Aaron Wherry

His dad is from Windsor!

The Ford Ad: Despite Trump’s tariff wrath, majority agree with ON government running TV spot featuring Reagan - Angus Reid Institute Half say ad helps Americans understand counterview to Trump tariff policy, but impact viewed as ‘small’ October 31, 2025 – As if the Toronto Blue Jays weren’t providing enough drama this October, even...

Should have linked to the ARI poll.

Here tis.
angusreid.org/doug-ford-tr...

Interesting party splits on the Ontario ad about tariffs.

Generations raised on video game consoles have been taught that the reset button is an easy out.

People who live in Ottawa are also Canadians.

Canada looks pretty good in these cross country comparisons

The UCP is hiding behind "justifications" that "they can do it" (of course they can) and that "they had to do it" (no, they didn't). If the UCP won't have the real, normative debates in the legislature during daylight hours with the premier present, it falls to the rest of us.

"The preemptive use of the notwithstanding clause cannot be allowed to normalize. Neither should the curtailment of legislative debate become routine...We cannot take the Rule of Law for granted; if we do, it may not be there to protect our rights when we most need it." #ableg #abpoli #cdnpoli

Opinion | In Trump’s America, Are We Losing Our Democracy? Donald Trump has wielded power as no previous president has.

This is an important editorial for Canadians to read and digest.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

2025 MLB Team Salary Payroll Tracker A real-time look at the 2025 salary payroll totals for each MLB team..

I understand framing the Jays as the underdog — basically anyone facing the Dodgers is an underdog.

But feels worth noting that the Jays are also fifth in baseball for team payroll.

(And that's good. Spending money on your team is good!)

www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/...

🤷‍♂️

I would wildly guess that Canadians would not see this as a failure.

www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Heat pump installations continue to rise in Canada. 📈

The latest data show more Canadians making the switch, with adoption in the Maritimes rising sharply.

Roughly half of New Brunswickers now have a heat pump as their primary heating system.
440megatonnes.ca/insight/late...

Absolutely the most underrated question for aspiring candidates for public office to ask themselves before they run:

Why do you want this job?

And I think it inevitably becomes apparent if they don't have a good answer to that question.

Above and beyond its other shortcomings, cynicism is also quite boring.

Yes, EVs are still the future Why we need to ignore the naysayers and actually look at the data

Fact check: EVs are still the future, no matter what the Trump administration tries to do to forestall it.

The question for Canada now is whether we want to participate in that future or get stuck in the past.

maxfawcett.substack.com/p/yes-evs-ar...

When a Canadian party loses and decides to do some deep thinking, the sum total of the discourse ends up being "we should get a more appealing leader and propose policies that appeal to a larger number of voters."

Maybe it's just that simple!

I imagine it's partially (or largely) to do with the (much, much larger) amounts of money and polling data available to American parties.

But at some point it feels like maybe there's too much money and polling data and like everyone in U.S. politics has too much time on their hands.

The real reason why Democrats are so unpopular Does the case for centrism stand up to scrutiny?

The sheer amount of time and energy that American partisans — or at least Democrats — put into agonizing over what their party could or should do is really jarring from a Canadian perspective.

I can't really think of a Canadian party doing similar.

www.vox.com/politics/466...

I'd also add:

Lougheed would never have supported a premier ramming through a bill the notwithstanding clause in the middle of the night without even showing up for the debate.

YouTube video by Reagan Library President Reagan's Radio Address on Canadian Elections and Free Trade on November 26, 1988

I listened to the Reagan speech the Ontario government quoted, and no honest person could claim it was taken out of context. But what interested me more was the next clip that autoplayed, where he connects the American founding to the rejection of tariffs. 🔥🔥🔥

youtu.be/Tp1T7kPEdDY?...

I think there's this tendency in the Canadian discourse to assume that in any situation where another country is mad at Canada, it must be because Canadians did something wrong.

Probably we need to most past that as the default assumption.

Bring back disallowance, but only for provincial television ads.

The House of Commons is very nearly debating whether the federal government has jurisdiction over television ads.

Yikes.

www.environicsinstitute.org/docs/default...

New from me at TVO, with the radical theory that the person primarily responsible for Donald Trump's actions is Donald Trump. www.tvo.org/article/anal...

Also: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember anyone saying the Ontario ad was a bad idea *before* the president got mad.

Some of the Ford second-guessing reminds me of the post-Charlevoix second-guessing of Trudeau's (entirely anodyne) comments.

I guess you always have to consider possible ramifications, but at some point you risk excusing really irrational responses.

bsky.app/profile/doug...

Those who think the Reagan ads were a bad idea for having irrationally annoyed the president for reasons having nothing to do with their merits are, I assume, writing urgent letters to the Toronto Blue Jays organization urging them to lose the World Series for the same reason

And then when a manager comes out to argue, the manager can say, "I'd like to speak with the robot."