Roundup: Two committees move behind closed doors

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There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth happening by the Conservatives because debate in two committees was moved behind closed doors now that the Liberals are able to exert majority control of them. The cry is that they’re shutting down “public debate,” but I’m dubious. Members of the government won’t say why this was necessary, but I’m not ready to pull the fire alarm just yet.

Why? Because the two committees in question have been in the throes of attempted witch hunt studies that the Conservatives have been trying to orchestrate (with the gleeful assistance of the Bloc, who are happy to embarrass the government any day of the week). In the ethics committee, it’s been the wrangling over trying to insinuate that François-Philippe Champagne was in a conflict of interest because the Alto high speed rail project was included in the budget when he has since put up an ethics screen because his spouse is now an executive on the project. The thing is, the Ethics Commissioner already said that there is no conflict because Alto reports to a different line minister, but Champagne put up the screen out of an abundance of caution. He did agree to appear after a filibuster, but this may be the Liberals trying to get out of it, and not unsurprisingly. The Conservatives have been trying to engineer this meeting so that they can harvest a bunch of clips of them calling Champagne corrupt and him prevaricating or looking obstinate.

The other committee is health, where the Conservatives are trying to manufacture another “boondoggle” around the PrescribeIT project, which as I understand it, was created at the behest of the provinces, who then decided not to take it up once it was developed. Oh, but there was outsourcing! And? They haven’t been able to make any particular allegation other than it cost money, and this is somehow entirely the federal government’s fault for trying to accommodate provinces who, to this day, refuse to come together on common standards for electronic health records, which has been a persistent problem for two decades now. Suffice to say, I’m not convinced that moving procedural wrangling in camera is a sign that democracy is under threat, and there was a whole lot of this very same thing when the Conservatives had a majority on committees (and they turned those committees into branch plants of ministers’ offices). They may try to cast themselves as heroes for inventing scandals, but I remain unconvinced that this is a danger to parliamentary democracy just yet.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-29T13:08:02.607Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s attack on Odesa early Wednesday hit residential buildings and a hospital. Ukraine says its new long-range drones hit a Russian oil pumping station 1500 km away from the border. Here is a look at the interceptor drone programme to stop Russia’s Shahed drones, and how the interception rate is now up to 90 percent.

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QP: Credit card versus skilled trades

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In the wake of the fiscal update, the PM was present today as were the other leaders, because they all had a show to perform. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, where he deployed the same lines he has all week—credit card budget, just another Liberal, and that he doubled Trudeau’s deficit. Mark Carney praised the limitless possibilities that the update would provide. Poilievre mouthed his lines about food price inflation and blaming it on deficits, while Carney said that Poilievre was obsessing over Trudeau while he was focused on the future. Poilievre switched to English to say that he was being unfair to Trudeau because Carney had doubled his deficits, and wondered what he limit was on the “credit card.” Carney patted himself on the back for reducing the deficit by $11 billion in the face of a trade war and and actual war, before racing through some of his applause lines and slogans. Poilievre slowed down his cadence to look like he was talking down about the comparative sizes of the deficit, and Carney took a pause, said he wouldn’t go there, and then patted himself on the back for the focus on affordability. Carney said the Liberals were like the Bourbon dynasty, learning nothing and forgetting nothing, before he listed their supposed sins. Carney retorted that Canadians would not forget that Poilievre voted against benefits for them. Poilievre then claimed that Carney was wrong on every economic issue of the past decade, and Carney retorted that Poilievre was wrong on crypto and wrong on Brexit, but he could go on, while the government was building.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried about the new tariff calculations by the Americans, and Carney thanked him for his concern and that there would be an announcement on new measures in the coming days. Blanchet pointed out that there were no measures in the economic update, and Carney said it was always a good idea to believe what the prime minister says. Blanchet offered to set aside partisanship to focus on affected businesses, and Carney said that he and his ministers will take action to help those businesses. 

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Roundup: The 2026 Spring Economic Statement

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It was the Spring Economic Update yesterday, and this was less of a mini-budget than in previous years, but still had a few new elements. Overall, yes the deficit is lower than anticipated because growth was greater than projected, but in true Liberal fashion, Mark Carney and the government added new spending measures that took up some of that room, both with some previously announced measures like the “pause” on the excise fuel tax, and new measures like $6 billion in incentives for skilled trades workers.

Some highlights:

  • That $6 billion for skilled trade workers includes support during training and a completion bonus (as half of those who start apprenticeships don’t finish)
  • There is a shift toward attracting more foreign investment.
  • There will be a small break in CPP deductions for the next year.
  • Canada is making progress on diversifying to non-US export markets.
  • There is money for sports, the Financial Crimes Agency is finally getting its implementation legislation, and crypto ATMs are being banned.
  • The Defence Investment Agency is getting more structure and oversight, and there is also more funding for military trades.
  • They plan to resurrect the ability for Canada Post to search and seize mail.
  • There are new tax credits for enhanced oil recovery (because Carney has full-on decided he no longer cares about the environment.)
  • There are promises for $4.3 billion in First Nations education, Inuit food security, and Indigenous child welfare.
  • More odds and ends here.

In pundit reaction, David Reevely considers this to be Carney buying time until his big projects can start to pay off. Lindsay Tedds delves into the issues surrounding the so-called “Sovereign Wealth Fund.” Kevin Carmichael gives some thought to the deficit position, as well as the choices that Carney is making with what they are putting additional resources into. Susan Delacourt ponders the juggling act of the government both trying to build long-term, while still looking for tangible effects in the here-and-now. Paul Wells looks at the context of some of the numbers presented, and the government’s “fiscal prudence” back-patting.

Housing items in today's federal economic statement. Delighted to see they're planning to move on reforms to make it easier to build multiplexes! This is aligned with one of our recommendations from our January report.

— Dr. Mike P. Moffatt (@mikepmoffatt.bsky.social) 2026-04-28T21:46:33.000Z

Well, this isn't even remotely true (as @lindsaytedds.bsky.social and I discussed in my latest episode).

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-29T02:20:59.692Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-28T19:08:02.092Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine says that it shot down over 33,000 Russian drones last month, which is a new monthly record. Ukrainian drones have been causing fires at Russia’s Tuapse roil refinery. Ukraine is now trading diplomatic blows with Israel over ships carrying stolen grain docking in Israeli ports.

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QP: Filling time before the Spring Economic Statement

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In advance of the spring economic update, the PM was absent, and the other leaders were not present, but were off getting briefed for the 4 PM media rush. That left it up to Melissa Lantsman to read the script about “credit card budgeting” and capping the deficit. Dominic LeBlanc said that he appreciated her enthusiasm but it was false, and good news was on the the way. Lantsman tried again, and LeBlanc equated her “tired talking points” to an eight-track. Jasraj Hallan repeated the same script with added scorn, and LeBlanc repeated his assurances that the good news was on the way. Hallan read some complete nonsense about inflation, and this time, Steven MacKinnon gave his prepared lines about demanding a list of Conservative cuts. Pierre Paul-Hus took over to read the French version of the script, to which Mélanie Joly patted herself on the back for putting the fiscal house in order while helping Canadians with measures like cutting the price of gas. Paul-Hus demanded a cap on the deficit, and LeBlanc said that within a couple of hours, they would have the good news they were waiting for.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she decried that the prime minister called himself a nationalist but wanted a pipeline which Quebeckers don’t want. Joly said that the prime minister called himself an economic nationalist which is why he was launching a national sovereign wealth fund. Normandin was not mollified, and on her follow-up, MacKinnon listed projects that government was supporting. Xavier Barsalou-Duval took over to worry about a parliamentary secretary meeting with a group that promotes contract truckers. Peter Schiefke said that he accepted an invitation to talk about road safety for truckers, and would do so again.

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Roundup: Thirteen cherry-picked charts

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Ahead of the spring economic update, the National Post ran a story that contained thirteen charts that they claim were proof that Justin Trudeau delivered a “lost decade” to the Canadian economy. To absolutely no one’s surprise, the charts were awfully selective in how they presented the data, because everybody has decided that they have a vested interest in creating an image of how much Trudeau “doomed” the country. And to be perfectly fair, Mark Carney himself has engaged in these kinds of rhetorical games, which his insistence on using the “new government” moniker has been nothing more than an effort to disassociate himself with his predecessor.

To wit: yes, we fell behind the US on GDP per capita because we rapidly increased our population while the US didn’t, and that increase staved off an economic downturn post-pandemic, until everyone decided to start scapegoating those same immigrants for provinces under-investing in housing and healthcare capacity. The rise in business insolvencies? Mostly a post-pandemic correction when a lot of businesses that would not have survived did only because of those pandemic supports, and the levels are returning close to the pre-pandemic baseline. The number of self-employed freefalling? Again, this was because of the pandemic because a whole lot of those self-employed got stiffed by the companies they invoiced and they didn’t get paid, so they took salaried jobs. I can’t speak was much to the number of high-value start-ups fleeing Canada other than the fact that many of them specifically set themselves up to sell to American companies because that’s where the money was. Total investment per worker declining? My dudes, corporate Canada decided they don’t care about productivity because they only want to be rent-seekers, so that’s what they do. Climbing cost of living? The chart is without context to demonstrate how we compare internationally given the inflation spike late in the pandemic, where Canada did far better than most of our comparators. Home prices? The chart cuts off at 2015 so it doesn’t show that they also doubled under Harper, but this is mostly a provincial/municipal problem as the federal government has very few levers for the problems of charges and zoning. Public sector rising faster than private sector? What does that include? Does it include provinces? Does it include nurses or teachers? How does it compare to under-investment and cuts in the Harper years? Again, context matters. Federal deficits? Have you seen the state of the world? Healthcare wait times? That’s provincial—how are you trying to pin that on Trudeau? He gave plenty of transfers to provinces that got put on their bottom lines to pay down deficits rather than hiring nurses or expanding capacity. The rise in the violent crime severity index? The piece scapegoats this on immigrants, again without any context for how those figures are way down from historical highs.

It’s shitty journalism, but this is the kind of thing that the we’ve come to expect from the Post, simply in service of a narrative.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-27T13:17:49.975Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The attack on Odesa early Monday wound up injuring fourteen, and hit residential buildings and a hotel. A worker at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, still under Russian control, was killed in a drone attack.

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QP: Complete rotting nonsense about a “national credit card”

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The PM was in the building, and had done the “walking in” introductions for the three newly-elected MPs this morning (unusually, as this is normally done just before QP), but he was not in Question Period for whatever reason. Pierre Poilievre was present, and led off in French, referencing a Journal de Montreal article about seniors who don’t feel they can retire, and he blamed this on “inflationary taxes and deficits” and wondered if the government would rein those in. François-Philippe Champagne took the opportunity to praise this morning’s announced sovereign wealth fund. Poilievre trotted out his new line about a “credit card budget” and demanded the government cap the size of the deficit. Champagne rattled off the growth rates in the G7 to note why Canada is expected to grow faster. Poilievre switched to English to decry the size of the deficit, and again repeated the “credit card” line along with the demand for a cap. Champagne repeated that they have good news about the sovereign wealth fund, and that they are building together to benefit together. Poilievre tried his “prime minister is in hiding” line and got cautioned for the Speaker, and then called the sovereign wealth fund a slush fund put on the country’s credit card. Champagne repeated his lines about the rate of economic growth in the G7. Poilievre trotted out his self-important claim that he had a better economic record than Carney, and again lamented the “credit card.” Steven MacKinnon got up to note that inflation is in the target range, and he wondered just what exactly counted as “inflationary spending.” Poilievre listed the high speed rail project, the gun buyback, consultants, bureaucracy, supposed “phoney refugees,” and so on. MacKinnon noted that it was funny to consider money that hasn’t been spent inflationary, and then wondered which other programmes counted.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she lamented that the new U.S. tariff calculations were disproportionately targeting Quebec, and demanded a wage subsidy for affected industries. Joly agreed that the tariffs were abusive and agreed they would help workers. Normandin demanded more actions to help Quebec’s industries, and Joly pledged to continue defending Quebec’s workers. Gabriel Ste-Marie noted a business in his riding that is closing because of tariffs, and Joly again repeated that they are there for Quebec’s workers.

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Roundup: Kinew’s very bad promise

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On Saturday night, Manitoba premier Wab Kinew promised to ban social media and chatbots for youth, which may sound like a good idea, but it’s very, very bad. Why? This is essentially just internet surveillance. You need to upload ID in some variety to access anything, which means that you are being tracked, either by government or by third parties who will either profit form that tracking, or who will leave your data vulnerable to being hacked. This is exactly the same issue with people who want age verification for internet porn—the same problems exist, and those problems are very, very bad.

Using what age verification tools, exactly?This is going to end so very badly. This is just more internet surveillance, and politicians cannot get that through their heads.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-26T03:54:14.098Z

I’ve written about this problem a lot over the past few years, and there is no good system of age verification. It simply doesn’t exist, but too many politicians treat it like a “nerd harder” problem, meaning that they are sure that the nerds will just figure it out rather than accept the fact that it’s really just surveillance of all of your online activities. And even worse, most kids will figure out workarounds, leaving all of that surveillance in place for everyone else, while you didn’t solve the problem you wanted to.

As I wrote in @xtramagazine.com, age verification is bad tech, and it is going to just harm so many people unnecessarily, most especially queer and trans people.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-26T03:58:36.941Z

I get why Kinew is doing this, which is because it’s a populist move. Yes, it’s well-intentioned, but again, there is no good way to implement this (and frankly, I’m not entirely sure which tools he has to enforce this at the provincial level). But boy howdy do a lot of people need to start speaking up about why these kinds of age verification tools will only do so much damage to the internet at large, while doing nothing about the problems of social media on minors, most especially because it also allows the platforms to get away with not doing their own due diligence of content moderation or online safety tools that would shield minors from the worst of the problems. So instead, politicians want to remove everyone’s internet privacy instead. It’s bad news all around.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-26T23:08:01.383Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone attack on Dnipro killed ten people and injured dozens of others early morning Saturday. And just this morning, a drone attack on Odesa wounded at least ten people. Ukraine marked the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster on Sunday.

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Roundup: Boulerice reaches for the exit

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Multiple sources have confirmed to multiple news outlets that NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice is about to pull the plug and make the jump to provincial politics, running for Québec Solidaire in the upcoming election. Boulerice is the sole survivor of the 2011 “Orange Wave” that swept Quebec and made inroads into metro Toronto, but in many ways, Boulerice has been a reminder of the party’s failure to capitalise on the gains they made in that election, particularly in Quebec.

The most obvious failure was the party’s inability to cultivate grassroots in the province. Riding associations in most of the province existed on paper only, and they had a habit of running paper candidates for the sole purpose of being able to say they ran candidates in every riding so that they could maximise their spending caps. In the 2011 election, you had a group of McGill students who were placed as paper candidates in several ridings they had never visited, as well as a bar manager from Carleton University, and because of the fluke of Quebec voting emotionally for “Le Bon Jack” after Jack Layton had his bout of cancer and he would wave his cane everywhere, these paper candidates won. But did they do the work of actually building grassroots organisations at this point? Nope. Because the NDP is a party where they consider their federal and provincial wings to be the same organisation, they tend to leave their provincial wings to do the grassroots organising, and well, there isn’t a provincial NDP in Quebec, and so they didn’t, and they paid for it when Quebec’s mood shifted.

The party did try to start up a provincial wing at one point, running candidates in a provincial election, but they failed miserably and got nowhere with it, in part because the NDP didn’t know what it wanted to be in Quebec, where there is already a crowded field that is complicated by federalist, separatist and (ethnic) nationalist convictions, and I seem to recall there was a whole issue of trying to discern just which Quebec NDP MPs were actually separatists. Suffice to say, that provincial failure still wasn’t enough of a lesson for them, and their only anchor in the province was Boulerice, and now he’s leaving. Avi Lewis has ruled himself out of running in that riding (which they will likely lose), and in Beaches—East York once Nate Erskine-Smith steps down in the coming weeks, meaning he is going to make himself irrelevant much the way that Jagmeet Singh did when he won his own leadership contest. If anything, this makes the job of rebuilding the party’s fortunes even harder, and there aren’t enough Zohran Mamdani gimmicks in the world that they can imitate to fix that.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone attack on Odesa early Friday killed an elderly couple and wounded more than a dozen others. There was a prisoner exchange yesterday, swapping 193 captured personnel on each side. President Zelenskyy was in Saudi Arabia to develop their new security agreement. Here is a look at the problems facing Chernobyl after drone strikes in the area.

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Roundup: Overplaying the ethics committee report

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The Commons committee on access to information, privacy and ethics released their latest report yesterday, reviewing the Conflict of Interest Act, and it was, well, a doozy. This is one of those kinds of reports that was always going to be a problem because it’s so highly partisan, and the fact that the committee reflects a minority parliament made this even more so. Reading through it, it was quickly obvious that this was mostly an exercise in the Conservatives (and Bloc) looking to score points based on Mark Carney’s past, and trying to suggest a whole bunch of new rules that would essentially target him personally, which goes against pretty much every principle of good governance. Remember that bad facts make bad case law, and well, this is terrible all around.

It was also quite striking just who the majority on the committee was listening to, which was mostly “Democracy Watch’s” Duff Conacher, whose only credibility is that he branded himself a one-man watchdog who answers media requests, so he gets phoned all the time and provides quotes on too many stories. He’s also lost pretty much every court battle he’s ever waged, and thinks that he should be the only arbiter of parliamentary ethics in this country. They also listed to disgraced “journalist” Sam Cooper (who is so credulous he once believed that a clip from a Hong Kong film was secretly obtained proof of a Canadian official being compromised by Chinese agents), who pretty much was only there to back up Conacher. Experts who warned the majority that they were creating more problems than they were trying to solve were largely ignored, because they didn’t fit the narrative. Unsurprisingly, the Liberals had a nine-page dissent at the end of the report that called these kinds of things out, for all the good it will do.

Why? Because looking at the reporting of the report’s contents and recommendations, it was framed in such a way that the committee agreed to these points when in fact it was only the Conservative and Bloc members of the committee and not the Liberals, which then distorts the report because it makes it sound like it was more unanimous than it was. Mention of the Liberal dissent was waaaaaaay down in the copy, and doesn’t really spell out that this was the Conservatives and Bloc trying to use the committee to attack Carney and the Liberals, which is pretty relevant information when you’ve got a report of this nature. And while I don’t want to give the reporter on this piece a hard time, you can’t really consider what the main body of the report says as what the committee believed—only what the opposition members believed.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-23T19:08:02.093Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The Russian strike on Dnipro early Thursday killed three people and injured another ten. Ukraine is boasting that their new interceptor drones can be controlled over thousands of kilometres.

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QP: Just another Liberal

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Another day where the PM was in town but not at QP, while Pierre Poilievre had held a press conference in the Foyer earlier, and he was present. He led off in French, accusing Carney of being another Liberal with rising costs, crime, and “corruption,” before demanding that all taxes be cut on gasoline. François-Philippe Champagne responded by noting the cut in the gas excise tax. Poilievre whined that the question was for the prime minister, whom he declared was “hiding under the table” and received a caution by the Speaker for it, before he said that the reason the PM doesn’t respond because it would expose the illusion he has made thing worse. Champagne pointed out that they are helping Canadians, and that their economic update is coming next week. Poilievre turned to English, and called Carney “just another Liberal” before demanding all gas taxes be repealed. Champagne noted that Poilievre has been nowhere to be seen when they provided relief for Canadians before raising the economic update. Poilievre took a broad swipe at Carney, repeating the “hiding under the table” line, before pointing out that he “snarled” at a female journalist earlier in the day, and then denounced him in general. Hajdu said that if being just another Liberal means helping people, then sure, he’s just another Liberal. Poilievre listed Carney’s supposed sins as being “just another Liberal.” Hajdu tried another tactic and listed Poilievre’s supposed sins as being “just another Conservative.” Poilievre accused her of having imaginary conversations, before he went on a tear about the deficit and “printing money.” Champagne responded with his “take no lessons” line and listed supports they have provided while ensuring “sound fiscal management.”

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she lamented that the tariff crisis had not yet been resolved, and wondered about whether the government would adopt their proposal on wage subsidies for affected industries. Champagne said that they have a strategic fund to help companies with supports, and that foreign exports are up. Normandin then demanded an enhancement to OAS for all seniors, as well as more supports for forestry. Joël Lightbound said that she was right to note the headwinds the country is facing, which is why the government is busy diversifying markets. Jean-Denis Garon took over to lament the planned reduction in health transfers, and said they could pay for it by taxing oil companies and web giants. Marjorie Michel patted herself on the back for how well she works with her Quebec counterpart. 

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