Roundup: Not doing anything about Xitter

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The federal government has been pretty quiet about just what they plan to do about Xitter, given the recent explosion of “deep fake” nudes and child sexual abuse images that its digital asbestos chatbot has been creating, to say nothing of the fact that the site has been gamed to be a far-right disinformation platform. In spite of all of this, government department and ministers continue to use the platform, and feel they have little choice given that its adoption was once wide-spread (but now it’s a haunted house full of bots interacting with one another and gaming each other’s replies).

Of course not. That would make the tech bros that Solomon is sucking up to very angry. What an absolutely useless waste of a Cabinet minster.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-11T06:22:14.369Z

In spite of media reports saying that Canada, the UK and another country were looking at joining forces to impose some kind of ban, that clearly isn’t happening, nor would I expect it to because both Mark Carney and Evan Solomon have bought into the digital asbestos hype, and have been promising few regulations for the tech bros because they don’t want to “stifle innovation” never mind that we are seeing in real time what online harms look like. Saying that these images are illegal is not enough because it requires people alerting the police to specific images that the chatbot generates, and then police resources to investigate and charge the individual before prosecution. This is too big of a problem for individual prosecutions.

The government has plenty of tools at their disposal, but they are afraid to use them because they know that Elon Musk or any of the other tech bros will go crying to Daddy Trump if someone tries to regulate them, and Carney is too keen to get a deal from Trump that he keeps capitulating on regulating these web giants and the tech bros behind them. But that might require someone like Solomon to demonstrate a modicum of courage or backbone, which don’t seem to be qualities he possesses.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-01-10T15:08:01.416Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians attacked Kyiv late Sunday, setting fire in one city district. A thousand apartment blocks in Kyiv are still without heat after Friday’s attack.

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Roundup: Loosening the advertising rules they put into place

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The federal government, in their infinite communications wisdom, has decided to change the rules around government advertising so that they can do things like more easily use slogans, and to advertise programmes before they have been passed by Parliament. Worse, their excuses for doing so are utterly ridiculous, saying that the more “dangerous and divided world” needs faster communications and the old process was “too slow and duplicative.” Sorry, you think you need to be able to advertise slogans or programmes that do not officially exist yet because it’s faster? Are you kidding me?

The point of these rules is to create a separation between party and government, and the Harper government had incidents where this got them into trouble, such as when Pierre Poilievre, as minister of Employment and Skills Development, showed up at a government announcement in party-branded attire and got in trouble with Elections Canada for it. These rules exist for a reason, but Carney has decided that they’re inconvenient for him, so he needs to alter them. If the Liberals’ usual kryptonite is arrogance, Carney’s personal brand of it is acting like a magnifying glass. He should be reminded of this fact, before he drives the party off the very cliff he rescued them from.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia used hypersonic medium-range missiles to strike Lviv early Friday morning, which is being considered a “warning” to Europe. That same day, drones hit two foreign-flagged civilian vessels in ports in the Odesa region. Here are Kyiv residents dealing with damage to their homes as a result of these attacks.

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Roundup: Framing headlines to privilege the lie

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Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, I want to once again return to the issue of how stories are being framed. The shooting in Minnesota has been of particular interest in the last couple of days, and so many outlets are framing it using the lies from the Trump administration. For most of the day, CBC had on their website a headline to the effect of “Shooting victim ‘weaponized’ vehicle: Federal officials” which frames it with the lie as being the “official” version of the facts, leaving people who only read the headline to conclude that was what happened. (I don’t have exact wording as the headline changed when the story got updated later in the day).

Because CBC will always egregiously both-sides everything in order to avoid being called biased, even though they're still going to be called biased anyway.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-08T16:27:29.959Z

This is both-sidesing at its most egregious, not only because it is not actively calling out what is a clear lie by the administration, but because it is giving preferential treatment to the lie over the version of events that we could all see on the various videos of the incident. This is the kind of behaviour that let parties and political actors realize that they can lie with impunity—because they won’t be called out on it. Legacy media outlets will just both-sides it, and let the lie fester as those who are predisposed to believe it because it came from their preferred party don’t have their beliefs challenged, and they start making up justifications when evidence no longer fits the lie. We The Media created this monster, and we not only don’t know what to do with it, we refuse to change the very behaviours that created the monster in the first place.

Which brings me back to an example closer to home—Conservative MP Garnett Genuis claiming—falsely—that he was being censored on the York University campus. It turns out that he didn’t get the proper permissions for setting up a table to talk to students for his wannabe Charlie Kirk cosplay, but how was this news story framed by both The Canadian Press and Conservative-friendly Postmedia? With Genuis’ claim of censorship, which again, privileges the lie for those who only read the headline. (And yes, Genuis has a history of lying to play the victim as part of his crybully shtick, which he once tried to do to me in an attempt to get my credentials revoked). And once again, it was both-sidesed, and Genuis doesn’t get called out for fabricating the version of events, meaning he will continue to do so because he knows it works. And We The Media keep letting him get away with it.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones attacked Kyiv early Friday morning, killing at least four. There was also an attack on infrastructure in the western Lviv region. Russia is also threatening that any troops sent by other countries as part of a ceasefire agreement would be “legitimate combat targets.” (Some ceasefire that would be).

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Roundup: Twenty years of ignoring a warning

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I find myself a little bit fascinated with the story of the main water feeder pipe break in Calgary, mostly because of what it exposes about municipal politics in this country. Council was presented with a report today that shows that they were warned about this twenty years ago, and that nobody did anything about it during all that time. Twenty. Years. The report was commissioned after the 2024 pipe break, and here it is, broken again, because they didn’t finish the job.

Here is the independent panel's timeline of how risk was identified with the Bearspaw Feeder Main 20 years before it ruptured in June 2024.

— Adam MacVicar (@adammacvicar.bsky.social) 2026-01-07T21:19:54.037Z

City councils didn’t prioritize it because they have been so preoccupied with keeping property taxes as low as possible that these kinds of major infrastructure projects continue to be underfunded and overlooked. City staff apparently have unclear reporting structures so nobody becomes responsible for this kind of an issue, and the author of the report was saying he wouldn’t lay the blame on any one individual or era of council. “This problem existed. It repeated itself. It did not surface to the right level of decision-making. And so it’s very difficult, in my opinion, to lay specific blame on any individual. We had a process weakness that was not corrected.”

The thing is, we have a lot of city councils in this country who are also focused solely on keeping their property taxes down, and placating NIMBYs, and we there is other critical infrastructure in this country that is bound for failure. Councils adopt a learned helplessness when city staff don’t do their due diligence about these kinds of failures, and vanishingly few councils are doing their jobs in ensuring these kinds of issues are actually being dealt with. This could be a warning for other cities to take a second look and ensure that they are doing the inspections and maintenance that was ignored here…or they will rely on normalcy bias and leave it for later because clearly it won’t happen to them, right? I have a feeling I know which is more likely.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia attacked two seaports in the Odesa region on Wednesday, while late-night strikes knocked out power in two southeaster regions.

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Roundup: Immediately approve what pipeline?

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In the wake of the Venezuela happenings, Pierre Poilievre has decided to do what Pierre Poilievre does best, which is come up with a half-baked pronouncement and make it confidently—in this case, demand the immediate approval of a pipeline to the Pacific. Erm, you know, with absolutely no plan attached, or any of the necessary details about said pipeline. But sure, approve it. (Incidentally, Alberta launched a website for its attempt to get proponents for such a plan).

Poilievre and his followers are so insistent that if government just “got out of the way” that things would get built. Of course, the other thing that Poilievre has said outright is that even though he will “consult” with local First Nations, he will push through a pipeline without their consent, on their lands, where they hold treaty rights. I don’t think he understands what that actually means, and that’s going to be a problem that will merely ensure that all of his plans will land in protracted litigation, and eventually fail (and no, you can’t invoke the Notwithstanding Clause on treaty rights).

And because of course he is, David Eby is musing about refineries instead of export pipelines, which isn’t going to happen because they are extremely expensive to build and would require billions and billions in government subsidies for little return (and yes, the Alberta government tried that and is still paying for that particular error in judgment.

Ukraine Dispatch

The new Czech prime minister says they will continue to run the ammunition sourcing programme for Ukraine, but won’t contribute money to it.

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Roundup: Freeland’s botched departure announcement

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Early Monday morning, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that he had appointed Chrystia Freeland as a new advisor on economic development, which was a little peculiar considering that she is still a sitting MP, and still holds the role of a parliamentary secretary in her capacity as the prime minister’s special representative on Ukrainian reconstruction. This being said, we know she’s on her way out the door because her new job with the Rhodes Trust starts in July, so she had a definite end date in being before that.

Immediately, Conservatives like Michael Chong demanded her immediate resignation because of the conflict of interest this posed, and it wasn’t for several more hours that she announced that she will be formally resigning by the end of the month, with an immediate tweet from Carney to praise her for her work and for Ukraine, but Great Cyllenian Hermes, this was so badly handled by Carney’s PMO.

While I will grant that this pretty much went down while he was in the air on the way to Paris, they should have been prepared for this to go live at the same time as Zelenskyy’s announcement, and been aware of the time zones in play, because all they manged to do was muddy the waters around the potential conflict of interest, what is going on with any kind of approvals from the Ethics Commissioner, and not spent the bulk of daylight hours looking stunned or blindsided—especially as there was talk that the offer from Zelenskyy came in late December, even if most of Official Ottawa has been shut down for the bulk of that time period. This kind of thing continues to make Carney’s PMO look like amateur hour, and that once again, a Liberal government can’t communicate their way out of a wet paper bag. Honestly…

In Case You Missed It:

  • My column on whether Carney is capable of adapting to a post-neoliberal world in order to be the right prime minister for the moment (as Poilievre sure can’t).
  • My year-end episode taking a cue from the Ellie Goulding meme about how anything could happen—and did in Canadian politics in 2025.
  • My weekend column on the credulousness by which the supposed “end of the consensus on immigration” gets covered, and what gets omitted in the retelling.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take on changes that Carney has made to Canada over the past year, and what we should be watching out for as a part of it.
  • My column on the faux debate raging over whether Carney wants to turn the Senate back to a two-party system when they should worry about his appointments.
  • My weekend column on how Carney’s plans to Build Canada requires better data from the provinces, which we can’t keep waiting for them to get their acts together.

Very chuffed to see several of my stories on this list, including the most-read story of the year. Thanks to all of my readers!

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-12-29T22:50:06.873Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones hit a hospital in Kyiv on Sunday night, and struck energy infrastructure in Kharkiv as well as a US-based agricultural producer in Dnipro late Monday. President Zelenskyy is shaking up his top officials, including his spy chief.

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Roundup: Appointing another friend to an important post

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It’s now official—prime minster Mark Carney has announced his plan to name his friend Mark Wiseman to the role of Ambassador to the US as of February 15th. Wiseman has no prior diplomatic experience, but was a mergers & acquisitions lawyer before becoming an asset manager at Blackrock, and yes, he was a donor to Carney’s leadership campaign as well as his election campaign, donating the maximum for each.

There were immediate howls about this appointment from the Bloc and the Conservatives because of Wiseman’s involvement in the “Century Initiative,” which was a proposal to triple Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100, which we were on track to do regardless (before the current decision to halt immigration to the point where our population was in decline last quarter). The Bloc are treating this kind of thing like their own version of “Great Replacement Theory” because a) they are an ethnic nationalist party, and b) they see an expansion of the rest of the Canadian population as diminishing Quebec’s influence, because they heavily limit their own immigration (because again, ethnic nationalism) and their birth rate is very low. The Conservatives are treating it like Great Replacement Theory writ-large, and use it to scaremonger about Muslims and such, while also pretending to care about Quebec. There was also that stupid brouhaha about when Wiseman retweeted an Andrew Coyne column headline about said Initiative and people took it to be Wiseman insulting Quebec, so that’s great. Oh, and he apparently said he’s opposed to Supply Management, so of course Quebec and the majority of Conservatives are also opposed to his appointment.

This being said, I find myself increasingly uncomfortable by the fact that Carney keeps naming friends and former colleagues to top jobs, some elected (Tim Hodgson), some appointed (the head of the Defence Investment Agency), is a worrying trend because it’s starting to reek of cronyism. I also am reminded of the fate of Bill Morneau, who also did not grasp the ethical considerations in government of just calling up your friends and network to do things (in Morneau’s case, those friends were WE Charity), because that’s how you do them in the corporate world. Government is not the corporate world, and I know we’re all tired of hearing it, but no, you should not run government like a business or a corporation. Nothing good can come of this.

Programming Note: And that’s it for 2025. I’m taking a break from the blog until the first week of January, so enjoy your holidays everyone.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-22T23:08:01.593Z

Ukraine Dispatch

There was yet another strike on Odesa, the second within twenty-four hours. President Zelenskyy says those kidnapped villagers from Sumy region had long had dealings across the border without incident. Here is a look at Ukraine’s new low-cost interceptor drones, taking out attacking Russian drones for much cheaper. (Gallery here).

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Roundup: Naïve assumptions about the energy transition

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There were a couple of longreads over the weekend that are worth your time when it comes to understanding where we are at with the current government. The first was a deep dive into Carney’s past climate “leadership,” from his time at central banks to the UN, and a pattern emerges throughout where much of this “leadership” was fairly surface-level. Scratch the surface, and you find a lot of on naïve assumptions around a market response to the clean energy transition, coupled with some arrogant beliefs that he was right and no one could tell him otherwise (as those companies he was touting were also heavily invested in fossil fuels). In the time since, we have all watched as Carney has systematically betrayed that former climate leadership, and continues to rely on a “just trust me” approach to that clean energy transition as he breaks his word with little regard.

The second longread was in the Globe & Mail about Tim Hodgson and his adjustment going from banker CEO to Cabinet minister, with his belief that government bureaucrats are essentially lazy and stupid, and needing to learn how to be politically sensitive to the realities that he has little patience for as he looks to secure deals as quickly as possible. Along the way, he is learning that things don’t work like that, and that there are plenty of other considerations that he continues to ignore, like obligations regarding First Nations. And how he continues to alienate the actual clean energy people in his own department, along with the part of the Liberal caucus that actually care about climate change, because hey, he needs to be Mr. Business. This is what “running government like a company” is bringing, and it comes with a hell of a lot of ideological blind spots, while they insist that they’re not being ideological.

As well, in year-enders, Carney has been criticising the Trudeau approach to climate change as “too much regulation, not enough action,” which goes back to his particular assumptions about the market and why the government wasn’t able to rely on carbon pricing alone to achieve its goals, Oh, and he’s still completely sold on the belief that carbon capture is the route to go, even though it only captures a fraction of the emissions from the production process (and none of the downstream uses), so the math doesn’t even work there. He also talks about “guardrails” in dealing with China, but considering there has been no hint of that with India, I’m not holding my breath.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-20T15:08:01.975Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Following more Russian airstrikes and bombings in the Odesa region, president Zelenskyy says that Russia is trying to cut off Ukraine’s Black Sea access. Russian forces have crossed the border in Sumy region and kidnapped 50 villagers. Ukraine has signed an agreement with Portugal go co-produce sea drones. Here is a look at a Ukrainian artist who is reflecting the war through his collection and work.

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Roundup: Lessons learned for the NDP?

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NDP interim leader Don Davies have his year-ender to The Canadian Press, talking about getting out to listen to Canadians, and reflect on the party’s devastating loss, and joking that the best part about being burnt to the ground is the ability to rebuild the foundation. And he’s not entirely wrong there, so long as he’s taking the right lessons. But in the same interview, he’s waxing poetic about pharamacare without actually seeming to understand what the issues are (i.e. the provinces), and totally ignoring the work that Trudeau did into building up the programme from the ground up (such as establishing the Canadian Drug Agency) so that provinces could sign on once they were ready, as PEI did (and NDP provinces refused to, particularly BC and John Horgan most especially).

On the same day, the NDP’s Renew and Renewal Report from the last campaign was also released, and it has a few interesting things to say. Once you get past the usual back-patting about how hard everyone worked and how it didn’t feel like it was doomed, and how the leader’s campaign went well, you start getting into some of the structural problems within the party that really do need addressing. Things like the sense that there is an allergy to fundraising in the party, and that nobody wants to actually do it, which doesn’t really help anyone (but also perpetuates the weirdness that bequests from the estates of dead people are one of the party’s top fundraising sources). And there was also a lot in there about the party not properly developing riding associations, and relying too heavily on the central party at the expense of those associations. And to be frank, this should have been a lesson the party internalized after they got nearly entirely wiped out from Quebec in 2015, because they didn’t build up their riding associations during the “Orange Wave,” but assumed that somehow those MPs would have incumbency advantage forever when they didn’t really establish grassroots after all of those accidental victories.

The other thing that is worth noting is that once again, it draws American examples for inspiration, and again it’s Zohran Mamdani. I suspect the reason for this is that too many people in the NDP’s brain trust are terminally online, and as with so many things, the American discourse pervades and they simply think that it can apply to Canada if you divide it by ten, even though we are very separate countries and that we are not just a maple cupcake version of Americana. I’m also going to note that the report said pretty much nothing about the NDP constantly trying to interfere in areas of provincial jurisdiction (particularly with their “bold progressive ideas”), because again, their American analogues don’t translate to Canada in the same way, but this was apparently an area of introspection they didn’t want to engage in. Alas.

This reminds me of something I've been wondering about. Given the various examples of the NDP being the government or official opposition at the provincial level, I'm not sure why federal New Democrats so often — or so recently? — look to the U.S. for inspiration.

— Aaron Wherry (@aaronwherry.bsky.social) 2025-12-19T21:14:07.891Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-19T14:24:03.406Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched another missile attack on Odesa, killing seven and wounding at least 15 late Friday. There was an exchange of bodies by both governments—1003 dead Ukrainian servicemen for the bodies of 26 Russians. Ukraine and Poland are working out a cooperation agreement around drones.

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Roundup: Shrugging off the trade irritant list

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Prime minister Mark Carney made remarks on the trade situation with the US yesterday, saying that the timelines being what they are, hope for any sectoral tariff deals will likely be rolled into the broader New NAFTA review taking place next year, in spite of the fact that we had apparently been close to a deal before they got blown up by the Reagan ads (though one should contend that it is more than likely that if it wasn’t the ads, something else would have been used as justification to call off the talks, because this is Trump exercising the so-called “art of the deal.”)

Carney was somewhat dismissive of the capitulation list that the US Trade Representative has laid out, and insisted that this was really nothing, that there are dozens of irritants on all sides, but made the promise again to protect Supply Management, because reasons. This being said, there has been commentary that within the existing market cap there could be better efforts for US dairy access, because of how the supply management system works in that only certain producers are allowed to hold the quotas for imports, and if they want to make it difficult, then the market cap doesn’t get reached. This has long been a complaint for Europe, because frankly, the Canadian system is designed with fuckery in mind. Fixing that might help alleviate some of the complaints, but it would take political will to actually do that (though I’m not sure just what American dairy we would be so eager to import, given that their cheese is nothing special compared to Europe or the UK).

Nevertheless, I am most especially worried about the Online Streaming Act and Online News Act complaints from the Americans, and that Carney would be tempted to dump those as capitulation for the sake of “continuing negotiations” like he did with the Digital Services Tax. The problem here is that Trump is going to bat for the tech broligarchy because they have pledged their fealty to him and offered him up large bribes, so he is bullying other countries on their behalf because they don’t want to be regulated. The fact that these specific complaints continue to be treated as trade irritants and not just tech bros being whinging babies is a problem, and will continue to be a problem so long as they remain his loyal backers.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling near Odesa has killed one person, and hit power systems. This comes after an attack on power systems in five regions the night before. European countries have agreed on another €90 billion loan for Ukraine, putting off the question of frozen Russian assets once again. Here is a look at Russia’s hybrid warfare sabotage operations across Europe, designed to distract and overwhelm those country’s resources.

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