As Pierre Poilievre heads to London and Berlin for his first actual foreign trips as opposition leader, his office released his itinerary, which includes attending a CANZUK reception in London after meeting with parliamentarians and business leaders, and then delivering a keynotes speech in Berlin, along with meeting with officials and business leaders and touring an LNG facility.

And there’s the rub. This is going to turn into another tedious exercise of Poilievre doing a little song and dance about “Look! Europe wants our oil and gas!” when really, European leaders, after much badgering and hectoring, actually said something like “Sure, we’d like it if it was available and the right price,” neither of which is going to happen. We’ve seen this before. Certain political show hosts in our country like to engage in this very same badgering and hectoring whenever they interview a visiting European leader in order to say “Look! There’s a business case! Trudeau was wrong!” But they ignored the caveats and the economics.

The reason why LNG to Europe is never going to happen include:

1. There is no local supply of natural gas, so most of the feed stock would be imported from the US, raising prices locally, and if you think a cross-country pipeline is feasible, that will also increase prices in the east coast;
2. It would take years to build an export facility, and it would take years to convert the one existing import terminal (which serves not only the local market, but also feeds into the northeastern US market);
3. Even if these facilities existed, there has bene no interest by European buyers in signing a long-term contract, which is one of the reasons why proposals for east coast LNG terminals never got off the ground. Also remember that these facilities essentially need to operate for a good thirty or forty years to make their money’s worth, and Europe is already rapidly decarbonizing.

Of course, Poilievre will ignore all of that, and declare that Europe wants our LNG, and we’ll go through this whole exercise yet again. It’s so tiresome that nobody actually wants to listen to reality on this subject.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-02-27T23:56:01.183Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia says a temporary ceasefire has been reached around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in order to ensure repairs. Ukraine is setting up a joint venture with allies to produce more air defence ammunition.

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/2027352819905249375

Good reads:

• Mark Carney has landed in Mumbai, and there is talk of India’s desire for more Canadian energy, as well as the hopes for a uranium deal.
• Here is more about how the relationship with India changed over the past year.
• Here is a look at the diplomatic gifts Carney received on his China trip, which included an “action camera” that security experts recommend he not use.
• China is suspending some of its canola and seafood tariffs as of March 1st.
• The federal deficit sits at $26.1 billion between April and December.
• Evan Solomon says he’s going to meet with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman next week, while he continues to be theatrically outraged (but won’t actually regulate).
• Gary Anandasangaree insists that lawful access is going to happen (never mind that the Supreme Court has twice—twice!—ruled it unconstitutional).
• All opposition parties support the Senate’s amendments to Bill S-2 to end the second-generation cut-off for the Indian Act, but the government is balking.
• Governor General Mary Simon spoke at the Indigenous Defence Conference and highlighted the role of Indigenous communities in national (and Arctic) defence.
• Stéphane Dion has been named the first “diplomat in residence” at Université de Montréal, because he doesn’t know how to stop working.
• Justin Ling bemoans cuts to research on online harms, and calls on the government to stop studying and get moving on legislating action.

Odds and ends:

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