John Ivison: If 2025 becomes the mortgage-pain election, the Liberals have already lost

Sometimes, politics is simple.

Occasionally, voters disregard all the noise, look at their own personal circumstance and vote accordingly.

That would not bode well for the Liberals in next year’s election.

In the House of Commons on Monday, Conservative Leader, Pierre Poilievre, pointed out that three-quarters of the outstanding mortgages in the country will be coming up for renewal before the end of 2026.


As predicted on this blog, Trudeau is working to support sky high real estate prices in cities to protect his urban vote base.

Trudeau says real estate needs to be more affordable, but lowering home prices would put retirement plans at risk

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government aims to make housing more affordable for younger Canadians without bringing down home prices for existing homeowners.

Cutting shelter costs while ensuring that homeowners’ property values remain high could be viewed as contradictory, but Mr. Trudeau was adamant that property owners would not lose out.

“Housing needs to retain its value,” Mr. Trudeau told The Globe and Mail’s City Space podcast. “It’s a huge part of people’s potential for retirement and future nest egg.”

Mass immigration will be maintained at unsustainable levels to force housing prices ever higher and drive rents out of reach.

Trudeau’s corporate cronies will reap a bonanza from the shortages mass immigration brings not the least of which is depressed wages.

Share

First-in-the-nation reparations scheme SLAPPED by lawsuit that calls $25,000 payouts to blacks ‘unconstitutional’

America’s first operational reparations scheme has been slapped with a lawsuit that calls $25,000 payouts to black Illinois residents ‘unconstitutional.’

The class-action lawsuit led by Judicial Watch, a conservative group, casts doubt on the future of the watershed reparations program in Evanston, a Chicago suburb.

The scheme was launched in 2021 and offers $25,000 payments to black residents who suffered from racist housing policies in the 20th Century.

Share

Ottawa wants the power to create secret backdoors in our networks to allow for surveillance

A federal cybersecurity bill, slated to advance through Parliament soon, contains secretive, encryption-breaking powers that the government has been loath to talk about. And they threaten the online security of everyone in Canada.

Bill C-26 empowers government officials to secretly order telecommunications companies to install backdoors inside encrypted elements in Canada’s networks. This could include requiring telcos to alter the 5G encryption standards that protect mobile communications to facilitate government surveillance.

h/t Mauser

Share

Israeli tanks in central Rafah for first time after strikes on refugees

Israel’s military has said it’s likely that the blaze that ripped through a Rafah tent camp after air strikes, killing at least 45 people, was caused by a secondary explosion.

An initial investigation by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), published Tuesday, said the army fired two 17kg munitions targeting a pair of senior Hamas militants. Daniel Hagari, a military spokesman, said the munitions on their own would have been too small to ignite a fire on such a big scale.

Israel was looking into the possibility that a Hamas weapons dump was in the area, Hagari said. The IDF published maps showing where its weapons struck and a recording of an intercepted conversation between two Hamas fighters claiming there were weapons in the area.

Share

Ahead of Pride Month: School Walk-Outs Planned, Parents Discuss LGBT Lessons in Schools

June is Pride Month, which often means LGBT-related events and discussions at schools across Canada. Some school walk-outs are planned for the beginning of the month, to coincide with pride flag-raising ceremonies.

And ahead of the month’s kickoff, a parental rights group hosted a virtual summit during which some speakers looked at how gender and sexuality issues are presented to children in Canadian schools, and how some parents are expressing concerns about the topics.

Share

Top FTX Executive Sentenced to Seven and a Half Years in Prison

Ryan Salame, a top executive at the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on Tuesday, making him the first of Sam Bankman-Fried’s circle of advisers at FTX to receive prison time.

Mr. Salame, 30, a trusted lieutenant of Mr. Bankman-Fried, the exchange’s founder, pleaded guilty last year to a campaign finance law violation and a charge of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. He is one of four top deputies in the FTX empire who have pleaded guilty to crimes since the company imploded in November 2022.

Mr. Salame’s sentence exceeded the five to seven years that prosecutors had recommended. Defense lawyers had requested an 18-month sentence.

Share

OCAD sued for $1M over alleged failure to protect Jewish students

A student at Toronto’s Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) University is seeking $1 million in damages after alleging she was subjected to ongoing anti-Jewish discrimination at the school.

The statement of claim, filed by the New York based Lawfare Project on behalf of Samantha Kline in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, claims there is a pattern of antisemitic harassment at the school as a result of OCAD’s alleged failure to protect Jewish students since war broke out between Israel and Hamas.

“Antisemitism has always been a problem at OCAD, and after Oct. 7 it exploded and the school did nothing about it,” Kline said at a news conference outside OCAD on Tuesday.

Share

Majority of Democrats Don’t Want Biden on the Ballot, New Poll Shows

More Democrats than Republicans say they want President Biden off the Democratic presidential ticket, according to a Rasmussen poll released Tuesday.

Some 54 percent of likely Democratic voters would approve of ditching Mr. Biden, and only 38 percent of Democrats would disapprove of doing so. A smaller number of Republicans — just 43 percent — say they would approve of the Democrats replacing Mr. Biden on the ticket.

Share

China can’t use Canada as trade path for cheap goods, Freeland says

(Bloomberg) — Canada won’t allow itself to become a foothold for oversupplied Chinese goods that could pass through to its democratic allies, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said.

But she did not commit to following the path of U.S. President Joe Biden, who announced massive tariff hikes against Chinese goods earlier this month. For now, Canada is simply reviewing its trade measures toward China, Freeland said.

“Canada absolutely recognizes that China has an intentional, state-directed economic policy which is leading to overcapacity and oversupply in specific sectors,” Freeland told reporters on Tuesday. She said the Asian country isn’t “playing by the rules” when it comes to steel, aluminum, some critical minerals and metals and manufacturing products.

Share