Kay

Recovering former Liberal, politically adrift.

[Kay @Skmam9]

Happy Pride Month

[Kay @Skmam9]

@marycatedelvey Self awareness and empathy are among the first things these men ditch at the onset of their delusion.

[Kay @Skmam9]

@cselley

[Kay @Skmam9]

Pride Month at The Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina Saskatchewan is overwhelmingly caucasian. The token Indigenous/Metis drag queen seems to have pleased his white patrons.

[Kay @Skmam9]

Wouldn't a federal government owned and operated food store be federally regulated workplace? The labour costs and employment benefits relative to the private sector would easily drive up costs. Additionally, the cost of building and operating a national food supply and distribution system would easily rival the costs of the proposed high speed Toronto/Montreal rail line.

[Kay @Skmam9]

@NewWorldHominin In Canada the collection of personal information is governed by PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act). Your privacy was substantially violated.

[Kay @Skmam9]

@GasPriceWizard The power of incremental acquiescence is frightening.

[Kay @Skmam9]

@GG37374104 A cold next day rotisserie chicken is $9.55 at our local Co-op, which is the sole grocery store with-in an hour drive. My partner and I get a couple meals out of it. I've been using subbing in some black beans in place of beef or pork in recipes, it's cost effective.

[Kay @Skmam9]

@sappholives83 He's an Old Spice man...

[MJ Murphy @hothingsgirlsay]

Listen to me and be Deprogrammed.

[Kay @Skmam9]

@JustBins Wascana Lake path has been known as The Fruit Loop since the 1970s

[Kay @Skmam9]

@JohnThomsonSK OMG, We owned a Chevy Barretta in 1993, It was the worst financial decision we made as newly weds but we looked cool and had a blast driving it all over the prairies.

[Kay @Skmam9]

@Mr_Husky1 Anime anything on display.

[Kay @Skmam9]

@GG37374104 Beautiful, spring flowers are food for the soul. We have some crocus popping up here in SW Sask. Of course it being a Canadian spring, there is a couple of inches of snow covering them this morning.

[Kay @Skmam9]

@KatKanada_TM 🙏

[Just Bins @JustBins]

We were leaked the Gender & Sexual Diversity rulebook from the Regina Public School system. It is verbatim with the presentations we’ve reviewed from the viral University of Regina professor of Queer Studies in Education. Dr. j. skelton’s policy efforts are mainstream.

https://t.co/kEz4P8icol

[Kay @Skmam9]

@RosieRocks28 It's Kismet.

[Melanie In Saskatchewan @saskatchewan_in]

From Crossing Floors To Crossing Lines:

Dear Michael Ma,

There are missteps in politics. Then there are moments so pristine in their execution that one almost wants to thank you for the demonstration.

Your appearance at the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade was one of those moments.

Not because it advanced anything.
But because it clarified everything.

You were questioning Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa and a long-established expert on China, global supply chains, international trade, and the forced labour risks tied to Uyghur slavery.

If ever there was a witness purpose-built to speak on that exact subject, she was it.

Credentials aligned. Expertise aligned. Topic aligned.

A rare moment where the system actually put the right person in the right chair.

And then you arrived.

Faced with Margaret McCuaig-Johnston’s level of expertise, you chose not to engage her evidence, but to sidestep it. “Anti China,” you suggested, as though documenting labour camps were a personality flaw rather than a matter of record. A neat little label, deployed with the confidence of someone hoping it would do the heavy lifting.

It didn’t.

Then came the tempo.

The rapid-fire questioning. The insistence on short answers. The carefully managed interruptions that ensure just enough of a response is heard to pivot away from it. It had all the hallmarks of a strategy, in the same way a cardboard cutout has all the hallmarks of a person.

You were not examining.
You were staging.

And layered over it all was that faint, unmistakable throwback tone. The kind that treats a highly qualified woman not as an authority to be reckoned with, but as something to be contained, redirected, and talked over until the room forgets why she was invited in the first place.

A little early-1900s patriarchy, lightly polished and rolled into committee procedure.

Very modern. Very progressive. Very on brand for a man who crossed the floor only to immediately begin crossing lines.

There was, however, a second performance worth appreciating.

In most committee rooms, when a Conservative so much as nudges a witness toward brevity, Liberals react as though parliamentary norms have been dragged into a ditch. Objections fly. Hands wave. Faces tighten. And the chair intervenes with great theatrical concern to ensure the witness is allowed to answer.

A well-practised ritual.

Which made the sudden outbreak of tranquility under Ben Carr feel almost experimental.

No intervention.
No reminders.
No concern.

Just a serene confidence that everything unfolding was, somehow, entirely appropriate. One assumes the rulebook was merely resting.

Because this is the part that lingers.

You crossed the floor from Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party to Mark Carney’s Liberal Party.

A move presented, as these things always are, as thoughtful. Strategic. Necessary. You would be more effective, we were told, aligned with power.

It is a compelling narrative.

It does, however, rely on the assumption that effectiveness is transferable. What we saw instead suggests something else made the trip.

Not improved.
Not recalibrated.
Just relocated.

The Conservatives, for their part, have been handed a rather elegant escape. Not through foresight, but through timing. A problem that walks out the door is still a problem, just no longer yours to explain.

That explanation now belongs to the Liberals. And here the irony becomes almost too generous.

This is a party that never tires of informing Canadians that it will take no lessons from Conservatives. Yet when it came to you, the apparent vetting model seems to have been: well, he was over there, so surely somebody checked.

A touching faith in invisible homework.

Sadly, the Conservatives clearly did not do enough homework either. They just happened to unload the assignment before it exploded in someone else’s locker.

The Liberals, however, cannot even claim surprise. They took a floor crosser from a rival party, apparently made sweeping assumptions, and then acted shocked when the package turned out to contain exactly what the label should have warned them about.

Which brings us, inevitably, to Mark Carney.

Because leadership is not tested by the decisions that go smoothly. It is tested by the ones that arrive with consequences attached.

And you have arrived fully assembled.

He now faces a choice.

He can sideline you. Quietly reduce your profile. Remove the conditions under which this kind of performance becomes a recurring feature. In doing so, he also quietly dismantles the entire excuse for your floor crossing, that proximity to power would somehow make you more useful to your riding.

Or he can do what his own track record suggests he may well do.

Stand firm. Close ranks. Pretend the whole thing is overblown. Preserve appearances. Protect the ego that made the bad decision in the first place. Because to admit error would mean admitting that courting you over was not a show of strength, but a lapse in judgment dressed up as strategy.

And that, politically, is where the trap closes.

If Carney turfs you to the back benches, he blows a hole in your own justification for crossing. Suddenly the man who claimed he had to switch parties to get closer to power is left nowhere near it.

But if Carney keeps you up front and keeps defending you, then he is not merely tolerating the behaviour. He is feeding it. He is teaching you that protection follows performance, no matter how boorish, how transparently partisan, or how steeped in old-school misogyny it may be.

And people who feel protected rarely become more restrained.

They become more confident.
More willing.
More asshole-ish.
More certain that the room will adjust around them.

So here we are.

You crossed the floor in search of influence.

And in short order, crossed a line by trying to discredit Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a woman whose expertise on China and Uyghur forced labour far exceeded anything you brought to that exchange.

If ever there was a witness who could speak to Uyghur slavery, she was it.

And Michael Ma’s answer to that was not substance.

It was swagger, interruption, and the kind of stale patriarchal toxicity that should have been left somewhere around the invention of the typewriter.

As for Mr. Carney, he may soon discover that in the pursuit of numbers, he acquired something far less cooperative.

Not an asset.
Not a coup.

A stinking, rotting albatross now hanging around the Liberal Party’s neck like a garland of decaying principles.

And if he chooses to keep feeding it rather than cut it loose, he can keep it.

Sincerely,

Melanie in Saskatchewan,
A citizen who was paying attention

👇🏻
https://t.co/aXxbVBrVDW
👇🏻
https://t.co/mJSeTruiBE

[Danielle Smith @ABDanielleSmith]

I, and Alberta's government, believe that biological men do not belong in women’s sports, period. So, I'm very glad to see the International Olympic Committee has followed Alberta's lead to protect the integrity of female athletic competition by ensuring only biological females can compete in female events.

Women and girls deserve a level playing field. That’s why our government has already taken a balanced approach through the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act, ensuring biological women and girls can participate fairly in the sports they love.

I expect national sporting organizations, including Skate Canada, will follow Alberta and the IOC’s lead in protecting the fairness and safety of women's sport.

[Nostalgia @NostalgiaFolder]

Eyewitness books