Prime minister Mark Carney spent the morning with the premiers in Muskoka as part of their meeting, and proceeded to lower expectations even further than they already are. The message of the day was that he’s only going to take the “best deal” in negotiations with the US, and that matters more than the August 1st deadline, which is already beyond the “deadline” that was agreed to in Kananaskis, and so long as talks are ongoing, retaliation measures continue to also be pushed back so that American bullying can continue unabated. But the kind of deal he wants isn’t going to be available, because this is Trump, and we’re just not going to get a deal that “preserves, reinforces and stabilises” the trade relationship, because Trump does not want that, nor do we want to keep tying ourselves to a failing autocratic regime whose economy is increasingly defined by the chaos of its leader.

We also learned that he stayed at Doug Ford’s cottage the night before, and that they stayed up talking past midnight, and Ford just gushed like a schoolgirl about Carney’s business background, and said that he would hand the keys of a business over to the prime minister (and said “business” about fifty more times), all of which was a little bit unseemly. We know that Ford continues to fancy himself a “businessman” because he inherited part of his father’s label business, but this constant fawning over anyone with a business background is a little bit unbecoming, particularly if you pay any bit of attention to what happens.

Meanwhile, Ford also signed an MOU with Danielle Smith and Scott Moe about building pipelines to Ontario and James Bay (which is never going to happen because it’s too shallow for tanker traffic), amidst the usual nonsense about federal environmental laws that they are trying to be rid of. There are no proponents for these pipelines, because there is no economic case for them. And if Carney is true to his word and says there’s no PONIs without Indigenous buy-in or consent, well, the pipeline Smith wants to the northwest coast of BC won’t happen because the First Nations in the area do not want one. Nevertheless, I think Andrew Leach is right in that they’re stacking up a wish list they’ll never meet in order to keep blaming the federal government, because that’s what they do best.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine lost one of their French Mirage fighters due to equipment failure, but the pilot was able to safely eject. There were protests in Kyiv because president Zelenskyy signed a law that rolled back the independence of two anti-corruption bodies and placed them under executive control, which was seen largely as his first major unforced error, and give ammunition to Putin supporters.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1947576960110014850

Good reads:

• Carney and his office are silent about appointments to special envoy positions, and about the creation of new positions that have long been called for.
• Statistics Canada says the crime severity index fell by four percent last year, and remains far below historic highs (in spite of the doom rhetoric).
• The federal Privacy Commissioner has ended his investigation into a data breach of Toronto public schools because the software provider has made a strong response.
• Here’s a look at the impact of the tariffs on two of the largest automakers in Canada.
• Pierre Poilievre is calling on government to pass new legislation to close the loopholes that the Longest Ballot crybabies are using for their “protest.
• First Nations in Quebec have walked away from talks regarding forestry legislation because Quebec’s approach to zoning would infringe on their rights.
• Mike Moffatt’s Missing Middle Initiative looks at the collapse in homebuilding in the GTA, and the policy solution that is best able to address that price inelasticity.
• Paul Wells dismantles Poilievre’s defence of the “convoy” organisers, and how he’s both hypocritical and incapable of coherence in his own message.

Odds and ends:

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