Canada Holds Unofficial Referendum On Becoming 51st State

Canadian flags across the country will be at half-mast tomorrow for the annual National Day of Mourning honoring workers who were killed or severely injured on the job. People generally don’t take much notice unless there’s a personal tragedy involved but it may have added oomph this year for sitting Conservatives if polls predicting their culling prove correct.

The surging Liberals under celebrity banker™ Mark Carney are projected to win 186 seats nationwide to form a comfortable majority government on Monday’s election, while Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are expected to get just 124, according to the latest numbers from aggregate polling firm 338 Canada. It’s quite possibly the biggest reversal of fortunes in modern political history, where a rightwing party considered a shoo-in to form government only a few months ago saw their chances blown due to a seismic shift of the political winds thanks to Trump’s “51st State” arglebargling and America generally reminding us of what voting for mean-spirited weirdos looks like.

A Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes To Mark Carney

The Tory leader isn’t even a sure shot to keep his own seat in the suburban Ottawa riding of Carleton even though he’s easily won it seven times already, including getting 49.9 percent of the vote in the mostly pointless 2021 federal election. But that was before he pissed off a sizable segment of Ottawa society by cheering on the Freedumb Convoy that shut the city down, and they’re unlikely to have forgotten the dude brought coffee and donuts to their anti-vaxx tormentors.

Anti-Vaxx ‘Freedom Convoy’ Truckers Harass Ottawa Soup Kitchen For Freedom, Eh

Which could explain why a whopping total of 90 independent candidates without a hope in hell are running against him on the home front.

This time the Grits have also fielded a more formidable candidate in motivated local businessman Bruce Fanjoy, who is best known around town as the guy who built the cool net-zero house overlooking the Rideau River. He also had the bright idea to put up a prominent billboard cherry-picking a quote from a recent interview Peewee gave to fellow culture warrior Jordan Peterson where he claimed “Canada is ripping itself off” by not investing in better technology to hand America and other markets our oil.

“We have been so stupid and our bureaucrats have been so obstructive and woke activists have been so fanatical that we have not been able to develop the infrastructure to refine and transport our own energy to world markets … We are actually handing over our resources stupidly. It’s not the Americans’ fault. It’s our fault. We’re stupid. And we’re gonna stop being stupid when I’m prime minister.”

The irony is Canadians would have to be stupid to choose someone personally endorsed by Elon Musk at this point.

Like most sane Canadians, I’m hoping to see Big Daddy Carney given the chance to get us through America’s Nazi phase in the best shape possible but I also didn’t vote for the Liberals in advance voting last weekend.

I can explain. The NDP, who are the reason Canadians get to brag about our free healthcare in the first place, are mostly going to be wiped from the map as panicking progressives flock to Team Carney. Canada’s so-called “party of conscience” is expected to only win a single seat in my home province of British Columbia and it happens to be my riding of Vancouver East, a working class neighborhood that’s been a punk rock NDP stronghold with only minor blips for nearly a century. The Conservatives have never won more than 20 percent of East Van, and this time they’ll also have more vote-splitting with the lunatic right as the Peeple’s Party of Canada have a candidate with actual name recognition in the Maple MAGA community. Although her Wikipedia page claims she “is currently living in Mexico, after having left Canada for freer pastures [in] 2021.”

My current Member of Parliament, Jenny Kwan, has been clobbering contenders for nearly three decades and has earned a reputation for giving a flying fuck about her constituents. And I’ve always felt personally grateful to her for the opportunity to write the newspaper headline “The Wrath of Kwan” after she led a caucus revolt against former provincial NDP leader Carole James many years ago. But I was nonetheless considering voting for rookie Liberal Mark Wiens until bumping into him as he was out knocking on doors.

Wiens is a realtor, a profession that comes with built-in suspicion in an insanely expensive city where money-laundering through real estate is one of the biggest industries, and more than half of Vancouver East residents are renters who live under the threat of having their homes sold out from under them. (I personally live in an awesome, semi-affordable apartment in an old mansion that I fully expect my ailing elderly landlord’s children will sell and demolish the moment he dies.) Wiens told me he only got into it as “a Hail Mary pass” to provide for his growing family after realizing his small landscaping business wouldn’t cut it.

Fair enough but it’s hard not to think becoming an MP is yet another one given the hefty salary and lifelong pension if he wins and manages to hang onto the seat for a few years. And running for office in a snap election sure is a smarter investment than it was under Justin Trudeau a few months ago. He also accused Kwan of misrepresenting his chosen Chinese professional name 地產男神 used to woo overseas clients as meaning “Real Estate God” instead of the intended “Real Estate Hunk,” which is pretty gross either way.

Also he’d never heard of Wonkette. Pft.

Investment opportunity!

But, while Wiens didn’t get my vote, he may at least have a chance to someday sell my home. Quite possibly to fleeing Americans if we manage to hang onto our sovereignty.

[338 Canada / CTV / National Observer / Bluesky!]