NDP interim leader Don Davies have his year-ender to The Canadian Press, talking about getting out to listen to Canadians, and reflect on the party’s devastating loss, and joking that the best part about being burnt to the ground is the ability to rebuild the foundation. And he’s not entirely wrong there, so long as he’s taking the right lessons. But in the same interview, he’s waxing poetic about pharamacare without actually seeming to understand what the issues are (i.e. the provinces), and totally ignoring the work that Trudeau did into building up the programme from the ground up (such as establishing the Canadian Drug Agency) so that provinces could sign on once they were ready, as PEI did (and NDP provinces refused to, particularly BC and John Horgan most especially).
On the same day, the NDP’s Renew and Renewal Report from the last campaign was also released, and it has a few interesting things to say. Once you get past the usual back-patting about how hard everyone worked and how it didn’t feel like it was doomed, and how the leader’s campaign went well, you start getting into some of the structural problems within the party that really do need addressing. Things like the sense that there is an allergy to fundraising in the party, and that nobody wants to actually do it, which doesn’t really help anyone (but also perpetuates the weirdness that bequests from the estates of dead people are one of the party’s top fundraising sources). And there was also a lot in there about the party not properly developing riding associations, and relying too heavily on the central party at the expense of those associations. And to be frank, this should have been a lesson the party internalized after they got nearly entirely wiped out from Quebec in 2015, because they didn’t build up their riding associations during the “Orange Wave,” but assumed that somehow those MPs would have incumbency advantage forever when they didn’t really establish grassroots after all of those accidental victories.
The other thing that is worth noting is that once again, it draws American examples for inspiration, and again it’s Zohran Mamdani. I suspect the reason for this is that too many people in the NDP’s brain trust are terminally online, and as with so many things, the American discourse pervades and they simply think that it can apply to Canada if you divide it by ten, even though we are very separate countries and that we are not just a maple cupcake version of Americana. I’m also going to note that the report said pretty much nothing about the NDP constantly trying to interfere in areas of provincial jurisdiction (particularly with their “bold progressive ideas”), because again, their American analogues don’t translate to Canada in the same way, but this was apparently an area of introspection they didn’t want to engage in. Alas.
This reminds me of something I've been wondering about. Given the various examples of the NDP being the government or official opposition at the provincial level, I'm not sure why federal New Democrats so often — or so recently? — look to the U.S. for inspiration.
— Aaron Wherry (@aaronwherry.bsky.social) 2025-12-19T21:14:07.891Z
Ukraine Dispatch
Russia launched another missile attack on Odesa, killing seven and wounding at least 15 late Friday. There was an exchange of bodies by both governments—1003 dead Ukrainian servicemen for the bodies of 26 Russians. Ukraine and Poland are working out a cooperation agreement around drones.
Good reads:
- Mark Carney made the hand-off of the G7 presidency to France’s Emmanuel Macron, and patted himself on the back for his list of accomplishments.
- Carney had a major shake-up of deputy ministers, and named Justice Marie-Josée Hogue to the post of deputy minister of justice (which is unprecedented).
- Dominic LeBlanc is headed back to Washington to meet with American counterparts on the trade agreements, as the formal review of the New NAFTA gets underway.
- Anita Anand has summoned the Israeli ambassador over the treatment of those six MPs who were shoved while attempting to gain access to the West Bank.
- Gregor Robertson says the Build Canada Homes agreement with Nova Scotia should serve as a model for other provinces to follow.
- The government is cancelling the Start-Up Visa programme, as well as halting the intake for the Home Care Worker Immigration pilot. (That’ll help things).
- Federal civil service unions are grousing that the government plans to fund the early retirement incentives through the surplus of the Public Services Pension Fund.
- There are new details from the court filings on the Canadian military intelligence officer charged with passing information, possibly to Ukraine.
- Apparently that officer was also investigating claims that a defence journalist in Ottawa was a Russian asset (which is almost certainly Russian disinformation).
- Here is a look at how Canada is not keeping pace with the ability to investigate and police the proliferating crypto scams on the internet.
- The Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously that a Quebec municipality needs to compensate a developer for lands they claimed for greenspace that weren’t used.
- Former minister Randy Boissonnault has won a default judgment in his lawsuit against his former business partner—who has since disappeared.
- The “Alberta Next” panel made its recommendations (with no report), calling for more referendums and attempts to amend the constitution. (Good luck with that).
- Former UCP MLA Peter Guthrie has registered a new “Progressive Tory Party” in the province, in the hopes of splintering the UCP of its non-separatists.
- A private college in BC had its certification revoked for misleading international students. (Tell me again it was all the federal government’s fault, guys).
- Ken Boessenkool has doubts about the ability for anyone to fulfil the conditions in the Alberta MOU by the dates prescribed.
- Mike Moffatt demonstrates how metro Vancouver keeps raising development charges to offset federal tax reductions on housing, nullifying their effectiveness.
- Philippe Lagassé previews the many and various challenges ahead for the new deputy minister of national defence.
- Paul Wells delves into polling data that shows the strong fundamentals that Poilievre has on certain issues, but for which Carney is continuing to consolidate.
Odds and ends:
For National Magazine, I look at the push to make restorative justice options more available for survivors of sexual violence.
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