Pierre Poilievre was back at the Canadian Club in Toronto for another lunchtime speech on how he is going to fix the economy to make life more affordable, and—stop me if you’ve heard this one before—it involves doubling down on trickle-down economics. In fact, while the speech made all of his greatest hits (destroy environmental legislation, cut taxes, cut bureaucracy in the most hand-wavey way possible), along with his latest genius plan of building a stockpile of oil and critical minerals that will supposedly give us “leverage” with future negotiations. Again, this is stupid because you’re not going to convince Trump, with his love of tariffs, to abandon that with a “strategic reserve.” Get real.
Actual quote from Poilievre's speech today:"If you asked a neutral and objective AI bot to go into all of the policies on the books of the government of Canada, what would you find has actually changed in the last year?"There is no such thing as a "neutral and objective" bot. Absolute clown show.
— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-16T20:24:29.511Z
And because this is Poilievre, he is continuing to double-down on his peevish insistence that he is somehow a better economist than Carney because he watched a bunch of crypto bros on YouTube. In fact, he dismissed Carney as having the “illusion of knowledge,” and claimed that all of Carney’s economic ideas have been wrong for years, which is a ridiculous thing to say. This while he keeps going on and on about “money-printing,” which nobody is engaging in, but again, this is one of the key things that crypto bros will say drives inflation (hence why Poilievre parroted their lines about Bitcoin being a way to opt out of inflation), and nobody will call this out. (Okay, David Cochrane has tried to call it out, and Poilievre and Andrew Scheer just obfuscate and prevaricate, but absolutely nobody else challenges this absolutely bullshit claim, including the government). It’s amazing how much we let him get away with saying that is completely untrue—and he knows it.
Meanwhile, Conservatives back in Ottawa were complaining to the press that François-Philippe Champagne won’t appear at the ethics committee to answer about his recusing himself on the Alto high-speed rail project because his spouse is a vice-president there, even though the Ethics Commissioner said that there is no actual conflict because Alto reports to a different line minister. This is just theatre, because the Conservatives want clips of themselves calling Champagne corrupt in committee, and surprise, surprise, the Liberals have no interest in exposing him to this. So, the Conservatives are now crying foul in advance of committees being rejigged to reflect the majority, and saying that this is proof the Liberals are going to avoid accountability. But witch-hunts and media stunts are not accountability, and this is just so stupid.
Ukraine Dispatch
Russia spent all Thursday hammering Ukraine with 700 drones and dozens of missiles, which killed sixteen people and wounded more than a hundred others. One of those strikes was on the Black Sea port of Tuapse, which it an oil tanker.
Good reads:
- Mark Carney will be meeting with new Quebec premier Christine Fréchette today.
- Dominic LeBlanc wants you to know that any delays with trade talks with the US are not coming from the Canadian side.
- The opening date for the Gordie Howe bridge is apparently being “quietly negotiated” in order to avoid upsetting Trump.
- An internal audit shows persistent issues with military procurement processes.
- Elections Canada says that there were fewer rejected ballots in the Terrebonne byelection with its special write-in ballot than there were in the general election.
- Canada Post is ending home delivery to 136,000 addresses in thirteen communities as part of restructuring.
- The Privacy Commissioner is calling for stronger privacy laws in advance of Chinese EVs coming onto Canadian soil.
- Another Sikh activist has received a duty to warn from the police, a month after Carney’s visit to India, and the RCMP saying they can’t trace any activity to India.
- First Nations chiefs want a fresh inquiry into the RCMP Security Service’s tracking of Indigenous activists in the sixties. (They had one—the McDonald Commission).
- Danielle Smith has decided to throw out the electoral boundaries commission report and start fresh with a partisan-appointed panel, with a gerrymandering mandate.
- Lindsay Tedds argues that when it comes to the women’s state, Carney is actually worse than Stephen Harper because he’s letting the funding expire quietly.
- Matt Gurney calls out Poilievre’s attacks on Carney’s education as loser talk.
- Paul Wells talks to pollster David Coletto about the state of the polling industry, methodology, and why he’s measuring the “precarity mindset.”
- My Xtra column takes a look at what we can expect from Carney’s majority, and why it will be the absolute bare minimum for queer and trans people.
Odds and ends:
Nerd alert: Canada's GHG Inventory for 2024 just released. It shows that progress has stalled (emissions down 0.3% from 2023 levels).www.canada.ca/en/environme…
— Keith Stewart (@climatekeith.bsky.social) 2026-04-16T18:30:48.982Z
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