In more election fallout, it looks like the Liberals were just 611 votes, between two Ontario ridings and Nunavut, from getting a majority Parliament. That’s an incredibly close number for this race, and once again goes to show how every vote really does count, particularly in smaller ridings. There is also some pretty good analysis from the numbers to show that all those southwestern Ontario seats that went Conservative was not because of progressive vote-splitting, but because they were quite clearly turned off of the NDP. That clarity is going to matter if the party wants to start rethinking their path forward. Oh, and the vast majority of NDP candidates didn’t make their ten percent vote threshold for Elections Canada rebates, so the party is going to really be hurting financially for the next couple of years.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1917541319209046324

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1917541365925253229

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1917678086385959124

Elsewhere, every legacy media journalist is trying to get a story about NDP MPs crossing the floor to the Liberals (they won’t), or about Elizabeth May either becoming Speaker or getting into Cabinet, neither of which is going to happen. Ever. Especially Speaker because, as much as I respect May, nobody in the House of Commons is going to vote to put her in the Big Chair because they don’t want a sanctimonious scold in the position. There’s a reason they have voted in incredibly weak chairs for the past couple of Parliaments, and why they didn’t vote for Geoff Regan a second time when he was being a firmer hand. Stop indulging in these stupid fantasies. It’s not going to happen. Oh, and no, official party status isn’t something that is going to be negotiated, much as Don Davies likes to claim that the magic number of 12 MPs is “arbitrary,” but it’s not. You need that many MPs to fit onto committees, and that’s already doubling up. You physically cannot have enough MPs to be in all places when there are six+ committees meeting at the same time outside of QP.

Meanwhile, taking advantage of Carney’s win for her own ends is Danielle Smith, who introduced a very Trump-like package of electoral law amendments which brings back big corporate money into Alberta politics, feeds conspiracy theories, and lowers the threshold for citizen-initiated referendums, and while she didn’t outright say she would bring a separation referendum, essentially encouraged someone else to, and they already started gathering signatures. You might ask whose interest this serves, and the answer is hers, in part because she is facing a major growing scandal about health services procurement that is getting bigger by the day, and the former Cabinet minister she has since expelled from caucus, who tried speaking up about the issue, tabled a bunch more documents about what he knew, and it’s pretty damning stuff. So, what is Smith’s best weapon of mass-distraction? Stoking separatist sentiment, pretending she’s not behind it, and watching it take over the news cycle. It’s terrible, and nobody should take their eye off the ball while she pulls the fire alarm.

"If you or any other Canadians are not happy living on Treaty lands, they are free to apply for citizenship elsewhere."Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation issues a scathing rebuke of Danielle Smith's talks on a national unity crisis.

— Courtney Theriault (@ctheriault.bsky.social) 2025-05-01T03:29:35.719Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones attacked Odesa early morning, killing two and injuring at least five. A Ukrainian drone strike hit a weapons factory in Russia. South Korean intelligence says that some 600 North Korean troops have been killed out of a deployment of 15,000 soldiers.

Good reads:

• Trump says that he’ll be meeting with Mark Carney in the White House “within the next week” (and won’t that be a treat?). Insiders™ talk about Carney’s preparations.
• Here’s a look at some of the MPs who didn’t win their seats on Monday.
• Elections Canada is investigating why certain polls closed hours early in Nunavik in Northern Quebec on election day.
• The crybaby jackasses at the Longest Ballot Committee have “declared victory” in their stunt in Carleton during the election, for some unknown reason.
• The summary of the Bank of Canda’s governing council’s deliberations show why they opted to wait-and-see rather than cut rates again.
• Some former clerks, lawyers and journalists recall the personalities they dealt with at the Supreme Court of Canada.
• Poilievre is making calls to shore up his support while some Conservatives are voicing their support for Poilievre to stay on as leader.
• The Star talks to some New Democrats about their leadership aspirations (but nobody is owning up to any just yet).
• Green Party co-leader Jonathan Pedneault resigned after coming in fifth place in the Montreal riding of Outremont.
• Both Doug Ford and Tim Houston defended their not helping the federal Conservatives out in the election, and Jamil Jivani called them Liberals.
• Ford went on a rant about judicial impartiality, appointing partisan judges and maybe even electing them, because he’s a menace to the rule of law and democracy.
• Kevin Carmichael posits that Carney’s win is a victory for experience over anti-elitist sentiment, and maybe blunting the governing-as-performance-art of Trudeau.
• Brigitte Pellerin points to the work on the ground in Bruce Fanjoy’s campaign that eventually unseated Poilievre.
• Susan Delacourt hopes for a honeymoon period in which Carney won’t be beset by the same negative politicking that marked the last parliament at its end.

Odds and ends:

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