Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦

NEW POST: My new book is out! Here's what it's about. emmettmacfarlane.substack.com/p/a-new-book...

Depending on what this means, it is quite possible that repealing laws designed to address discrimination in hiring would be contrary to s15 of the Charter.

Vass Bednar: Meta's latest audacious move shows why Canadians must keep pushing back against Big Tech financialpost.com/technology/m...

Oh hey, it's @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social setting a trap to invite arguments from people who don't understand the parliamentary system at the provincial and federal level. www.tvo.org/article/anal...

"The people" want functional services, affordable housing, and better transit, and yet they're electing candidates who dodged debates and avoided any policy positions other than 'lower taxes'. What do they think they're going to get?

Lot of people tout 'the people wanted change' when looking at these municipal election results, and obviously they're right. But they're right on that point without acknowledging that often voters are electing people who will make things worse, not better.

Turnout in Waterloo was a meagre 30.71%. Sad to see the incumbent mayor - who seemed quite good - lose to a candidate who presented no vision during the campaign other than empty pablum about taxes and cost of living.

So this is very cool. A friend alerted me that The Administrators' Colloquium, a public policy forum for public servants, is hosting a session on our book 'Legislating under the Charter'. The session is being being led by former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.

New polling from Environics on Canadian attitudes toward the United States. environicsinstitute.org/wp-content/u...

New polling from Environics on immigration. From the most-watched line graph, not back to where we were, but a significant bounce back.

A reminder for today.

Sometimes it just dawns on me how deeply weird and wild this situation is. A company making a crappy, unchecked and badly designed product, but thanks to pre-existing science fiction narratives they can aggressively tout their own failures and inadequacies as reasons for self-regulation

This got flagged for ‘intolerance’ when it’s objectively true

Indeed, one of the reasons the US is not currently a democracy is that its high court explicitly abandoned the rule of law.

Something that's not being said. The REASON why Blanche and Bill Essayli are so defiantly violating the Constitution is bc John Roberts said they can't be prosecuted so long as they're following Trump's illegal orders. Blanche's criminality arises DIRECTLY out of Trump v. US.

BC nobly sacrifices good governance to teach one man about hubris

Congratulations to David Peterson, who will no longer be the first David people think of when discussing the potential peril of triggering an early election.

Toronto city councilors make more than Ontario MPPs. That is... a thing. (Before you tell me 'Toronto is expensive' note I will point out that a bunch of MPPs do in fact live in - you guessed it - Toronto).

Jeeeeezus fucking Christ...

We will learn that once again Parliament is making capable Canadians with grievous and irremediable medical conditions and experiencing enduring and intolerable suffering go to court to get their Charter rights respected and Canada is going to have a patchwork quilt with holes for advance requests.

Literally every demographer for two generations: it's gonna be rough when the boomers get past 70, everyone get ready Ontario:

I wonder if buddy is even conscious of his own words. He's literally saying "gender dysphoria is real" but that he opposes health care for young people affected by it.

Uhhh... pretty sure the US Constitution already failed at stopping exactly this from happening. (Tho the problem isn't 'extreme partisanship' so much as right-wing radicalization).

You should just give up being scholars then. Have AI produce the papers, review the papers, and publish the papers. And then it will increasingly rely on its own slop to produce homogenized slop. Who needs humans? (Why do I bet these are reviews of a particular narrow type of research)?

"A system where humans volunteer time to engage with AI products is not going to last." That's where I am. I keep getting sent papers/policy proposals that are clearly AI-written and people want feedback and comment from me. So, they want me to donate my scarce time to validate their AI slop. Nope.

Whenever someone says we “don’t need any more shoebox condos, we need real housing for families”, ask them about the needs of single people who’d like their own place but are forced by the housing shortage to live with roommates.

What happens when a movement convinced it's the majority loses a vote? In Alberta some separatists blamed rigged ballots, Dominion machines, immigrants, and political elites. My latest on conspiracy theories, echo chambers, and constructed victimhood drcarmencelestini.substack.com/p/when-the-m...

"Where we have differences of opinion, we discuss those in private." The thing about this approach is that silence is taken as endorsement of their human rights abuses. It says "Canada doesn't have a problem with it, so we can keep doing it with no repercussions." And that's a Problem.

Last summer, Scientific American's owners were stalking the site, making sure it wasn't being too critical of Trump. This summer, the magazine was sold and gutted. I wrote about it for The Nation www.thenation.com/article/soci...

I guess it is a fantasy to believe anyone could ever govern with principle.

Whereas I and all those who believe in democracy opposed them both for being fascists AND for behaving like fascists.

Fellow Gen-Xers, what the hell?

Why is this student so upset about the mushroom, though? What could it have done to make her protest across the whole continent

You can read my book, Constitutional Pariah, on the changes to the Senate: ubcpress.ca/constitutional-pariah

Yeah, okay. And who exactly gets to make judgments about which protest is righteous or not?

A reminder that this is the reason why Danielle Smith is desperate to gerrymander the next provincial election.

No way…