There were a couple of immigration stories of note yesterday, the first of which was the revelation that a post-doc researcher at McMaster University—who has a PhD from the Sorbonne—had her permanent residency application rejected because it looks like the immigration department used generative digital asbestos to process the claim and it hallucinated a bunch of things about her job. Worse, while there was a disclaimer about the use of said digital asbestos, it said that a human verified it, which someone clearly did not. This is outrageous, and exactly the kind of thing that some of us were warning about when Mark Carney and Evan Solomon crowed about how great this digital asbestos was going to be for the productivity and efficiency of the civil service. Clearly that’s not the case, and now they not only need to redo her application, but it demonstrates what most of us knew was going to happen—that the humans were going to start cutting corners and not verifying the work because there is a belief in the infallibility of these programmes. This is scandalous and worthy of a resignation if we actually believed in that anymore.

The other story was that justice minister Sean Fraser says that when he was immigration minister, he would have handled things differently with the student visas, but there is one thing that is buried in the piece that everyone is going to overlook:

However, he also said the federal government was negotiating as part of “a good-faith relationship with the provinces who were requesting additional access to immigration programs at the time.”

He said those negotiations failed, leading to the federal government placing a cap in January 2024.

The provinces are very much to blame, but they keep avoiding responsibility. They were screaming for more immigrants and temporary foreign workers. They allowed these strip mall colleges to run rampant—Ontario most especially. Not one of them did anything at all about building more housing, or not keeping their healthcare system from collapsing, and not one of them stopped from the blame pile-on with the federal government. I keep making this point because nobody wants to listen—we have a problem with the provinces, and nobody wants to acknowledge it so that we can start holding the premiers accountable.

Could Carney possibly stop using Nigel Farage's framing? Why is it so hard to learn the lesson of not giving the far-right any ammunition? FFS.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-26T03:14:49.967Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks on Kharkiv killed two, and damaged Danube port infrastructure in Izamil. It has been calculated that Russia has lost some 40 percent of its oil export capacity thanks to Ukrainian attacks.

Good reads:

• Mark Carney said that he’s “very disappointed” in the CEO of Air Canada after his English-only condolence message (for what that matters).
• Jill McKnight says there will be an independent investigation of the veterans rehabilitation programme and the company contracted to run it.
• The hate crime legislation passed the House of Commons with the religious exemption provision removed from the law thanks to the Bloc’s amendment.
• The head of the Canadian Army wants you to know that it’s not a “spending spree” and that they are being responsible in procurements.
• The Ethics Commissioner released the data on MPs’ sponsored travel in 2025, and it was sharply down, particularly because there were so few trips to Israel.
• RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme is expressing “sincere regret” for the 1970s surveillance operation of First Nations leadership.
• PolySeSouvient is lambasting the federal government for the poor roll-out of the gun buyback programme, which is well below its target.
• Wealthsimple got permission to engage in prediction market trading in Canada, which is insane if you look at how that has enabled corruption in the US.
• The outgoing chair of the Young Liberals wants his potential successors to promise not to take PMO jobs (because the grassroots needs an accountability role).
• Mandatory voting will be one of the policy resolutions that the NDP will be debating at this weekend’s convention.
• Doug Ford made an agreement with Carney for a one-year break on the HST on all new home purchases under $1 million (Can one year stimulate construction?)
• An agreement in principle has been reached with Alberta on methane reductions under the MOU (and I await word as to how much they are watered down).
• Lindsay Tedds points out that the “Alberta Advantage” of low taxes is offset by levies on property taxes akin to the Texas model (and that’s not good).
• Althia Raj worries that a diminished NDP is losing its ability to hold the governing Liberals accountable as they have in the past. (I may quibble a bit there).

Odds and ends:

My Loonie Politics Quick Take looks at the process to appoint the new PBO, and why the Conservatives are promising shenanigans.

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