Votes aren’t that important in the Senate

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On Friday morning, the CBC put out a deeply ignorant article that was Very Concerned about senators missing “key votes,” and that “some legislative changes pass with barely half of all senators casting a vote.” OH NOES! Except that there are pretty much no key votes in the Senate, and that very few legislative changes are so important that they need all hands on deck to vote. Legacy media and a number of academics who have spent zero time watching the Senate simply do not understand how it operates, and for the most part, votes are not all that important. Government bills are going to pass, unless it’s something extraordinarily egregious, so there is less impetus to vote for things, because nobody wants to cause a constitutional crisis by voting down these bills. There are almost no close votes in the Senate these days, unless it’s on some contentious procedural matters—such as what was being rammed through with some of those bills at the end of the sitting—but again, that was on the timing of studies and not on the bills themselves. The votes are not important—the committee work is, and that’s where senators focus most of their attention.

This being said, the fact that so many of these senators in the article had absences related to doing things like keynote speeches and engaging with certain stakeholder communities is in part a function of the kinds of appointments that Justin Trudeau made to the Chamber, which were a lot of type-A personalities who have some pretty specific interests, and sometimes pursing those interests mean that they’re not in Ottawa as a result. Also, a lot of senators are aged, and that means that some of them have more health issues and they miss sittings as a result, which also wasn’t really addressed. And articles like this one are going to leave the impression that they simply can’t be arsed to turn up, and isn’t it just like those attendance scandals of the eighties and nineties (which it’s not, and yes, the Senate takes attendance and those records are public, unlike the House of Commons). This isn’t the whole “taskless thanks” nonsense that certain past Senate figures *cough*Mike Duffy*cough* tried to make it out to be. It’s just really tiresome that this kind of story comes around every year, often from the same journalists, and nobody bothers to learn a gods damned thing about why the Senate is not the House of Commons.

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Engagement is not endorsement?

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From Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, both Anita Anand and prime minister Mark Carney defended their visit and all of the business deals they’re drumming up under the rubric of “engagement is not endorsement,” because remember, Carney’s brand of “pragmatism” is that he’s ready to jettison values at the drop of a hat. Any hat. If any of this feels familiar, it’s because it’s like we’re back in 1995 again, and the Canadian government and all of the mandarins in Ottawa sincerely believe that when it comes to China or any other unsavoury regime that we’re one trade deal away from them improving their human rights. We’ve been down this road—the whole we’ll take your money and hope that it vicariously improves your human rights thing didn’t work then and it won’t work now. All you’re doing is sending the explicit message that so long as you have money, human rights don’t matter.

Carney's readout of his meeting with Prince Bonesaw.No mention of rights, or not murdering journalists and dismembering them because you don't like what they said about you.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-07-09T15:36:38.647Z

Longer release from PMO about the "bilateral relationship" with Prince Bonesaw, and the only mention of rights is in relation to the conflict in Sudan.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-07-09T19:41:27.912Z

Sure, Anand says she raised human rights concerns in private, but what good does that do? In Saudi Arabia of all places, where you get jail time for liking a tweet that ridicules Prince Bonesaw, or where you get lashes for being openly critical. The same Saudi Arabia who murdered and dismembered a journalist who was critical of their regime. It shouldn’t be such a low bar to say that maybe that’s not a regime that we want to do business with. Carney insists that “lecturing from afar” is “ineffective,” but not rewarding them economically is not simply “lecturing.” And if we’re just going to follow the money with no regard for rights or values, then what exactly is the point of having any values? Why not simply become transactional Americans? Let’s give our heads a shake.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-07-09T19:08:01.478Z

Sports betting

The National Post has a longread out about the rise of sports betting in Canada, but in the promotional email they sent around to subscribers, it was titled “Canada rolled the dice on online sports betting. No one saw the harms.” Nope. This is what happens when you have no institutional memory in your reporters. The story only mentions the final bill to legalise betting, which did pass, and how it had support then. There was no mention of the half-dozen or so previous iterations that all went down in defeat, and which were sometimes passed in the Commons through procedural chicanery by the NDP (who were the sponsors of these bills, because their Windsor MP wanted to help the casinos in his riding), with very little scrutiny. It was in the Senate that these bills saw actual study, and yes, there were scores of people, including sports bodies, who outlined the harms of this kind of sports betting. And by the final bill, they had basically given up because the overriding argument, including from the Trudeau government, was “If we don’t legalise it, people will just do it illegally online, so this way we get the money.” But yes, plenty of people knew there would be harm, and nobody listened to them.

Email header from the National Post to advertise their new longread. Completely false—lots of people saw the harms. In the various attempts to legalize it, you had expert after expert in the Senate testifying that this was bad news. Every sports organization said so. Everyone ignored them because $.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-07-09T15:07:49.346Z

The NDP, who kept sponsoring private members' bills to legalise this kind of betting, played every procedural trick in the book to keep trying to pass these bills, until Trudeau came in and decided to make this government legislation.Lots of people saw the harms, but they all shrugged.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-07-09T15:07:49.347Z

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Let’s not defund Stornoway

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There are fewer tedious stories than those about electronic petitions to the House of Commons, but the Globe and Mail decided that there wasn’t enough serious news to write about, so they wrote about particularly nonsense petition about de-funding Stornoway as residence of the leader of the opposition. It’s stupid, it’s petty, and it’s cheap, and above all, mean, but why should that stop anyone? The notion that this is about “cost-savings” is just more of the kinds of hairshirt parsimony that creates more problems than it solves for Canada and Canadians, but since when has that stopped legacy media from lighting their hair on fire about it?

“Oh, but no other similar democracy has an official residence for their leader of the opposition!” So what? It was a senator who kicked off the drive to acquire such a residence back in 1946, and the thing about Stornoway is that it has a particularly proud history in that it was where the Dutch royal family stayed when they were in exile in Canada. That it was purchased as an official residence after that means that its heritage as that home in exile is able to be preserved, while it also highlights that in a Westminster democracy, the leader of the opposition is an important position and a modest official residence (and all things considered, Stornoway is pretty modest), is not a huge extravagance. It’s also worth pointing out once again that it’s not fit for a prime minister because it can’t be properly secured. The only reason it’s in as good of shape as it is was because in the mid-to-late nineties, Preston Manning refused to move in there as opposition leader, so it gave the NCC time to do necessary renovations and upgrades, but it’s showing its age once again. So let’s not be petty and cheap, and no matter how much you might dislike the current occupant, there isn’t any justification to defund it as an official residence.

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The most cynical Senate appointments

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Yesterday, prime minister Mark Carney made his first four Senate appointments, and they were…a choice. After months of rumours, he appointed his principal secretary, Tom Pittfield, to the Senate—but not as a partisan Liberal to be in a revived Liberal Senate caucus, which is not happening, but as an “independent.” (Pittfield was also a childhood friend of Justin Trudeau as his father was once Clerk of the Privy Council to Pierre Trudeau, and was later appointed to the Senate; his wife is Liberal MP Anna Gainey). He also appointed Conservative MP Richard Martel, also to sit as an “independent” and not as a Conservative senator, plus cancer researcher Dr. Rodney Ouelette and CPA Geeta Tucker.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-07-07T13:50:42.850Z

Performatively distancing himself from Trudeau.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-07-07T14:01:38.222Z

I will have a lot more to write about this and the changes he’s making to the appointment process in the coming days, but for the moment, let me say how cynical this move was. There are those trying to spin Pittfield as somehow being needed to “quarterback” legislation in the Senate, but he’s not being made Government Leader, so that makes no sense. And legislation is not being delayed. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to actually study bills, but they’re not a rubber stamp. (There is also a weird little subplot about the pissing match that Pittfield and David Lametti had in PMO over being Carney’s principal secretary, Pittfield won and Lametti was sent packing to the UN, and months later, Pittfield is now getting a Senate seat). The appointment of Martel is to open up a winnable seat in the Commons, and it’s crassly obvious that was the reason. Poilievre got jammed by the move, and he’s instructed his caucus not to shit-talk the appointment (unlike what they did with Alain Reyes’ leaving caucus, for example, or any of the floor-crossers). Carney doesn’t seem to be coming from any place of principle here, and per his previous foreign policy moves, his “principled pragmatism” is that he can slough off his principles at the drop of a hat, and that seems to be exactly what is happening here.

He's totally not mad, guys.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-07-07T22:28:54.018Z

“Warrior not woke”

At his Stampede Conservative barbecue speech, Pierre Poilievre gave one of his tired lines about returning the Canadian military to “warrior culture, not woke culture” (which means what? That we should go back to the era of a toxic, sexualized culture marked by abuse of power?), but the fact that he was dressed in a white satin shirt with white embroidery and an ill-fitting white cowboy hat with a Conservative logo on the front drew many laughs. I find it amazing that Conservatives seem to have a hard time finding appropriate Stampede-wear (see: Stephen Harper’s two-sizes-too-small leatherette vest), while “woke, effete” Justin Trudeau never had a problem.

— Pablo Hidalgo (@infinata.bsky.social) 2026-07-07T13:49:58.898Z

Pierre Poilievre’s Personal Assistant Explains His Calgary Stampede Outfityoutu.be/r-1lhkq3c3w

— Clare Blackwood (@clareblackwood.bsky.social) 2026-07-07T19:53:01.400Z

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A fantasy pipeline to Sarnia

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Doug Ford and Danielle Smith held a joint press conference yesterday to announce a proposal for a northern pipeline route from Alberta to Sarnia, entirely through Canadian territory. Currently Alberta oil transits to Sarnia through the US because it’s a much shorter and flatter route, and that network is working just fine. Yes, a northern route might be more secure from American threats, but I will reiterate—a Canadian route is much longer, and over much rougher terrain, and is unlikely to find private sector proponents because they have no desire to strand the current pipeline network’s assets.

This sounds an awful lot to me like wishful thinking. There’s no timeline, there’s no price tag, there’s no agreement with Manitoba to go through that province—it’s a line on a map that rests on the wishful thinking that the oil market is going to keep growing in perpetuity. Ford keeps talking about how great it would be if the pipeline could go all the way to the Irving refinery in New Brunswick, but that’s never going to happen because Irving has no interest in paying a premium for Alberta oil when they can get imports for cheaper. (On a similar note, hopes to ship oil or LNG out of the Port of Churchill is also fantasy, because it’s only open for three months out of the year, and if they think that they need icebreakers the rest of the year, well, that’s one hell of a government subsidy).

Meanwhile, Smith going on about how the plan is to build this out now and decarbonise later is also ridiculous. There is a supply glut in the global oil market already (and prices will fall precipitously once the Strait of Hormuz issue is resolved, which it will be). Alberta increasing production to fill all of these pipelines is not going to bring plenty of more dollars, because adding supply to a supply glut further lowers the prices they get. That’s the reason why so much investment dried up after the price crash in 2014. It’s not coming back. This is just fantasy.

Danielle And Doug Ford Are Making A Beautiful Pipeline Togetheryoutu.be/BbOvIjvbMMw

— Clare Blackwood (@clareblackwood.bsky.social) 2026-07-06T19:40:58.929Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-07-06T13:08:02.411Z

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Placating Eby for a pipeline?

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Prime minister Mark Carney had a big day of announcements yesterday, starting in Vancouver with premier David Eby, where he announced a bunch of infrastructure projects in the province, most notably a major federal contribution to a tunnel project that the province has been waffling over for years, plus money to expand the port of Vancouver, and a couple of other ports further north. But he also tipped off the coming pipeline announcement with Alberta by saying the northwest coast tanker ban would remain in place, which pretty much assured that any proposed pipeline route would be to the south.

And lo and behold, following a meeting with the president of the Philippines, Carney headed to Calgary to announce with Danielle Smith the next phases of the pipeline project, which would go to the southern route, largely along the existing TMX corridor, and would be a beneficiary of the Port of Vancouver expansion. However, what was not announced was a private proponent for said pipeline—yes, a company expressed interest in a stake, but only a minor one, meaning the federal and provincial governments are going to be the main proponents, with an unknown dollar figure at stake (but justified by talking about how TMX has already delivered a billion-dollar dividend for the federal government). They also claim that they’ve come to an agreement with the Pathways project, which I will believe when I actually see it, because Pathways has been pretty clear that in no way did they want to have to pay for this, and they have made a pretty implicit case that their rhetoric since their creation was nothing but greenwashing and spin to take the heat off of them for their carbon emissions.

Everything about this smells, and all of those conditions Carney laid out with the initial MOU are being proven to be fictional after all. And for Smith to also talk about doubling production in the next fifteen years (while also making announcements about gas-fired electricity plants to power digital asbestos data centres) is just proving how much Carney lied to everyone about his environmental beliefs and credentials.

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Some admissions in the latest “Forward Guidance”

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Prime minister Mark Carney released another of his “Forward Guidance” videos yesterday, and it was…revealing. The historical figure that Carney used as his hook was the founder of Ontario Hydro, and it was all about the energy crises that we find ourselves living through. The problem? That so much of what Carney used as his frames of reference were based on 1) old myths that were not true; 2) revisionist history of the Trudeau government; and 3) wishful thinking. To break it down, Carney gave a line about how when he grew up in Edmonton, the National Energy Project made Albertans feel like “our resources weren’t our own,” which goes to the falsehoods around the NEP, and the generations of grievance politics that emerged from it. The NEP was never the problem—the collapse in global oil prices were. Alberta blamed the NEP, but to this day wishes they had the benefits, like west-east pipelines and a country-wide energy market instead of going north-south. Imagine that. Carney also says that more recently, “we were made to feel that our energy contributions were running against the tides of history.” Really? Trudeau, who bent over backwards for Alberta, built them a pipeline at the cost of his own political capital, and who kept giving money to the industry (who then squandered it)? And under whose leadership production rose to its highest levels ever, which Carney also admitted? Yeah, he was really making them feel bad about their energy contributions—except of course that they blamed him for the oil crash of 2014, that happened before he was in office. Huh. Carney didn’t mention that. Oh, and when Carney talks about how Alberta developed the oil sands, he omits that said development came with federal money and favourable tax treatment (thanks to Jean Chrétien). When your federalist leader keeps conceding the points of the separatists (which are falsehoods), it’s hard to see how he’s defending the country as a whole.

I have zero confidence that Carney will insist on the conditions of having a private sector proponent, or that Pathways happens (and I can pretty much guarantee that he'll shrug and say "Well, it was only going to capture 12 percent of emissions anyway").

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-06-30T15:11:12.884Z

From there, Carney kept going on about building our energy sector, and made some nonsense points about home-grown electrification, which…is already home-grown. We’re not importing electricity in any significant way. We export more. He talks about needing this new pipeline to have “new options,” but once the Strait of Hormuz opens up (which it will eventually), it’ll just be feeding a supply glut, which is going to further depress prices. And then he goes on about building trust internationally, before admitting that we’re not going to meet our climate targets (so, betraying the trust that we were building by saying we were going to meet our targets?) He kept insisting that the commitment to fighting the climate crisis is “absolute,” but he wants to do that by doubling down on oil and gas while also increasing electrification (omitting that said electrification will also mean more natural gas, particularly in Alberta). He also claimed that Trudeau’s climate plan, while it would meet our targets, was “unsustainable” and “too expensive.” Erm, you know how much more expensive climate change is, right? We’re talking orders of magnitude here. Oh, and it was “too divisive,” but only if you’re listening to liars and grifters, which apparently Carney is.

If I were Julie Dabrusin, I’d be pissed. Carney had sent her around to every media outlet to insist that they were “committed” to meeting those climate targets, and essentially demanding that she lie about it, only to pull a bait and switch and say that yeah, you guys were right, we’re not going to meet our targets after all, after spending months insisting that everyone else was wrong. So why should we believe anything this government says? Serious question.

Oh, and if you were playing the “Building Canada Strong™” drinking game, you’d be puking right now.

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Misunderstanding the differences between Canadian and Westminster cultures

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Over the weekend, the CBC put out a facile piece that tried to examine why the UK has an easier time ditching prime ministers than Canada does, and in the process, missed most of the important nuances that make our systems different. The issue is not “party discipline,” because people underestimate how strong it actually is within the UK, even though you have rebel backbenchers on a more frequent basis than you do here, but the biggest difference remains the fact that it’s a holdover from how the leadership selection process worked until recently in the UK. Up until about a decade ago, the UK still maintained the proper Westminster tradition of the party caucus deciding on the leader, and that meant the caucus also had the power to remove said leader. When they moved to a more Canadian-style system of party membership selection of leaders, the holdover from caucus firing remains strong, whereas it died in Canada by the 1920s—especially when Mackenzie King got into a scandal and told his caucus that they didn’t elect him, so they couldn’t fire him.

The other part about the piece that irked me, and will continue to irk me every time it’s brought up is the (garbage) Reform Act, and the false belief that it alone can empower MPs to turf a party leader. That’s completely untrue—MPs have never needed special legislation to give themselves permission to vote non-confidence in their leader. Michael Chong dreamed up this belief when he promoted the Act, and instead made it harder for MPs to challenge their leaders because he put in thresholds and processes that actually make it harder for MPs, not easier. And no, the Liberals didn’t have a hard time ousting Justin Trudeau because they didn’t sign onto the (garbage) Reform Act—they had a hard time because the members of his caucus who wanted him out were trying to convince him to go willingly using polling data to back up their claims, or to call a vote, rather than simply organising a vote on their own, which they could have done if they were serious about it. And in the end, it took Chrystia Freeland’s public resignation to force Trudeau’s hand. The (garbage) Reform Act remains the greatest democratic con in Canadian political history since the original sin of leadership conventions in 1919, and I wish the media would stop mouthing all of the lies about this egregious attack on the rights of MPs.

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A grab-bag of Carney answers

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Prime minister Mark Carney held a press conference yesterday to pat himself on the back for his government’s accomplishments over the spring sitting, but as with most of these exercises, the real interest was in his responses to questions, which he doesn’t do very often. So, what did we learn?

  • That big call with Trump this week with the extremely vague readout was mostly about Iran and NATO, and not about trade.
  • We’re still a long way away from any kind of trade deal with Trump.
  • The six upcoming by-elections will likely be spaced out.
  • We finally got more details on that condo purchase in Vancouver, which is 90 percent provincial funding/10 percent federal, and is intended as rent-to-own.
  • He will be going to Stampede, and plans to defend national unity, and is using Brexit as a cautionary tale (as well he should be).
  • We are sending aid to Venezuela after the earthquakes, and while it might be useful to have some kind of consular services there or in Iran, we’ll go through partners.

Shortly afterward, Pierre Poilievre gave his own press conference to decry the state of the Canadian economy and blame Carney for it, as though Trump wasn’t a factor, or that climate change isn’t affecting things like food prices. In fact, he pretty much admitted he’d accept a bad deal with Trump for the sake of getting a deal. So there’s that.

"It's all an illusion."

— Scott Robertson (@sarobertson.bsky.social) 2026-06-25T19:54:15.597Z

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The totally avoidable condo “bailout” meltdown

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There’s been a meltdown happening in certain circles, and Pierre Poilievre’s among them, about the federal government supposedly spending $3.2 billion to “bail out condo developers” as they seek to convert 2200 vacant condo units into affordable housing units. The details are pretty much entirely wrong, thanks to a poorly worded PMO communiqué and flawed reporting, and it’s just spiralling out of control.

To wit, the condo acquisition is not $3.2 billion, as that figure is about expanding “housing-enabling” infrastructure. There is no dollar figure attached in the release about how much they are spending on the vacant condos, other than it’s part of the Build Canda Homes funding envelope to acquire affordable housing. And it took days for the minister responsible, Gregor Robertson, to actually explain this—over Twitter, no less—and not do a coordinated media blitz (and I’m given to understand that those media outlets have not offered corrections on the initial reporting). This is absolutely appalling, and it’s yet another own-goal by a government whose arrogance is exerting itself at every opportunity.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/2069774302690279805

It's weeks like this where I fear for Canada's future. We have governments putting out housing plans they can't explain, and a media that struggles to report even basic facts, and won't correct their errors.I'm not sure how Canadians can be expected to trust our institutions.

— Dr. Mike P. Moffatt (@mikepmoffatt.bsky.social) 2026-06-25T03:19:10.000Z

And Moffatt is absolutely correct here. This is an absolute clusterfuck that the government could have avoided if they actually bothered to explain (and I’m undecided if this is a “can’t explain” or a “won’t explain” situation), and not simply insisted that the “just trust me” approach is going to keep working for them. It obviously won’t, and they need to start recognizing that before it becomes a serious problem for their voters (and that’ll come at them really fast if they don’t change course).

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My column draws a couple of lessons for Canada from what we saw of Keir Starmer’s resignation in the UK.

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