Prime minister Mark Carney announced his national electricity plan yesterday, which he’s calling Powering Canada Strong™ (and I swear to Zeus, I am so tired of branding everything “Canada Strong™” by this point). He wants to double production by 2050, as well as connect provincial power grids with interties, build the skilled workforce necessary, and manufacture the technology to do so in Canada. And it all sounds well and good, but to get there, he plans to weaken the Trudeau-era Clean Electricity Regulations in order to allow a lot more natural gas-fired production. You know, for “flexibility.”

At this point you have to wonder how Carney can keep up the pretence that he is still going to meet our climate targets, and yet, he keeps saying that’s what’s going to happen. Sure, he’ll “adjust them,” but if you say we’re weakening them, he gets testy and huffy. But the notion that by “building up we can drive emissions down” is farcical on its face. It relies on the same logic of reducing emissions intensity while increasing the overall volume of production (and it was a tell that he used emissions intensity when talking about gas-fired electricity)—you’re still increasing overall emissions, albeit at a slightly lower rate. And to be clear, Canada was making progress in driving emission down, and we had an actual path to meeting our targets, but that has been completely blown out of the water now.

I’m also getting increasingly tired of this being billed as “pragmatic,” when it’s not in the longer term. The climate crisis is already here, and it’s reflected in the dramatic increase in wildfire season, extreme weather events, and increasing droughts that have pushed up food prices, at home and abroad. We can’t just keep ignoring this and treating climate goals or environmental protection as a luxury add-on. It’s essential to ensuring we have a stable economy of the future, and the fact that Carney and nearly everyone else is ignoring this fact is a really, really big problem, because the costs for kicking this down the road are already being felt. It’s only going to get worse from here, and they keep insisting that they want to make that future pain as bad as it can possibly get.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-05-14T19:08:01.779Z

Programming Note: I am taking the full long weekend off from the blog. See you Wednesday, and happy Victoria Day.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s massive drone attack continues, with the count at over 1567 drones since Wednesday, and the death toll now over 37 as an apartment building was struck. Zelenskyy’s former chief of staff has now been arrested in relation to money laundering charges. Meanwhile, the government of Latvia has lost its parliamentary majority over the handling of the incident where a Ukrainian drone accidentally flew into their territory.

Good reads:

• When asked about the ongoing separatist petition drama, Mark Carney said that the “best place for Alberta is in Canada.” (Great, that clears everything up).
• Marc Miller says the government will be moving ahead with a ban for minors with digital asbestos chatbots, so say goodbye to your internet privacy.
• David McGuinty is suggesting that Canada could contribute a vessel, demining assistance, or satellite information to a potential Strait of Hormuz operation.
• Mélanie Joly got her turn with the Artemis II astronauts at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters in Longueuil, Quebec, yesterday.
• The government has been making a big play to build ties in the Persian Gulf, but is being mighty silent about human rights in the process.
• Two years after the law to create the Miscarriage of Justice Review committee was passed into law, the government still hasn’t actually created it.
• The US plans to put tariffs on Canadian mushroom exports, claiming ordinary agricultural tax breaks are subsidies. (This is, naturally, being appealed).
• Mobile phone data shows that trips to the US by Canadians has fallen by 42 percent, which is higher than the StatsCan estimate of 25 percent.
• AFN national chief Cindy Woodhouse Neepinak says the proposed “streamlining” of reviews contains a lot that is unacceptable to First Nations (and the environment).
• The Federal Court is beginning the process of hearing constitutional challenges related to the recent changes to the asylum system.
• Ontario is planning a massive expansion of provincial jails, which will solve nothing.
• Wab Kinew says he is planning for a “commissioner” to keep minors off of social media, which means nothing. This is a clueless, hollow promise.
• Lindsay Tedds calls all the bullshit on those who dismiss concerns about the lack of funding clarity in the Spring Economic Update as “political economy.”
• Supriya Dwivedi points out just how expansive the privacy violations are in the government’s lawful access bill as written, and that they need to understand that.
• Clarke Reis walks through the reasons why that court ruling on Wednesday is so devastating for Alberta separatists.
• John Michael McGrath delivers the scathing rebuke that the shenanigans in the Scarborough Southwest nomination show the Ontario Liberals are a party in crisis.
• Althia Raj notes that the government’s proposed rules to essentially ignore the Species at Risk Act could spell the end of the southern resident killer whales.
• Shannon Proudfoot marvels at how the talk by the Artemis II astronauts at the NAC this week was so grounded in their shared humanity.
• My Xtra column looks at the state of affairs in Alberta, and that separation is a white/Christian nationalist project that doesn’t need to be inevitable.

Odds and ends:

Not sure this is satire anymore.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-05-14T16:15:41.286Z

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