The superspreading of Pierre Poilievre
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Pierre Poilievre’s west coast swing included blaming Vancouver city hall for rising home prices, while a return to his Calgary hometown drew a newsworthy crowd. The latest polling from Abacus Data asked 2,000 people their reaction to his Conservative leadership campaign launch video, only to find wide agreement with the message.
The war room’s vacant meme
Steven Del Duca touted the Ontario Liberals as the best vote for women in tandem with a leaders’ debate from the union-backed Equal Pay Coalition, which Doug Ford didn’t attend. Meanwhile, a movement called Not One Seat is promoting strategic voting, but Andrea Horwath is seeking actual NDP votes.
Kitchener city council had a meeting to discuss if they could do anything about Jordan Peterson coming to town. An effort to shut down a May speaking date at a municipally owned venue, on grounds of discrimination, left local politicians in a bind over how to proceed. JBP was recently a keynote speaker at a Bitcoin convention.
A book gets burned on Twitter
The newly published collection of first-person stories from 29 Canadian CEOs who navigated their companies through the COVID-19 pandemic seems like a benign corporate exercise. Pitching it as content plebes might aspire to read is a different story, reflected in the ratio of rage brought on by this promotion:
Citytv gets into streaming on Amazon Prime. The free CityNews 24/7 stream now appears in conjunction with a new $4.99 per month service featuring mostly U.S. network acquisitions. The news side of Citytv is set to expand with some of the funding the CRTC is requiring the network to spend as a condition of the Rogers takeover of Shaw.
Finally, the anthem of Mile End
Bran Van 3000 released the album Glee on April 15, 1997, and soon enough had a modest Canadian hit single with “Drinking in L.A.,” which got bigger in Europe over the subsequent two years. James Di Salvio, the architect of the Montreal act, continued the BV3000 name at later intervals, but nothing recaptured the sentiment of being 26:
