The talk about the lack of a spring budget is reaching histrionics in the House of Commons, while the Conservatives nevertheless agreed to the unanimous consent motion to conduct the study of the Estimates in a rushed manner within the House of Commons as committee of the whole instead of splitting departmental spending off to relevant committees, because it will take too long to establish said committees before these votes need to be taken. And the Estimates are the actual money votes—a budget is a political document, so if the Conservatives are that concerned about where the government plans to spend, well, that’s entirely in these Estimates. The information is entirely there for them.

At the same time, we’ve heard these very same Conservatives (and some of their mouthpieces in the media) decry that there is no reduced spending within these Estimates. And of course not—these are based on last year’s budget and statutory obligations, so there wouldn’t have been any time to book any particular savings in the four weeks since the election. Not to mention that if you want to do a proper programme review in order to achieve smart savings, those take time—up to two years, which would have a better chance of achieving lasting savings. The Conservatives were masters of achieving paper savings in their last couple of budgets when they were in power, as they were so eager to get to a faux balanced budget that they booked a tonne of savings that not only didn’t materialise, but in many cases wound up costing them more (Shared Services, Phoenix) because the act of cutting the spending before the enterprise transformation was complete wound up costing more money in the end. It would seem that nobody learned a single gods named lesson from that exercise.

Meanwhile, Conservatives and their proxies keep insisting that they would rather sit into July so that they can get a budget, and let me once again say that no, they actually do not. There is almost nothing pleasant about an Ottawa summer, and if any of those MPs think they want to be sweltering in Parliament with jacket-and-tie dress codes with a humidex of 39ºC, no, they actually do not. This is performative nonsense, and everyone needs to grow the hell up.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-05-28T13:25:16.198Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Three people were injured in a Russian attack on Svitlovodsk yesterday. President Zelenskyy warned that Russia is massing 50,000 troops outside of Sumy region, which appears to be preparations for a summer offensive. Ukrainian drones hit several Russian weapons production facilities overnight. Russia is now proposing new peace talks in Istanbul (again)—but of course, this is one more deception. If they actually want peace, they can simply pack up and go home.

Good reads:

• The US Court of International Trade ruled that the “fentanyl” and the “Liberation Day” tariffs are illegal. (We still face the auto and steel & aluminium tariffs).
• Defence minister David McGuinty says it’s too early to know what kind of price tag we’re looking at with the so-called “Golden Dome.”
• McGuinty also told defence industry participants at the CANSEC conference to prepare for accelerated federal defence spending.
• The federal government’s translation bureau is rushing to build in-house automated translation software so that sensitive documents aren’t fed to public ones.
• Canada Post’s 2024 annual report shows a $1.3 billion loss in operating expenses. The Crown corporation delivered their “final offer” to their union yesterday.
• The national chief of the AFN says she understands the frustrations of chiefs who see fast-track legislation as undermining the duty to consult.
• The US ambassador says that he’s not concerned we’re hurt by annexation talk because they were “hurt” by us allegedly not paying into NATO. (I just can’t).
• Mexico’s president remains noncommittal about attending the G7 meeting after being invited to join.
• Poilievre had to be a spectator and not a participant in QP. (Sad trombone).
• A state of emergency has been declared in Manitoba over wildfires, and the military is being called in to evacuate certain northern communities.
• My column points to ways we should be further Canadianising our monarchy and increasing the gap with the UK, to further assert our sovereignty.

Odds and ends:

When they can get the other nine provinces on board in order to rewrite the constitution, then maybe this will amount to something. In the meantime, it's just more performance art.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-05-29T01:32:58.465Z

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