[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Zoupa]

The decoupling has begun.

Canada clinches deal to join Europe's €150B defense scheme

The deal concludes months of tough talks and will allow Ottawa to take part in procurements financed by the EU's SAFE program.

Canada has reached a final agreement to join the EU's €150 billion Security Action for Europe program, two EU diplomats told POLITICO, marking the first time a third country will formally participate in the bloc's flagship joint procurement initiative.

The agreement was later confirmed by the European Commission.

"This is the next step in our deepening cooperation and symbolic of the shared priorities of the European Union and Canada," it said in a joint statement with Canada.

The breakthrough follows months of technically complex negotiations and was communicated directly to ministers taking part in Monday's Foreign Affairs Council; Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius informed delegations that negotiations with Ottawa had concluded.

Canada's accession to the loan-for-weapons SAFE scheme gives Ottawa access to jointly financed defense projects and allows Canadian companies to bid into EU-supported joint procurement projects. For Brussels, securing a G7 partner strengthens the credibility of SAFE as it seeks to coordinate long-term weapons demand and ramp up Europe's defense industrial base.

"Welcome to SAFE, Canada!" Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on social media. "When like-minded partners join forces on security and defence in a turbulent world, our countries grow stronger, our industries benefit and our citizens are safer."

Under SAFE, third countries can account for a maximum of 35 percent of the value of a weapons system paid for by the scheme; Canada will be able to have a larger share but it will have to pay a fee "commensurate with the benefits the Partner Country and its entities are expected to derive," factoring in GDP, industrial competitiveness and the depth of cooperation with European manufacturers.

Other issues tackled in negotiations covered conditions on intellectual property control and limits on non-EU inputs for sensitive systems including drones, missile-defense assets and strategic enablers.

Similar talks with the U.K. broke down on Friday.
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The timing aligns with a major SAFE milestone: Kubilius announced on X that all 19 participating EU countries had submitted their spending plans that will be financed by low interest SAFE loans.

He added that 15 members included support for Ukraine in their plans, involving "billions, not millions" — something the Commission has been keen to encourage.

[Grey Fox]

Canada is willing to pay the price while it sounds like the UK is not.

[Zoupa]

The UK is under a double delusion:

• the special relationship is still (or ever was) relevant
• their defence industry is up to snuff

UK procurement has been an absolute disaster for decades. Latest in a long line is the Ajax AFV.

[Syt]

They were an Empire, dammit. They don't need help.  

[garbon]

Zoupa misrepresenting something so he can feel smug?

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-uk-talks-on-defense-deal-break-down/

...

Under SAFE, third countries can account for a maximum of 35 percent of the value of a weapons system paid for by the scheme; the U.K. was negotiating for a higher percentage, which would benefit the country's large arms industry.

The negotiations have been tough, with London and Brussels clashing over how much the U.K. would have to pay to participate in joint procurements financed by SAFE. The U.K. was offering only millions of euros, while the EU slashed its initial request for London to pay between €4.5 billion and €6.5 billion to a lower €2 billion.

A U.K. official stressed London sought to "base our offers on a clear, rigorous methodology" but there "was just too big a gap" with Commission expectations.

Even without an agreement, the U.K. can still take part in joint procurements under the 35 percent threshold.

...

[Zoupa]

What did I misrepresent exactly? I formulated an opinion.

[Jacob]

BC Conservative leader John Rustad faces call to resign in a letter apparently signed by 20 BC Conservative MLAs (they have 39 MLAs in the current Provincial Parliament):

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/conservative-mlas-call-for-john-rustad-to-be-removed-as-leader-9.7001741

I'm not an expert on provincial party internal politicking, but it seems like Rustad's goose is close to cooked.

It will be interesting to see if whatever the BC Conservatives come up with is going to be a lurch further to the right, or an attempt to woo more centrist voters. As well, it'll be interesting to see to what degree there'll be further fracturing on the right - how many various One BC type parties will we see?

[Josquius]

https://macleans.ca/society/montreals-new-rail-line-is-the-future/

Montreal's New Rail Line Is the Future
Canada has forgotten how to build fast, cheap transit. A new megaproject has the fix.

On a sunny morning this November, I boarded the Réseau Express Métropolitain, Montreal's brand-new light metro line, for its first voyage. From the front of the driverless train, the crowd got a privileged view of the rough rock walls of the century-old tunnel under Mont-Royal and the ice-rimed shores of the Rivière-des-Prairies. The journey was not just a tour of the REM's 14 new stations, however—it was a preview of the most ambitious transit expansion in North America.

My Cure for Student Reading Fatigue? Movies., and other top stories from December 02, 2025.

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The last time Montreal celebrated the opening of a new rapid transit line, the Expos were still running the bases at Olympic Stadium, and Mitsou was tearing up the pop charts with "Bye bye mon cowboy." Since the inauguration of the Montreal Metro's Blue Line in 1988, the city's network has added just three stations. Now, the opening of the REM has vaulted Canada's second largest city from a transportation laggard to a frontrunner. It's also provided a low-cost template of quick-to-build rapid transit that every Canadian city struggling with gridlock, long commutes and inflated transit costs can, and should, emulate. Next spring, a new branch will open to the island's western suburbs, and another is slated to reach Trudeau airport in 2027. By that point the REM will span 26 stations and 67 kilometres—it's an expansion that invites comparison to the long-awaited Grand Paris Express, four new lines of automated trains that will serve Paris's outer suburbs by 2030.

Riding that train made me feel like Canada was finally building transit fit for the 21st century, a worthy counterpart to the systems that are now common in Asian and European cities. This is a sharp contrast to the rest of the country. For the most part, Canada's cities are lacking the kind of transit networks people now take for granted in much of the world. Toronto has struggled for years to finish the Eglinton Crosstown, a light-rail project that is now going into its 15th year of construction. The Ontario Line, the successor to the Downtown Relief Line—a project first proposed in the 1980s—won't be completed until 2031. And while second-tier cities in China have metro systems, smaller Canadian cities like Halifax, Saskatoon and Winnipeg struggle even to set up express bus lanes.

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The REM has taken best practices from around the world and gives them a made-in-Canada twist. As in Shanghai and Taipei, you board the trains through safety-enhancing platform doors. Like most modern European networks, the trains draw power from overhead wires; this being Montreal, the rooftop pantographs that connect to the wires are reinforced to break up ice on the lines. As on Japanese commuter trains, the seats are heated for winter riding comfort. And because it's automated, it can run trains at greater frequencies—they can arrive as often as every two and a half minutes.

Maybe most importantly, given Canada's cash-strapped municipal budgets, the REM is being built for a fraction of the cost of comparable projects in North America. In Toronto, the Eglinton Crosstown has swollen to $13 billion, or $684 million a kilometre. The second phase of New York's long-overdue Second Avenue Subway may cost $3.7 billion a kilometre, and current rail expansions in San Francisco and Los Angeles have gone north of $1 billion a kilometre. The construction of a five-station extension to the all-underground Blue Line, which has just begun in Montreal's east end, has a similar price tag. The REM is being built for $140 million a kilometre—an astonishing bargain.

How is Quebec getting so much bang for its transportation buck? Typically, governments finance existing transit agencies, giving them the licence to build and operate new lines for 30 years or so. The city of Montreal ponied up $100 million to fund the stations that connect to its metro, but this isn't a municipal project. The REM is being built by CDPQ Infra, the construction arm of the Caisse de dépôt et placement, the manager of Quebec's massive public pension fund, which has undertaken other infrastructure projects: Eurostar's high-speed trains, the terminals at Heathrow airport and Vancouver's Canada Line. CDPQ Infra has a 78 per cent equity stake in the REM and will reap revenue from the service, paid out at the rate of 75 cents per kilometre per passenger, for 99 years. From the start, it was in CDPQ's interests to keep costs down.

Continued on link. Copying and pasting is working weird.

Montreal is getting a lot of positive attention for it's new rail line. Really bucking the trend for anglo countries (yes I know. Montreal) to spend a bazillion times what Europe does for a fraction of the results.

[Grey Fox]

It wasn't cheap and the government has 5 years, iirc, to buy it from the CDPQ or they will be able to do has they please selling it to China or SA or some such.

The train it self is pretty awesome so far. Has really got rid of a lot of traffic on my morning commute.

[Jacob]

So Rustad said he's not going to resign because of the letter (apparently the names of the 20 MLAs aren't public). Arguments in favour of his position are that he recently got 70% of the membership votes in a leadership review*, and that the party's constitution allegedly doesn't have anything saying MLAs can remove a leader.

(* though the turnout rate was only 15% of membership)

Against that argument, apparently the Board of the BC Conservative Party say they've removed him from his leadership position as of a few minutes ago. They've also, it seems, appointed an interim leader.

At this time it is unclear who's leading the BC Conservative group in the BC Legislative Assembly.

Exciting times for the BC Conservative Party.

[Jacob]

I know you're all absolutely riveted by the BC Conservative Party drama.

The current situation:

Rustad says he's still the leader, nothing's changed. Some MLAs say he's still their leader.

The new interim leader - Trevor Halford - says he's the leader. The party's board says Rustad is not the leader.

The logic of the removal is that the BC Conservative Party constitution says:

The Leader can only be removed from office by resignation, death, incapacitation, or the leadership review vote resulting in less than fifty percent (50%) support of the Party Members in good standing who vote in a universal secret paper ballot."

What the board did was to declare Rustad "professionally incapable" as grounds for removal.

Rustad has declared that that is a bunch of BS (he used the words "give me a break", which I think of as old school BC phrasing for "that's BS").

David Eby, the BC Premier (NDP) sticks the knife in a bit, saying:

"This is not a surprise that we continue to see this chaos," Eby said.

"The kinds of people the Conservatives brought into the legislature, the anti-vax conspiracy theories, the pro-Trump tweets, the YouTube bloggers — I don't know how you hold a group together with that kind of hodgepodge of craziness."

That said, some of the rebels also seem to be coming from the centre-seeking Liberal-Conservative coalition wing of the party. It seems like both wings of the big tent are dissatisfied. There's also been some rumbling about Rustad's leadership having made fundraising difficult... whatever that suggests.

Stay tuned for more of "as the BC Conservative Party turns"

[Grey Fox]

 

I'm happy to know the West can also be divide within itself.

[crazy canuck]

I don't think Rustad has much of a leg to stand on, there will be a new leader selected, and there is already a new interim leader in place. 


The interesting question is whether the non NDP vote reconsolidates under the BC Conservatives now after having been under the banners of Social Credit, then BC Liberals/United. Or whether we end up with three parties.  I think the first option is the most likely.  But who knows.