Michael J. Wigginton

This little link was an absolute game changer for my Hull-CarletonU commute. Shaved off some considerable time, and made the commute a lot safer / more comfortable. Great to see the holes in the Ottawa-Gatineau bike network filled in!

Recently I was in a painted bike lane on Beechwood and had a car veer suddenly into my lane (and nearly me) as it prepared for a right turn. Painted lanes absolutely aren't sufficient, and it really doesn't help when they curve around car parking. Once the paint starts to fade the lane disappears

To me the bizarre thing is that experimental studies in social science are often *less* reliable than observational ones because of how hard it is to make a good experimental scenario. Voting in a simulation just ain't the same, and countries will not let me randomly assign candidates in real ones

Elections Canada Graphic: Peak voting times on advance polling days (adjusted for the holiday weekend). Early morning to 1 p.m.: red arrow indicating busiest period 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.: yellow arrow indicating a busy period After 4 p.m.: green arrow indicating a low-traffic period

Elections Canada Graphic: Usual peak voting times on election day Early morning: red arrow indicating busiest period 10 a.m. to noon: yellow arrow indicating a busy period Noon to 4 p.m.: green arrow indicating a low-traffic period After 4 p.m.: red arrow indicating busiest period

PSA for people looking to vote this weekend: Elections Canada's data suggests that, unlike on election day, the evening of advance voting days is the least popular time to vote. So waiting until after 4pm might get you a better experience
(Election Day is of course also an option)

I was recently without my bike for a week and was shocked by how bad my Hull-Carleton U commute was. 1hr by transit vs 30 mins by bike, assuming the bus actually came (it often didn't). And now OC Transpo is cutting that bus altogether. Hard to imagine ridership numbers will increase like this.

Debate conclusion: I learned roughly as much about the election from playing the video game as I did from watching the debate. Increasingly wondering if the debate format is at all productive for democracy, or if a series of interviews like 5 chefs, une élection would be a better use of time.

Picture of my computer set up, with the debate on one monitor and the game Transport Fever 2 on the other

Dual monitors have a lot of uses, but making following the debate less boring is an pretty great one.

Maybe I misunderstood your point, but there is a travel advisory for China and not for the USA? While they've added some language about increased scrutiny at the US border, the advisory for China is very clear about arbitrary law enforcement. If anything we're still understating the US situation.

It's ultimately just a simple typo, but given that the point of this press release is to pander to Quebecers, it's pretty funny that they got the French version of the headline so wrong.

Yeah the sudden request for rescheduling seems very amateurish. If they were going to object on that basis they should have done it well before now.

Leaders' French debate bumped by NHL playoffs | CBC News The French-language televised leaders debate — originally scheduled for Thursday — will be moved to Wednesday due to a conflict with the NHL playoffs.

I have no memory of it, but apparently we've done almost this exact thing before. Sometimes our politics can stray into self-parody territory.

www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

Thought about this a bit more, and now I think I actually might have read that he did this for people he appointed to the Senate, either in addition to or in place of cabinet. Just in case that helps you in searching.

I can offer up that I've definitely also read this before, but can't figure out where. It feels like an anecdote that would have been in Governing From the Centre but a quick ctrl +f tells me it's not.

A screencapture from votewell.ca, showing the same figures as the previous picture, but with the advice to "please vote for your preferred candidate"

#votewell.ca handles this a lot better imho, and just tells voters that they don't have any reason to vote strategically in this riding.

Screencap of Smartvoting.ca's recommended vote in Berthier—Maskinongé. It shows the BQ at 29%, LPC at 28%, NDP at 28%, and CPC at 12%. It advises that the Bloc are the strategic vote choice. Available at: https://smartvoting.ca/ridings/federal-2025/24012

I'm lukewarm on strategic voting overall, but if orgs like @smartvoting.ca are going tell people to do it they should be more nuanced about it. Voting 'strategically' to keep the CPC out of a seat they have no hope of winning makes no sense, as does picking one party out of a 3-way statistical tie.

Le PQ, qui veut que le Québec soit indépendant du Canada, trouve ça injuste que le Québec ait sa propre politique sur le prix du carbone, et suit pas celui du RoC 🤨

So now that it's April 2 @theconversationca.bsky.social are going to reveal that this was just an April Fool's joke and not a serious article, right? Because surely a publication based on "academic rigour, journalistic flair" would not publish this tripe as serious analysis. Surely. Right?

“The setting for the game is a pure exchange economy with a finite number of states.” — H.S. Shin, “News Management and the Value of Firms,” The RAND Journal of Economics, 1994, p. 60. Article content “The setting for the game is a pure exchange economy with a continuous number of states.” — Carney thesis, 1995, p. 211.

I can be a bit of a stickler for citations when I teach, but this National Post article is full of some incredibly weak accusations. The example below is a formulaic stock phrase, not an original thought. Nowhere near the sort of conduct that gets degrees revoked.
nationalpost.com/news/mark-ca...

How much federal funding should universities receive? NDP: Much more Source: Analysis Jagmeet [Singh] has a plan to make sure post-secondary is accessible which includes: Making post-secondary education part of our public education system; [...] Working towards a future where tuition is free.

Canada's laws against hate speech place too many limits on freedom of expression. CPC: Strongly agree Source: Analysis Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Wednesday his party is vehemently opposed to the government's forthcoming online harms legislation, a bill designed to combat hate speech, terrorist content and some violent material on the internet. Saying he won't accept "Justin Trudeau's woke authoritarian agenda," Poilievre said the prime minister and his government shouldn't be deciding what constitutes "hate speech" online and called the legislation an "attack on freedom of expression."

I also find some of their stances for the parties questionable. In a question about funding for universities, they rely on Singh saying tuition should be free. In questioning if our hate speech laws go too far, they rely on parties stances on a *proposed* law. Neither exactly matches the actual Q

Vote Compass - 2025 Canadian Federal Election Use this interactive survey designed by political scientists to calculate your alignment with the candidate platforms.

Tried out CBC new vote compass and I found some of their indicators this year odd. Multiple Qs on hate speech laws, but none on housing policy? Banning puberty blockers, but no high speed rail? Are these really the salient ballot questions this election? I worry they over-represent the culture war

I think there's probably something to this idea, particularly the idea that vesting one person with too many roles and powers makes it easier for them to slide towards being an autocrat. Still, Pakistan has a parliamentary system and Russia was only semi presidential; it's far from robust protection

Photos and terms of Canada's shortest lived PMs from Wikipedia. Text: Canada's three shortest-serving prime ministers, left to right: Sir Charles Tupper; 68 days John Turner; 79 days Kim Campbell; 132 days

Assuming that an election happens by the end of April as rumoured, Carney will set a new record for shortest time in office for a PM if the LPC lose government.
If they win he'll still be the first PM to never have held elected office when appointed. A future trivia question either way.

"This would be the most incredible country visually."
Is the obsession with annexing 🇨🇦 and 🇬🇱 really just about the aesthetics of how the map works? This is literally the logic I use when playing Civ V or Total War - it's terrifying to think that the US president is making geopolitics a video game

It's incredibly frustrating to see news outlets frequently refer to "the current caretaker government" when no election has been called. Yes there's a leadership race and yes there's a probable future election but, that does not a caretaker government make. Political journalists should know this.

Should polls be banned ahead of election day? Ontario's chief electoral officer thinks so | CBC News In the wake of record low turnout for an Ontario election, the province's chief electoral officer is calling for a ban on publishing the results of political polls for the final stretch of the campaig...

This proposal is interesting, but I'm not sure it would have the desired effect overall. While knowing that an election will likely be a blowout can depress turnout, knowing it will be close can motivate more voters to show up. Personally, I'd prioritize high turnout in the latter situation.

Can Canadian IR carve out its own space? Michael P. A. Murphy & Michael J. Wigginton find that American, British, & European journals dominate Canadian IR education, sidelining Canadian & French-language scholarship.

Read more here: https://buff.ly/41kuJOf

TTC Shop: quality gifts, souvenirs and apparel The TTC Shop offers quality merchandise, souvenirs, gifts and apparel that celebrate the iconic Toronto Transit Commission (TTC).

The TTC's offical store can be a tad pricey, but it has a lot of excellent gifts and is the source of an embarrassing amount of my home decor 😅
www.ttcshop.ca

Me wearing glasses crudely taped together at the bridge. They're slightly askew, but on my face at least.

Me, 5 seconds later. The right half of my glasses have fallen off my face and are dangling from my ear. I have a very dejected expression, slowly realizing that my plan isn't working.

I somehow managed to snap the bridge of my glasses during my commute to the office this morning. Efforts to tape them back together have been going... less than excellently