The narratives around the motion to rebalance committees have become pretty much unhinged. Most legacy media outlets described the move as “seizing control,” when that’s not what is happening, or how this works, but it sounds dramatic so that’s what they’re running with. Meanwhile, the Government House Leader has claimed that this will help end “silly partisan games,” which also isn’t true at all. If anything, the fact that there is a majority means that the opposition will double down on these partisan games because they are less likely to accidentally do something that could trigger an election (which is the real reason that the Conservatives have been so much more cooperative and willing to let bills pass on division rather than with standing votes). This does give the government more tools to shut down antics, but it won’t end the antics. Far from it. And it’s just precious that Andrew Scheer of all people is taking offence to the National Post using this as a headline. Both-sidesing for me but not for thee!
Amateur media critic Andrew Scheer is badmouthing the National Post! *gasp!* The Conservatives are just so hard done by!
— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-23T04:07:31.566Z
As part of this, the government has rejected the proposal by Scheer and the Conservatives to maintain an opposition majority on the three opposition-chaired “oversight” committees, and claims that this is about the Liberals trying to shut down investigations into their corruption, which is both hyperbolic and ignorant of history. Some of us have been on the Hill for a while now, and we remember that when the Harper government went from a minority to a majority parliament that they also took over committees and stripped them of any vestige of independence that they still had, and turned them all into branch plants of ministers’ offices. I wonder who the Speaker was at that time? Oh, wait—it was Scheer. Meanwhile, under the past couple of parliaments, the Conservatives have led a charge to not only turn these “oversight” committees into partisan clown shows so that they can harvest clips from them, but they have absolutely perverted some of the most serious and grown-up committees such as Public Accounts in order to have them do things like conduct witch hunts into the Trudeau Foundation (which has absolutely nothing to do with Public Accounts’ mandate), destroying the best committee that there was. (And before you ask, you can thank former NDP MP Blake Desjarlais for going along with it).
Meanwhile, on the subject of accountability, reporters asked prime minister Mark Carney why he’s not going to Question Period more, and he gave some nonsense about the government operating as a “team” so they can answer, before taking a swipe at the quality of the questions being asked. And I mean, fair play that the questions have been uniquely terrible, however a) as prime minister, it’s his job to go to QP whether he likes it or not; and b) just because the questions are terrible, it doesn’t mean the answers have to be. Instead of just repeating a couple of self-congratulatory talking points, Carney could instead be using facts to dismantle the very premise of Poilievre’s questions, particularly around his claims about economic growth, “money-printing,” food price inflation, and so on, but he doesn’t, and that’s a choice, and it’s a choice that makes everyone worse-off in the end.
Ukraine Dispatch
Russian drones attacked infrastructure in Odesa early Wednesday, and have hit an apartment block in Dnipro this early this morning. The Druzhba pipeline has restarted, and thanks to Hungary’s new government, the €90 billion EU loan to Ukraine has been unblocked.
Good reads:
- Mark Carney says that trade talks with the US could drag out, and that he won’t let the Americans alone dictate the terms.
- The Americans are demanding even more concessions before trade talks even begin (to which they should be told to go pound sand).
- Lina Diab’s unclear communication is spreading misinformation about a proposed programme to convert some temporary residents to permanent residents.
- Eleanor Olszewski says the government cannot promise to deliver on a national flood insurance programme “in the near future.”
- The PMO is considering using digital asbestos tools to help with the volume of correspondence to the prime minister (which seems offensive on its face).
- Public Safety officials say that they have increased monitoring of the Iranian regime’s threats to the diaspora community in Canada.
- The government has been considering that a new west coast pipeline might use the existing Trans Mountain route rather than a northern one.
- It turns out that CBSA only started auditing its database use around the time that they caught one of their agents accessing it for his real estate side gig.
- The Supreme Court of Canada ruled from the bench 7-2 against the Quebec Government’s plan to block the independent boundary commission’s work.
- Anne Applebaum lays out the kind of authoritarianism that Viktor Orbán employed, which MAGA is replicating (and I would add so are people like Danielle Smith).
- Susan Delacourt offers her appreciation to the US Senator who called out Howard Lutnick’s moaning about the ban on US alcohol sales here in Canada.
- Paul Wells reflects on Mark Carney’s “Forward Guidance” video, with four separate thoughts about both the content and the format.
Odds and ends:
Stop Picking On Doug Ford, Ontario!youtu.be/P-mOlaBgnjY
— Clare Blackwood (@clareblackwood.bsky.social) 2026-04-22T20:16:29.660Z
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