Canadian here. A minority gov is one which has less than X seats (where X is 50% in Canada and I believe Australia too), and usually that requires a coalition. “Forming government” in a parliamentary system like these basically means “has a good chance of passing meaningful legislation.” Since the leading party can’t do so alone, they form an agreement with another party (or multiple) to help them reach that criteria.

It is entirely possible for the party with the most seats to also not form government, if they’re far enough below 50% and can secure no agreement with another party to push them across the line. In these situations, another general election would soon follow.

Underrated comment, this should be at the top.

And all the Albertans who are so incensed about that have completely forgotten that they got a major pipeline expansion west through BC under Trudeau. In fact, Trudeau’s gov removed a bunch of red tape and poured a bunch of money into the project to make it happen. And yet, guess who they’re mad at…

Or at least demanding she resign. I bet there’s more support for that than for separation. You should all do it.

It’s the 5th largest of Alberta’s 37 ridings. I doubt it’s even in the top 20 nationwide, but I can’t be bothered to go compare areas that long.

I’d say it’s more like insisting your parents legally give you their basement as a separate property.

Yeah, the cost is so incredibly tiny. To take the full general election as an example, it cost each of us about $20. Is a fair and democratic election not worth $20 to you? It sure as heck is to me.

Maybe not PR. But ranked choice voting sure would have!

Yeah, this might actually be convincing to those in power now. The eternal problem with electoral reform is: why would you change a system which you just won with?

Thanks for the explanation! I’m familiar with the voting reform issue (and still salty Trudeau didn’t carry through on it), but some other readers might not be.

That reminds me - what the heck is up with the candidates in Carlton? Who are all these independents?

I had a past employer tell employees in a group meeting that you should stay home when sick, because coming to work just spreads it around and has a worse impact on the whole team, and therefore the business. We all stood there thinking, “OK, that makes sense… so why are you not paying for sick days, again?”

That’s not an answer. Why do you want Poilievre sitting across from Trump? What is the upside you see to that scenario?

Except when asked point-blank what his position is on his party wearing MAGA gear, Poilievre refuses to address it. Silence is complicity, plus Poilievre has been doing everything he can over the past several years to ape Trump.

Kind of splitting hairs, but a company that can let go of “scores” of employees and still exist is not a small business.

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2030/

As a software developer, it perfectly summarizes my position.

Yoga is correct - the average riding is 100-120k people. The smallest riding in BC currently is 89k, so unless they were going to give BC more ridings it makes sense.

The only ridings which are significantly below that mark are:

• Labrador, it’s an entire island
• The territories, with 1 riding each

Labrador is perhaps debatable because Newfoundland has other ridings it could join, but I think the case for having a riding cross a strait is much weaker than splitting a city in a remote area. This is not unique to Prince George, and sharing a riding with people 600km away is just reality when you’re talking about remote, sparsely populated areas.

Yes, you’re anthropomorphizing far too much. An LLM can’t understand, or recall (in the common sense of the word, i.e. have a memory), and is not aware.

Those are all things that intelligent, thinking things do. LLMs are none of that. They are a giant black box of math that predicts text. It doesn’t even understand what a word is, orthe meaning of anything it vomits out. All it knows is what is the statistically most likely text to come next, with a little randomization to add “creativity”.

Think about it for another minute. Nobody pays $800/mo in Union dues, and we haven’t talked about other benefits like PTO, health, and working conditions.

Trump has been fabricating victim stories since the start of this whole saga - trade deficit, fentanyl are both not actually problems big enough to warrant his actions, but were provided as the reasons.