There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth happening by the Conservatives because debate in two committees was moved behind closed doors now that the Liberals are able to exert majority control of them. The cry is that they’re shutting down “public debate,” but I’m dubious. Members of the government won’t say why this was necessary, but I’m not ready to pull the fire alarm just yet.
Why? Because the two committees in question have been in the throes of attempted witch hunt studies that the Conservatives have been trying to orchestrate (with the gleeful assistance of the Bloc, who are happy to embarrass the government any day of the week). In the ethics committee, it’s been the wrangling over trying to insinuate that François-Philippe Champagne was in a conflict of interest because the Alto high speed rail project was included in the budget when he has since put up an ethics screen because his spouse is now an executive on the project. The thing is, the Ethics Commissioner already said that there is no conflict because Alto reports to a different line minister, but Champagne put up the screen out of an abundance of caution. He did agree to appear after a filibuster, but this may be the Liberals trying to get out of it, and not unsurprisingly. The Conservatives have been trying to engineer this meeting so that they can harvest a bunch of clips of them calling Champagne corrupt and him prevaricating or looking obstinate.
The other committee is health, where the Conservatives are trying to manufacture another “boondoggle” around the PrescribeIT project, which as I understand it, was created at the behest of the provinces, who then decided not to take it up once it was developed. Oh, but there was outsourcing! And? They haven’t been able to make any particular allegation other than it cost money, and this is somehow entirely the federal government’s fault for trying to accommodate provinces who, to this day, refuse to come together on common standards for electronic health records, which has been a persistent problem for two decades now. Suffice to say, I’m not convinced that moving procedural wrangling in camera is a sign that democracy is under threat, and there was a whole lot of this very same thing when the Conservatives had a majority on committees (and they turned those committees into branch plants of ministers’ offices). They may try to cast themselves as heroes for inventing scandals, but I remain unconvinced that this is a danger to parliamentary democracy just yet.
Ukraine Dispatch
Russia’s attack on Odesa early Wednesday hit residential buildings and a hospital. Ukraine says its new long-range drones hit a Russian oil pumping station 1500 km away from the border. Here is a look at the interceptor drone programme to stop Russia’s Shahed drones, and how the interception rate is now up to 90 percent.
Good reads:
- Mark Carney insists his clean electricity strategy is on the way, in spite of saying “next week” a month ago.
- After being coy about it for a day, the government confirmed they are considering privatising airports (for dubious reasons).
- Tim Hodgson says the federal government will help fund a “nuclear renaissance.”
- Gary Anandasangaree pledged $145 million for security funding for the FIFA World Cup games being held in Canada.
- Marc Miller says any ban on social media for minors would need to be national (but still almost nobody cares about the massive privacy violations this would entail).
- Here is a first look at the legislation to create the new Financial Crimes Agency.
- The government is planning to outsource the backlog of travel complaints at the Canadian Transportation Agency to a third party.
- The Public Sector Integrity Commissioner’s office is at the point of collapse because they are overwhelmed, and got no new money in the spring update.
- Canada was the unanimous choice of 19 member countries to host the proposed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank—but it may yet not go ahead.
- Iranian soccer officials were turned away at the airport for their ties to the regime, leaving questions as to who they were allowed to get on the plane in the first place.
- Hanwha’s attempt to sweeten their submarine bid is to also pledge to save auto jobs by building armoured vehicles in Canada.
- Conservative MP Kelly DeRidder claims that the Liberals have attempted to poach her to cross the floor. (I have doubts that all of these poaching stories will be true).
- Jamil Jivani is back in Washington to meet with Jamieson Greer (with the ambassador present), which seemed to take Poilievre off-guard.
- Kevin Carmichael parses the Bank of Canada’s thinking in holding interest rates.
Odds and ends:
No #QP for the PM tomorrow. #cdnpoli
— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-30T01:43:06.402Z
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