Tag Archives: Access to Information

QP: Ministers not proving their ability to know their files

Posted on by
Reply

The PM was still at the G7 in France, while Pierre Poilievre was also absent, and for some reason, Branden Leslie led off with a shouted recitation of the “recession” script, and François-Philippe Champagne suggested that the Conservatives were not happy but he bought good news about the highest level of foreign direct investment and the second-fastest growth in the G7. Leslie cited people turning to GoFundMe pages to afford to live, and Champagne assured him that Canadians don’t want another clip, they want action, and he listed measures the government has taken. Gabriel Hardy took forward in French, read a weeks-ago talking point about the prime minister talking about the level of affordability before reading today’s clip-bait about GoFundMe pages. Champagne accused the Conservatives of hypocrisy for their voting against programmes to help people. Hardy suggested that people want the government to stop what’s not working, and that government spending was driving the country into recession. Lightbound suggested the number of people in Hardy’s riding getting that GST credit would disagree. Shannon Stubbs picked up the metaphorical baton to angrily read the day’s script, including the GoFundMe mention, and this time Tim Hodgson listed programmes that are getting underway. Stubbs railed about the prime minister’s in-flight catering and meandered into the “inflationary spending” talking point. Steven MacKinnon got up to wonder what the Conservatives are for if they vote against all measures to help people.

Yves Perron led for the Bloc, and complained about the programming motion on Bill C-22 and time allocation on Bill C-30. MacKinnon took a swipe at the Bloc for opposing the high-speed rail project and all of good things it would bring. Perron kept up his complaints about these “gag orders” that prevent MPs from doing their jobs, and to keep civil society from realising the abuse in those laws. MacKinnon said they would not apologise for working on the priorities of Canadians, like high-speed rail. (Erm, lawful access is not this, guys). Claude DeBellefeuille took her own crack at complaining about the motion on Bill C-22, and Lightbound said he wouldn’t apologise for taking action on things like transit…which again, is not lawful access.

Continue reading →

QP: More grousing about in-flight catering

Posted on by
Reply

As the final sitting week of the spring sitting began, the PM was yet again absent, this time off in Evian, France, for the G7 meeting. Pierre Poilievre was also absent, leaving it up to Rhonda Kirkland to lead off, bafflingly, and she read the tired script about the country supposedly being in recession (we’re not), and the prime minister’s in-flight catering. Steven MacKinnon rose to point out that the Conservatives merely vote against any assistance for Canadians while Mark Carney brings back trade deals. Kirkland recited the scripted line that these were just “illusions,” and MacKinnon says that success looks like Canada creating twice as many jobs per capital than the U.S., high-speed rail, and the MOU with Alberta. John Brassard took over to sanctimoniously to cite the CFIB’s press release this morning on small businesses feeling uncertain, before moving onto the “recession”talking points. Tim Hodgson dismissed this, and listed project that are being built. Brassard tied again, demanding the government scrap their policies over the past six years, and Hodgson said the Conservatives are trying to fight the election from six years ago, and cited Danielle Smith’s optimism (not that it’s worth anything). Luc Berthold took over in French to cite the same reports and talking points, to which Joël Lightbound pointed out that the Conservatives voted against any measure to help Canadians. Berthold tried again, citing more newspaper stories, and Lightbound pointed to the tens of thousands of people in Berthold’s riding benefitting from government programmes.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she listed the ways in which Carney capitulated to the Americans and abandoned Europe to do it. MacKinnon said that there is another European phenomenon which they should sign onto, being high-speed rail. Normandin listed more sins of Carney’s in betraying Europe, and MacKinnon continued to praise high-speed rail. Martin Champoux took over to give the same condemnation of “abandoning” the EU, particularly around streaming levies and the digital services tax. Lightbound got back up to point out that the Bloc hasn’t spoken about culture with the budget.

Continue reading →

Roundup: More demands to interfere with judicial nominations

Posted on by

Three more premiers have now joined Danielle Smith in her demand for more say in judicial appointments, both at the provincial superior court level as well as when it comes to Supreme Court of Canada nominees, and it would be the usual suspects—Scott Moe, Doug Ford, and François Legault. Quite immediately, federal justice minister Sean Fraser essentially told them to go pound sand, which is the correct answer, but that doesn’t mean they won’t cause a fuss about this, and try and invent a new grievance out of this.

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3mht45l24ec2w

Clearly these premiers, each of whom are constitutional vandals who have invoked the Notwithstanding Clause, are looking to politicise the appointments to their own ends, often with nonsense around judges being too “soft on crime.” Never mind that the vast majority of criminal cases are heard by provincially-appointed judges, whose appointments they already control (and Doug Ford has taken steps to make the process more partisan in Ontario), they are looking to exert more influence over appointments because they believe they can find candidates who will be more favourable to their positions, particularly when their constitutionality is challenged. Danielle Smith likes to refer to federally-appointed judges as “agents of Ottawa,” even though they are from the province they are appointed in, on the advice of local judicial advisory committees, which provincial governments already play a role in, both in terms of advising and vetting potential nominees to ensure that they don’t see problems with them.

I would add that the other thing about these judges being federally-appointed is that they are paid for by the federal government, and considering how much provinces already underfund their justice systems, I would not want to see them in control of even more appointments, whom they will underfund and undermine at every turn.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-03-24T21:22:01.960Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched nearly 1000 drones at Ukraine, 550 of which were during the daytime and hit as far as Lviv. Here is a look at Ukraine’s strikes on Russian energy facilities.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Longest Ballot Committee is back at it

Posted on by

The losers at the Longest Ballot Committee are back at it, this time targeting the by-election in Terrebonne, because of course they are. Despite the fact that their supposed protest has not garnered them any actual traction to their cause, which tracks, because their means of protest is pretty divorced from the results they’re trying to achieve, which is to convince people that what we really need is proportional representation. Flooding the ballot with names nobody will vote for doesn’t scream “We need PR,” but what do I know? And then, their “longest ballot” turned into the shortest ballot in Battle River—Crowfoot, when it simply became a write-in ballot because it was easier for Elections Canada at that point (even though those ballots take more time to verify).

This being said, we could have had measures to help blunt their attempts when the House of Commons was trying to pass changes to the Canada Elections Act in the previous parliament, and the Chief Electoral Officer had suggestions for how to thwart these losers, but none of it got implemented. Why? The Conservatives, led mostly by the antics of Michael Cooper. The Conservatives decided to fuck around with that bill instead of treating it seriously for a myriad of reasons, some of which included the fact that one of the proposals was to move the “fixed” election date a week later to avoid Diwali, but it also would have put a bunch of MPs (mostly Conservatives) over the line for their pensions, and the Conservatives (and Bloc and NDP) decided that this was a ploy by the Liberals to get their MPs those pensions (again, even though it was mostly the Conservatives who would benefit).

Cooper then spent his time on dilatory motions, such as “reasoned amendments” at second reading to prolong debate, and then once at committee, it was all manner of silly buggers, like “Change the fixed election date to three weeks from now so that the election is before Jagmeet Singh’s pension comes to pass,” and on and on it went, until we had the prorogation for Trudeau’s announced resignation, and the election call once the leadership had passed, before prorogation ended. That meant the bill died, and no changes were made to blunt the losers at the Longest Ballot Committee from doing this over, and over again, no matter that the Conservatives complained when Poilievre was targeted. And so, here we are, with them going at it yet again.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia made a rare daytime drone attack on Kyiv, that included targeting the city’s independence monument. Russia claims to have taken a dozen settlements over the past two weeks, which Ukraine is disputing (as they push Russian lines back).

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/2033471908142789046

Continue reading →

Roundup: Trying to politicize the Order of Canada

Posted on by

Because everything needs to be stupid all of the time, Conservative MP and obnoxious windbag Andrew Lawton started circulating a petition in support of his nomination of Don Cherry to the Order of Canada. The Order of Canada advisory board does not respond to petitions. It is an arm’s-length body chaired by the Chief Justice in order to apolitically weigh the nominations for the Order. I make this point because the honours system in Canada is held by the Crown in order to keep it apolitical (which is one reason why constitutional monarchy is superior). Lawton circulating this petition, which is being signed and championed by members of his caucus, including his leader, is the very definition of politicising these honours for the sake of culture war bullshit—after all, Cherry eventually lost his lucrative CBC gig because of racist commentary.

But because Lawton was so keen to gin up the culture war grift, he inadvertently pissed off members of his own caucus—specifically, most of the Quebec members, who are not fans of Cherry because Cherry also spent his career insulting Quebec and European players, and they are not looking to forgive and forget. And now this is spiralling because culture war grifting is by its very definition stupid and self-defeating. But when your political fundraising is tied to this same grifting complex, is it any wonder that this kind of self-own happens? And will they learn any lessons from this? Of course not.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-03-13T13:24:01.664Z

Carney-versary

It’s the one-year anniversary of Mark Carney being sworn-in as prime minister, so there are a few retrospectives. The National Post takes stock of what we know and don’t know about him, and the fact that there are still a few mysteries. JDM Stewart enumerates the expectations placed on Carney that he will need to deliver on. Althia Raj talks to 33 sources about that first year in office, and it’s a pretty honest assessment of the trends both good and bad he has demonstrated.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling killed one and wounded six in Dnipropetrovsk region, and an attack in Zaporizhzhia region injured four. President Zelenskyy warned that pausing Russian oil sanctions will only prolong the war.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Credulous takes on private members’ bills

Posted on by

There have been a few stories over the past few days that have raised my ire, so I’m going to take a few minutes to point a few things out. One of them is this CBC story yesterday about Jenny Kwan’s private member’s bill, and that as many as sixteen Liberals are considering supporting it. My beef: the sub-hed on the story reading “Vote would mark first time some in caucus split from government line under Carney.” Split from the government line? It’s a private member’s bill. Those are free votes by default. That’s the whole point of them. CBC should know better, and frankly, I really don’t like it when the media tries to play party whip while at the same time wishing that MPs were more independent.

The other story yesterday was about Conservative MP Dan Albas’ private member’s bill, which purports to empower Canada Post to deliver alcohol across provincial lines. Most of the stories in various outlets talked about how Dominic LeBlanc appeared to support the bill in Question Period, which he actually did not. What LeBlanc said was that this is an area of provincial regulation (which only the Star’s story mentions), but that he would bring it up when he meets with his provincial counterparts in a few weeks because he thinks it’s a good idea. And more to the point, this bill is a gimmick, which Albas and Pierre Poilievre insist overrides provincial regulation, but it actually doesn’t because, and just puts Canada Post in a bind. It would be great if any story could point that fact out, or talked to a lawyer, but nope, they focused on LeBlanc’s answer in QP, and even then couldn’t get the nuance right.

The third is a story from CBC on Monday, which was very concerned that a lot of bills are passing “on division,” meaning without a vote. The problem was the initial sub-hed on the story which stated “Half the bills passed in the House this session have cleared 3rd reading without a head count or consensus,” which is wrong, because “on division” is consensus you don’t need a vote—the “or consensus” was later dropped from the sub-hed. Of course, the real reason is that the Conservatives don’t want to go to an election, so they’re not going to force a vote and have Andrew Scheer and Scott Reid hide behind the curtains again to ensure that the math is right and that they won’t accidentally do something stupid with the vote counts given how everything is so close, but the person you reached as your source for your explainer is Peter Van Loan? Possibly the worst Government House Leader in decades (which is saying a lot)? It came across as amateurish, and like CBC’s parliamentary bureau has a hard time understanding how parliament works, which is not a good look.

When your parliamentary bureau doesn't understand parliament, dumb things happen.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-09T13:50:45.982Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-03-10T21:22:01.632Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia dropped three guided bombs on Sloviansk in the east, and hit Kharkiv and Dnipro with drones, injuring another twenty people. Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian invaders out of Dnipropetrovsk region, while Russia claims to be making gains in Donbas. Ukraine hit a missile plant in Bryansk region in Russia.

Continue reading →

Roundup: “Breaking ranks” to represent his constituents

Posted on by

Every news outlet in the country is framing Liberal MP Bruce Fanjoy as “breaking ranks” because he wrote a letter to the government in opposition to the latest return-to-office mandate for civil servants. Why is this language suspect? Because he’s not a member of Cabinet, so the expectation that he must be a compliant sheep and not step out of line is frankly wrong and non-existent. Backbenchers are there to hold the government to account, even if they’re in the same party. In fact, especially if they’re in the same party, because they are no good to anyone if they are nothing more than mindless clapping seals whose only purpose is to stand up and vote for the government and its programme at every opportunity.

https://twitter.com/brucefanjoy/status/2020920966893928589

The thing about Fanjoy is that he worked that riding in order to oust Pierre Poilievre, and part of that was the message that Poilievre took them for granted, and that he was going to actually represent them, and that’s what he’s doing, because there are a lot of civil servants in that riding. After all of the work in his winning the riding, can you imagine the message it would send for him to say absolutely nothing as the government moves ahead with its very ill-thought-out plan for return-to-office? It’s likely he wouldn’t win it again if that were the case. So yeah, he’s going to “break ranks” to deliver this very gentle message to the government.

This being said, I am once again going to absolutely rage at the expectation that this kind of framing devices places on MPs. It’s an old media dichotomy—we insist we want MPs to act more independently, but the moment they do, they have “broken ranks,” or the leader is “losing control,” or any other means by which We The Media police MPs into being good little drones and just following the (presidentialised) leader when that’s not what they should be doing. It’s beyond frustrating that we are worse whips than the actual party whips, which is saying something in this country with our parliament. It’s just ridiculous that this keeps happening, even when the party has room for disagreement (see: Nate Erskine-Smith).

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched 149 drones and 11 missiles early Monday, killing four people. Russian forces are also trying to push ahead at Pokrovsk, in spite of previously claiming they had already captured it. Ukraine is opening up sales of its domestically-produced weapons to help finance the war effort.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Letting Trump’s lackeys spin the narrative

Posted on by

Because everything is so stupid all the time, there was a whole ridiculous bit of drama yesterday as US treasury secretary Scott Bessent went on TV to claim that prime minister Mark Carney aggressively walked back his Davos speech on the phone to Trump, when the rest of us didn’t know there even was a call because there was no readout. When Carney came in for his caucus meeting yesterday and was asked about it, he disputed the characterisation, said he meant what he said at Davos, and then turned it into one of those quasi-flattering but also quasi-shady remarks akin to calling Trump “transformational,” in saying that Canada was the first to recognize the changes to global trade that Trump instituted. I’m sure he thinks he was very clever about it too.

Nevertheless, the point stands that the lack of a readout from PMO about the call means that it let the Americans get out ahead in terms of spinning the call and what was said, and as this administration does with everything, is to just lie. Part of this is also transparency, so that we know when there are calls with world leaders, particularly given the situation we’re in with Trump, and the fact that they had a thirty-minute call on a range of topics that included Ukraine is actually kind of important to know, but Carney has refused to be transparent and has said he’s not going to provide readouts for these “informal” calls going forward. So you just keep letting Trump and his people lie about what’s being said? I do not understand why they refuse to understand how to deal with this kind of behaviour.

Amidst this are a bunch of conservatives, some MPs, some designated talking heads on media shows, who were so very eager to take Trump’s side and blaming Carney for harming the relationship, or in trying to insist that it’s Carney who is holding up a tariff deal instead of Trump being mercurial and untrustworthy. I get that for a lot of these people, it’s “anything to own the Libs,” and they will contort themselves to almost the point of treason in order to get that thrill they’re looking for, but for the love of Zeus, have some self-respect.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone struck a passenger train near Kharkiv, killing five, while drones attacking Odesa killed at least three. There was also a strike against a natural gas facility in western Ukraine. The US says that Ukraine needs to sign a peace deal with Russia to get security guarantees (but Russia has no interest in a peace deal).

Continue reading →

Roundup: A major agreement with the EU

Posted on by

At the Canada-EU summit in Brussels yesterday, Mark Carney signed a new security and defence partnership, and the joint communiqué was very, very long. A lot of stuff that might have been part of a G7 communiqué, but that wasn’t going to happen given how much time and energy was spent managing Trump and the Americans, and that included a lot of talk about upholding the rules-based international order, or combatting climate change, and that kind of thing, that would have caused Trump to throw another one of his public tantrums. But that’s the world we live in now.

This means that Canada is now on the road to participating in programmes like ReArm Europe, which seeks to drive down the cost of joint military procurement projects by increasing the scale of the buys, and helps to keep those industries in Europe rather than relying on the American defence-industrial complex, but the hope is that this agreement will open the Canadian market to those procurements as well (though I am curious to know how many Canadian firms are actually Canadian and not just American branch-plants).

Today will be the big NATO summit where increasing the expected defence spending target is the major focus, though there will likely be some sidebars around de-escalation with Israel and Iran. Ukraine will also be a focus, though president Zelenskyy is not expected to attend (though he was in the UK yesterday to sign new agreements on military production there, and to have lunch with the King at Windsor Castle). Nevertheless, that five percent target—to ostensibly be divided up as 3.5% operational spending and 1.5% in related spending that has some kind of a defence-adjacent component—is going to be incredibly difficult for the majority of countries to achieve, but especially to sustain. You already have some countries who met their two percent target by front-loading a bunch of procurement, but they have no idea how they’ll manage to stay at two percent, let alone 3.5%-plus going forward. (It’s also a dumb metric because it doesn’t deal with contributions to operations, and the disparity between the denominators among member countries is pretty vast, to say nothing about the fact that it’s easier to hit your targets if you crash your economy to drag your denominator down). One hopes there will be some cooler heads around the table, but it looks like the 5 percent is a done deal, which will create problems down the road.

https://bsky.app/profile/plagasse.bsky.social/post/3lsbzgrlhpk2u

Ukraine Dispatch

The attack on Kyiv early Monday wound up killing at least ten, including a child, as an apartment block was struck. Ukraine says that it attacked and set ablaze an oil depot in Russia’s Rostov region.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1937171580552966364?s=61

Continue reading →

Roundup: A big defence commitment?

Posted on by

Yesterday, at Fort York in Toronto, prime minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would meet its NATO commitment of two percent of GDP by the end of next fiscal year instead of by 2030, in part through use of greater pay, more funds for sustainment, support for the defence industry, and some good ol’ creative accounting. Carney prefaced this by making a very real point about the changing nature of America’s place in the world: “The United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony, charging for access to its markets and reducing its relative contribution to our collective security.”

One of the big question marks has to do with the status of the Coast Guard, and how it gets folded into the calculation around defence spending—there were mixed messages on whether it stays under Department of Fisheries and Oceans, of if it will be moved into Department of National Defence (though there is also an argument for it to go to Public Safety), and the question of whether or not to arm those ships is a fraught one because of the training requirements for armaments. It sounds like there will be things like CSE’s cyber-capability being counted as part of this calculation as well, which again, seems to be more fudging numbers that we typically accused other nations of doing while we were more “pure” in terms of what we counted toward our spending commitments, and that seems to be going away.

I would add that while we get a bunch of competing narratives around the target, whether it’s the Conservatives’ memory-holing the fact that they cut defence spending to below one percent of GDP (in order to achieve a false balance on the books in time for the 2015 election), or the notion that we are nothing more than freeloaders in NATO, we should keep reminding people that even with lower per-capita defence spending, we have been punching above our weight taking on the tough missions in NATO (Kandahar, leading a multi-country brigade in Latvia) where as other allies who have met their two percent targets don’t contribute (looking at you, Greece). A poor metric of spending is not a good indicator of contribution, but it has created a whole false narrative that we should be correcting, but that’s too much work for the pundit class, who are more interested in hand-wringing and calling Justin Trudeau names than they are in looking at our actual contributions. (Here’s a timeline of the spending target melodrama).

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia made another massive overnight attack against Ukraine, launching 479 drones and twenty missiles of various types, targeting the western and central parts of the county. Another prisoner swap did go ahead yesterday.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1932086386145841186

Continue reading →