There was a lot of talk about newly-minted Liberal MP Michael Ma’s performance at the industry committee, where he questioned a witness about whether she had personally witnessed forced labour in China, in a tactic to try and dismiss her in favour of a witness who was pro-trade in Chinese EVs. Ma later apologised, and there was apparently some confusion over just which region in China he was referring to, but still, it made for a poor clip from committee (and of the CBC reporter chasing him on the Hill), and bad clips would seem to be a cardinal sin in Parliament these days.

This being said, there would seem to me to be a tension in all of this that very few people want to actually discuss, which is the fact that Carney’s “strategic partnerships” that he’s been patting himself on the back for post-Davos speech involve countries that involve forced labour—China and Qatar—while at the same time praising all of the “good, union jobs” that those partnerships will create back home in Canada. This while the Liberals still insist that they opposed forced labour in all of its forms, and that they have strong rules about eliminated forced labour from supply chains. There is a fundamental disconnect that they seem incapable of bridging coherently, because they simply ignore the dissonance, or in Ma’s case, his attempt to throw confusion around it just wound up making him look like an ass.

This is why I wrote my column earlier in the week about the Canadian Ombud for Responsible Enterprise, whose office was designed to look for forced labour in supply chains and call it out, and the fact that Carney has left the office vacant for the past year and will almost certainly smother it in its sleep and scrap the office in the name of budget cuts—so that there is no embarrassment caused over these “strategic partnerships” with forced-labour countries in the name of being “pragmatic” in the post-rupture world of global trade. Ma just gave the government a black eye over this, so we’ll see if they can handle themselves any better in the face of these embarrassing contradictions.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims to have taken a village in eastern Ukraine, while Ukraine reclaimed a village in the Dnipropetrovsk region. President Zelenskyy arrived for an unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia, one of the countries Ukraine is supplying drone expertise.

Good reads:

• Mark Carney summoned the media to Halifax to declare that Canada has met the NATO two-percent spending target, just days before the end of the fiscal year.
• Carney also said that there should be a formal apology for the RCMP Security Services’ programme spying on Indigenous activists in the seventies.
• David McGuinty suggests that Canada might support allies with ships, de-mining expertise, or cyber capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz if there is a ceasefire.
• The government is proposing a $1.7 billion no-strings-attached fund for cities to use to help to accelerate home-building however they see fit. (Danger, Will Robinson!)
• The government tabled a new election bill that includes provisions to thwart Longest Ballot losers, along with disinformation, and crypto donations.
• The Procurement Ombud released a scathing report on how Indigenous Services failed to verify companies bidding under the Indigenous Businesses strategy.
• A fatal house fire in a northern Ontario First Nation is renewing calls for more federal funding for fire services for First Nations.
• Here is a look at how the International Olympic Committee’s ban on trans women will negatively affect all women in sport, who will be treated to a witch hunt.
• The Alberta Boundary Commission report is out, and the minority opinion from the UCP-affiliated commissioners proposes some radical gerrymandering of ridings.
• Alberta separatists have found that they can’t get signatures from people with rural PO boxes. (Countdown to Danielle Smith passing emergency legislation about this).
• Leah West makes the case for the government’s lawful access bill (mostly).
• John Michael McGrath is concerned that the one-year HST rebate in Ontario is just tinkering and won’t do enough to turn the crisis in homebuilding around.
• Supriya Dwivedi calls for more transparency, particularly from CSIS, on the allegations around India’s activities, in light of the RCMP’s recent “no current links.”

Odds and ends:

For Xtra Magazine, I heard from five Pride organisers from around the country about why they’re asking the federal government for more stable funding.

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