Tag Archives: Canada Post

Roundup: More provincial buck-passing, FCM edition

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The Federation of Canadian Municipalities had their big conference in Ottawa over the past couple of days, and there were a host of mayors and councillors on the Hill to meet with MPs. Yesterday afternoon, Mark Carney addressed their conference to basically give the same speech he’s been giving for the past couple of weeks about things like “moving to delay to delivery,” and so on. But I did find it interesting that as part of this address to the FCM, he essentially told them that he’ll be too busy with nation-building projects to reform municipal funding structures.

It’s kind of funny, but at the same time, I have to ask how that’s actually his job, or the job of the federal government at all. Cities are creatures of provincial legislation. If you want to reform their funding structures, the provinces need to sit down and hammer that out, unless you want to start amending the constitution, and I’m pretty sure that nobody wants to open that particular Pandora’s Box (which, incidentally, was not a box but a jar). We could let cities collect their own income or sales taxes, or other forms of financing that would be better than simply property taxes, but provinces refuse, and in some cases, have specifically legislated against it. And we’ve known for decades now that cities have funding challenges that they need something to be done about, but have provinces responded? Of course not. They simply demand the federal government send them more money.

With this in mind, Toronto mayor Olivia Chow was also here for the FCM meeting, and she says she is encouraged by Carney’s sense of urgency on tackling the housing crisis, but again, she too is here calling for the federal government to directly intervene with money. One thing she has proposed is for necessary infrastructure to build more housing, for the federal government to basically pay the municipality’s one-third share (so they essentially pay two-thirds and the province pay the other third), and it’s just so infuriating. The federal government is not the purse for every other jurisdiction. Provinces have the very same revenue-generating tools as the federal government does, but they refuse to use them because they would rather beg for money and let the federal government be the bad guy with their taxes than the province. This kind of absolute immaturity is just exhausting, and it’s one of the reasons why things just aren’t getting done in this country.

Or ever, if we're being honest.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-05-30T13:30:00.766Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s massive drone attack overnight Thursday injured two people in Kharkiv, and hit a town that sits on the border with Romania, which is a NATO member.

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Roundup: Budget complaints vs Estimates votes

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The talk about the lack of a spring budget is reaching histrionics in the House of Commons, while the Conservatives nevertheless agreed to the unanimous consent motion to conduct the study of the Estimates in a rushed manner within the House of Commons as committee of the whole instead of splitting departmental spending off to relevant committees, because it will take too long to establish said committees before these votes need to be taken. And the Estimates are the actual money votes—a budget is a political document, so if the Conservatives are that concerned about where the government plans to spend, well, that’s entirely in these Estimates. The information is entirely there for them.

At the same time, we’ve heard these very same Conservatives (and some of their mouthpieces in the media) decry that there is no reduced spending within these Estimates. And of course not—these are based on last year’s budget and statutory obligations, so there wouldn’t have been any time to book any particular savings in the four weeks since the election. Not to mention that if you want to do a proper programme review in order to achieve smart savings, those take time—up to two years, which would have a better chance of achieving lasting savings. The Conservatives were masters of achieving paper savings in their last couple of budgets when they were in power, as they were so eager to get to a faux balanced budget that they booked a tonne of savings that not only didn’t materialise, but in many cases wound up costing them more (Shared Services, Phoenix) because the act of cutting the spending before the enterprise transformation was complete wound up costing more money in the end. It would seem that nobody learned a single gods named lesson from that exercise.

Meanwhile, Conservatives and their proxies keep insisting that they would rather sit into July so that they can get a budget, and let me once again say that no, they actually do not. There is almost nothing pleasant about an Ottawa summer, and if any of those MPs think they want to be sweltering in Parliament with jacket-and-tie dress codes with a humidex of 39ºC, no, they actually do not. This is performative nonsense, and everyone needs to grow the hell up.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-05-28T13:25:16.198Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Three people were injured in a Russian attack on Svitlovodsk yesterday. President Zelenskyy warned that Russia is massing 50,000 troops outside of Sumy region, which appears to be preparations for a summer offensive. Ukrainian drones hit several Russian weapons production facilities overnight. Russia is now proposing new peace talks in Istanbul (again)—but of course, this is one more deception. If they actually want peace, they can simply pack up and go home.

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Roundup: Delay to delivery?

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The new natural resource minister, Tim Hodgson, gave a speech in Calgary yesterday and everyone in the energy sector was all hot and bothered because he insisted that they were moving to a culture of delivery instead of delay. And you’ll have to forgive my cynicism, but that seems to completely ignore what the actual issues of delay have been, and if you say “Liberal regulation!” you’re going to get a smack. The premise of saying they need “one project, one review” ignores that that’s been the case for ages now—there are no duplicative reviews, because federal and provincial reviews look at different things, and on projects where they had shared jurisdiction, they set up a joint review panel so that it was *gasp!* one review. Anyone who says they were mired in duplication is frankly not being that honest.

The real issue has been proper consultation, which is what leads projects to wind up in litigation, particularly from Indigenous groups. Harper’s attempt to reform assessments to “streamline” them meant that most of those projects wound up in litigation because, well, they ignored their obligations. In some cases, like Northern Gateway, the Conservatives ignored the process that they put into place for meaningful consultation, and well, the project died on the vine as a result. And with BC and Ontario both pushing legislation to “streamline” projects which basically means bulldozing over environmental and Indigenous obligations, well, that’s all going to wind up in litigation too. This was the whole point of the Impact Assessment Act that Jason Kenney in particularly successfully villainized—it was to ensure proper consultation up-front, at the design phase of a project, so that the rest of the process would go faster because you did the hard work at the beginning. But it became the subject of lies and disinformation, and yes, the federal government’s attempt to exert jurisdiction over certain projects because the polluting effects cross borders didn’t convince the Supreme Court of Canada, but that didn’t render the entire statute or the issues of up-front consultation obsolete or moot, and nobody seems to want to explain that part.

One more thing about Hodgson’s speech was the he singled out Pathways Alliance as a project he wants to see move forward. I’m really hoping that this means he’s telling them to put up or shut up, because we know that they basically went dark because their claims about building a massive carbon capture and storage hub were overblown and they were about to face legal consequences for greenwashing thanks to new powers for the Competition Bureau. And frankly, the whole point of the emissions cap was to tell the energy sector to put up or shut up—that they have been boasting about how they’re going to reduce their emissions, so when the government basically told them to prove it, suddenly they started crying about how this as a “production cap” and it was unfair to them. Girl, please. You insisted you could do this, so prove it.

Meanwhile, we’ve had our first glimpse into Mark Carney’s PMO, and while he’s insistent on punctuality, business attire, and UK spellings (hooray!), and decision paralysis is not setting in (so far), he’s also starting to micromanage all kinds of things that he shouldn’t be, which sounds an awful lot like a Harper trait. Part of the problem so far is a lack of a proper chief of staff, and that ministers haven’t staffed up yet either, and yet he wants to operate at a breakneck pace. But there are other warning signs—because he doesn’t understand politics, he really hasn’t given thought to how to navigate a minority House of Commons, to say nothing of the Senate (ahem), and not knowing how to deal with Parliament could lead to a situation where the Conservatives can team up with the Bloc and the NDP yet again to start frustrating anything passing once again—and for all of their talk about working together and getting things done, don’t think for a second that they’re actually not more interested in scoring points and embarrassing the Liberals. Trudeau lost the ability to manage these things, in part because of disinterest, and we’ll see if Carney doesn’t make the same mistake.

Ukraine Dispatch

There was a massive missile and drone attack against Kyiv overnight, which has injured at least eight people (Photos). Ukraine and Russia exchanged 390 prisoners each on Friday, marking one of the largest swaps since the war began.

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Roundup: The new ambassador doesn’t get it

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The new US ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, has been making the media rounds, and is just one more in a long line of American politicians who just can’t understand why Canadians are so upset with the Americans. (It’s a complete mystery!) Surely, we must be happy that we could have the “lowest tariffs of any country,” instead of, oh, the free trade that allowed for integrated supply chains between both countries. Why wouldn’t we be happy with that? And in a preview for an interview to be aired over the weekend, he says there are easier ways to send messages to Trump than to bring over the King.

*sighs*

Having the King open the next session of Parliament is not only about sending a message to Trump. Yes, that is part of it, and you can bet that it’s actually going to be something he pays more attention to than a phone call because his attention span only lasts as long as the next person who talks to him, so what good is a phone call in that regard? Also? This is as much about domestic reassurance as it is a message to Trump. As Trump has threatened us, we had a bunch of people wrongly believe that the King needed to act unilaterally and say something that might cause a diplomatic incident, and others actually believed that he personally invited Trump on the second state visit when no, that was at the behest of the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer. And no, he can’t say anything unilaterally, because that goes against what constitutional monarchy stands for, and why there was the Glorious Revolution in 1688. If anyone is to blame for Charles not speaking up on Canada’s behalf earlier, it was Justin Trudeau’s, because he very much liked to ignore the Crown as much as he possibly could (probably because it pulled the focus away from him).

Oh, and Hoekstra keeps saying that the “51st state” stuff is over, and that Trump isn’t saying it, and they have more important things to worry about. But he said it just two weeks ago, and do you actually think that anything is really over for Trump? He’s incredibly angry with his past self for signing the New NAFTA. And I get that Hoekstra needs to play this particular role, but come on. Demonstrate that you’ve paid the slightest bit of attention to Canada since you were named ambassador, and read the room.

https://bsky.app/profile/effinbirds.com/post/3lps2mm7mmf26

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia is claiming to have taken a settlement between Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka in Donetsk region.

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Roundup: Signing decision notes as performance art

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It was Mark Carney’s first Cabinet meeting yesterday after the election and the shuffle, and hoo boy, is there a lot to talk about, starting with the fact that Carney once again called the media into the Cabinet room so that they could film him signing a “decision note” about implementing his planned tax cut. This is pure theatre—essentially this note is to instruct the civil service to prepare the legislation that will make this happen, but having the media witnessing him signing a document is both very Trumpy, and also a continuation of Trudeau-era politics by comms exercise. It’s not how things work in our system, and this is a very bad sign about how they’re doing things “differently” from Trudeau.

I have to say, I'm really not a fan of this new performance art of calling the media into the Cabinet room so that Carney can sign a mysterious document in front of them, Trump-style.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-05-14T17:29:26.165Z

Oh, look, it's another "Decision Note." Glad that this is now a vehicle for policy performance.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-05-14T17:40:41.329Z

And then there was the gauntlet of ministers saying things unfiltered to the press, with no message discipline. On the one hand, it’s pretty glorious to finally have ministers unleashed. On the other hand, the kinds of trouble that they are inviting is exactly why iron-fisted message discipline has been implemented for the past two decades. First up was François-Philippe Champagne saying that there won’t be a budget tabled in the short spring sitting, but that there will be a “comprehensive” fall economic update. He could have articulated that there simply isn’t time for the civil service to put one together in those four weeks or to talk about how the private sector forecasts are pretty much unusable in the current trade war uncertainty, but he went on about the Speech from the Throne, because reasons.

New Secretary of State Wayne Long says that it sounds like government is going to be run “like a corporation,” and I cannot even. This kind of thinking never, ever works out in government because it doesn’t have a bottom line to deliver to shareholders—it has to do the things that companies won’t, and government is set up to be held to account, whereas corporations are explicitly set up in a way to limit accountability and liability.

There was Gregor Robertson who stumbled on his very first outing, saying that housing prices don’t need to come down and that more supply will make housing affordable—except the math on that one is that it would take 20 to 40 years to do so. This is a tightrope to walk because of the number of people who have their nest eggs in their home equity, but he’s going to have to do better than what he answered.

The Housing Minister suggested that home prices don't need to go down to restore affordability. We examined this, and it's technically true. They don't. However, in large parts of the country, it would take 20-40 years to reach affordability.Read here: www.missingmiddleini…

— Dr. Mike P. Moffatt (@mikepmoffatt.bsky.social) 2025-05-14T15:50:37.000Z

And Steven Guilbeault. Oh, boy. Guilbeault was asked about Carney’s comments around building more pipelines, and Guilbeault—whose new job is “Canadian identity” (and good luck to him on that Pandora’s box)—said that we should actually use our existing capacity for building more. And he’s right—but he got the current TMX values wrong. He also pointed out that both the Canadian Energy Regulator and the International Energy Agency have said that peak demand is going to happen is around 2028-29 (so it may not make sense to build a bunch of assets to be stranded), but man, did this go over like a lead balloon. And of course, Danielle Smith pounced on it, while every TV pundit declared that Guilbeault should have just shut up since it’s not his portfolio anymore. But he has a point—there are no pipeline projects waiting to go ahead, and there is no demonstrable market demand for more, so everyone is getting hot and bothered over a fantasy or a dead letter (such as Energy East), which absolutely nobody is asking for. We’re twisting ourselves into absolute knots over imaginary projects.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1922731670043517191

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1922722025291858017

Feds bought & built TMX. Complain about the cost but it’s operating. They delivered. This was supposed to be a bargain. Tidewater in exchange for meaningful reductions in GHGs.Has the oil industry delivered there? That’s the starting point for discussions about further pipelines. #ableg #cdnpoli

— Martin Z. Olszynski (@molszyns.bsky.social) 2025-05-15T00:21:34.144Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile killed three people in Sumy. President Zelenskyy looks to still be headed for Istanbul to continue to call Putin’s bluff on “peace talks”, and it looks like Trump won’t be there either.

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Roundup: Maligning legitimate Senate appointments

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One of CBC’s worst reporters is back again with the “scandalous” news that the prime minister is preparing to fill all ten vacant Senate seats before he resigns, and the original title of the article was “Trudeau plans on stacking Senate before retiring: source” before it was toned down in an update. The framing that the prime minister—who is still the prime minister—is doing his job and filling these vacancies as he is constitutionally mandated to do, is somehow inappropriate or unfair, is wrong, and frankly, is well into the category of misinformation (which is probably why the headline got changed).

It's notable the media consistently uses hedging language when it comes to things like racism (Musk's explicit Nazi salute) but will casually imply wrongdoing in headlines about debatable constitutional practices like making Senate appointments.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2025-01-27T15:05:32.107Z

The story then quotes a single Conservative senator to claim that this is somehow illegitimate, which it’s not, and there is no counter voice from an expert. For the TV version of this story, said reporter got video of Andrew Scheer claiming it’s inappropriate and that the vacancies should be left until after an election, which is again false, and there was no counter. There was no proper acknowledgment that Trudeau won a series of confidence votes in December, and that gives him the constitutional right to make these appointments, but hey, then he couldn’t frame the story as this being somehow wrong or inappropriate, and the fact that he gets away with this is infuriating.

This particular reporter has a pattern when it comes to trying to gin up scandals around any appointments. When it’s with judges, he resorts to histrionics about appointees who made political donations in the past, as though the low campaign contribution limits in Canada allows one to buy influence or access, or that they somehow bribed their way into these appointments. With recent Senate appointments, he’s now judging what is and is not a partisan appointment given past history, ignoring that a) there is no Liberal caucus in the Senate for them to be a part of, and b) past legislative experience is actually a good thing to have in that Chamber, and that the lack of it with so many appointees has been a problem. But hey, the CBC editors let him get away with these self-imposed purity tests, so he’s going to keep on doing them. It’s a disservice to the country, and the gods damned public broadcaster shouldn’t be letting their reporters personal bugaboos dictate their coverage, particularly when it taints the reporting.

Ukraine Dispatch

An overnight air attack injured four in Kharkiv after houses were hit. Other critical infrastructure was damaged during overnight drone attacks on Sunday night, where 57 out of 104 drones were downed. Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery suspended operations after a Ukrainian drone attack last week. President Zelenskyy says that the realities of the current war means that they can’t change mobilisation rules as soldiers leaving for home en masse would mean Russians would “kill us all.”

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Roundup: Ford’s false “mandate” demands

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Ontario premier Doug Ford confirmed that yes, he will be calling an early election on Wednesday, and spouted a bunch of bullshit about needing a “strong mandate” to deal with Trump, which is fiction. He went so far as to call for the “largest mandate in Ontario history,” which veers dangerously close into one-party-state delusions. And incredibly, Ford said “So you better pray that we get elected, because I’m going to protect everyone’s job, including the media’s job,” which no he won’t, and then said, “Imagine Bonnie Crombie or Marit Stiles sitting across from President Trump negotiating a deal. It would be an absolute disaster. And God help us if that ever happens.” Premiers do not engage in international negotiations. Ever. That is explicitly outside of their jurisdiction. Ford is not going to negotiate with Trump, even if he thinks that “businessman to businessman” they can work something out.

This is pure distraction. Ford has been planning on an early election for months, and now he has Trump as a fig-leaf of an excuse. He wanted to go to an election before the federal election because he doesn’t want Pierre Poilievre to taint his chances in 2026, when the next election is supposed to be held, and he’s afraid of this nonsense “theory” that Ontarians like to have different parties in power federally and provincially. And by running against Trump, he figures he can distract everyone from his corruption (RCMP investigation ongoing) and absolute mismanagement of the healthcare system to the point of its collapse, his dismantling of the post-secondary education system, and the size of the deficits he’s been running after all of his lamentations about Kathleen Wynne’s record when he has done worse by absolutely every metric. But Trump? Well, that’s a real distraction, and his playacting the “Captain Canada” role has been helping him build that, even though he hasn’t actually filled any federal vacuum in leadership (there is a conscious decision not to react to every Trump utterance), and it’s already had the Baby Spice effect on people’s brains.

Meanwhile, his constant claims that he needs a “mandate” is a fraught political concept that doesn’t actually mean anything in a Westminster system. He has a majority legislature. His opposition parties are largely ineffective or in disarray (and he has invoked the Notwithstanding Clause to neuter third-party groups from campaiging against him). Those opposition leaders said they will support anything he needs to do to counter the effect of any Trump tariffs. His claims that he needs a “mandate” to do this is an import that doesn’t actually mean anything. He was elected to govern for four years—he doesn’t need to call an election every time a crisis comes up to say that he needs a “mandate” to deal with it. Nothing would get done if he did. This is naked self-interest, and it needs to be exposed as such, but the Queen’s Park media won’t, and I suspect that Uncle Doug will sail to another election victory, both because he continues to beguile the population, and the opposition parties continue to be useless. It’s absolutely embarrassing.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a drone barrage against residential buildings in Kyiv overnight Friday, killing three. Russians claim they are about to overtake the town of Velyka Novosilka in the Donetsk region. Ukraine launched an overnight drone attack against one of Russia’s largest oil refineries in the Ryazan region, causing an explosion and damage. Reuters got access to the drone unit that is launching these long-range attacks into Russia to damage their war capabilities.

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Roundup: No, we don’t need a “unity government”

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The closer the Trump tariffs loom, the more insane the suggestions are being proffered. Case in point was in The Line yesterday, where former NDP MP and law professor Craig Scott said that the only way to save Canada is with a “unity government.” It was like he had decided to smoke meth before sitting down to write the op-ed because it was devoid of sense, or rationality.

Yes, Trump’s threats are serious, but what exactly is a “unity government” going to do? The government currently has all of the powers it needs for retaliatory tariffs and most other countermeasures. Creating a situation of an interim party leader (as prime minister) and building a Cabinet to include members of all other parties (and as he proposes, former Conservatives like James Moore, Rona Ambrose and Lisa Raitt if the current ones don’t play ball) would only be for the sake of optics, and would cause more problems than it solves. What portfolios do you distribute to members of opposition parties, for a few months? And if you’re brining in former Conservatives because the current ones don’t play ball, well, they’re all in the phase of their post-political careers where they are making money, and bringing them into Cabinet means a lot of headaches around disclosures and ethics obligations—again for the sake of a few months of optics. On top of that, the demand to bring Parliament back right away makes no sense either, because there is nothing for them to legislate around the Trump threats. As I have stated elsewhere, its only utility would be for dubious unanimous consent motions and vapid take-note debates.

You don’t need a “unity government” for MPs to play nice in the face of a grave threat. Insisting that you do is naïve and ahistorical, but fully in keeping with Scott, who was a blowhard when he was an MP, and this hasn’t changed in his time since apparently. Anyone who takes his op-ed seriously needs to rethink some of their life choices.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims Ukraine has hit them with a massive drone and missile attack overnight that hit two factories. Russian forces are bypassing the stronghold of Pokrovsk in order to try and cut off its supply lines instead. Production at the Pokrovsk coal mine (used for the steel-making industry) has been halted as Russians close in.

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Roundup: On the policing of Trudeau’s feminism

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One of the sub-plots around the lead-up to Chrystia Freeland’s resignation was the continued policing of feminism by the Conservatives, because it’s in their interests to dismiss Justin Trudeau as a “fake feminist.” The CBC has a whole write-up about how gender was never mentioned in the letter but is being used as an attack line. I’m inclined to agree with University of Calgary’s Melanee Thomas, cited in the piece, who notes that the only real gendered element was the “frustration” that qualified women can experience when men in power dismiss their advice.

I have to say, though, that the piece lacks some of the specific comments that the Conservatives made, and chose some of the tamer quotes rather than the unhinged ones, where Freeland was belittled as someone who apparently had no agency in order to attack Trudeau, which seems like a really interesting way to defend her, but also not really defend her. My absolute favourite was Leslyn Lewis standing up to declare that she wasn’t a token, with the obvious implication that Freeland was, which again, is hard to square with defending her honour (but not really) by insisting that she had no qualifications and was only there as a quota. It was pretty grotesque, and also a little delusional, because if there is anyone who is more likely to be a token, it’s Lewis, who is a crazy conspiracy theorist who shouldn’t hold a portfolio and yet does, and sits in Poilievre’s camera shot for quite obvious reasons.

One of the most common refrains from the Conservatives as they have tried to denigrate Trudeau’s feminism, as performative as it might be, is that they keep insisting that women and minorities in their caucus all earned their places, but any in the Liberal ranks were all token diversity picks, which is incredibly dismissive, and just perpetuates the very notions that straight white men are the only ones who can really be considered “qualified” without question. It makes it really, really hard to take the feminism-policing from those who continue to push that kind of a narrative, whether they think that’s what they’re doing or not.

Ukraine Dispatch

South Korean intelligence suggests that at least 100 North Korean troops in the Kursk region have been killed so far, another 1000 have bene injured in combat, and that they are struggling with drone warfare. Here is a look at why Russia is so eager to take Pokrovsk. A combined Ukrainian missile and drone strike damaged an oil refinery in the Rostov region. Russia alleges that Ukraine has used white phosphorus in attacks, which Ukraine denies and says Russia is the one who used it.

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Roundup: Freeland drops a grenade

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The day began with a grenade. Chrystia Freeland published her resignation letter on social media, pulled the pin, and let it explode in Trudeau’s lap. Just hours before she was supposed to deliver the fiscal update, she very publicly disagreed with his “political gimmicks” and the fact that it became clear that he was looking out more for his political survival than the good of the country, and said that he told her he wasn’t going to keep her in the portfolio but offered her another one, which she decided to decline.

It’s hard to fathom just how absolutely boneheaded Trudeau’s move was, to have her accept a demotion but still read a political document whose direction she had concerns with. And as for the portfolio he was going to give her, it was apparently a “Canada/US relations” portfolio with no department attached, meaning no levers of power to actually do anything in the role—it would be strictly ceremonial, and she was perfectly within her rights to reject that as a slap in the face after everything she has done for Trudeau, and been loyal this whole time.

Minister without Portfolio & no officials / no levers is not a real jobYou are being asked to bake the cookies for the team retreat.

— Jennifer Robson (@jrobson.bsky.social) 2024-12-16T17:36:13.151Z

Big #cdnpoli vibes today.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-17T01:16:13.508Z

Her departure, and the way she did it, sent the government scrambling. There was supposed to be a lock-up for journalists for the Fiscal Update, but it ended up being postponed while the Cabinet figured out what the hell to do, and if someone was going to read the document in the Commons. The rumours were that the back-up finance minister (according to the Order of Precedence), François-Philippe Champagne refused, as did Anita Anand, but I’m not sure what to think of those. In the end, there was no speech, merely a document tabled by the House Leader (who had just spent 45 minutes eating shit on Trudeau’s behalf in QP), and Dominic LeBlanc was shuttled over to Rideau Hall for an emergency swearing-in to add finance to his already too-long list of portfolios. From there, Trudeau went to an emergency caucus meeting as several of his MPs were renewing vocal calls for him to step down. In the end, he didn’t, but apparently the question remains open and he plans to “reflect” over the holidays. Oh, and all that talk about Mark Carney? Yeah, it’s not happening (because it never made any gods damned sense), so maybe stop talking about him already.

I have to wonder how Poilievre/Scheer/Hallan, et al., are going to spin the fact that Carney is not, in fact, taking over in finance. Do they claim credit, saying that they successfully warded him off? Do they pretend they never insisted this was a done deal? Which lie will be the lie they tell?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-17T04:14:25.455Z

And as if that wasn’t enough, Trudeau then headed to the annual holiday party of the Laurier Club—the party’s top donors—and somewhat shrugged off the day’s events, repeatedly saying that Canada is the best country in the world. We’re in for some rough waters ahead, and I don’t know how Trudeau can possibly stay on at this point.

Throughout all of this, Jagmeet Singh took the opportunity to beclown himself, by demanding that Trudeau step down, but when asked if he would vote non-confidence, stated that “all options are on the table.” In other words, his party is not ready for an election, and will swallow themselves whole to prevent one while they try and look tough while they shit-talk the government at every opportunity. It’s farcical, but what do you expect from the current state of Canadian politics?

The fiscal update

After all of the drama, the update was released, albeit with no speech in the Chamber, which the Conservatives caterwauled mightily about. There weren’t many surprises, other than the fact that last year’s deficit was larger than expected because the government booked a bunch of legal settlements—primarily for the Indigenous communities—onto last year’s books (which is probably also why the Public Accounts have been delayed). These were one-time costs, so that means the deficit can continue to decline in the future, and economist Armine Yalnizyan noted that this was essentially a gift to the next government because it’s off their books, and they can make it look like they were more prudent managers when that’s not necessarily the case. Nevertheless, the government didn’t try to tease or hint that this was coming, which really makes you wonder about whoever is trying to decide on their communications strategy.

The Logic has a good summary of the document, and it is confirmed that Terry Fox will be on the new $5 banknotes, while Laurier will be shuffled up to the $50 (and I believe Sir John A Macdonald will take over the $100). The NDP, meanwhile, are disappointed there are no new social programmes in said budget, because of course they are.

How great is this, Terry Fox will be on the 5 dollar bill.#Canadianlegend

— Rick Dhaliwal (@dhaliwalsports.bsky.social) 2024-12-17T00:33:46.874Z

The biggest ticket item in the FES is the extension of the Accelerated Investment Incentive. This is a huge deal. This allows companies to save taxes when they invest, and only when they invest. It will cost $17.9B in foregone revenue over the next 6 fiscal years.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2024-12-16T21:44:13.179Z

Next, debt to GDP. We put on some debt during the pandemic. (Which was the right thing to do!) We have now knocked a few points off it. (Which is the right thing to do!). I'm hoping to see this trend continue in the FES. (It's the right thing to do!)We are nowhere near 1995 levels. This is fine.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2024-12-16T19:00:55.197Z

Finally, here's the deficit to GDP. As a rough line, I'm pretty comfortable so long as the defict is under 2% of GDP. (We can run deficits of that size forever and still have Debt/GDP fall. Sustainable fiscal policy is about Debt/GDP.)

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2024-12-16T19:14:29.334Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian and American intelligence both say that North Korean troops have been killed alongside Russians in fighting in the Kursk region. A Ukrainian drone has destroyed a Russian ammunition depot in the occupied parts of Donetsk region. Ukraine is claiming that they have a laser weapon that can down aerial weapons at a range of 2 km.

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