Sometimes, it gets very, very difficult to take the state of politics seriously in this country because so much of it is just clown performance. Two examples from yesterday:

1) Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner held a press conference to announce that she was going to table a Private Member’s Bill to stop courts from considering possible deportation in sentencing decisions—even though the sentencing rules were about asking judges to be aware of the potential for unintended consequences, so this bill is really about punching down—and along the way wound up talking about the wildfire situation. In her estimation, the federal government is to blame, and she blamed the federal government for the “forest bans” in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick…except those rules were from the provincial governments. And wildfires are provincial jurisdiction. Nevertheless, she thinks that the federal government needs to do more, but this gets back to the whole point I was making in my latest Quick Take—provinces have the responsibility but have been under-funding their emergency management systems because they know they can call on the Canadian Forces and get them to do it for free. That’s a problem. Rempel Garner is just feeding into this problem through this performance of hers.

2) Pierre Poilievre demanded that the federal government cancel the loan for the BC Ferries contract which will have those new ferries built in China, in retaliation for the latest round of Chinese tariffs on canola. Erm, except that’s a provincial Crown Corporation who contracted for those ships, and the federal government didn’t make the loan, the Infrastructure Bank did, which the federal government doesn’t exercise control over, and even more to the point, no Canadian shipyards bid on that contract. This is just more performance for social media, rage-bait to get his followers angry and opening up their wallets.

1) It is not a "Liberal" loan or a government loan. It's from the Infrastructure Bank, which is arm's-length from government. The loan was made before the procurement process was completed.2) NO CANADIAN SHIPYARDS BID ON THIS PROJECT!Is Poilievre going to force a Canadian yard to build them?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-08-13T17:53:19.054Z

The absolute mendacity of all of this is just exhausting, which is part of the point. It’s a common authoritarian tactic to lie about everything so that people give up trying to inform themselves, and not a single legacy media outlet in this country will actually call them on it. It’s a problem, and we need to do something about it now, before we get any further down the path that the US is taking.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-08-12T14:08:02.942Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy says that he told Trump ahead of his meeting with Putin on Friday that Putin is “bluffing” about his desire to end the war—and he’s correct.

Good reads:

• Mark Carney met virtually with “Coalition of the Willing” allies and president Zelenskyy in advance of the Trump-Putin meeting on Friday.
• The Bank of Canada’s deliberation minutes show that they are concerned that future rate cuts may wind up fuelling inflation.
• Canada Post and its union are finally returning to the bargaining table.
• Indigenous families are looking to launch a class-action lawsuit against the federal government for denying them status when ancestors gave it up “voluntarily.”
• Here’s a look into the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, which poses as a non-partisan thinktank but is a conservative swamp leaning hard into transphobia.
• Elections Canada says that early voting in the Battle River—Crowfoot byelection is on par with levels seen during the general election.
• Former justice minister Irwin Cotler is among the signatories of Jewish voices calling on the Israeli government to end the war and starvation in Gaza.
• Doug Ford announced $1 billion in support loans for businesses in Ontario affected by the trade war.
• Anne Applebaum details how the Trump administration is now whitewashing corruption and human rights abuses in their State Department reports.
• Kevin Carmichael is optimistic that Canada is getting a little more substantive and a little less performative in its search for new trading partners.
• Jennier Robson looks at the data surrounding the economic uncertainty caused by the trade war, and why you can’t separate the two.
• Paul Wells suggests that if Ford is coming to see Mark Carney with a shopping list, that Carney make a few demands of his own given Ford’s incompetent governing.

Odds and ends:

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