: “[Carney] keeps wanting to say he’s erasing the Trudeau legacy. Well, it’s not just Justin Trudeau’s legacy — he’s erasing a legacy that goes back a lot of years for a lot of Liberals. I mean, I was a Liberal since I was 17, and I’m finding what he’s doing to be quite disturbing.”"

EDITORIAL: Canada tells investors ‘we’re not ready’ | Toronto Sun - "The difficulty in turning around our economy after a decade of neglect by the Justin Trudeau Liberals should surprise no one because it’s like trying to turn around the Titanic before it hit the iceberg.  For example, the Mark Carney government told the United Arab Emirates last month that it isn’t ready to move forward on $70 billion in investments from the UAE into the Canadian economy because its major projects office, set up in August, hasn’t approved any shovel-ready projects to invest in. According to a report in Tuesday’s Financial Times, this lack of ready-to-go projects is holding back Carney’s plan to double trade with non U.S partners in a decade.  A Canadian official granted anonymity in the story said:  “The PM keeps talking about the $70 billion UAE commitment he secured on his first visit (to Abu Dhabi) in November. None of that has been deployed.”... Former Quebec premier Jean Charest, co-chair of the UAE-Canada Business Council, told the Financial Times that while the major projects office is “only one bucket of potential projects” for investors, it “gave them the only answer they could give them, at this point we’re not ready. But that is the same answer for everyone.”... what this episode demonstrates is that it’s one thing to announce new investment agreements with foreign countries and quite another to deliver them, with Carney claiming he will catalyze $1 trillion in new investments in Canada in five years and double non-U.S. exports in 10.  That’s because there are still numerous federal and provincial laws and regulations that hamper Canada’s ability to build infrastructure “at speeds not seen in generations,” as the prime minister likes to put it."
Weird. Left wingers tell us that signing a MOU is the same as securing investment

Marty York: Mark Carney is a failed economic wizard | National Post - "The consensus in Canada is clear to most of us — even irrefutable — that Prime Minister Mark Carney has done very little if anything to make Jewish people in this country feel safer or more content. His contributions to rising antisemitism and divisive behaviour haven’t bothered most of his supporters, however, judging by the popularity polls... Yet many of Carney’s supporters stand by him because they have a perception, unfounded, that he is an economic guru. He’s not. The supporters rave about Carney’s economic prowess but the truth is that, under him, the Canadian dollar sunk in recent days to the lowest it’s been in a year. What’s more, we are in a technical recession. And, while Carney travels on Canadian tax dollars to watch soccer with his wife, shakes hands in front of cameras with other global leaders, makes “important” and costly decisions (about $150-million) to enter Canada in the Eurovision Song Contest and feeds the Hamas-connected United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) millions and millions of our tax dollars, he is letting down Canadians on multiple economic fronts.  He had sold voters a budget based on assumptions and wishful thinking, even though former PM Stephen Harper tried to warn us about him. In March, 2025, before Carney was elected, Harper accused him of taking excessive credit for helping guide Canada’s response to the 2008 global financial crisis. Carney’s history of leading the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, before moving to the Bank of England, was the backbone of his campaign. He described himself as someone who would bring a steady hand to the economy.  “I have listened, with increasing disbelief, to Mark Carney’s attempts to take credit for things he had little or nothing to do with back then,” Harper wrote in a letter to fundraisers at the time. “He has been doing this at the expense of the late Jim Flaherty (former Canadian Minister of Finance), who sadly is not here to defend his record.  But let me be very clear – the hard calls during the 2008-09 global financial crisis were made by Jim.”  So has Carney been the economic wizard he promised to be? Nope.  Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre — granted, not unbiased — noted recently that Canada is “the only G7 country in a recession.” He added: “Canadians are starving, losing their jobs and missing mortgage payments. And Mark Carney is hiding from accountability.”  Canadians lost 112,000 jobs in the first quarter of 2026 and have the worst per-capita number of job losses in the G7. Business investments have declined for five consecutive quarters. Canada has the worst investments per capita in the G7. Canada has the worst household debt in the G7.  Poilievre also cited Food Banks Canada statistics showing rising food insecurity. But he is not the only one noticing Carney’s shortcomings economically. Annette Ryan, Canada’s new independent Parliamentary Budget Officer, recently acknowledged in a response to Conservative MP Tamara Jansen that Carney’s budget has a 99 per cent chance of missing its targets.  “I think that is a fair statement,” Ryan said, adding:  “Our forecast saw a lot of revenue weakness, especially in personal income taxes.”  And what about Carney’s vow to stand up to, and reach a deal with, U.S. President Donald Trump? Well, that’s gone nowhere. Trump has declined to renew the Canada U.S. Mexico Agreement and economists say more obstacles with this will further unsettle Canada’s financial problems.  And Carney’s plans to accelerate homebuilding by giving $5-billion of tax money to B.C.’s infrastructure? Yep, many questions here, too. According to a recent commentary at the Fraser Institute web site, the plan to buy 2,200 vacant condos in B.C., and convert them into affordable homes, is deeply flawed.   “Using taxpayer dollars to buy existing condos will not increase the housing supply,” the Fraser Institute said. “Instead, it could undermine the competition that’s desperately needed to improve housing affordability in the province. Government should stay out of the condo market.”  Carney justified his economy in early June by saying the recession is part of a “settling-in” period.   But while the “settling-in” period takes place, many Canadians are hurting. More and more."

Carney’s summer spending spree lacks detail and transparency, economists assert - The Globe and Mail - "Mark Carney’s wave of summer spending Thursday included numerous billion-dollar references to new projects in British Columbia and Alberta, but economists are questioning the lack of detail as to where the money will come from.  In his typical rhetorical style, the Prime Minister made several references to “catalytic” investments that will attract more than $200-billion in private capital... As is increasingly the case with major federal announcements, the background documents provided by officials lack important details.  No information was released that explains how much Ottawa plans to spend each year on the various projects, nor how much would be direct spending versus loans. Nor was an update provided as to what the flurry of announcements would mean for the size of Ottawa’s deficit and debt.  Those details will presumably have to wait until the release of the government’s fall budget.  “I’ve been involved with budgets in one way or another since 1977 and I’ve never seen such a lack of transparency,” said Don Drummond, a professor at Queen’s University’s School of Policy Studies.  The former senior finance official is a co-author of the C.D. Howe Institute’s annual shadow budget, where a team of economists attempt to estimate the size of the federal deficit before the budget is announced based on spending announcements made throughout the year.  “We’re trying to generate a ‘status quo’ fiscal update, and we do not know what to do,” he said. “Are these loans? Are they loan guarantees? Are they actual capital purchases, which under accrual accounting we just record as amortization? The answer to all of the above is: ‘I don’t know.’”... Jimmy Jean, chief economist with Desjardins Group, said he understands that some of the lack of detail around the pipeline is due to the fact that the financing structure is still being negotiated.  Mr. Jean said in an e-mail that the government may be planning on drawing from existing funds like the Canada Infrastructure Bank or the Canada Strong Fund for some of these projects, but such information was not provided.  “It’s very difficult to figure out what was pre-committed or not,” he said."
Damn Maple MAGA!
Don't these ignorant "economists" know that Carney has an Oxford Masters and PhD?!

Carney releasing 'strategic plans,' with few results: Tristin Hopper | National Post - "the report reads like a wish list published by a think tank, rather than a position paper from a government with unprecedented powers to actually build out electrical infrastructure.  The report says that, given current trends, Canada must deliver “twice as much power as it does today” by 2050. But as to how this will be done, there’s no new policy in the strategy.  Anytime some specific government measure is cited, it’s something that Ottawa was doing anyway. One example: “The Government of Canada will … continue to prioritize projects of national interest that support electricity system growth.”  In a conclusion, readers are told to register three takeaways from the National Strategy for an Electrified Canadian Economy: “It is time to act,” “it is time to think big” and “it is time to work together.”"
Lots of woke motherhood statements too, but that won't stop left wingers from denouncing him as a "conservative"

Jimmy Ruffian | Facebook - "And Carney has basically stripped every environmental protection and climate change initiative. The relentless pursuit of capital for the privileged few is going to be our end unless we do something."
Of all the hysterical overreactions, navel gazing (imagining that only Western carbon affects the climate) and epic failures to understand things, this takes the cake (so far)

Meme - Wyatt Claypool @wyatt_claypool: "Apparently it demonstrates someone "cares about human rights" by going to a government-sponsored Pride parade in Toronto. You know the same parade whose organizers oppose parental rights, support hate-speech laws and support the terrorist organization Hamas over Israel."
Laura Babcock @LauraBabcock: "Carney clearly cares about human rights. Where was Poilievre?"
Mark Carney @MarkJCarney: "Happy Pride, Toronto. #PrideToronto2026 *Carney waving fist*"

Building Canada Act’s purpose questioned as Carney government marks 1 year without a single project designated - "Nearly a year after Parliament passed the Building Canada Act (BCA) with promises to urgently advance projects across the country, not a single project has been formally designated under the legislation—and policy experts are questioning whether the law was ever capable of delivering the results the Carney government promised.  A new intelligence memo from the C.D. Howe Institute, published June 11, argues the BCA has compounded the very problem it was designed to solve.   “Rather than creating a clearer and more predictable approvals framework, these changes expand federal discretion and further politicize the regulatory process,” wrote George Vegh, a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and Kate Koplovich, a senior policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute.   The stakes for Canada’s economic future are large. The number of oil and gas projects in the Carney government’s major project inventory has fallen 76 percent from its 2017 peak, a decline the authors describe as reflecting a “sustained erosion of investment confidence” in Canada’s energy sector over the past decade... Vegh and Koplovich argue that the machinery is structurally flawed. Cabinet ministers and, they say, the Prime Minister’s Office in reality, were granted “virtually unconstrained discretion” over both ultimate approvals and the process governing them. That discretion, they argue, means the government can effectively predetermine the outcome of a hearing before evidence is weighed, with regulators going “through the motions” to produce a record supporting a political decision already made.  The memo also raises a fundamental ambiguity: the BCA may not replace existing review requirements under the Canadian Energy Regulator Act or the Impact Assessment Act (IAA); it may simply add to them, compounding uncertainty for investors rather than resolving it."
Clearly, Mark Carney is a conservative, because he believes that government should play a big role in the economy. But then, left wingers are actively hostile to economic growth, so anything that is aimed at improving it is "conservative" to them

Mark Carney’s 26 trips abroad: A breakdown of the prime minister’s trade deals and travel after 1 year in office - "Prime Minister Mark Carney is living up to his self-avowed globalist status. Since taking office exactly one year ago, the globetrotting former central banker has been outside of Canada 68 days, or 20 percent of his first year in office...   The Hub compiled a list of the 26 travel trips Carney has made so far to other countries (each country visit is counted as a separate trip). We want to understand what deals and partnerships he’s made with foreign nations to see if these new trade avenues will have a material impact back home, and just how soon they could take effect.  Is all of Carney’s journeys to foreign lands bearing fruit, or are they mainly airy flights of fancy?...   Despite the majority of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s 26 trips to foreign focusing on diversifying trade, no major expansive trade deals have yet been signed.  “In terms of his negotiations with trade agreements with new partners, Carney has made important steps towards diversifying trade but has few concrete accomplishments to point to,” Steinberg told The Hub. “Only one new trade agreement has formally been signed, [with Indonesia], and it has not yet actually been ratified yet.”  Steinberg also pointed to reductions in Chinese agricultural tariffs, but noted that this only brings us back to the 2024 status quo, rather than adding net-new export destinations.  While Steinberg believes Carney is on the right track with signing new trade deals, he says it’s too early to celebrate. He adds that trade with the U.S. should still be Canada’s primary focus.  “I applaud the ongoing discussions with other trade partners, especially India, where I see great long-term potential, but most of these discussions have yet to actually reduce any trade barriers,” Steinberg explained.  “Carney’s primary focus should be on renegotiating CUSMA, or at least keeping it alive until President Trump leaves office. Losing CUSMA would hurt our economy more than any potential trade agreements with other countries could possibly help it.”  While laudable, the economics professor sees diversifying the bulk of Canada’s trade elsewhere outside of the States to be a foolhardy exercise."
From March. One left winger slammed PP for criticising Carney for poor progress on this front and claimed that trade deals take 1-7 years to negotiate. If that's the case, he should instead of criticising all the left wingers glazing Carney for his huge success in "signing trade deals", since they're lying

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Saturday, September 19, 2026

Links - 19th September 2026 (2 - Homelessness)

A judge just hallucinated that homelessness is the same as race or sex | National Post - "an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that the Region of Waterloo cannot clear a 30-person tent encampment from a parking lot in downtown Kitchener, even though the region owns the lot. The municipality has been trying to do so as part of its plans to build the Kitchener Central Transit Hub, which will eventually connect local and regional bus and light rail services, along with VIA Rail (the kind of integrated transit infrastructure Canadian cities are constantly told they need more of). People have been living in tents on the site since 2021. The region has spent three years trying to clear them through the courts. It passed a bylaw. When the bylaw was challenged, it amended it. It removed the $5,000 fines for people who refused to leave. It created a transition policy to help residents find alternative housing. It offered individualized housing plans to every resident. None of it was enough. To use its own land, the judge ruled, the region must first provide an alternative legal encampment site or a formal “tenting protocol” with equivalent services. The absurdity of the decision is obvious to any sensible observer, but the case is just the latest in a disturbing trend in how this country is governed. Buried in the 88-page decision is yet another instance of an Ontario court overturning settled law to invent a new constitutional right, and in the process imposing a policy outcome that no elected government has voted for and no majority of Canadians has ever endorsed. The number of cases where courts use the Charter to invent new rights and impose the policy fever dreams of out-of-touch progressive activists has become impossible to ignore. The crux of the decision begins at paragraph 204 of the ruling. There, Ontario Superior Court Justice Michael R. Gibson declares that homelessness should be recognized as an “analogous ground” under Section 15 of the Charter, meaning a protected characteristic alongside race, sex, religion, and disability. Homeless people, Gibson writes, possess a “constructively immutable characteristic” and constitute a “discrete and insular minority.” Faced with the awkward fact that homelessness, unlike race or sex, is not actually permanent, he concedes (he has to) that homelessness is transitory. He then asserts this does not matter, because such characteristics are, “while they last,” beyond an individual’s conscious control. Read that twice. Homelessness is immutable, except that it isn’t, but it should be treated as though it is. The judge has redefined “immutable” to mean its opposite. The reasoning would not survive a first-year constitutional law tutorial, and yet there it sits, in a published Superior Court ruling, as the basis for a substantial expansion of equality rights in Canadian law. This argument has been tried before and lost... If the ruling stands, every municipal bylaw in Canada that differentially affects homeless people (encampment clearances, park rules, public-space regulations, loitering provisions) becomes a potential equality-rights violation. And this is not an isolated mistake. Last summer, a different Ontario Superior Court judge struck down provincial legislation removing bike lanes from three Toronto streets, on the grounds that removing the lanes violated cyclists Section 7 rights to life and security of the person. A de facto constitutional right to bike lanes, found by a single judge, against the explicit will of an elected legislature. The pattern across both rulings is strikingly similar. Identify a sympathetic group. Connect their circumstances to a Charter provision. Then tell elected officials what they may or may not do, or what they must affirmatively provide, regardless of what voters and their representatives have decided. Notice that the Charter’s text is endlessly elastic in the direction of the activist class’s preferred outcomes, and remarkably inflexible in any other direction. What has happened, slowly and then quickly, is that a particular reading of the Charter has captured much of the legal academy and the bench. On this reading, the Charter does not merely constrain government action that violates clear individual rights. It empowers courts to assess the substantive outcomes of any law, identify groups disadvantaged by those outcomes, and order remedies that turn out to look identical to progressive social policy. More bike lanes. More tenting protocols. More positive obligations imposed on public bodies. More constraints on resource development. The Charter’s framers in 1982 did not intend this. The text does not require it. No Canadian government has ever been elected on a platform of delegating social policy to the courts. But this is what we have, because the people who decide what the Charter means have decided it should be so. There is a remedy. Section 33 of the Charter (the notwithstanding clause) was designed for exactly this kind of judicial overreach. Both Section 7 and Section 15 fall within its scope. The Region of Waterloo cannot invoke it on its own; but the Ontario legislature can. Thirteen Ontario mayors have been asking Ford to do precisely that since October 2024, when the mayors of Sudbury, Cambridge, Guelph, and ten other municipalities signed a joint letter requesting that the province invoke Section 33 to allow encampment clearances, following earlier court rulings. Ford declined and tried a softer route: the Safer Municipalities Act and $75.5 million for homelessness prevention. The judiciary responded by going further still, inventing a new analogous ground and demanding tenting protocols as the price of regional governance. The case for Section 33 was strong then. It is overwhelming now. That the notwithstanding clause is widely treated by the legal commentariat as illegitimate to invoke is itself part of the problem. The clause exists for moments like this. Decades of constitutional commentary, much of it produced by the same legal class now driving the expansion of Charter rights from the bench, have insisted that using Section 33 is undemocratic, anti-rights, even authoritarian. The result is a Charter in which one half (the rights provisions, indefinitely expandable by judges) is treated as sacred, whilst the other half (the democratic override) is treated as a constitutional taboo. Nobody voted for the judge who wrote paragraph 204. Nobody can vote him out. But Ontarians did vote for the legislature that can override him. Decisions like this are likely to continue until somebody with political authority decides that the democratic legitimacy of elected legislatures is worth defending against a judiciary that has, quietly and with the full approval of most of the legal class, made itself this country’s most consequential legislature."
Damn automobile lobby making it impossible to build public transit! We need to ban cars!
This is why left wingers hate the notwithstanding clause so much - it (temporarily) blocks legislating from the bench to push the left wing agenda

guyfelicellaπŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦πŸ on X - "Let me break it down for everyone πŸ‘‡πŸΌ   Everyone is upset that an Ontario judge said you can’t just keep displacing homeless people.  Here’s an idea: stop complaining about homeless people and start demanding governments actually house people. Then maybe the courts wouldn’t have to step in to protect basic human rights.  You can’t oppose encampments, oppose supportive housing, oppose shelters, oppose affordable housing, oppose mental health supports  and then complain that homelessness still exists.  You don’t solve homelessness by pushing people from one sidewalk to another. You solve it by giving people somewhere to go."
Ben Woodfinden on X - "This is a nice strawman.   The Region of Waterloo offered every encampment resident an individualized housing plan. It dropped fines. It created a transition policy. The court said none of it mattered.   What the judge actually did here, and what you're conspicuously not mentioning, is declare homelessness a constitutionally protected class under s.15 of the Charter, something courts have previously refused to do, including in this very case three years ago. You're happy about it because the judge happens to share your policy preferences.   That's all this is. An activist class that can't win these fights democratically cheering when judges do it for them."

Judge rules taxpayers must fund housing where homeless can smoke crack | Toronto Sun - "In effect, Gibson is saying that the people in this encampment cannot be moved until they are provided with housing that they find adequate. The people behind this challenge don’t want to stay in shelters, they don’t want to stay in motels paid for by the local government. They want the region to provide them with housing option where they can continue to smoke crack, smoke meth and consume opioids without judgment.  That’s not an exaggeration — it is in the judgment.  “Emergency shelters are not always appropriate or available for people who lack capacity, have serious mental health, and/or substance use issues,” Gibson writes.  He notes that some people have been barred from shelters due to persistent illegal drug use, which is not allowed in the shelters, but then also says the motels offered by the city are not sufficient.  “Motels do not provide the levels of support required for high-needs individuals; behavioural issues frequently lead to eviction and unsupervised drug use can lead to overdose with no one nearby to notice or assist (a risk that may be mitigated by the ‘buddy system’ in the encampment),” he writes. Gibson arrives at his conclusions by interpreting Canada’s Charter, not in the way it is written but rather through the lens of several United Nations declarations and even a non-binding report.  Citing the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and their National Protocol for Homeless Encampments in Canada report, Gibson invented a new right to housing and stated the government must provide it.  “Adequate alternative housing, with all necessary amenities, must be provided to all residents prior to any eviction,” he wrote.  That line effectively turns Canada’s Charter on its head from a document that protects citizens from government overreach, such as the government trampling on your rights, into one where the government is obligated to provide certain services to you at certain levels. This would hand over control of how our country is run from our elected officials to appointed judges, who, as Ford said, answer to no one."

Ford blasts judges, threatens notwithstanding clause over encampments - "Elizabeth MacIsaac, president of the anti-poverty organization Maytree, said it is “deeply disappointing” to hear Ford discussing the notwithstanding clause again. “Sec. 33 wasn’t set up as a ‘get out of jail free’ card. It has a purpose, and its purpose is to protect the most vulnerable, not to enable a government to override the rights of the most vulnerable. I think it’s the wrong tool for what he wants to achieve,” MacIsaac said. “If Premier Ford wants to see encampments gone, there is an answer to that. And it’s not taking away their rights; it is providing the housing needed, the deeply affordable options for housing that would allow people to live with dignity. But this government hasn’t done that.”"
Only groups the left loves have rights. Ordinary people have no rights

Murder, floods, disorder: Granville strip crime and chaos at untenable levels, hospitality industry says - "“What is happening is continual public disorder, open drug use, and mental health episodes that are frankly scary,” Kershaw said from inside the Roxy Cabaret... business owners saying rising crime and disorder are making Granville’s nightlife and tourism district untenable. Kershaw said nearly 31 fires and the water flowing down from units at St. Helen’s Hotel, the SRO above his club, have caused more than 100 floods in his business, while repeated false fire alarms have driven away customers. “The loss of sales due to this disruption, for me personally, is now in the six figures.” “We’re asking the NDP government to move quickly to relocate these residents to supportive housing that properly serves their needs, and allow business owners to restore the entertainment district Vancouver deserves,” Kershaw said. Crime and emergency calls have surged in the area since the SRO conversions, according to Vancouver Police Department data collected by the Hospitality Vancouver Association. Police and fire services responded to roughly 6,641 calls at the three SROs between 2020 and 2025, an increase of more than 800 per cent compared with the year before the conversions, spokesperson Laura Ballance said. “We give you a snapshot of the past 10 days on this street: a daytime murder in the middle of a busy work week, a major fire with a resulting flood, other smaller floods, and a sharp escalation in street disorder,” Ballance said. Vancouver Police Chief Const. Steve Rai said Thursday that the three social housing buildings in question have generated 18 times more police calls per capita than the rest of the city. “Residents in these buildings are 12 to 16 times more likely to experience violent crime,” Rai said. He added that B.C.’s closing of The Luugat hotel was a step in the right direction."
Clearly, all you need to house people and everything will be okay. Greedy business owners need to shut up and not persecute defenceless homeless people/i>

After fatal stabbing, HVA calls Granville Street SROs ‘a failed experiment’ - "Vancouver police are investigating after a man was stabbed and killed on Granville Street on Monday afternoon... members of the Hospitality Vancouver Association (HVA) are expressing concern after the brazen daylight incident.  The man was stabbed and killed across from the Luugat single-room occupancy housing (SRO) on Granville Street.  “Today, our organization reiterates our ongoing concerns related to the situation on Granville Street, which is dangerous and unsustainable,” the HVA said in a statement.  “We recognize and appreciate the efforts of the Vancouver Police Department to keep the area safe but feel that it is increasingly clear that the BC Housing decision to locate over 300 SRO beds into a concentrated two block stretch of Granville Street is a failed experiment.”  The HVA says it has been calling for the permanent closure of SROs along Granville Street for years... The HVA said there are two other “highly problematic” SROs located within two blocks of each other on Graville Street that are “a real threat to public safety and need to be closed immediately.” In June, the provincial government announced plans to transition supportive housing out of the Granville Street entertainment district, according to Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim.  This announcement came after a fire broke out in the Luugat building on the strip, leaving two people needing treatment for smoke inhalation.  The B.C. government bought the building at 1176 Granville in 2020, and controversially converted it to housing as it sought to shelter the city’s homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic quickly.  It has since generated thousands of emergency calls, with residents setting fires, pulling fire alarms and setting off the building’s sprinkler systems."
Trust the Experts! Double down on Housing First! Formerly homeless people only set fires, pull fire alarms and set off sprinklers because of discrimination and stigma, so we cannot punish them!

After fatal stabbing, HVA calls Granville Street SROs ‘a failed experiment’ : r/ilovebc - "Less idiots than ideologically homogeneous activist-researchers.  When each "study" on this phenomenon qualifies the research conducted and the data presented to conform to the authors' ideological perspective then all credibility should be lost.  A major contributor to such junk science that has unilaterally informed our policies created to address the issue has been the proliferation of "trauma-informed principles" from therapy venues to institutions foundational to our society.  When activist-researchers rely on the stories of purported oppression and traumatic experiences offered as excuses for addiction and antisocial behaviour by addicts, and when such self-serving diatribes are uplifted to a level of unimpeachable truth based purely on identitarian principles and without further investigation, much-less corroboration, then the data which is presented should be ridiculed -- not implemented.  When each study over the past 30 years that is accepted and implemented is produced and influenced by a minority of socialist extremists hiding behind purportedly non-partisan NGOs and other activist organizations -- such as the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, DULF, or VANDU -- then the solutions offered cannot possibly diverge from the praxis of the activist-researchers' chosen ideology.  If more socialism for the lumpenproletariat was the answer then the population of addicts in the DTES would not have grown exponentially in the 25 years since the Four Pillars strategy was implemented.  If utopian narratives surrounding the nature of addiction were accurate then our "trauma-informed" approach to the antisocial behaviours associated with addiction wouldn't have created a new class of repeat-criminals called prolific offenders.  If giving addicts the redistributed wealth of those who actually contribute to society through an ever-expanding suite of entitlements led to positive outcomes then the overdose rate wouldn't have risen 500% since the implementation of the Four Pillars strategy."
"Obviously this is a great comment, I just want to point out that we never really executed on the “four pillars”. To suggest Four Pillars = 500% increase in overdose deaths isn’t completely fair. Harm reduction, prevention, treatment, and enforcement all should have involved housing, access to means in a medical setting, re-socialization, etc.  We basically just turned a blind eye to open use of illicitly sold drugs, tested some of the street supply to prevent a few deaths, slapped a sticker on it and called it the Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy. And then we got hostile with our neighbors/local businesses when they complained about the effects of being near SRO/SIS."

Undercover TTC agent : r/askTO - "Saw some uniformed guys the other day, asked everyone for pop except the smelly homeless guy in the back of the car who was having an episode. Gotta love how the TTC is more concnered with collecting their pound of flesh than it is making transit safe for paying riders. This city is a joke."
Undercover TTC agent : r/askTO - "Yet they do nothing about tweakers on the streetcars or subways, needles thrown around the TTC, people jumping onto the tracks causing hour delays, etc etc. the list goes on.  But thank goodness they stopped this one dude from not tapping, that’ll surely improve the quality of transit in Toronto."
"Not only are they doing nothing, they are actively encouraging it. I have witnessed TTC employees working at the ticket booths open the gates to let unhoused/ mentally disturbed people in for free. They don’t want to deal with them so they let them into the subway and trap them with us."
Another aspect of anarcho-tyranny. Naturally, at least one person went around lecturing others about having no "empathy"

Anthony Furey: Toronto's radical plan to turn all homeless shelters into drug sites - "The City of Toronto’s shelter system is still guided by radical policies that encourage the city to hire active drug addicts to staff their programs, push for drugs and drug kits to be provided in abstinence-based facilities and even require that all shelters with children residing in them provide drug services... When it comes to hiring drug addicts at facilities, the document says that: “Shelter programs should plan for the intentional integration of people who use drugs into their staff team.” Paid duties can include helping friends shoot up. Drug dealers are drawn to the vicinity of injection sites because that’s where they find their client base. If a shelter has active drug users employed on site, this suggests that even staff will be liaising with dealers. It’s this sort of twisted attitude that got us to the point where a staff member at the Leslieville drug site was criminally charged for helping a drug dealer when a young mother was killed in drug warfare crossfire as opposed to helping the actual victim. They also seem to want to ruin the chances of people to keep clean. “Abstinence-based shelters are an important option for some people in the shelter system with lived and living experience of drug use,” the guide notes. “While these programs may not directly provide the fullest spectrum of harm reduction services, they remain accountable for employing a harm reduction approach, ensuring that their residents who use drugs are enabled to do so in the safest ways possible.” An abstinence-based shelter would be one where people are not supposed to be doing drugs. They are abstaining. So, no, the people in these shelters should not be “enabled” to use them and yet here we have a city guidebook telling them to make it happen. When it comes to shelters designed to house children along with their parents, the guide informs us that “family shelters are required to use a harm reduction approach to drug use. Family shelter operators are tasked with supporting safer drug use practices, while upholding legislative requirements and identifying any substantive risks to children and the family unit.” Right, because advertising a shelter for children and then enabling hard drug use on site is somehow not a risk to those children? Let’s be very clear on one point here: These are not policies just for drug injection sites. These are policies for all the homeless shelters within the City of Toronto. And the document makes no mention of ways to support people in getting off of drugs. If there is a shelter coming to your neighbourhood, in any form, it will not just be a place for people seeking something to eat and refuge from the cold — which is what well-intentioned people of all political leanings typically think of as a shelter. It will actually, if it’s following these guidelines, be a facility staffed by drug addicts who promote open drug use in the presence of children. What’s concerning is that this guidebook is not new. While it is posted as a current resource alongside other 2025 city documents, it was first authored in 2021. In other words, this has been doing the bureaucratic rounds for almost five years and no adult in the room has yet stepped in to have it removed."

‘Black mandated’ homeless shelter on way, city hall confirms - "Toronto officials are taking applications until Friday for city council’s new “Black-mandated” shelter, where everyone from employees to the homeless could be excluded on the basis of race.  City Hall has also decreed that experience in running a shelter is not a requirement for those submitting applications... The B3 shelter competition follows a similar process for an Indigenous shelter, which could move to construction as soon as this year."
Left wingers love racial segregation

Northern Ont. man defies eviction threat, vows to remain in self-built dwelling : r/OntarioNews - "He should go be homeless downtown anywhere. Somehow thats better."

Northern Ont. man defies eviction threat, vows to remain in self-built dwelling : r/OntarioNews - "People are missing the real issue. The reason he had to build a dangerous shed to live in is because of a local bylaw preventing him from using an RV. Normally, that would be fine, but there is a housing crisis. There are literal cities of tents. Higher levels of government should step in here and end those bylaws, at least until the crisis is over. An RV is perfectly safe. The municipality should be absolutely ashamed for not letting this man live in an RV on his own land during a crisis."
"The problem is they don't get their cut, the costs for the permits and licenses, inspections and what not is owed to them and they want it. Doesn't matter that Canada is burning to the ground around us as long as they get their cut."
Proof that capitalism has failed!

Jonathan Kay on X - "The media’s love affair with homeless encampments continues. A main reason people set them up is to use drugs (banned in shelters). The camps destroy local civic life, & (as in this case) can be fire hazards. There were just 12 ppl here, all of whom were offered shelter space"

Half of Toronto's and 42% of Ottawa's homeless population consists of asylum seekers, fed funding for asylum seekers housing to fall from 95% in 2025/26 to 0% in 27/28 : r/TorontoRealEstate - "Why do we willingly bankrupt ourselves?"
"It helps destroy the middle class and it gives more power to the elites."
"Best way to keep a populace in line is to make them dependent on the government.  Like a quarter of them working for the government."
Clearly, the solution is to virtue signal even harder and encourage the whole Third World to go live there

Longtime tenants no longer feel safe in 55-plus building providing housing to homeless people - "Complaints about drug activity, drinking, thefts and break-ins have prompted a provincial investigation into the safety of a 55-plus social housing complex in Winnipeg's North End.  In interviews last week, residents in the Canadian Polish Manor at 300 Selkirk Ave. said the eight-storey rent-geared-to-income building used to be a peaceful and comfortable place to live, but that started changing last summer.   That's when new tenants with backgrounds of homelessness and addiction, along with other complex needs, started moving in, says Allison Bailey, 62.  "They just brought in anybody, and that's when a lot of the problems really started," said Bailey, who has lived in the building for two years... Richard Stein, 73, who has lived in the building nearly eight years, says in recent months, copper wiring has been stripped from laundry machine power cables and flat-screen televisions in common areas have been stolen. Garbage, discarded needles and human waste have been found in shared spaces... while CBC was in the building speaking with tenants in the lobby, Stein — who has had a tracheostomy, lives with cancer and uses a cane — chased away a man who appeared to be intoxicated, after the man followed someone in through the locked front doors.  "This is what we go through 24 f--ing seven," Stein said. "No f--ing security."... Agnes Breton, 73, who has lived in the building 11 years, said tenants have found people sleeping or passed out in laundry rooms.  "My daughter wants me to move out so badly," she said. People who live there once enjoyed sitting together outside but no longer feel safe doing so, Breton said.  "There's people yelling outside," she said. "The police are here a lot more now because of what's been happening."  Resident Freda Campbell, 69, needed help from police after someone recently discharged bear spray in the hallway of her floor... She's now using a security bar in her suite to prevent people from breaking in.  And Isabelle Lewis, 74, an avid sewer who's lived in the building for five years, previously used an eighth-floor common area with tables for pool and tennis table to lay out her fabric, but she doesn't feel safe using that space anymore. "I'm afraid," Lewis said. "This is not a safe haven."  A Polish restaurant operating out of the building has also had break-ins, with food and cash stolen, said Teresa Szpakowski, who works in the kitchen... Residents were reminded in a recent memo to report any drug-related activity, prostitution, assault, unlawful use of firearms and any other situations that threaten the health, safety or well-being of tenants.  Housing advocates have expressed concern that the provincial NDP government's focus on housing people experiencing chronic homelessness has made other low-income Manitobans, including seniors and families, less of a priority."
These seniors are just awful, terrible, heartless people. They need more "empathy".
When you vote NDP, you're just asking for more Needles, Drugs and Poverty
More proof that the solution to homelessness is just to house people! It's so simple and evil conservative governments just want homeless people to die by not doing that

Canada Proud | Facebook - "The Liberals spent $1.2 MILLION on a project to "help" homeless veterans. The actual project? Giving out cameras to homeless people to take pictures while staff at Egale Canada, a Liberal-funded LGBT organization, handed out nearly $1 MILLION to their own staff. The staff promised they would include the homeless veterans' photos in an art exhibit. Housing minister Gregor Robertson approved this disgraceful project. He needs to resign immediately."
If you don't spend more money on homelessness, you're heartless, lack empathy and want homeless people to die

T.D. Leaker on X - "A Canadian university conducted an actuarial study and concluded 60% of new homeless tent owners were displaced due to high housing costs as a direct result of immigration policy and insatiably appetite for low wage earners. The study was buried for fear of being seen as racist - risking funding."

Managing Risky Behaviours and Challenges to Prevent Housing Loss in Permanent Supportive Housing - "Approximately 10-20% of individuals experience difficulties in PSH that can result in eviction, recurrent homelessness, and/or rehospitalization."
Managing high-risk behaviours and challenges to prevent housing loss in permanent supportive housing: a rapid review - " in an examination of over 12,000 supportive housing applicants in Toronto, Canada, 20.3% had a history of suicide attempts, 17.7% were perpetrators or victims of physical assault, 14.7% had engaged in non-suicidal self-injury, 8.0% had fire safety concerns, 7.9% had damaged property, and 5.9% engaged in hoarding behaviours"
Clearly, the way to end homelessness is to just give homeless people houses, which they can burn down and/or destroy, and where they can kill themselves and beat up other people

Posted by Agagooga at 5:25 pm
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