The news that there won’t be a spring budget meant a day of wailing and gnashing of teeth, much of it misunderstanding about what the budget actually is and does. Pierre Poilievre summoned the media outside of West Block to decry that Mark Carney “has no plan” because there isn’t a budget, and his MPs have been tweeting up a storm to insist that “Carney lied” by not having a budget, but this, as usual, is little more than low-rent disinformation that treats voters like idiots because they don’t know the parliamentary budgetary cycle.

Budgets by their very nature are political documents. They provide guideposts for spending plans, but we just had an election and the Liberals have a reasonably comprehensive platform document, so that can provide the broad strokes for spending plans in the same way that a budget document does. The thing we are missing is an updated chart of what the current debt/deficit projections look like, and what the growth projections are, but again, the growth projections are merely an amalgamation of private sector forecasts and are no longer based on Department of Finance projections, and we’re in a moment of profound economic uncertainty because of Trump’s trade war, so they could very well go up in smoke next week, and wouldn’t be of much use to anyone. There is also the practical reality that the election was three weeks ago, and the Department of Finance wouldn’t have time to prepare a budget document, even based on the projections from the platform document, nor have it ready before the Commons rises for the summer. And if anyone thinks they want to sit in Ottawa’s hot and muggy summer climate, well, no they actually do not. That’s just political posturing (or sheer ignorance of what summer is like here).

I did also want to point you to this thread which corrects something from this The Canadian Press explainer about the budget document, budget implementation acts, and the Estimates. The estimates are the actual spending documents about how much the government plans to spend. A budget implementation act is legislation that enacts things like tax changes from the budget document, which are proper omnibus bills, but in recent years have become abusive omnibus bills as governments will stuff extraneous things into the budget document in order to include them in the omnibus BIA for the sake of expediency. It abuses process and shouldn’t be allowed (including with the fig leaf of “it was in the budget document!”) but this is also was six years of unrelenting procedural warfare has wrought—if you can’t pass bills because the opposition parties want to play games, then you shove everything into an abusive BIA, and the cycle perpetuates, which isn’t good for anyone (which is also a reminder that actions have consequences). Suffice to say, there will be an Estimates Bill passed in the four weeks that Parliament is back, so it’s not like there isn’t anything from government on spending plans.

Programming Note: I am taking the full long weekend off, because I’m utterly exhausted. See you on Wednesday.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims that they have taken two more settlements in Eastern Ukraine, which Ukraine disputes. President Zelenskyy is in Türkiye for the “peace talks” that aren’t actually going to happen because he called Putin’s bluff.

Good reads:

• The Elections Canada validation count of the election results in Nunavut still hasn’t happened because one of the ballot boxes remains stuck in a blizzard.
• The Canadian Forces plan to expand their training operations in the Arctic so that they are effectively there ten months out of the year.
• Amnesty International says that the Canadian government isn’t doing enough to stop the exploitation of temporary foreign workers.
• Canadian Tire won the bid for the name and IP associated with Hudson’s Bay (including the strips), but I am dubious they could use the coat-of-arms.
• Poilievre has cleared out his offices now that he’s no longer an MP, but will be staying in Stornoway since the party gets to decide on that (per PCO).
• The Bloc plan to make a court challenge of the results in Terrebonne (as Elections Canada can’t do anything more), which could result in a fresh election.
• Ontario has opted for a big-spending budget to deal with the trade war, but assumes it’ll be short-lived and not a fundamental reordering of the global economy.
• Here is a deep dive into Ontario’s bill to override environmental regulations to speed approval of certain resource projects.
• One of Ford’s former aides was sanctioned by the Integrity Commissioner for unregistered lobbying (but isn’t receiving meaningful penalties).
• Alberta’s (captured) Energy Regulator approved a coal mining exploration project on the eastern slope of the Rockies.
• Onion Lake First Nation is launching a court challenge of the Alberta law that lowered the threshold for an independence referendum.
• Jennifer Robson gives a full accounting of why a government is not like a corporation and cannot be run like one.
• Matt Gurney returns to his lament for the inability to do basic service delivery in this country, like basic paperwork requests.
• Colby Cosh castigates both Carney for his “decision note” signings, and the separatists in Alberta for their republican nonsense.

Odds and ends:

The Beaverton imagines Evan Solomon asking ChatGPT what he should do now that he’s the minister of AI.

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.