Tag Archives: Appointments

Roundup: Inventing a new grievance to get mad about

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Alberta premier Danielle Smith is at it again, by inventing a grievance regarding the appointment of judges, and is threatening the federal government to withhold funding for the justice system in the province if she doesn’t get her own way when it comes to having a say in who gets appointed, both with Superior Court and Court of Appeal appointments, but also with the upcoming appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada, as the vacancy opening up is a “western” seat on the bench. This is insane, it’s unconstitutional, and it’s possibly the dumbest thing to threaten. Her claim that she needs input because of the “distinct legal traditions” of Alberta is a load of absolute horseshit—Alberta has no distinct legal traditions. Quebec has a civil code which is separate from the common law that the rest of Canada employs, so yes, they have a distinct legal tradition. Alberta does not. It’s beyond risible that she is threatening to implode the province’s justice system over something that does not exist.

1) This is blatantly unconstitutional2) Withholding funding from which judicial appointments? Provincial? Because federally-appointed judges get paid from the federal budget. That's why new judicial spots end up in federal budget bills3) Withholding any funding will make the justice system worse

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-02-03T21:57:28.042Z

Provinces are already underfunding their judicial systems (provincial judges, court houses, clerks, bailiffs, Crown attorneys, remand facilities, etc). If she wants to withhold more funding, and then claim the federal Liberals caused crime, well, that'll be a real choice on her part.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-02-03T21:57:28.043Z

Also, this is just an other invented grievance, which conservatives in Alberta love to do, and then claim that they are being oppressed because they're not getting something that nobody gets in the first place. Call it out, as just that.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-02-03T22:04:53.329Z

It’s almost certain that this is supposed to be some kind of a stunt to demand judges that are tougher on crime, and that she can somehow “direct” as she has been quoted as wanting to do, which is an affront to judicial independence and the very nature of the rule of law. And frankly, we don’t have a judicial culture in this country of ultra-conservative judges who throw the book at everyone like they do in the US, because those judges tend to be elected, so they go extra hard to win votes. That’s not how this works here. And frankly, the appointment of judges is for lawyers to self-nominate to a judicial advisory committee, who then vets them and then either recommends them to the minister or not. Smith trying to insert herself into this process is simply asking to undermine the process and to personally reduce confidence in the justice system. Just absolute lunacy.

She is her inventing a grievance to be mad about. There are no distinct legal traditions in the province. They are a common law jurisdiction like eight other provinces in the country. Quebec has a civil code, which is a distinct legal tradition, and Alberta does not.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-02-03T22:06:57.965Z

Let’s call this out for what it is—Smith is quite literally inventing things to get mad about, and then throwing a tantrum about an imaginary problem that doesn’t exist, so that she can be performative in her “Western alienation” pantomime. None of this is real, but she has determined that constantly having everyone mad at Ottawa is her ticket to staying in power perpetually, but it’s a really stupid plan. That kind of anger is exhausting, and will lead to unintended consequences, but most of all, this is just more fodder for the separatists that she claims not to represent (even though we all know that she doth protest too much over that one). Now the question becomes whether anyone in the federal government will call this out, and point-blank say that this is just an invented grievance, or will they back down, and try and placate her in some manner? Because if it’s the latter, that’s a very big mistake.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-02-03T15:08:06.097Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The attack on Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday killed two people and injured at least nine others, while a power plant in Kyiv was badly damaged. President Zelenskyy says that Russia used the US-backed “energy ceasefire” to simply stockpile more ammunition and drones, and launch another attack.

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Roundup: Some noticeable omissions from the GDP concerns

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The latest GDP data was released on Friday, when the House wasn’t sitting, so the Conservatives spent yesterday making up for it, both with concern-trolling questions during QP, plus a lengthy statement about their concern about the “grim picture” of the Canadian economy. Yes, real GDP was flat in November, but that seems to be about as far as they are willing to read, because if you scratch the surface, one of the biggest drags on the economy was the fact that those motor vehicles and parts numbers were down 6.4 percent as a result of the global shortage of semiconductors. That is most assuredly not the fault of the Liberal government. Without that drag, it’s likely that the GDP would have been in the positive for the month, in spite of the other economic drags.

All of these words from the Conservatives, and none of them point out that Trump's trade war is the primary cause of this economic malaise (for which we have been surprisingly resilient to date). No, it's all the Liberals' fault.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-02-02T21:38:44.075Z

The thing is, much as with Poilievre’s big speech on Friday, there is absolutely no mention of Trump in their statement like there wasn’t in the speech. Trump and his trade war are having a deleterious effect on our economy, because we grew over-reliant on them as an export market because they’re right there, and they were a willing market that was simply too easy to trade with. Disentangling parts of our economy from theirs is going to take time, and we are taking damage from it, but to be frank, most economists figured we’d be in a recession by now as a result of Trump, and we haven’t been, showing that we had some more resilience than they initially thought. But the fact that the Conservatives cannot acknowledge the reality of the situation in order to blame the Liberals is sad and pathetic.

And it’s not just the GDP data. They’ve been doing this with food price inflation, and putting out a bunch of absolute nonsense to “prove” that their obsession with imaginary “hidden taxes” and environmental laws are the real problems, not climate change, not Trump, not factors beyond our control. Nope, it’s all Liberals and their deficits. And because they get so little pushback on it, from either the government or the media (though, to be fair, David Cochrane was actually producing data to push back on Power & Politics yesterday), they get away with this false version of reality and people believe them. It’s a problem, but nobody wants to actually acknowledge it because that seems like work, or math, which they are allergic to.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-02-02T14:08:02.462Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia is once again attacking Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other major centres, destroying energy infrastructure after a “ceasefire” for a whole couple of days. Russia also claims to have taken another settlement in Zaporizhzhia region.

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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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QP: Relitigating the Century Initiative, again

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Despite being in town and on a Wednesday, the PM was not present for what could very well have been the final QP of 2025. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he accused Mark Wiseman, potential candidate for the new ambassador to Washington, of advocating throwing open the borders to cause the decline of housing, healthcare, and French in Canada, as part of the Century Initiative, and accused the government of planning to reward him. Steve MacKinnon said that he first wanted to wish the best to Ambassador Kirsten Hillman, but the Century Initiative has never been and will never be the government’s policy. Poilievre said that regardless, the person behind the policy was Wiseman, saying he showed contempt for Quebec and cannot negotiate on their behalf. Dominic LeBlanc gave his own thanks to Hillman, and said that Poilievre was trying to get a clip for the news but this wasn’t going to be the one. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the “radical open doors” accusation about Wiseman. MacKinnon repeated praise for Hillman, and that the Century Initiative was never government policy. Poilievre segued this to taking swipes at the PM for the trip to Egypt and the costs of the private plane, where he played no role at the ceremony. MacKinnon pretended to be aghast that Poilievre was suggesting the PM miss an auspicious event as signing a peace accord for Gaza. Poilievre continued to be agog at the cost of said flight, and this time Anita Anand praised the prime minister’s role in global events. Poilievre groused that Carney himself wasn’t answering, and then pivoted to his imaginary “hidden taxes.” Patty Hajdu dismissed these imaginary taxes and pointed to drought and climate change hurting crops and herds, which was why the governor was ensuring they have money in their pockets.

Christine Normandin rose for the Bloc, and she too complained about Wiseman and the Century Initiative. MacKinnon reminded her that was never the policy of the government and never would be. Normandin suggested one of the Liberal Quebec MPs stand up the prime minister to push back against his appointment. This time Joël Lightbound reiterated that this was not their policy, before taking a swipe at the Bloc for not caring about culture in Quebec. Yves Perron raised the “sandboxing” provisions in the budget and called them anti-democratic, to which MacKinnon dismissed the concern as they were debating it right now.

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Roundup: A last-minute trip sans journalists

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Prime minister Mark Carney took a last-minute trip to Egypt over the weekend to attend the Middle East peace summit, where he did things like praise the release of hostages, and commend the “leadership” of Trump in reaching this moment (which ignores a whole lot of what has happened up until this point). But a lot of things about this trip were unusual. For one, he ended up chartering a private plan because no military aircraft were available on short notice, which is odd in and of itself (and I can’t wait for the pearl-clutching when the Access to Information request is released about the costs of said charter). For another, he did not alert the media to the trip until he was taking off, and no accredited journalists accompanied him on the trip.

Statement from the president of the Parliamentary Press Gallery:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-14T23:14:12.452Z

This is a very big warning sign about how Carney is treating the office, and his obligations to transparency. Perhaps more egregiously was the fact that the PMO comms team spent the long weekend emailing journalists and pointing them to links to his posts on Twitter, as though that was some kind of substitute. It’s not. Social media posts are carefully curated and present a very stage-managed view of the world, which is not a substitute for journalism. In fact, it’s usually a form of propaganda, because it delivers a carefully crafted message in a way that is intended to influence the voting public in a certain way.

To be clear, Carney is not the first prime minister who has tried to limit media access in favour of his in-house photographers and media team, and these photographers and videographers are given privileged access to both document history, and set up carefully curated narratives. And yes, the press is going to complain about it because it’s our job to present a wider view than what the PMO wants us to see, and the public expects more transparency, which has been in retreat under Carney’s leadership because he still thinks that this is like being a CEO where you don’t say much because it might affect your stock price. That’s not how you behave in the top political office of the country, and he needs to get that message.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian glide bombs hit a hospital in Kharkiv in the early morning hours of Tuesday, while attacks on the energy grid continued. A UN humanitarian convoy in southern Ukraine was also hit by Russian drones. Ukrainian authorities have ordered the evacuation of dozens of villages near the city of Kupiansk given the deteriorating security situation, while Russia claims they took control of another village in Donetsk region. President Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian troops have advanced in their counter-offensive in the Zaporizhzhia region.

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Roundup: Empty-handed at the White House

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After all of the build-up, the managed expectations, and all of the blustery accusations in Ottawa that prime minister Mark Carney is an inept negotiator, he came away from his “working lunch” at the White House with pretty much nothing. Carney gave Trump his usual quasi-flattering/quasi-shady “transformational president” line (because once Carney has a line he likes, he sticks with it), and he laughed off another annexation “joke” from Trump, and Trump rambled some nonsense about competing in the same ecosystem for cars, but that was about it.

Carney later on had dinner with couch-fucker vice president JD Vance, while Dominic LeBlanc was sent out to deal with the press, and said pretty much nothing other than the fact that they’re going to negotiate further and hoping for some “quick deals” on a few specific issues, which we’ve heard so many times now, and capitulated on so many particular issues that it just feels all the more meaningless. And it is meaningless, because everyone knows that there is no deal to be had because Trump will not live up to any “agreement” he signs. So naturally, the auto sector is concerned that they’re going to be thrown under the bus because Trump refuses to give up the notion that Canada stole auto production from the US, in spite of facts and evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, we’re in for another round of QP where the Conservatives denounce Carney as the incompetent negotiator when Trump is not a rational actor who can be negotiated with, because why unite against a common enemy when you could be scoring Internet points?

There wasn’t much in the way of pundit reaction so far, but Shannon Proudfoot points out that Keir Starmer figured out the key to flattering Trump before everyone else did, and how it reflected in Carney’s meeting. Althia Raj correctly calls this a cringe-worthy performance on both sides, which accomplished nothing.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-07T14:08:04.476Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Putin claims that Russia has seized 5000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory this year, and that they retain the strategic initiative; Ukraine says they have failed to seize any major settlements and that their initiative is stalled.

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Roundup: Forcing a pipeline project

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Believing herself clever, Alberta premier Danielle Smith is trying to lay a trap for prime minister Mark Carney, but it’s a really obvious trap and Admiral Ackbar can see it from a mile off. Because she is apparently now a socialist, Smith has decided that the provincial government will take the lead on proposing a pipeline to the northern coast of BC, with the “advice” of three pipeline companies, but none of them will actually be the proponent as this goes to the Major Projects Office. Smith claims that she is trying to get around the “chicken and egg” problem of not having any interested proponents in such a pipeline, and hopes that she can get it off the ground so that a private company will take it over, but remember that it’s not 2014, and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of market demand. (Oh, and she wants to use digital asbestos to help map the route, which is even more hilariously sad).

This is very much a dare to everyone to oppose her. BC premier David Eby has called this out as a stunt because it’s not a real project, with no real proponent, and no buyers lining up for any of the product. The Indigenous rights and title-holders in the area are not interested in the project, and are opposed to a bitumen pipeline going through their territory and off their coast, because this would also require lifting the tanker ban because Smith wants to ship bitumen through it, which is a “persistent” product unlike LNG. Carney has previously said that if the province and First Nations are opposed to the project, it won’t go ahead, but he has also given himself the power to override pretty much any objection, or the tanker ban, or any of it, if he really wants to. But a refusal is largely what Smith is counting on, so that she can once again play the victim, and blame the federal government for a lack of market interest.

In a sense, the province wasting millions of dollars on this for the sake of grievance theatre is not new. Jason Kenney sunk $1.3 billion into the dead Keystone XL project in an attempt to revive American interest in it, even going so far as to proposed to fund its construction if the proponent wouldn’t to try and challenge the Biden veto. This feels like more of the same, where she is sinking money she doesn’t have into a losing prospect in an empty gesture in order to secure her political future by playacting as the great defender of Alberta and its ossifying industry. But there are going to be epic tantrums, and she’s going to try and use the threat of separatism to try and get her way (because she thinks it worked for Quebec and doesn’t understand how much it devastated the economy in that province), and we’ll see if Carney is actually prepared to handle it, because so far, he’s telling a lot of people what they want to hear, and those messages are starting to collide.

Ukraine Dispatch

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is now going the longest it’s been without external power for cooling reactors, increasing concern. This after Russia also attacked the area near Chornobyl, which also briefly cut its external power supply.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith’s Notwithstanding hypocrisy

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Danielle Smith is planning to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to protect her anti-trans legislation before the courts can weigh in, much as what happened in Saskatchewan. If you’ve been following that case, at the first court injunction, Scott Moe hurriedly not only invoked the Notwithstanding Clause, but also enacted legislation to shield his government from lawsuits for any harm that may come to these youths as a result of his policy—because if that’s not telling on himself, I’m not sure what else is.

But it gets better. Danielle Smith is also self-righteously opposing the federal government’s factum to the Supreme Court of Canada on the upcoming challenge to Quebec’s Law 21, saying that provinces have a right to use this clause, but then says she disagrees with Quebec’s use of it, but they should have the right. So, she disagrees with using it to attack religious minorities, but she’s totally justified in using it to attack trans or gender-diverse youth? The absolute hypocritical audacity. She’s also built an entire false discourse that the federal factum is going to cause a national unity or constitutional crisis, which mischaracterises what the federal factums says. The federal government position is that the courts can weigh in on whether the law the Clause is protecting violates rights or not. A declaration of no force or effect. But she doesn’t want them to do that, because they would expose her for attacking the rights of vulnerable youth, and that makes her look bad. The poor dear.

Meanwhile, the meltdowns over the federal factum continue, with the Bloc insisting that this is an attack on Quebec’s ability to legislate for itself (it’s not), and conservatives all over insisting that this is going to tear the country apart, and that the Supreme Court needs to be removed if they impose limits, and so on. Not one of them has read the factum, of course, but they’re treating this like political Armageddon, because that’s never backfired before. I’m not sure the minister is helping by soft-pedalling the message of the federal position, especially since pretty much every media outlet is getting the very basics of this factum wrong. But of course, he would be explaining, and “when you’re explaining, you’re losing,” so they never explain, and things continue to slide downhill at an alarming rate.

Ukraine Dispatch

Fragments of a drone attack over Kyiv have damaged the city’s trolley bus network. President Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces are pushing Russians back in a counteroffensive along the eastern front. Ukrainian drones have hit Russia’s Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil processing and petrochemical complex, one of the largest in the country. Russia has turned over the bodies of over 1000 Ukrainian soldiers. Ukrainian forces are training their Polish counterparts on more effective ways to counter Russian drones following the incursion.

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Roundup: Asking for declaratory powers, not limits

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There is a bunch of confusion and/or bad faith arguing going on around just what the federal government said in their factum to the upcoming Supreme Court of Canada hearing on the challenge of Quebec’s Law 21, which they claim is “state secularism” but is really just wholesale discrimination and racism. The reporting hasn’t been great—in fact, the National Post’s is downright misleading—because they keep describing this like it’s a reference question to the Court, which it isn’t, but rather, the argument that they’re putting forward during the existing challenge, and something that they feel the Court should address (which is how factums tend to work).

What their argument consists of is that the Court should be able to declare when a law that is protected by the Notwithstanding Clause is actually unconstitutional. They can’t strike it down, but they can weigh in and say “Yeah, this contravenes Charter rights.” They also want the Courts to be able to do this when something has been ongoing in its use of the Clause (which only lasts for five years before it needs to be renewed in legislation), and to rule on whether it may result in the “irreparable impairment” of rights, because they argue that repeated use of the Clause amounts to “indirectly amending the Constitution.” This is also not coming out of nowhere—the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal just recently ruled that they have this right when it comes to the challenge around the province’s attack on trans youth, saying that invoking the Clause should not be the last word.

Why is this important? Because the point of the five-year time-limit on the Clause is that it allows that government to be voted out before it can be renewed. Having the courts weigh in and say “Yeah, this is discrimination,” even if they can’t strike down the law, is powerful information for voters to have. And it’s absolutely democratic. But you have conservative thinkers who are trying to say that this will cause a “constitutional crisis,” or a national unity crisis if it offends Quebec or Alberta, is frankly absurd. It’s trying to give cover for attacks on minority rights and abuse of the Clause, and they should be honest about those intentions rather than trying to sow confusion and undermining the Court.

Ukraine Dispatch

An overnight Russian attack on the Kirovohrad region has partially cut power and disrupted railway operations. A top Russian commander claims they are advancing on all fronts, in contravention to Ukrainian reports. Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies say they need more resources to crack down on the “shadow economy.”

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QP: The “sword” hanging over the PBO

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All of the leaders were present today, as is customary for a Wednesday, even if Wednesdays are no longer the pronto-PMQs of Trudeau’s era. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and demanded to know the size of the deficit. Prime minister Mark Carney responded that the budget will be on November 4th, and it would have the biggest investment in the country’s future. Poilievre asked the same in English, and got much the same response. Poilievre returns to French to lament that we still don’t have an answer on the deficit, which creates uncertainty for business, and demanded to know the number. Carney thanked him for the compliment about being a fiscal expert, and said that the trade war left uncertainty that made sure they have to do what they can control. Poilievre repeated the same in English, and this time, Carney boasted that interest rates were lower in Canada than the U.S. Poilievre dismissed this as saying that was because the economy was collapsing, and then claimed that a liberal members of the finance committee threatened the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s job (while someone chirped that didn’t happen). Carney said that he just the PBO, and that he didn’t recognise the characterisation. Poilievre said that the post was temporary in order to hold a sword over his head, and then demanded he be made permanent and demanded a deficit figure. Carney said that if they wanted him to be permanent, he would be open to consulting on that in the new spirit of collaboration.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried that the government was going to table something on the use of the Notwithstanding Clause, and demanded it be allowed to be used by provinces, even in a “preventative” measure. Carney said that the government’s job is to uphold the Charter and it was up to the Supreme Court to determine what is and is not legal. Blanchet claimed that putting limits on use of the Clauses was denigrating the Memory of a Pierre Trudeau, and Carney dismissed this, saying this was up to the Supreme Court to rule on.  Blanchet accused the government of hiding behind the Court, and attacking Quebec’s state secularism, to which Carney reminded him that this is the legislative branch, not the judiciary. 

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