Blake Shaffer 🇨🇦

Thrilled to share the launch of Western Transmission Catalysts today! WTC is an initiative to overcome the longstanding barriers and make Indigenous-led interprovincial transmission possible across western Canada and the prairies. 🧵 www.newswire.ca/news-release...

Today the Western Transmission Catalysts released a new report: A (much needed) made-in-Canada framework to assess the benefits and allocate the costs of interprovincial electricity transmission. www.westerntransmissioncatalysts.ca/resources

Excellent article. macleans.ca/politics/the...

What a spectacle! #heritageclassic

JUST POSTED: A Russian energy giant has secretly moved to acquire a position in a massive Alaska gas project. Its part of talks between Witkoff/Kushner & Putin. But CEO of US company resigns after learning of Russian money in the project. A wowzer of a story. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/u...

"Friend with benefits" remains the best possible title.

Bad men gain power when we don't fight back. Vivek Ramaswamy is everything wrong with politics: arrogance, cruelty, dishonesty, and a willingness to do ANYTHING for power. Ohio deserves better. I'm proud that my wife, MK, is supporting Dr. Amy Acton today.

Two days before the Oct. 24 vote, Eby was five points behind his BC Conservative opponents. “It could go down as a historic miscalculation"

One day we are going to look back on this period of history and just a collective “WTF was that??”

Fun fact. This tweet has been deleted now. #abpoli #ableg #cdnpoli

A reminder that this is the reason why Danielle Smith is desperate to gerrymander the next provincial election.

As the count continues, we are getting a clearer picture of the results from Monday's AB referendum: 1. Separation was trounced 2. No real mandate on the heavily pushed Q1-9 Big picture: the Urban-Rural divide Cgy+Edm voted No on all questions Rest of Alberta (combined) voted Yes

And there it is. Alberta said No to all four constitutional questions.

Another one bites the dust...

So just curious for #ableg vote watchers, what happens when the 48 hour deadline passes? We are nearly there and there's still millions of votes left to count. By my projections, two questions are still set to flip from Yes to No. What does the 48 hour deadline even mean if the count isn't done?

Over $2,000 in donations now for KidSport! All from fans of a slightly petty website about a Winnipeg goalie not getting paid. 😅 Hellebucks.com

Other than Q5 ("proof of citizenship to vote") and of course Q10 that got walloped, it looks like the end result will be: - a very weak mandate across the immigration Qs, despite the effort and slanted framing that went into boosting them - a clear rejection of most of the constitutional Qs #ableg

An update on projected results of the "other" 9 AB referendum Q's: Q6 flipped to No overnight, as expected. ** It still looks like all 4 "constitutional" questions will end up No ** The reason: most of the mail-in ballots are yet to be counted there. Those that have are 75% No.

Wow — 🔥 Neil Bush: “I voted for @jamestalarico.bsky.social… Trump and those who have enabled him have done enormous damage to the Republican Party… Character matters more than party affiliation.”

Premier Smith was deliberately cautious when speaking about the outcomes of Questions 6-9. And rightly so. With roughly 500k mail in ballots yet to be counted for each, and with those swinging hard No on other Q’s, I expect these Qs to fail.

New approach. Here i take the # of votes remaining by each voting method (elxn day, advanced, mail-in, mobile) and used their % Yes share from votes cast to get a projected outcome. Because so many mail-in ballots are remaining and their %Yes is low, this flips Q6-9 to No and tightens Q1-5.

No surprise, but very strong %Remain vs %No correlation by riding.

This is a *very* speculative projection I took Q10 counts to get expected total votes and figure out how many remain for each riding and vote method for Q1-9. I then project how remaining votes will go based on Q10 riding x method fit. Given so many mail-in ballots remain, i get Q6-9 flipping No

For #ABref watchers, it's worth noting that the non-separation questions remain far from settled. The special ballots (mail-in) have largely not yet been counted for Q's 1-9 (they counted Q10 first). Given how big the "remain" share was for special ballots, expect a swing towards No on some Qs.

If you remember the Alberta referendum results being delayed last night for voting in Lavern Community Hall (in Cardston-Siksika): the vote there ended up being 307-6 (98%) in favour of Option 1.

Alberta's Conservative leaders/leadership should read this. #abpoli open.substack.com/pub/theline/...

Remember "Alberta is Calling"? That was so last year...

I will say the rank cynicism of Smith demanding more provincial control over immigration when she was one of the premiers who begged for higher immigration targets just over 2 years ago is a lot to take. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Consider the irony associated with the namesakes: Manning to remain and Notley to leave 🤔

Edmonton-Manning wins the prize for the highest vote share to remain in Canada: 92% Only two districts were below 50%: Rimbey-Rocky Mtn House and Peace-Notley

We are two solitudes: the Urban/Rural divide Other than Q5 (proof of citizenship to vote) and Q10 (separation) the votes in yesterday's referendum split across the urban/rural divide. (Note: still lots of counting to do, especially for Qs 1-9)

No to the Nine resonated pretty strongly in Alberta's two big cities. Different story outside them. The urban/rural/small cities split remains a feature of our province.

Interesting breakdown. Vote split by voting type. Remain were motivated to vote early with mail-in (special ballots) and avoid the polling station headaches (which, surprisingly, were few). 91% remain there. Election day is tighter. Could mean we tighten a bit as vote count rises.

Updating. Made it clearer which side of the vote is winning with some colour shading. The senate question swung Yes, but it's still early on those counts.

Separation was never broadly popular here. This was a case of a leader needing to placate their party's base. And it likely won't even do that.

CTV has made the (pretty easy) call: Alberta has voted not to hold an independence referendum. With a bit less than half of the vote counted, it's 77% in favour of remain.

more results on all questions coming in for the AB referendum. Provincial control on immigration and proof of citizenship to vote is proving popular. Opt-ing out of federal programs and federal judge selection is not. Separation is resoundingly being rejected. 🇨🇦

Most of the coverage tonight has been a relitigation of Alberta’s grievances. Talking to separatists whining about Trudeau, panelists whining about Trudeau…and nobody ever really trying to introduce facts to their feelings. Pathetic.

Spectacular paragraph from the "2021 Alberta referendum" Wikipedia article.

An entire article on tackling road congestion in Toronto and not a single mention of the tried and tested method that has worked in other major cities (NYC, London): congestion pricing [gift link] www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/fe4f74c...

Trump’s victim-blaming of Ukraine is disgusting. I hope republicans grow a backbone and stand up to this man who is now openly aiding and abetting Russia. Also: “Ukraine’s oceans are gone” 🤪

This is very, very impressive.

Chrystia Freeland: "The biggest mistake foreign leaders and a lot of Americans made was to try to appease Donald Trump and to capitulate to unacceptable actions. What we've seen from Trump and you see it from all bullies, giving in just encourages the guy to come back for more the next day."

It hasn’t even been 1 month since the Lindsey Graham act was passed. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/u...

Oh.

I don't think most Americans are even capable of understanding how stupid and tone deaf this is from Schiff.