Tag Archives: Budget 2025

QP: Stacking false premises to claim a cover-up

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The PM was jetting from Singapore to Busan, South Korea, while things rolled along back home. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he returned to the Food Banks Canada report, blaming “inflationary” deficits for food insecurity, and demanded a budget to make life affordable. Steve MacKinnon said that they would do that, and wanted the Conservatives’ support for it. Poilievre said that past budgets “ballooned” the deficit and again drmwndrd an affordability budget. MacKinnon noted that Food Banks Canada supported their measures in the budget, and hoped that the Conservatives weren’t aiming for a Christmas election. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the same question with added embellishment, and this time Patty Hajdu got up to read a quote from the CEO of Food Banks Canada in support of their programmes. Poilievre dismissed this as saying that if it were true, the demand would not travel increased, and Hajdu responded with incredulity that Poilievre dismissed the CEO of Food Banks Canada as not knowing what she is talking about. Poilievre doubled down on an anecdote from the report, and Anna Gainey quoted again from the report that praised federal supports and noted that the Conservatives voted against them. Poilievre again insisted that this couldn’t be true, and he again demanded an “affordable budget.” Hajdu retorted that either Poilievre wants a Christmas election, or he wants to inter what is in the report.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he worried about the trade war, and demanded the government restore “decent relations” with the U.S. (How?!) Dominic LeBlanc gave some bland assurances of work with his counterparts in the U.S., before reciting the line about building up the Canadian economy. Blanchet wondered what they should tell investors given the uncertainty, and LeBlanc said that the government is there to support them and to invest. Blanchet was incredulous at the notion that these businesses need to wait, and LeBlanc said that the government has cooperated with provinces and industry leaders about what more can be done to support workers and industries.

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Roundup: Only premiers can make pharmacare happen

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The Star takes a deep dive into the notion of pharmacare as a nation-building project, instead of just thinking of mines, pipelines or other major infrastructure, and it’s an interesting piece to read. This being said, it once again ignores the problem of the premiers in the equation, which is starting to feel like a pattern for a newspaper that actually has the resources and the bench depth in their Queen’s Park bureau to actually take on this state of affairs. You can’t look at an issue that is almost entirely squarely within an area of provincial jurisdiction, whether that’s pharmacare or bail courts, and then ignore provincial culpability, and yet, this is what keeps happening in legacy media.

As for the pharmacare issue, yes, there are plenty of good arguments to be made for a universal single-payer system, and yes, the Liberals did spend years trying to build up this system on the back-end before the NDP made this a condition of their supply-and-confidence agreement, and put in the work of doing things like establishing the Canadian Drug Agency and getting an agreement with PEI off the ground for a full co-pay system (because they had no provincial drug plan), but that went entirely unrecognised as the NDP demanded a useless piece of legislation that tried to do things backwards, to legislate before an agreement had been made with provinces, and this is what the media kept their focus on, in particular because the NDP made such a dog-and-pony show about it, while at the same time, refusing to call out their provincial counterparts who actively resisted signing onto a federal pharmacare programme. Former BC premier John Horgan was particularly vociferously opposed, but did Jagmeet Singh, Don Davies or Peter Julian say a gods damned word about it? Nope.

Premiers have been allergic to this issue for decades now, because they don’t want to have to pay for one more thing, particularly as they are trying to starve the existing healthcare system in the hopes that they can privatise it to relieve themselves of the burden of paying for it. But nobody wants to hear that. They’d rather blame the federal government for supposedly under-funding (they don’t), or that they aren’t working hard enough to get a pharmacare deal with the provinces when the Trudeau government worked for years before NDP made their demands, and got an extremely limited agreement and called it a win. And premiers continue to be let off the hook.

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— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-27T13:08:08.642Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces are reinforcing positions in Pokrovsk as some 200 Russian troops have infiltrated the city in small groups. A UN inquiry has found that Russians have been using drones to hound and hunt down civilians who live near the front lines.

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QP: Disingenuously reading the Food Banks Canada report

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The PM was jetting off to Singapore while the fallout from Trump’s latest tantrum continued to reverberate at home. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, where he raised Food Banks Canada’s latest report, and the dire numbers therein about food bank usage, to which he attributed culpability on the federal government’s “inflationary prices,” and asked how many more meals people would miss because of the government’s upcoming budget. Steve MacKinnon pointed out that the report pointed to four main issues to overcome food insecurity, and that they point to things like disability support, affordable housing, and school food programmes, all of which the Conservatives voted against. Poilievre paraphrased the report saying how the acceleration of food insecurity has taken place, and accused the government’s school food programme of only “feeding bureaucracy.” Anna Gainey responded that the government was investing in Canadian families to help them get ahead, and raised the school food programme, as well as dental care, child care, and the Canada Child Benefit. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first question on the report on food insecurity, and again this time, tied it to Carney’s speech on “sacrifice.” MacKinnon reiterated that Poilievre didn’t read the report, which praised their programmes like the school food programme. Poilievre dismissed this as not feeding anything but bureaucracy, and again, Gainey quoted from the report which called on the government to make the school food programme permanent with legislation, which is what they plan to do, and the Conservatives opposed. Poilievre hammered away at number of people at food banks and continued to blame the “costly” government, and this time Gregor Robertson got up to praise their plans to build me homes. Poilievre kept at those same statistics, and Patty Hajdu said that she took this as support for their budget with the school food programme and their recently announced tax credit for personal support workers.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and raised the government’s concerns that they don’t have the votes to pass the budget, and blamed the government for not working with any opposition party. MacKinnon retorted that the government is working hard, and they have more Quebec MPs than the Bloc does. Normandin said the budget doesn’t meet Quebeckers’ needs and listed their demands, and this time, Steven Guilbeault said the Bloc are incoherent because they made demands and still say they will vote against it. Denis Garon took over to complain that the government didn’t do adequate consultations in Quebec ahead of the budget, and MacKinnon reiterated that they are building, and dared the Bloc to vote against it.

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Roundup: An “explainer” that ignores provincial culpability

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The Star had a supposed explainer piece on bail reforms over the weekend, which talked a lot about over-incarceration, and poorly explained stats about certain offenders being out on bail with no context as to the charges they were facing prior to the alleged second offence, but absolutely nothing about the actual problems that the system faces, which is the continued and pervasive under-funding of courts by provinces, and Ontario most especially. It’s absolutely maddening how an explainer piece can lack that whole entire and most vital piece of the supposed puzzle. (It’s not a puzzle).

Part of the problem is who the reporter spoke to, being the “balanced” choices of the Toronto Police Association and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. The CCLA is just fine, because they provided a lot of relevant points about lack of data that means we don’t actually have any proper information on reoffences on bail, or anything like that (because—wait for it!—provinces have refused to fund that data collection). But police associations, by and large, are not credible sources. (Police associations, by and large, exist to protect bad apples within police forces, and remain a huge problem when it comes to reforming police services). There was nobody from the broader legal community interviewed for this piece, neither Crown nor defence counsel, who could have explained the resourcing issues. Am I biased because I write for legal publications? A little, but the perspective from my piece on bail reform differs vastly from the “explainer” in the Star for that very reason.

This is one of the most quintessential policy issues of our times where provincial underfunding is having an outsized impact on the system in question, this being the justice system, and it keeps getting ignored by the vast majority of legacy media, while the federal minister is behaving naively when he says that his provincial counterparts say they understand the problems in the system. But the problem is them, and their governments not funding the system. They like to complain that the problem is the Criminal Code, or that judges are being too lenient, but no, the problem is the provincial funding, and no changes to the Criminal Code will ever change that. And for yet another legacy media publication to ignore this, and let the provinces off the hook yet again, is beyond irresponsible.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-25T21:10:02.092Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks on Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk killed four and wounded at least twenty early Saturday, while attacks early Sunday wounded at least 29 in Kyiv.

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Roundup: Jivani’s tour for disaffected young men

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Something that has gone largely unnoticed has been Conservative MP Jamil Jivani’s campus tours, modelled after the late fascist Charlie Kirk’s campus tours that were deemed essential to youth outreach for Trump’s MAGA movement. There has been some acknowledgement that under Poilievre, the Conservatives have been attracting a lot of disaffected young men, but as Jivani’s little campus tour is showing, this is much more explicitly about disaffected young white men, who are tired of being confronted about the concept of toxic masculinity, who don’t think that they can speak freely, and who can’t find jobs.

If anything, there is some bitter irony in Jivani cultivating this particular demographic because he has been beating the anti-DEI drum that Poilievre has appropriated from the MAGA cult, but part of this tour is about getting these young white men to present themselves as the real victims. To suggest that they need special policies to address their needs is pretty hard to square with the whole cry about “merit” that is supposed to replace DEI. If they need special programs, then they are not able to get ahead by merit alone, no? Of course, we know that the real reason why they want to eliminate DEI is precisely because they can’t compete based on merit, so they want to return to a system that systemically discriminates against those who are deserving but can’t get a fair shake.

This of course gets to the real issue in play—that these rallies are attracting groups who are Diagolon-aligned, and whose talk about “remigration” is code for ethnic cleansing. Sure, Jivani can tell them that it’s “complicated,” but this is not a group that believes in nuance. The fact that Jivani can’t denounce that kind of rhetoric but instead tries to mollify it is an indictment about where the Conservative party is headed in this country. Someone remarked that this is no longer the party of Stephen Harper. Unfortunately, it’s becoming the party of Donald Trump, whether they want to believe it or not, and that’s a very terrifying prospect for where things could be headed in this country, because there is no “good parts only” version that they think they can achieve.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-23T21:27:02.365Z

Ukraine Dispatch

An attack on Kyiv overnight Wednesday wounded nine people. Two Ukrainian journalists were killed by a Russian drone in Kramatorsk, while an investigation has been launched into Russian soldiers killing five civilians in a village in the Donetsk region.

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QP: Parsing Carney’s “miserable” speech

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The PM was away again today, this time having spent the morning at the Darlington nuclear plant, and before his planned appearance at the Blue Jays’ practice (because priorities). Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and said that Mark Carney’s speech last night was “depressing,” and that he was demanding young people make sacrifices, when they have already been making sacrifices and have nothing left. Joël Lightbound said that young people sacrificed a  pessimistic, negative vision of Canada from Poilievre and chose a serious leader with an ambitious government. Poilievre said that Lightbound didn’t listen to the speech, and he repeated the supposed sacrifices that these young people have made, including falsely claiming that these are the worst job numbers in 30 years, before demanding an “affordable budget.” Lightbound said that the gulf between Poilievre and Carney gets wider and wider, and he rhymed off the talking points about the “transformational budget” and “spending less to invest more.” Poilievre switched to English to repeat his lament for the “depressing speech” and the sacrifices being demanded. John Zerucelli stood up to proclaim that he was proud to present red seals to a three young tradespeople before he praised the government’s plans. Poilievre again falsely claimed that the jobless rate was at a thirty-year high outside of COVID, and that young people need jobs and housing. Zerucelli proclaimed how much they were going go build. Poilievre again lamented that nobody had apparently watched Carney’s “miserable” speech and that youth would have to sacrifice more when they have already sacrificed enough, and wanted his own plan put into the budget. Steve MacKinnon got up to quip that the only person who is miserable when the prime minister speaks is Poilievre, before he gave a soaring paean about the announcement this morning and that the future was bright for youth. Poilievre again pitched his own plan to be put into the budget, and again, MacKinnon gave another soaring speech about the hope they are giving youth.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and decried the government’s dismissing of the Bloc’s demands as “political games.” Steven Guilbeault said that Blanchet was changing his plans as often as he changes his shirts, and his tone of cooperation has given way to panning the budget before reading it. Normandin panned Carney’s empty consultations, and Guilbeault listed all of the people who met with the Bloc leader. Yves Perron again decried the “political games” line and insisted that the Bloc’s demands represent the needs of Quebeckers. As he always does in the face of such rhetoric, MacKinnon reminded the Bloc that they have fewer seats that the Liberals do in the province.

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Roundup: Poilievre’s second backtrack attempt

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Still under fire for his comments about Justin Trudeau and the “despicable” leadership at the RCMP, Pierre Poilievre has been forced to backtrack a second time. The first was his tactic of issuing clarifications only to media outlets and not his social media or party channels, and that didn’t mollify people, so this time he held a media availability and insisted that he didn’t say what we all heard him say, and then sent his MPs out to do media to also overly parse what his language was, and to try and spin it to say something other than what we all heard him say, and to insist that what we all heard him say was out of context. (It was not). He is now claiming that he didn’t say Trudeau should be jailed—only that he “clearly” broke a law that would impose jailtime (even though it was not clear he broke said law), and that clearly isn’t the same thing. Kind of like how they’re not scapegoating immigrants, they’re just criticising Liberal immigration policy (wink).

Meanwhile, members of his caucus are getting restive, and while they all made a big show of publicly supporting him, several have been quietly talking to media outlets about their dissatisfaction. While some are saying they’re undecided if they want to vote for him continuing in the leadership review, I also suspect that there are very few Conservatives in the caucus who have the spine or the intestinal fortitude to actually vote against him, no matter how inappropriate the comment, because there are precious few MPs in any party who would dare stand against their leader and face the wrath of having their nomination papers go unsigned.

Carney Speech

Prime minister Mark Carney gave a speech last night that was intended as a kind of pre-budget positioning, but also a kind of victory lap to pat themselves on the back for all of the work they’ve been doing since the election. Carney promised that the budget was going to unleash all kinds of private sector investment, but I also feel like we’ve been hearing that refrain for the past two decades and not a lot of it has really materialized. He said he wants to double non-US exports over the next decade. He spoke about “betting big,” and getting back to a culture of doing big things, but the thing about that kind of talk is that it ignores the people who were impacted by that, most particularly Indigenous people who were displaced or exploited in the process. He said that this is going to take more than a few months and can’t happen overnight, but he also talked about “sacrifices,” particularly as he talks about cutting government spending.

My problem with this particular rhetoric is that he never quite makes it clear who will be making those sacrifices, and you can be damn sure it’s not CEOs or rich white dudes. In fact, you can pretty much set your watch by the fact that the “sacrifices” are going to be on the backs of women’s programmes, queer/trans people and other minority groups whose funding is going to be slashed to nothing, it’s going to be the poor who will find that programming designed to assist them will be gone (but hey, they’ll get their benefits thanks to automatic filing, whenever that actually happens). We’ve seen this happen time and again, and the cycle of time is coming around once again, and Carney is making no move to stop it and finding a new path.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-22T22:02:55.404Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The fairly massive attack early Wednesday targeted several cities and killed six, including two children, as a kindergarten was struck. Russia claims it took two more villages in Donetsk region. Sweden has signed a letter of intent about supplying 150 Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine.

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QP: An incomplete “economics lesson”

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The PM was present today, as we learned he has been having pre-budget meetings with opposition leaders (for what it’s worth, given that the document is about to head to the printers). Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and raised his meeting with Mark Carney later in the day, and demanded an “affordable budget for an affordable life.” Carney assert that this budget would be bring operational spending under control while making major investments in capital projects. Poilievre said that the Liberals promised this a decade ago and we have only had economic ruin since, before again demanding an end to deficits and so-called “hidden taxes.” Carney reiterated they would clean up operational spending before reminding him that inflation remains in the target zone. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first question, and Carney repeated his points about cleaning up operational spending to invest more, and that people have been doing better singe he became prime minister. Poilievre went on a rant about how Carney was telling people that they have never had it so good, to which Carney decided to give an economic lesson, pointing out that inflation is in the target zone, food inflation is in the G7 average, and that Canada is in the best position in the G7. Poilievre accused Carney of lecturing Canadians lining up at food banks—to which the Liberals shouted “you!”—and listed high food prices. Carney pointed to his tax cuts and stated he was here for single mothers and Canadians. Poilievre again railed about the inflation figures, and Carney again listed off his bullet points of his budget promises for operational spending and capital investment.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, raised another auto plant closing because of tariffs, and demanded action from the government. Carney stated their disappointment with the closures, and stated that they were still negotiating but Canada still has the best deal possible. Blanchet dismissed this as not being enough, and demanded other assurances in the negotiations. Carney promised they would protect Supply Management and Quebec culture in the negotiations. Blanchet wanted assurances for forestry, and Carney reminded him that they have a fund to help the sector.

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Roundup: More than just the CRA in the Auditor General’s gaze

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It was Auditor General Day yesterday, and boy were there some doozies. Pretty much all of the media attention was focused on the CRA audit, and the finding that call centres pretty much didn’t answer the phones, and when they did, they only gave correct information about seventeen percent of the time in the calls the Auditor General’s office made—yikes! The government is quibbling with the methodology, because of course they are, but also calling the report “constructive criticism” instead of “scathing,” and because these are the Liberals, François-Philippe Champagne thundered that the “good news” was that they had already started their one-hundred-day action plan to fix things without waiting for the report. (No, seriously—he declared this to be “good news” in Question Period). That said, when pressed about whether inadequate staffing was a problem, and what the coming civil service cuts were going to mean, the Secretary of State, Wayne Long, had no answer for it, which you would think is a pretty important detail considering just how embarrassing this is for the government. He also had no answers as to why things deteriorated this badly under the Liberal watch, and just kept saying that he was appointed on May 13th. Come on.

But there were plenty of other reports that were also not good:

  • There are plenty of cybersecurity vulnerabilities, not the least of which is because Shared Services Canada still can’t do their jobs properly since they were established under Harper.
  • Military housing is tremendously inadequate and much of it in a state of disrepair, and housing for single members is needed most especially.
  • Military recruitment is a gong show, and they couldn’t even ask why twelve out of every thirteen applicants abandoned their application.
  • There are still barriers to ending the remaining boil water advisories on First Nations reserves, even though they’ve been at this for a decade, and half of previous AG recommendations still haven’t been implemented.

The good news is that most of the legacy media outlets actually sent reporters to do reporting on these reports rather than just relying on CP wire copy, but really, only the CRA story got attention in QP and on the evening talking head shows, which is too bad because there was plenty more to talk about. But that’s indicative of the state of media these days.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-21T14:08:04.164Z

Ukraine Dispatch

There was a Russian attack on Kyiv overnight. Ukraine struck a Russian chemical plant with its newly acquired Storm Shadow missiles, which was a key supplier of gun powder and rocket fuel.

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QP: Blaming so-called “inflationary deficits” for food prices

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The PM was again in town but otherwise absent from QP, and the same dynamics were at play in the Chamber. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he raised today’s Statistics Canada inflation numbers, blaming government spending any taxes (even though taxes are anti-inflationary). François-Philippe Champagne praised the upcoming budget and the IMF suggestion that Canada and Germany had room to make generational investments. Poilievre then turned to the Auditor General’s report on the CRA and its call centres. Champagne responded with the “good news” that they are already partway through a one-hundred day action plan. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first question on inflation, and Champagne repeated his same response from the IMF Director General. Poilievre repeated his same question on the Auditor General’s report on the CRA, and got a “take no lessons” from Champagne, who listed the things that Poilievre voted against. Poilievre dismissed “costly slogans” from the other side and got shouted down, and once things calmed, he raised the 1200 jobs at the GM plant in Ingersoll, and accused the government of betraying workers. Mélanie Joly assured him that Carney would fight for their jobs, and that she had a conversation with the CEO of GM this morning. Poilievre dismissed her efforts as all talk with no action (as though he could do anything differently if he were in power), and he repeated the accusation of betrayal. Joly said that they would hold these companies to account, before reading the new jobs at other plants.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and he raised a “hate preacher” for a second day, and demanded the government close the religious exemption for hate speech. Steven Guilbeault agreed that hate speech has no place in Canada, and implored him support Bill C-9. Blanchet said that the bill doesn’t get to the issue of religious exemptions, and Guilbeault repeated his same answer. Blanchet insisted it would be easy to solve the problem, and said that they would be moving amendments they hoped the government would support. Guilbeault said that they are willing to hear amendments at committee.

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