Hybrid rules are still bad (in case you were wondering)

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Because it’s the summer doldrums, The Canadian Press has decided to check in on the “hybrid” Parliament rules, which are inexplicably still in place, long after the height of the pandemic ended. Well, it should be inexplicable, but for those of us with longer memories, we know that the Liberals were trying to institute these rule changes long before COVID happened, and were never able to get them over the finish line (for good reason!) until COVID, and well, they didn’t let a good crisis go to waste. A lot of them were very committed to the idea that these rule-changes are necessary because of parental responsibilities, and so on. Of course, we now have a handful of MPs who simply don’t show up in Ottawa (one of them was NDP MP Niki Ashton, before she got voted out, but there are others), while we are devaluing the in-person aspects of the job, which cannot be ignored.

I have consistently said this, and I will keep saying it—much of the value of what happens in Parliament are the conversations that happen in corridors, in lobbies, at the sides of committee rooms, that you cannot have online. People underestimate how huge that is. Keeping MPs online also keeps them in party silos, where they don’t see other MPs as human beings, but opponents. In-person meetings and the ability to connect on a human level increases collegiality and decorum. (See: Ending evening sittings in the 1990s and the demise of collegiality). But more than that, there is now a culture of presenteeism where they feel they need to be online all the time, when they should be taking leave for family issues, or medical care, or so on. You can pair votes for absences. You can have someone cover for you at committee. This happened for 150 years, and Parliament functioned just fine. The excuses for why they feel they need this are poor, and it creates more problems than it solves. MPs need to wind down these “hybrid” rules, and end remote voting (because that’s particularly offensive to parliamentary democracy), and engage with one another in person like they’re supposed to.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-08-04T19:08:02.941Z

My Latest:

  • My weekend column wonders how it was that Mark Carney had become an even worse communicator than Justin Trudeau was.
  • My column makes note of the premiers’ attempt to get back to a 50-50 healthcare funding formula, ignoring that they got revenue tools they now refuse to use.
  • For National Magazine, I delve into the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision to strike down the law that bars the Ethics Commissioner’s reports from judicial review.
  • My long weekend column looks at the falling crime rates before Carney’s performative tough-on-crime legislation, and points to how credulous he really is.

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Pretences for new tariffs

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The tariff news keeps coming, because of course it does. Trump is launching a new round of tariffs to replace the “temporary” ones that he put in place after the US Supreme Court struck down his previous “Liberation Day” tariffs, under the pretence that these tariffs are about combatting the use of “forced labour” in the supply chains of trading partners, like Canada. (Just don’t ask Americans about their own forced labour practices in their prison-industrial complex). These tariffs seem to be exempt if they’re New NAFTA compliant, so they may not affect Canada that much, but our government is going to keep insisting that we’re doing a great job of keeping forced labour from our supply chains, but they eliminated the ombudsman who investigated these supply chains, and their new legislation on tougher compliance is not in effect. (Also, we’re going to pointedly ignore all that investment from Qatar, which also engaged in forced labour).

Meanwhile, when it comes to the threats of the Section 338 tariffs, prime minister Mark Carney met with the premiers yesterday, and said that they are considering retaliation (just not retaliating in advance), and that “all options are on the table,” never mind that two of those premiers will not put all options on the table. So, yeah, I’m not exactly sure what to make of this other than to say that the history so far is a lot of huffing and puffing, and then quickly capitulating in order to “keep negotiations going,” which nets us absolutely nothing more than more threats, more bullying, and more attempts to turn us into a vassal state.

Programming Note: I’m taking the next week-and-a-half off for my summer break. Loonie Politics columns will still appear on schedule, but blog posts and video content are taking a break for the duration.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-07-22T19:08:05.890Z

My Latest:

My column points to how Avi Lewis seems determined to repeat Jagmeet Singh’s strategy for getting a seat, and how he’ll render himself just as irrelevant that way.

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The premiers want you to forget about tax points

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From the Council of the Federation meeting in Charlottetown, PEI, the premiers have decided that they not only want federal health transfers to stay at the five percent escalator they’re at currently (they are scheduled to fall to three percent within a couple of years), but they also want the federal government to assume fifty percent of all health spending, like when the system first began in the fifties. The problem, of course, is that back in the seventies, the provinces agreed to a smaller federal share in exchange for tax points, so that they could raise their own revenues (which also means that those revenues didn’t necessarily need to be spent on healthcare). So now they want to not only keep those tax points, but more federal dollars as well. Some of you might recall that during the era of Paul Martin’s six percent health transfer escalator, most provincial health spending increased by something like 2.6 percent, meaning a lot of money got spent on other things, including tax cuts. There is no reason why that wouldn’t happen again. But what about attaching strings, like those health advocates said? Well, that turns out to be easier said than done. Trudeau tried that by requiring provinces to submit action plans that would be checked in on before future transfers went ahead, but there was no end of provincial grousing, and it takes a lot of time, attention and resources to be constantly checking up on that spending.

Meanwhile, the premiers also want prime minister Mark Carney to “do something” about the tariff threats, but they won’t say what. Certain premiers don’t want to play hardball with their exports, while others, particularly Doug Ford, want Carney to play a “leadership role” for the provinces, but again, he only has so many levers when it comes to getting the provinces on-side. Carney will be meeting with said premiers today, where they will present him with the list of things they want him to do and pay for, and if Carney is true to form, he won’t push back—but he also may not pay for what they want. Nevertheless, I don’t think he’s quite reached the point of frustration with the premiers that all of his predecessors have, but it probably won’t be too long before he does.

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Disparity in premiers’ reactions to new tariffs

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There was more reaction to the threatened Section 338 tariffs yesterday, particular from the premiers, who were meeting in Charlottetown, though those reactions were mixed. Doug Ford was full of bluster and saying that if we cut off oil and potash, we could “dismantle” the US, while Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, true to form, insisted that no, we mustn’t use those products for retaliation. Prime minister Mark Carney had a curb-side press conference to say that he spoke with Trump this morning and that they will “intensify negotiations,” whatever that is supposed to mean, because apparently the thinking is that we can still come to some kind of trade agreement with the US? Even though there is no agreement to be had, and never will be? I also note that if you look at how provinces are affected by these threatened tariffs that Alberta and Saskatchewan are barely threatened at all—it’s quite clear that a lot of these were chosen to exacerbate divisions.

There's a lot of variation across #cdnecon in exposure to the new 50% U.S. tariffs (on August 19). Here's a preliminary estimate of the share of exports affected (based on HS6, so a slight over-estimate). BC/ON/QC most exposed. Others far less so.

— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe.bsky.social) 2026-07-21T19:53:38.355840Z

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3mr6jtyqv522e

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3mr6jxnjdk22e

News In Photo:

— The Beaverton (@thebeaverton.com) 2026-07-21T18:13:17.448Z

Meanwhile, senior officials have confirmed that what Carney said about the bridge agreement was wrong, and that the revenue-sharing is tolls minus operations (like snow clearing) and not post-debt repayment, meaning that it’s likely he was being misleading in the media. But in light of the latest threats, the Canadian government has decided not to attend any kind of ribbon-cutting when it opens next week, because why should they?

My Latest:

For National Magazine, I delve into why the government’s Digital Safety Act is very likely unconstitutional, and completely unworkable.

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Section 338 tariffs?

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With the World Cup out of the way, Trump decided it was time to beat up on Canada again, so he announced the intention to hit us with new 50 percent tariffs, and no, not because of the wildfire smoke crossing the border (which prime minister Mark Carney said he talked to Trump about at the World Cup final). No, these are under Section 338 in their trade law, which has to do with “discrimination.” Because retaliation for their illegal and unjustified tariffs apparently counts as “discrimination” in their eyes, and no, there won’t be any NAFTA exemptions under these tariffs, apparently.

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3mr4ivv6mlk2l

But they’re also weird. Some of them are calculated for symbolic effect (like hockey sticks, or Canadian wine), but some of them make no sense (Canadian tequila?). And maybe this is more “art for the deal” nonsense,

https://bsky.app/profile/jrobson.bsky.social/post/3mr4hk7wqcs2w

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Raking the Forests

Some Canadians got in on the whole “Rake the Forests!” MAGA meme, and it’s very embarrassing. Others decided that after years of insisting that these fires were set by climate arsonists, that now wildfires are natural, so there’s no climate change involved. (Erm, guys…) I can’t even.

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2078166450540519719

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2078912872625868932

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2079276027340362039

New right wing talking points dropped! The forest fires have nothing to do with climate change. Nothing to see here.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-07-18T19:42:56.807Z

My Latest:

My weekend column looks at how Carney capitulated to industry on the Pathways project, making it essentially costly and useless, likely in a bid to simply kill it.

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Elder pundit nonsense about the Senate

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I should have left well enough alone and not clicked, but I got curious. That was a mistake. John Ibbitson published some absolute tripe in the Globe and Mail yesterday morning that was ignorant to say the very least. In making reference to Carney’s Senate appointments, Ibbitson says the real problem is the west’s “under-representation” in the Chamber, which would require constitutional change. He then goes on to half-assedly explain why PEI got four seats when they joined Confederation, but missed the entire thinking behind the regional breakdown of the Chamber (24 seats for the Maritimes, 24 seats for Quebec, 24 seats for Ontario, and 24 seats for the west; the territories each get one, and Newfoundland and Labrador, as latecomers, got six). The whole point of the regional breakdown is because it’s not a rep-by-pop chamber, and the Maritimes as a region got the same number as Ontario and Quebec in order to provide a counterbalance to the rep-by-pop House of Commons. But apparently when you’re an elder pundit, you don’t need to care about facts.

How could someone who spent as many years in the Ottawa bureau as Ibbitson did and not a) learn the logic behind Senate regional seat distribution, and b) that telling the premiers to fight amongst themselves about constitutional change will only exacerbate "regional grievances"? For. Fuck. Sakes.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-07-16T14:04:58.949Z

From there, Ibbitson basically says to let the provinces hash out a new distribution in the Senate as a way of “tamping down” regional grievances, which is absolutely ridiculous. 1) That particular grievance is imaginary, and Alberta in particular has long flirted with other forms of Senate reform to Americanise the institution, when their real beef is that other parts of the country don’t vote conservative enough for their liking, and no change to the Senate will fix that; and 2) Getting the provinces to fight over constitutional amendments is not only opening up Pandora’s Box, it’s inviting nothing more than the wholesale destruction of the country as each tries to one-up the other, take even more power from the federal government that they will then not use, and demand federal transfers instead. Federalism is not working well in this country right now, but it’s not because of the Senate’s composition, or our de-centralised federation, but rather because provinces can operate with impunity and no responsibility. The fact that Ibbitson remains blind to these very basic facts of Canadian politics makes me despair for the state or our nation’s punditry, because great Cyllenian Hermes, that’s we are not served well by aging white guys who can’t be bothered to actually learn something.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-07-16T19:08:01.544Z

Scott Gilmore

Someone asked the other day if I had any thoughts on Scott Gilmore becoming Mark Carney’s new principal secretary, and I don’t have too much to say except this one thing—back in 2017, Gilmore declared himself a “self-loathing Tory” and tried to go around hosting meetings to see about drumming up support for a new conservative party that wasn’t socially conservative, and believed in things like climate change and gay rights. Establishment Conservatives all got hot and bothered about it, and it never went anywhere (ditto Dominic Cardy’s attempt at creating a new centrist party), but the fact that this same Scott Gilmore is now at the heart of Carney’s PMO sounds to me like conclusive proof that thanks to Carney, the Liberals have become the second coming of the Progressive Conservatives.

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More hints about future Senate appointments

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There were a couple of bits of Senate news yesterday, one of which was that prime minister Mark Carney has made new appointments to the senate appointment committee, filling vacant spots for a number of provinces. One of those appointments is former Senate Liberal leader James Cowan, and as this blog is a big Jim Cowan fan, I say this is a good person to help vet candidates, but it will do nothing to quell the constant chattering about partisan appointments. We also learned from the Canadian Press reporting that Carney himself chose Tom Pittfield and Richard Martel for appointments, while the other two came from the former committee recommendations that had apparently been sitting for months, which makes a tonne of sense.

This was followed up by Carney’s Senate Leader, Senator Pierre Moreau, who said that while they’re not going to revive a Senate Liberal caucus, Carney might appoint more Conservative senators because they’re dangerously low and he believes in the role for the official opposition in the Senate as a “mirror” of the House of Commons (erm, no, that’s not how this work), which is again, incoherent. Don’t get me wrong—I am not opposed to partisan appointments on either side of the aisle, so long as it’s done properly. The House of Lords has managed a very good system where their appointments board can recommend both partisan Lords and non-partisan cross-benchers, and they keep the numbers fairly in balance so that no one swamps the Chamber, and that is something we should be striving toward. Of course, Carney has not articulated any of this, and we’re instead left with the ongoing incoherence of his position, because nobody knows what the hell they’re talking about (most especially some of the Trudeau-appointed independent senators).

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-07-15T13:08:04.280Z

My Latest:

  • My (belated) Loonie Politics Quick Take points to some of the signs of resilience in the Canadian economy over the past year, amidst so much turmoil.
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Self-defeating speeding up of consultations

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The Assembly of First Nations is meeting in Ottawa this week, and so far there have been two major points of discussion among the assembled chiefs—the government’s plans for major project development and their attempts to speed through consultations with Indigenous people, and the First Nations clean drinking water legislation. The common denominator between the two is how the Carney government has been moving backwards on reconciliation issues, and watering down its commitments and obligations wherever possible, which is ultimately self-defeating. These are constitutional obligations that they are trying to skirt around as much as they can, and it’s not going to end well for them, and be costlier in the long run.

On the major projects, the national chief, Cindy Woodhouse Neepinak, is correct in that these plans to try and fast-track consultations were done without any consultation ahead of time, so and that can ultimately call into question the legitimacy of project approvals because they do not have Indigenous consent (and yes, free prior and informed consent is the law both in Canada and internationally). Remember when Stephen Harper tried to gut environmental legislation to speed project approvals and it mostly ended up with more litigation? Yeah, that’s pretty much what is going to happen here. As for the drinking water legislation, the fact that the government watered down the bill that had been ostensibly “co-developed” with First Nations in the last parliament (though your mileage may vary on this description somewhat) in order to match their arguments in other litigation is craven, and again, self-defeating. They will ultimately lose these battles in the courts, and it will have cost them time, money, and lives when doing the work up front could save all of these. There is so much penny-wise-pound-foolish nonsense that keeps happening over and over, and nobody seems to want to learn any lessons.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-07-14T19:08:01.471Z

My Latest:

My column points out Jason Kenney’s enthusiasm for airbrushed versions of history that don’t make straight white men the bad guys, which he considers “defamation.”

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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.

My Latest:

  • For National Magazine, I delve into Friday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision where they upheld a mandatory minimum sentence (for a change).
  • My weekend column points to just how incoherent Carney’s first Senate appointments were in the broader context of the direction of the Chamber.

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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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My Xtra column calls out Jamil Jivani’s attempt to rack up persecution points by going to war against Carney’s attending Toronto Pride and basking in the replies.

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