Monthly Archives: January 2025

Roundup post: Expediting a dubious legal challenge

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On Saturday, the Federal Court ruled that they would hear an expedited case on the legal challenge of the granting of prorogation, citing the “critical” nature of the Trump tariff threats, and that this somehow requires the legislative branch of Parliament to be operating when in fact it does not.

Part of the problem is that the UK Supreme Court did overturn a prorogation when Boris Johnson requested it in the lead-up to Brexit, which led a bunch of bad actors in this country to decide they could use that precedent to challenge its use here, never mind that prorogations function slightly different in the UK (there, it tends to be an annual affair, separating shorter legislative sessions, which is not how it has operated here in many decades). There should be no reason why that precedent should apply in Canada at all, let alone in this particular circumstance, but we are dealing with people grasping at legal straws because they want to be able to run to the courts when they lose at politics, which is a Very Bad Thing for democracy and our entire constitutional order.

"Meaningfully debate."I'm as big of a Parliament nerd as they come, and frankly, there is nothing that six hours spent reading slogan-filled prepared speeches into the record will accomplish when it comes to those potential tariffs.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-19T02:01:09.284Z

More to the point, nothing was happening in Parliament before the prorogation because of the filibuster, and everyone was threatening non-confidence when it did resume in January, so an election wouldn’t provide Parliament any ability to “meaningfully debate” the Trump tariffs then either. These arguments are specious, and I trust the judge will throw them out of court once the hearings happen, but unfortunately, these are not normal times, and we could be in for a very bad result if government lawyers can’t argue their case well enough.

Ukraine Dispatch

An overnight missile and drone strike killed six, including three in Kyiv. Russia claims to have captured two more settlements between Pokrovsk and Kurakhove. Ukrainian forces claim a pair of attacks on oil depots in Russia’s Kaluga and Tula regions.

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Roundup: Singh’s suck-up to Sanders

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While the Liberals are busy with their leadership race, Jagmeet Singh spent part of his Friday doing the biggest virtue-signal of all in NDP terms—having a meeting with US senator Bernie Sanders. It’s no secret to anyone who’s paid attention that the NDP have essentially turned themselves into a branch plant of the “justice” Democrats, and that a number of their policy proposals in recent elections have been irrelevant in the Canadian context, but because they didn’t bother to actually check if this is a Canadian issue, or they merely divided by ten and decided that’s enough to make it Canadian, when it’s irrelevant to our country.

This drips with Singh's desperation for praise from Sanders (and American Democrats in general). #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-18T01:28:05.702Z

This comes across to me as “Notice me, Senpai!” pleading from Singh, and looking for an obliging pat on the head from the figure that his party is currently drawing their inspiration from, no matter if Sanders’ prescriptions have little relevance for Canada. Even more hilarious is the part where Singh is seeking praise for pharmacare and dental care when neither programme is fully implemented, nor are they likely to be because he’s decided to start talking tough about bringing down the Liberal government, which will merely sign the death warrant for these plans that he is trying to take credit for.

Honestly, if it’s possible to die of cringe, Singh is in serious danger of doing so.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine downed 33 out of 50 Russian drones overnight Thursday, with damage reported in five different regions. A Russian missile killed at least four people and damaged an educational facility in Kryvyi Rih. Russia claims it retook 63.2 of captured territory in Kursk region. A Ukrainian drone set an oil depot ablaze in Russia’s Kaluga region, south of Moscow.

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Roundup: Poilievre’s revisionist history on energy exports

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Pierre Poilievre held a media availability in Vancouver yesterday to promise that he would undo the changes to the capital gains taxes, spinning some bullshit provided to him by Jack Mintz about how this kills tens of thousands of jobs, when in reality it only provides a loophole for self-incorporated wealthy individuals to pay less tax—a fact that the Liberals were too incompetent to properly communicate. But this wasn’t the biggest whopper of the event. When asked by the media about where he stands on potential export taxes on oil exports as retaliation from Trump, Poilievre claimed that the Liberals blocked pipelines and LNG terminals, forcing Canadians to export more to the US, which gives Trump more leverage. Absolutely nothing about his is true. None of it. And with receipts, here’s Andrew Leach.

There’s more. In fact, another whole thread here about the history of Northern Gateway that Poilievre has memory-holed in order to create a false version of history to blame Trudeau rather than note the lack of action under the Harper government. (First tweet below)

And then Danielle Smith tried to start chiming in about an Alberta-first “Team Canada” approach grounded entirely in fantasy.

And just because…

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine downed 34 out of 55 Russian drones overnight Thursday, but debris damaged energy infrastructure in Poltava region. There was a further drone attack on Kyiv as UK prime minister Keir Starmer was visiting. Ukrainian forces have begun using remote-controlled ground assault vehicles. Ukraine attacked a major Russian gunpowder factory in the Tambov region.

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Roundup: Smith offside the first ministers

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Yesterday was the big day where the plans to counter Trump’s predations started to take shape in public. There was a briefing on the border plans, which includes two leased Blackhawk helicopters, sixty drones, and other new technologies, and statistics to show an 89 percent reduction in migrants crossing from Canada to the US. And then came the first ministers’ meeting and an agreement to have a common front to counter Trump, that everyone signed on except for one premier—Danielle Smith, who was on Zoom from her vacation in Panama. Smith refused to sign onto any agreement that didn’t take the possibility of export taxes of cutting energy flows to the US off the table.

I get Smith’s objections that export taxes or cutting off oil and gas to the US would have an outsized impact on Alberta, and she has a domestic political constituency and a bunch of face-eating leopards in her political house who are looking for an excuse to eat her face the way they did Jason Kenney’s. I do get that. But by publicly disavowing the nuclear option, and threatening a national unity crisis over it, Smith is undermining the negotiating position of the country as a whole, and giving opportunities for Trump to exploit that weakness—and it looks especially bad after she already started to obey in advance and couldn’t wait to start licking his boots, and headed over to Mar-a-Lago at the behest of Kevin “It’s totally not annexation—really!” O’Leary. It makes it hard to see whose side she is on here.

https://twitter.com/gmacofglebe/status/1879645335494262832

Amidst this, I did find myself absolutely incredulous at the response that Doug Ford was getting because he wore a cap that said “Canada is not for sale,” and he was saying things like “Canada comes first.” And suddenly people were praising him left and right, and one columnist went so far as to say that at that moment, he wished Ford was prime minister. Doug Ford. “Fun” uncle Doug. Whose corruption is out in public. Who was pulling this folksy schtick on a day where there was a news story about how one community saw people line up down the block in the wee hours because a new doctor had come to town and would take the first 500 patients, which is a system that Doug Ford allowed to collapse because he was more interested in putting federal dollars toward his deficit than he was to doing anything about the system. And once again, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Come on, guys.

Ukraine Dispatch

A massive Russian aerial attack which featured more than 40 missiles and over 70 drones forced preventative power cuts in Ukraine. 25 POWs from each side were exchanged in a deal brokered by the UAE.

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Roundup: First ministers meet about the Trump threats

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Justin Trudeau will be meeting with (most of) the premiers today, to talk about the border plans in advance of Trump’s inauguration. Some premiers will be virtual, however, such as PEI premier Dennis King, who is currently on a bus trip to the northeastern states with a number of officials from the province. And it has already been noted that there are separate media availabilities after the meeting is over—the federal government in one location, the premiers moving to a hotel to have theirs.

In advance of the meeting, we’re hearing more pledges for “border officers” from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec, and Doug Ford was once again chirping about the supposed absence of federal leadership until he had a meeting with Dominic LeBlanc yesterday at Queen’s Park, after which he suddenly changed his tune. At that point, he praised the federal plan as “phenomenal,” which pretty much goes to show that the federal government has been working on it, and that in not responding and lighting their hair on fire with every Trump utterance that they are keeping their powder dry.

I get why Trudeau and the government have been keeping their heads down, but they have also created a problem for themselves. They should probably have been sending stronger signals to the provinces that they are working on said plan and to shut up in public rather than undermine the country’s position, but it’s not like they’ll all listen—particularly those premiers who are keen to suck up to Trump. Nevertheless, if this PMO’s persistent problem is their inability to communicate, they appear to be making no effort to change that on their way out the door. Cripes.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian air defences shot down 58 out of 80 drones in an overnight attack on Tuesday, while Russian forces claim to have taken control of two more settlements in the Donetsk region. Ukraine launched a major missile and drone attack into Russian territory, destroying a storage facility holding guided bombs and struck a chemical plant making ammunition. Ukrainian soldiers are also being forced to deal with suicide attacks by North Korean troops.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1879180179613872494

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Roundup: No, we don’t need a “unity government”

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The closer the Trump tariffs loom, the more insane the suggestions are being proffered. Case in point was in The Line yesterday, where former NDP MP and law professor Craig Scott said that the only way to save Canada is with a “unity government.” It was like he had decided to smoke meth before sitting down to write the op-ed because it was devoid of sense, or rationality.

Yes, Trump’s threats are serious, but what exactly is a “unity government” going to do? The government currently has all of the powers it needs for retaliatory tariffs and most other countermeasures. Creating a situation of an interim party leader (as prime minister) and building a Cabinet to include members of all other parties (and as he proposes, former Conservatives like James Moore, Rona Ambrose and Lisa Raitt if the current ones don’t play ball) would only be for the sake of optics, and would cause more problems than it solves. What portfolios do you distribute to members of opposition parties, for a few months? And if you’re brining in former Conservatives because the current ones don’t play ball, well, they’re all in the phase of their post-political careers where they are making money, and bringing them into Cabinet means a lot of headaches around disclosures and ethics obligations—again for the sake of a few months of optics. On top of that, the demand to bring Parliament back right away makes no sense either, because there is nothing for them to legislate around the Trump threats. As I have stated elsewhere, its only utility would be for dubious unanimous consent motions and vapid take-note debates.

You don’t need a “unity government” for MPs to play nice in the face of a grave threat. Insisting that you do is naïve and ahistorical, but fully in keeping with Scott, who was a blowhard when he was an MP, and this hasn’t changed in his time since apparently. Anyone who takes his op-ed seriously needs to rethink some of their life choices.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims Ukraine has hit them with a massive drone and missile attack overnight that hit two factories. Russian forces are bypassing the stronghold of Pokrovsk in order to try and cut off its supply lines instead. Production at the Pokrovsk coal mine (used for the steel-making industry) has been halted as Russians close in.

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Roundup: The heresy of well-wishes

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It began with Anita Anand writing that she was not only going to stay out of the Liberal leadership race (which was a surprise given that she had previously been organizing an effort before the job was even open), but was also not going to be running again in the next election—which is a shame, because she was not only an extremely competent minister, but probably the best defence minister the country has had in a couple of decades at least. Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole did the classy and dignified thing and saluted her work.

https://twitter.com/erinotoole/status/1878482424193073181

That simply wasn’t going to be on.

https://twitter.com/jenni_byrne/status/1878513929229320380

Whether Byrne misgendered O’Toole by accident or deliberately (because Conservatives thought it was hilarious to call Trudeau “Justine” and feminise him at every single opportunity), or if she was referring to Anand, it almost doesn’t matter because this is the kind of toxic, purity-test bullshit that she thinks the party really needs—and make no mistake, she is running the party. (If people thought it was bad that Katie Telford was running the PMO, should Poilievre win it’ll be Byrne doing the same). There’s a reason why Conservative MPs aren’t allowed to travel with anyone from other parties anymore, or why Byrne is attacking O’Toole for showing a modicum of human decency is praising someone from the other side—because in her conception of the world, they are not rivals or people who disagree on matters of policy, but rather they are the enemy, and if you don’t realise that you are a heretic and the problem. This is going to make Canadian politics even more toxic the more this takes hold.

This in turn led to people praising O’Toole for being a decent Conservative, which is in and of itself revisionist history, and ignores his own behaviour during his leadership contest and right up until his ignoble ouster as leader, where he lied about everything under the sun, and acted imperiously with his own caucus, going so far as to kick Senator Batters out of caucus for daring to challenge him. That, in his retirement, he did the classy thing to wish Anand well, doesn’t change his prior behaviour, and it makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills that everyone else has memory-holed his actual record.

The #cdnpoli vibes…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-13T04:02:12.787Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian forces shelled Kherson, targeting power systems that left tens of thousands without power. Russia also claims it captured Shevchenko, near Pokrovsk. South Korean intelligence says that North Korean troops captured by Ukrainians in Kursk haven’t expressed a desire to defect. It is believed there have been there have been more than 3000 North Korean fatalities to date (which includes suicides to avoid capture).

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Roundup: Putting a stake in pharmacare

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In the wake of his announced departure, it sounds like Justin Trudeau made calls to Jagmeet Singh and Yves-François Blanchet to try and secure votes on the Supplementary Estimates in order to extend the life of this parliament a little further, and both of them told him no. What is particularly curious here however is that Trudeau pointed out to Singh that more time would give them time to extend the dental care programme beyond seniors and children, and give them time enough to get the nascent pharmacare up and running (as so far, there is only cooperation from one or two provinces). Per the CBC, “An NDP source with knowledge of the conversation said the government already has all the powers it needs.”

*sighs, pinches bridge of nose*

It’s not a question of not having power, it’s a question of time. Implementation takes time to do properly, and with dental care, they went slowly on the groups eligible to ensure that everything was going to work before they rolled it out to the majority of the population, and they haven’t felt that they worked out all of the kinks yet. They want time enough to so. And the nascent pharmacare plan needs cooperation with the provinces, which takes time to negotiate, but also requires some assurance for those provinces that if the government does fall, that they have some guarantees for funding for a set period of time so that they’re not left holding the bag. Singh and the NDP should know this, but, well, they don’t actually know how government works because they’ve never formed it. They have now guaranteed that the premiers won’t bother to sign a deal because Poilievre will just kill the programme as soon as he’s in power, so why set up expectations?

What is most ironic in this is that by refusing to give the government more time so that he can look tough, Singh has doomed the very programmes that he was so insistent that the government set up as part of their agreement with the Liberals (which I will remind you, the Liberals fulfilled in good faith only for Singh to tear up the agreement for the sake of optics). And because the NDP insisted that dental care be a fully federal insurance programme rather than a cost-shared programme with provinces, they have guaranteed that it will be an easy kill for Poilievre, because they’re actually incapable of long-term or strategic thinking. I am reminded of how Jack Layton extracted all kinds of concessions from Paul Martin’s budget, but then brought him down before the budget implementation bill could be passed, and they spent years patting themselves on the back for a hollow victory that didn’t achieve anything they said they did. It’s looking an awful lot like there’s going to be a repeat of that particular folly.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia attacked Ukraine with 72 drones overnight, and five struck buildings in Chernihiv in the north, another fell on a building in Kyiv.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1877669181153304715

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Roundup: Leadership rules released

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The Liberal Party National Council met last night, and around 10:30 PM released the rules of the forthcoming leadership contest. The voting ends March 2nd, with the announcement made on March 9th. There will be a $350,000 entry fee (high enough to discourage no-hope candidates), and candidates must declare by January 23rd. People registering to vote in the contest have until January 27th to sign up (remember, the Liberals don’t have memberships you need to buy), and they have tightened those rules to only include citizens and permanent residents, following all of the talk at the Foreign Interference Inquiry.

The Liberal leadership rules are out.High entry fee to discourage no-hope candidates, and they have tightened who can be a "supporter" to just be citizens or permanent residents. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-10T03:35:50.365Z

There are already complaints over social media that the entry fee is too high, meaning the field will be narrow, but that’s kind of the point—this is a race to be prime minister, not leader of the third party like it was the last time around, so you only want serious people, not those looking to build a profile (as far, far too many people do in leadership races). Yes, it’s a barrier to entry, but again, this needs to be a race for serious candidates only. As for the changes to who can register, there were a number of people on social media talking about how they registered their cats to vote, and things like that, because they thought they were being terribly clever in proving a point about how easy the system is to game. The Party spokesperson tweeted out that those fraudulent “memberships” (which they’re not really) will be removed, because again, the point of this exercise is really to collect data to populate a voter identification database, and it’s not too difficult to tell that your pets don’t have voter identification to match to in the system.

Speaking of unserious entrants, backbencher Chandra Arya announced he was running yesterday, and included a list of ridiculous plans including ending Canada’s monarchy, which is not only disqualifyingly dumb, but would mean getting unanimous consent of the provinces to essentially rewrite the constitution to do so. He also speaks no French and dismissed its importance (and good luck with that too). Christy Clark is apparently due to announce her bid shortly, but I did notice that Chantal Hébert was calling her out over social media for refusing to do an interview in French (to say nothing about actually knowing which party she belongs to, as she apparently took out a Conservative membership to vote for Jean Charest in their last leadership race after musing about her own bid for that leadership).

All of it. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-09T15:23:22.169Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Two people were killed in Russian shelling of the town of Siversk in the Donetsk region. Ukraine’s air force says that Russia has launched over 51,000 guided aerial bombs on Ukraine since the start of the invasion. And that oil depot that Ukraine hit near a strategic Russian airfield has continued to burn for more than 24 hours.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1877283979574845612

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Roundup: Preparing the counter-tariffs

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The reverberations from Trump’s annexation comments continued yesterday, as Liberals held a caucus meeting in the wake of Trudeau’s announcement, and we seem to be back to the old issue of whether to take him seriously but not literally, or literally but not seriously. Cabinet ministers seem to be taking it seriously, and are letting it be known that we may be looking to do more than just the cutesy, targeted counter-tariffs from the last Trump presidency, and are starting to prepare some bigger guns. Former American ambassadors to Canada are warning not to overreact, but people in this country seem to keep forgetting (or ignoring) that lesson that we should have learned and internalised four years ago.

Update: this seems closer to where I'd suggest we set the tone for countering the bluster from the South. Good on Minister Wilkinson.www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/202…

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-01-08T22:31:34.170Z

Where I'm coming from on this is that many are used to 'trade wars' where the other side is proposing some tariff on apples or something, so they're going to their usual targeted boutique response toolkit.Me, I think this is an entirely different category of threat, and timid cutesy won't work.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-01-08T23:15:11.012Z

While there is talk about “manifest destiny” re-emerging, it is important to remember that expansionist policies are part of the fascist project.

Territorial expansion is not a distraction from the fascist project. It is *part of* the fascist project. There are many examples of territorial expansion and internal "cleansing" going hand in hand. The fact that the figurehead has pudding for brains does not make this any less part of the project.

— Kate Heartfield (@kateheartfield.com) 2025-01-08T20:32:50.865Z

"Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit — i.e., in thetendency of nations to expand — a manifestation oftheir vitality." – The Doctrine of Fascism, Benito Mussolini, 1932

— Kate Heartfield (@kateheartfield.com) 2025-01-08T20:37:23.137Z

Think of the time being wasted by diplomats and experts in Europe and Latin America, as they start planning how to counter American attacks on Panama or Greenland. Time that could be spent thinking about a unified response to Russia and China.

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) 2025-01-08T13:53:03.796Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided bomb attack killed thirteen people and injured at least 63 in Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine launched a long-range attack on a Russian oil depot that serves an air base for nuclear bombers. The UN estimates that 12,300 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the invasion three years ago.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1877020292746191129

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