Tag Archives: Canada Post

Roundup: The 2026 Spring Economic Statement

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It was the Spring Economic Update yesterday, and this was less of a mini-budget than in previous years, but still had a few new elements. Overall, yes the deficit is lower than anticipated because growth was greater than projected, but in true Liberal fashion, Mark Carney and the government added new spending measures that took up some of that room, both with some previously announced measures like the “pause” on the excise fuel tax, and new measures like $6 billion in incentives for skilled trades workers.

Some highlights:

  • That $6 billion for skilled trade workers includes support during training and a completion bonus (as half of those who start apprenticeships don’t finish)
  • There is a shift toward attracting more foreign investment.
  • There will be a small break in CPP deductions for the next year.
  • Canada is making progress on diversifying to non-US export markets.
  • There is money for sports, the Financial Crimes Agency is finally getting its implementation legislation, and crypto ATMs are being banned.
  • The Defence Investment Agency is getting more structure and oversight, and there is also more funding for military trades.
  • They plan to resurrect the ability for Canada Post to search and seize mail.
  • There are new tax credits for enhanced oil recovery (because Carney has full-on decided he no longer cares about the environment.)
  • There are promises for $4.3 billion in First Nations education, Inuit food security, and Indigenous child welfare.
  • More odds and ends here.

In pundit reaction, David Reevely considers this to be Carney buying time until his big projects can start to pay off. Lindsay Tedds delves into the issues surrounding the so-called “Sovereign Wealth Fund.” Kevin Carmichael gives some thought to the deficit position, as well as the choices that Carney is making with what they are putting additional resources into. Susan Delacourt ponders the juggling act of the government both trying to build long-term, while still looking for tangible effects in the here-and-now. Paul Wells looks at the context of some of the numbers presented, and the government’s “fiscal prudence” back-patting.

Housing items in today's federal economic statement. Delighted to see they're planning to move on reforms to make it easier to build multiplexes! This is aligned with one of our recommendations from our January report.

— Dr. Mike P. Moffatt (@mikepmoffatt.bsky.social) 2026-04-28T21:46:33.000Z

Well, this isn't even remotely true (as @lindsaytedds.bsky.social and I discussed in my latest episode).

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-29T02:20:59.692Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-28T19:08:02.092Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine says that it shot down over 33,000 Russian drones last month, which is a new monthly record. Ukrainian drones have been causing fires at Russia’s Tuapse roil refinery. Ukraine is now trading diplomatic blows with Israel over ships carrying stolen grain docking in Israeli ports.

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Roundup: Undeserved back-patting for recruitment figures

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Defence minister David McGuinty held a press conference yesterday to tout that the recruiting numbers in the military are way up, and this was a sign that the government is on track with their goals to recapitalise the military. But sure, there are still several trades that they are short in, and sure, they’re still quite a bit below the targets set in 2017, but it’s a start, right?

There are a few things at play here that deserve to be teased out. One of them is that people are saying this has to do with the pay raise, but I’m sceptical because the biggest problem with recruitment has long been the military’s poor intake process, which has been overly cumbersome, has dragged out the security screening process, and as they are admitting now, they don’t have enough beds in basic training to accommodate the increase in numbers. That’s pretty much entirely on the military’s internal processes and has precious little to do with the federal government’s handling of the file in any capacity, which makes it very hard for them to pat themselves on the back for it. (One might almost call that “stolen valour”). Over the past several years, the military’s internal delays were so bad that people who wanted to serve wound up walking away because it took too long, and they found jobs elsewhere. Again, it wasn’t an issue about pay, or military housing, it was that the Forces couldn’t get their own internal bureaucracy in line, and that again is on them.

There is another conversation that nobody is having here around this, which is the correlation between the job market and military recruitment. One of the other reasons recruitment has been poor for three decades now is because the job markets changed in the country, particularly in traditionally economically-depressed regions like the east coast, which used to see high recruitment numbers. What changed? Direct flights to Fort McMurray. The promise of oil sands cash for little education, and things like two-weeks-on/two-weeks-off shifts and living in camps meant good money for people from the region, so there wasn’t any need to sign up to the military to find stable employment. And now that is starting to shift back—there are no longer jobs aplenty in Fort Mac as the oil and gas sector has radically increased automation and productivity, and there are no longer unlimited jobs for high school dropouts that get six figure salaries. That is shifting the calculation around the country, and I suspect it is going to be one of the bigger drivers of recruitment more than anything the government has done around pay or base housing.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-20T19:15:34.667Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The death toll from a shooting spree in Kyiv has reached seven; the police chief has already tendered his resignation for it.

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Roundup: Another lunchtime speech praising trickle-down economics

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Pierre Poilievre was back at the Canadian Club in Toronto for another lunchtime speech on how he is going to fix the economy to make life more affordable, and—stop me if you’ve heard this one before—it involves doubling down on trickle-down economics. In fact, while the speech made all of his greatest hits (destroy environmental legislation, cut taxes, cut bureaucracy in the most hand-wavey way possible), along with his latest genius plan of building a stockpile of oil and critical minerals that will supposedly give us “leverage” with future negotiations. Again, this is stupid because you’re not going to convince Trump, with his love of tariffs, to abandon that with a “strategic reserve.” Get real.

Actual quote from Poilievre's speech today:"If you asked a neutral and objective AI bot to go into all of the policies on the books of the government of Canada, what would you find has actually changed in the last year?"There is no such thing as a "neutral and objective" bot. Absolute clown show.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-16T20:24:29.511Z

And because this is Poilievre, he is continuing to double-down on his peevish insistence that he is somehow a better economist than Carney because he watched a bunch of crypto bros on YouTube. In fact, he dismissed Carney as having the “illusion of knowledge,” and claimed that all of Carney’s economic ideas have been wrong for years, which is a ridiculous thing to say. This while he keeps going on and on about “money-printing,” which nobody is engaging in, but again, this is one of the key things that crypto bros will say drives inflation (hence why Poilievre parroted their lines about Bitcoin being a way to opt out of inflation), and nobody will call this out. (Okay, David Cochrane has tried to call it out, and Poilievre and Andrew Scheer just obfuscate and prevaricate, but absolutely nobody else challenges this absolutely bullshit claim, including the government). It’s amazing how much we let him get away with saying that is completely untrue—and he knows it.

Meanwhile, Conservatives back in Ottawa were complaining to the press that François-Philippe Champagne won’t appear at the ethics committee to answer about his recusing himself on the Alto high-speed rail project because his spouse is a vice-president there, even though the Ethics Commissioner said that there is no actual conflict because Alto reports to a different line minister. This is just theatre, because the Conservatives want clips of themselves calling Champagne corrupt in committee, and surprise, surprise, the Liberals have no interest in exposing him to this. So, the Conservatives are now crying foul in advance of committees being rejigged to reflect the majority, and saying that this is proof the Liberals are going to avoid accountability. But witch-hunts and media stunts are not accountability, and this is just so stupid.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-16T19:08:03.789Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia spent all Thursday hammering Ukraine with 700 drones and dozens of missiles, which killed sixteen people and wounded more than a hundred others. One of those strikes was on the Black Sea port of Tuapse, which it an oil tanker.

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QP: The phantom menaces of supposed terrorists and hidden taxes

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While he had initially not planned to attend, things apparently changed and the PM did opt to show up today, as did Pierre Poilievre. He led off in French, and he immediately launched into his bullshit claims that the Trudeau government allowed Iranian terrorists into the country and that ten government needs to deport them. Mark Carney stated that the government deplores the shooting at synagogues and the U.S. consulate in Toronto, and they are offering police support, while the IRGC is already a listed terrorist entity. Poilievre meandered into food price inflation, and claimed it was because of the government’s “inflationary” taxes and policies. (Taxes are deflationary). Carney stayed on the claim about Iranian terrorists and said they are conducting removals, before switching to the food prices, and noted that they have provided additional support. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first bullshit claims, and this time Carney exhorted him to support Bill C-14 and gun control, and noted that the government is investigating potential IRGC members in the country and that they have committed to another thousand RCMP. Poilievre claimed that the government was more concerned with protecting turkeys from farmers than people from criminals, and again repeated his same bullshit claim about Iranian terrorists. This time Carney exhorted the Conservatives to support Bill C-9 to protect synagogues. Poilievre dismissed this as the government trying to protect the Jewish community by banning sections of the Torah, and again blamed the government for Iranian terrorists. Carney said that the Charter protects the Torah and the Bible and any other religious text. Poilievre then returned to his false claims about food prices and demanded the government cut those hidden taxes. Carney reminded him that he impact of the industrial carbon price is close to zero, but the impact of their trade agreements for the farmers in his riding is enormous. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he demanded clarity from the prime minister on his position on the Iran conflict and the strategic vision for the Middle East. Carney said that Canada supports the necessity of preventing Iran’s nuclear programme, but is not participating in the offensive operations and will not. Blanchet wondered what our European allies have come to in terms of position, and Carney listed the leaders of the G7 he has spoken to as they come up with a policy on de-escalation. Blanchet wondered if there were any short-term measures for those suffering from the affects of the conflict, such as higher inflation. Carney said the best option is de-escalation, which is why he is having conversations with other leaders in the G7 and in the Middle East.

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Roundup: Refusing a pay raise for populism

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Conservative backbench MP Mike Dawon put on a big media show yesterday by declaring that he will be refusing his scheduled pay raise in April, which is something that the party itself is not actually doing a big song and dance about (at least not yet). In his stated reasons for doing so, he says that “the working man (and woman) in this country hasn’t seen a decent raise in decades,” which is not in fact true. Statistics Canada tracks these things, and average hourly wages in this country have been outpacing inflation going on three years now, and while that’s not everyone because this is an average measure, wages are not stagnant.

This being said, I really dislike these particular kinds of populist performances because they are largely designed to denigrate the role of elected officials in public life, and winds up leading to problems in the long term. Poor pay for MPs means it’s harder to attract talent who have professional careers, meaning doctors and lawyers for example, who frequently need to take a pay cut to serve. And frankly, the other side of ensuring that we have adequate compensation for elected officials is that it discourages corruption, so that they don’t feel the need to take bribes to maintain their lifestyle.

Ontario’s MPPs did away with their pensions and scheduled raises for years, and it created problems with MPPs who would ultimately refuse to retire because they couldn’t afford to, and had few options in the private sector, and there was one story about a former MPP whose financial troubles after leaving office left him destitute, which is not something we should want to expose anyone running for office to. Frankly we don’t want a system where only people with previous wealth get into politics because they can afford to, and these kinds of populist attitudes wind up reinforcing that kind of behaviour.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-02-10T15:08:05.641Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia struck energy facilities on Odesa overnight, meaning more power cuts in the region. There was also an airstrike on Sloviansk the Ukrainian-controlled portion of Donetsk, killing two. President Zelenskyy says that major changes are coming in the way that Ukraine handles its air defences.

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QP: Selectively quoting economic doom

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The PM was in town, but wrapping up a working lunch with the prime minister of Luxembourg, while Pierre Poilievre was also absent for reasons unknown. Melissa Lantsman led off instead, and she listed the government’s many economic failings before rhetorically asking how anyone on the government benches could defend this abysmal record. Patty Hajdu responded that the Conservatives merely stand in the way of assistance for Canadians. Lantsman raised the case of a young nurse who feels like she can’t ahead, and Hajdu insisted that they tell young people to help them build big things. John Brassard took over, and accused the government of gorging at the “all-you-can-take taxpayer buffet,” and a Gregor Robertson responded with some back-patting on their homebuilding programmes, as well as the GST rebate. Brassard sanctimoniously listed everything wrong, including accusing the government of not getting a deal with the U.S. John Zerucelli reminded him that we are in a trade war before praising their investments to build Canada. Gérard Deltell took over in French, and he recited the food price inflation script, to which Mélanie Joly declared that the government was in “solution mode,” including the GST rebate. Deltell recounted that he had a conversation with the manager at his local grocery store who lamented the increase in thefts because prices are too high. Joly listed the programmes to help people in need, including an agreement signed with the Quebec government. 

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she once again raised the problems with the OAS payment software, and the figure that 85,000 people have been affected. Stephanie McLean note that this is out of seven billion seniors, and that they are working to help those affected. Normandin raised the fact that the software transformation is $5 billion over budget, and this time, Steven MacKinnon recited that they have modernised the system and to let the government know so they can fix it. Andréanne Larouche took over to demand action from the government, and MacKinnon repeated that seven million seniors get pensions and that the 85,000 was too many, but they are working to resolve the situation. 

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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: More defection talk swirling

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A day later, the Ma floor-crossing is being dissected with more questions about what this means for Poilievre’s leadership of the Conservative party now that he’s lost two MPs to floor-crossings and one to a very suspicious resignation. We have learned that Tim Hodgson played a part in Ma’s decision, and that their wives are friends (and it is worth noting they are from neighbouring ridings). And now you have Conservatives telling the National Post of all places that they expect another couple of defections because Poilievre is so unable to read the room in his own caucus. Oh, and there’s also a whole side note about how Ma was apparently the “secret Santa” for Jamil Jivani and Jivani didn’t get his gift.

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3m7tbupdrrs2p

Government House Leader Steve MacKinnon proclaimed that he knows more disgruntled Conservatives and hinted that there yet may be another floor-crossing, and this has everyone wringing their hands about “backroom deals,” and saying dumb things like “Canadians didn’t elect a majority,” and that cobbling one together is somehow illegitimate. Poilievre himself is making this particular argument. But that’s not how elections work. We elect 338 individual MPs. Not parties. Canadians can’t select “majority” or “minority” on their ballots. In fact, parties have become political shorthand for how MPs sort themselves into configurations to achieve confidence in the Chamber, but at its core, we elect individual MPs, and they get to make their own decision including who they sit with, and on how to determine how a government is given confidence, and yes, that can include so-called “backroom deals” and floor-crossings, and if voters don’t like it, they can punish them in the next election. That’s how parliamentary democracy works.

If there is another defection or two, and it puts the Liberals into a majority, the most dramatic effect will not be just the fact that every confidence vote isn’t going to rely on Andrew Scheer and Scott Reid hiding behind the curtains to count abstentions, but rather that it will force the committees to be rebalanced, at which point the Conservatives and Bloc will no longer be able to team up to obstruct all business, as they have been doing. That will be a material change for the ability of this Parliament to get things done, and maybe finally break the dysfunction and deadlock that has plagued it since 2019.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-12T14:24:02.995Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia attacked two Ukrainian ports, damaging three Turkish vessels, one of them carrying food supplies. Russia also attacked energy facilities in Odesa region. Ukraine, meanwhile, hit two Russian oil rigs in the Caspian Sea, the Yaroslavl oil refinery, and two Russian vessels carrying military equipment. President Zelenskyy visited Kupiansk, as Ukrainian forces are encircling the Russians in the area, weeks after Russia claimed to have captured it.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1999435026300076425

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Roundup: Being too clever about the MOU’s language

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Today is the Conservatives’ big Supply Day, where they are bringing forward their motion that cherry-picks two phrases from the MOU with Alberta, and hopes to jam the Liberals with it. Pierre Poilievre may claim that the language is “lifted directly from the MOU,” so the Liberals should put up or shut up, but of course, he’s being too cute by half. It’s not language directly lifted from the MOU. The MOU states a “private sector constructed and financed pipelines, with Indigenous Peoples co-ownership and economic benefit, with at least one million barrels a day of low emission Alberta bitumen with a route that increases export access to Asian markets as a priority” whereas the motion simply says “pipelines enabling the export of at least one million barrels a day of low-emission Alberta bitumen from a strategic deepwater port on the British Columbia coast to reach Asian markets,” and adds “respecting the duty to consult Indigenous people.” One of these things is not like the other.

— Kady O'Malley (@kadyo.bsky.social) 2025-12-08T22:44:00.568Z

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3m7jbmdjkfk2i

Liberal MP Corey Hogan, the party’s sole Calgary MP, called out these shenanigans, both in a media scrum and on his Twitter, where he points out entirely why the Conservatives haver phrased it this way—to either make the Liberals look like they’re ignoring Indigenous consultation and consent, or to make it look like they’re not serious about building it, and in either case, it sends a signal to someone that will cause doubt and will inevitably delay any decisions. And the government indicated last night that they’re going to vote against it, citing that the Conservatives are not using the full language from the MOU. This in turn will set up weeks of Conservatives screaming that they knew the Liberals were lying the whole time and never had any intention of building a pipeline.

https://twitter.com/coreyhoganyyc/status/1998142565791477875

The thing we need to remember in all of this is not the shenanigans, or the Conservatives thinking they’re too clever, or any of that—rather, it’s that they think they can ram through these projects without Indigenous consent. Sure, they’ll talk about “meaningful consultation,” but consultation is not consent, and in their press releases, consent is never mentioned, nor is even consultations. That’s not realistic, nor even legal in the current framework. Of course, they also think a new pipeline will “unblock the trillions of dollars of privatesector energy investment to produce more oil and gas, build profitable pipelines and ship a million barrels of oil to Asia a day at world prices.” My dudes—this is a post-2014 world. It’s not going to be trillions of dollars, and world oil prices are tanking because of a supply glut. All of this is fantasyland.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-08T14:08:03.419Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians have attacked Sumy for the second night in a row, cutting off power in the region. Here is a look at those remaining in Kostiantynivka, as Russians approach.

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Roundup: A 28-point capitulation plan

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Things are heating up for Ukraine now that Trump has presented his so-called 28-point “peace plan,” which is nothing of the sort, and he’s giving president Volodymyr Zelenskyy one week to agree to it, or he is threatening to withdraw American support, even though that support has been mercurial and dwindling for the past year. Nevertheless, they have some key defensive technologies that Ukraine relies upon, particularly for air defences. But in no way is this plan at all acceptable, and is little more than a demand for Ukraine to capitulate, and to pay America for the privilege because Trump is a gangster running a protection racket.

This is what a protection racket looks like, although they are rarely put in writing

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman.bsky.social) 2025-11-21T17:56:08.496Z

The “plan” (full text here) proposes that Ukraine turn over remaining areas in the regions Putin has been unable to conquer after four years, which are essentially a fortress belt. Turning those over, plus reducing the size of Ukraine’s army, is essentially an invitation for Putin to come back and invade with nothing to stop him the next time. The “deal” wants Ukraine to forgo NATO membership, which essentially gives Putin a veto over NATO. It wants Ukraine to pay the US for security guarantees, but no agreement with Trump is worth the paper it’s written on. It wants Ukraine to abandon any attempt to hold Russia accountable for its actions, including mass torture and crimes against humanity. And it wants Russia’s frozen assets returned. So Russia gives up nothing, and it positions itself to fully conquer Ukraine in a few months or a year, when Trump gets bored, and then creates an existential threat for the rest of Europe given that Putin will have gotten rid of the biggest obstacle to his expansionary plans.

Zelenskyy says he will work earnestly with the Americans on this, but that he won’t betray Ukraine’s interests, which pretty much means that he can’t accept these terms. European leaders say that they’re standing behind Ukraine, because they know the danger. But some of the reporting in Canada is abysmal, treating the plan like it’s serious when getting defence minister David McGuinty to comment on it. At least he says that any plan has to be “acceptable,” but this plan clearly is not, so I’m not sure why anyone is bothering to ask if he supports it because there is no way he could or should. This “plan” merely confirms that there is no point in relying on the US any longer, which means that Europe and Canada need to step up right now, and give Ukraine all of the support possible right now because anything less is a disaster for the future of western democracies.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-11-21T14:24:03.043Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims it has taken a string of four settlements in the Donetsk region, which Ukraine denies. They also claim that 5000 Ukrainian troops are trapped in the Kharkiv region.

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