Tag Archives: Canadian Forces

Roundup: A committee of handwringing over ferries

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On Friday, the Commons transport committee met to wring their hands and express their dismay at BC Ferries’ decision to buy new ships from a Chinese firm, and lo, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Chrystia Freeland expressed her dismay. Gregor Robertson expressed his disappointment. The representative of the Canada Infrastructure Bank pointed out that they don’t make any decisions on procurement, and that their loan was secured before that decision was made. And the head of BC Ferries pointed out, once again, that no Canadian shipyard bid on these ships, if they did, it would take them a decade to deliver them (at least), and that the Chinese bid was $1.2 billion cheaper than any of the others.

That of course didn’t stop opposition MPs from doing the performative song and dance. Conservative Dan Albas demanded the government cancel the loan—which the government can’t do because the Infrastructure Bank is arm’s length. And now they want all documents and emails released, which is going to tell them yet again that no Canadian shipyards bid on this contract.

1) This procurement is entirely provincial jurisdiction2) The Infrastructure Bank operates at arm's length and ministers can't cancel any loans it gives3) NO CANADIAN SHIPYARDS BID ON THIS CONTRACT!Is the federal government going to dictate that one of them build these ferries? Seriously?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-08-05T13:50:03.050Z

Perhaps most galling of all was Bloc MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval wanted an apology from the government and from the Canada Infrastructure Bank because it’s “unacceptable” that the government plans to invest in foreign infrastructure when our own steel industry is facing tariffs from Trump—but the federal government isn’t investing. BC Ferries, a provincial Crown Corporation is, and the loan from the Infrastructure Bank is a fully repayable loan. You would think the Bloc of all people would rather the federal government respect a decision by a provincial body, but apparently that only matters if it’s in Quebec.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-08-04T13:08:04.388Z

In case you missed it:

  • My weekend column on the false choice between emissions caps and prosperity, as the costs of climate change are already being felt in significant ways.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take points out that Poilievre and the Conservatives had a chance to deal with the Longest Ballot nuisances, but chose stupid games instead.
  • My column which responds to what was in that weekend CBC story on the “radically overhauled” Senate and the problems with some of the arguments made.
  • My long weekend column looks at the current issue with contracts for freelance interpreters in Parliament, and why it’s exacerbating an existing crisis.
  • My column asks if it’s time to revive the Economic Council of Canada as we did with the Law Commission, given the uncertain times we live in.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims to have captured another village in the Dniporpetrovsk region. On Monday, Ukraine destroyed one Russian military jet and damaged four others stationed in occupied Crimea. Ukrainian officials say that Indian components have been found in Russian drones. Two days after Ukraine’s parliament voted to restore anti-corruption agencies’ independence, they announced that they had uncovered a major graft scheme involving drone procurements.

https://twitter.com/Denys_Shmyhal/status/1952763302699729187

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Roundup: Reassuring Inuit leadership

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Mark Carney was in Inuvik to have his meeting with Inuit leaders regarding Bill C-5 and the major projects they are hoping to build, and seems to have convinced them that nothing is going to impact on their particular treaty rights, even though it’s still a lot of “just trust me,” because I cannot stress enough that he gave himself the power to override pretty much any legislation with that massive Henry VIII clause in C-5, meaning that he intends to use it. Said Inuit leaders didn’t seem quite as exercised about the colonial structures being built into the Major Projects Office and its proposed Indigenous advisory council (which reports to PMO and not to the Indigenous nations they are supposed to be representing), but again, we’ll see once things are a little more fleshed out.

During the meeting, Carney and Anita Anand announced that Iqaluit resident Virginia Mearns, who is Inuk, will be Canada’s new Arctic ambassador, a role that Mary Simon once held. As part of this office and Arctic strategy, there are plans to open new consulates in Alaska and Greenland.

Meanwhile, the demands for PONIs continue to dwell largely in fantasyland, with projects that have no proponents being demanded approval of, nor projects that have a particular economic case to be made for them. It’s just “more pipelines.” Like, come on, guys.

Programming Note: I’m off for the next week-and-a-bit. See you on the far side of the long weekend.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-07-24T21:27:03.912Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Two people were killed in a Russian attack on Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine, while at least 33 were injured in a glide bomb attack on Kharkiv. President Zelenskyy has introduced a bill to restore the independence of the anti-corruption agencies, and says he welcomes input from friendly governments.

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Roundup: Longest Ballot nuisances reach a new record

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The Longest Ballot Committee crybabies have reached a high—or low—by organising some hundred candidates to be on the ballot for the Battle River—Crowfoot byelection, and they want to reach 200 when the nominations close on the 28th. It’s ridiculous and abusive, and they’re now full-on masturbating in the media insisting this is about the purity of democracy and that it’s not even about protest when this is about trying to force the government to hold a citizen’s assembly for electoral reform, because they don’t think politicians should write their own rules. Erm, except that’s what self-government means. Politicians write their own rules so that the King doesn’t. Revolutions were fought for this ability.

As for citizen’s assemblies, they are demonstrably bullshit—they’re tools used to launder accountability because there is no way to hold them accountable because you can’t vote them out for the decisions they make, and most of the time, they are easily manipulable to deliver the kinds of answers you want them to give, usually by gaming the “experts” who guide them. It’s another form of manufacturing consent, much like how referendums are easily manipulable by the government who organizes them, by shaping the questions and the conditions of those referendums to deliver results they want, at which point they manipulate the responses they get. In this case, they want this citizen’s assembly to deliver proportional representation for them (which system of PR? Who can say? But yes, that matters), because they’re crybabies who seem to think that if the person/party you vote for doesn’t automatically win, then your vote is “wasted.” There’s a technical term for that—it’s “sore loserism.” And Parliament really needs to get their shit together to close the loopholes in the rules so that the Longest Ballot organisers are stopped.

Meanwhile, the push to lower the voting age has been given a new push because the voting age is being lowered to sixteen in the UK, amidst complaints that Labour are trying to put their thumbs on the scale of the next election because their popularity is plummeting. I’m not a big fan of lowering the voting age to sixteen—teenagers make a lot of dumb choices, and just yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed that youth frequently don’t have the moral blameworthiness to know the severity of consequences in criminal activity, but they would for voting? I can guarantee you that it would mean that voter turnout percentages would plummet even further, just like they did when the voting age was lowered to 18, and we’d be in for a whole new round of handwringing about that. If teenagers want to be politically active, they should join political parties and learn how to organise, and participate in nominations and leadership contests (which is another reason why we need to reinvigorate grassroots party democracy). I’m just not convinced that lowering the voting age to 16 is going to solve any problems.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-07-18T22:56:07.793Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A mass Russian drone attack overnight has killed at least one person when they struck apartment buildings. Russian forces claim to have taken control of three villages along different parts of the front lines. Ukraine’s top commander says that their forces are holding firm outside of the key city of Pokrovsk.

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Roundup: A shambolic summit with First Nations

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Prime minister Mark Carney had his “summit” with First Nations leaders yesterday at the Canadian Museum of History, and it was a shambolic affair. Itineraries changed constantly, and the media were kicked out after Carney’s initial speech, before the AFN national chief could give her own speech, which she made a point of referencing. Leaders were promised time to engage with Carney and his ministers, and were instead simply told to talk amongst themselves. Carney did promise that this was “just the beginning,” and that there would be more focused regional consultations in the near future, but the whole thing didn’t really reassure a lot of those assembled chiefs (who were all Indian Act chiefs and not the hereditary chiefs who are in some cases the title holders). There was indeed a sense of frustration, and some chiefs walked out because of it.

Some of those chiefs from Alberta held a separate press conference with the assistance of Senator Prosper, and they noted that there was no proper consultation process on the meeting itself, that the attendees were hand-picked, and that this was largely political theatre to manufacture consent. Much of their comments focused on the fact that the treaties are not just box-ticking exercises, that they did not cede or surrender their lands, and that they have rights that must be respected—and more to the point, that in failing to live up to these obligations, the government is doing damage to the Honour of the Crown.

Afterward, Indigenous Services minister Mandy Gull-Masty tried to assure everyone that “national interest” included Indigenous people, and that projects can’t go ahead without Indigenous buy-in, but at the same time said that they can’t really discuss any specifics because they have to wait for the Major Projects Office to be stood-up, which they are hoping to do by Labour Day, and only then, when there are actual potential projects in the window could they properly engage with the rights-holders. But we are getting back into the “just trust us” territory, which traditionally has not gone very well for Indigenous people in this country.

Ukraine Dispatch

Here’s a look at how drone warfare is changing the front lines of the conflict. Russia and Ukraine exchanged more bodies of war dead.

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Roundup: Alberta’s censorship plan goes ahead

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The Alberta government released their policy on “explicit materials” in school libraries yesterday, and it went badly, in part because it was confusing about what they considered acceptable “non-explicit sexual materials,” and pretty much every media outlet got it wrong, while my Xtra colleague Mel Woods was out there correcting everyone for several hours until they could update their stories. The government even had to put out a clarification.

Alberta's new school library standards are here, and include a total ban on "explicit sexual content" from school libraries in the province Notably, "religious texts" are excluded — and when asked during the briefing today to give examples, only the Bible was brought up as an obvious exception.

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2025-07-10T18:35:11.927Z

I understand that the confusion is between "non-explicit sexual content" and what the government is defining as "not considered sexual" — they are two separate things

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2025-07-10T20:01:59.483Z

All of the media outlets reporting that books with puberty/kissing/hugging are banned in Alberta for Grade 9 and under … that's not true!!

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2025-07-10T20:33:27.209Z

All of this being said, what got me was that they got a token trans person to insist that this particular censorship (and let’s be clear that it’s what this is) has nothing to do with LGBTQ+ people but is just about sexually explicit materials, and they even said something to the effect of “At that age, we need guidance and not sexual materials.” And I immediately started swearing at the TV, because this is where it always starts. This is a page directly out of the playbook of autocrats like Viktor Orbán, who use LGBTQ+ scapegoating to further their ends. Hell, we have a history in this country where wannabe censors at Canada Customs (as it was then known) for seizing innocuous queer materials bound for the Little Sisters bookstore in Vancouver and claiming it was “obscene” (and there’s a Supreme Court decision on this).

For them to say "This is not about LGBTQ+ material, it's about sexually explicit material" as if Little Sisters didn't happen in this country or Viktor Orbán's anti-LGBTQ+ laws that target innocuous books aren't happening RIGHT NOW is absolutely enraging.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-07-10T18:46:28.143Z

Of course, this is about LGBTQ+ people and materials. Three of the four books that started this moral panic on the part of the Alberta government were queer or trans. They were weaponised by Christian nationalists to achieve this very result. And they will keep complaining that any queer materials are “sexually explicit” by their very nature until the government capitulates. It’s also why the proposed age verification legislation that is making yet another attempt federally is 100 percent guaranteed to be used to attack queer and trans materials. Pretending otherwise means you are either mendacious or an idiot, or possibly both.

Ukraine Dispatch

Here is a look at how the residents of Kyiv are dealing with the increasing waves of attacks in recent weeks. A rebuilding conference took place in Italy, committing over ten billion Euros to the effort. Meanwhile, the UK signed a deal to supply air defence missiles to Ukraine, while the UK and France also agreed that Paris would be the headquarters of the “coalition of the willing” for Ukraine.

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Roundup: A major far-right terror arrest

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The big news yesterday was that four people were arrested and charged in terrorism-related charges for plans to start an anti-government militia, and to violently seize land near Quebec City for their own purposes, and more to the point, that two of those charged are serving members of the Canadian Forces, and not reservists as we have seen in the past. They were also heavily armed and had a number of explosive devices prepared—and it was likely the largest number of weapons and devices seized in a terror-related event in Canadian history.

I can’t speak to the nature of the plot (too few details) but this is the largest amount of weapons and devices seized as part of a terrorism incident in Canada. Ever.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T14:20:46.149Z

Details are still scarce, but former CSIS analyst Jessica Davis has some particular observations.

Not small time: "Searches conducted in January 2024 in the Québec City area led to the seizure of 16 explosive devices, 83 firearms and accessories, approximately 11,000 rounds of ammunition of various calibres, nearly 130 magazines, four pairs of night vision goggles and military equipment."

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T13:19:41.537Z

This is an ideologically motivated plot. In Canada, 77% of terrorist attacks have been carried out by ideologically-motivated actors: newsletter.insightthreatintel.com/p/rising-thr…

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T13:29:30.504Z

Over the last two decades, however, most terrorism charges have been laid against religiously-motivated terrorists. That has slowly been changing, with more ideologically-motivated individuals getting caught: newsletter.insightthreatintel.com/p/terror-on-…

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T13:29:30.505Z

They do point to the ideology — anti-government extremism. And there's a long history in Canada of breaking down our terrorism into different categories. (ideological, political, and religious). There's a lot to criticize the RCMP about, but this is not top of the list.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T20:09:49.002Z

Another issue here has to do with the military not doing an adequate job of investigating the full extent of far-right extremism in their ranks, in part because they refuse to let outsiders do the investigating, as Leah West demonstrates in this thread. Some of this has to do with an insistence on cleaning up their own messes, but, well, their history on that score has not been great given the sexual misconduct problems and abuse of power scandals they have been dealing with over the past couple of decades. There is still work to do, and it doesn’t help when things happen, such as the commander of the Canadian Army saying he wasn’t notified about certain army members posting to an “abhorrent” Facebook group during the investigation into it.

There is much about this story that is staggering. But the inclusion of military members while deeply troubling is not surprising. A story:I was part of the RWE CAF research network funded by the Department of National Defence to study IMVE in the military for three years 2020-2023.

— Leah West (@leahwest-nsl.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T22:30:36.625Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The only real Ukraine news today is that Trump is planning to resume weapons shipments to Ukraine, feeling hurt that Putin was bullshitting him, but more concerningly, says he doesn’t know who ordered the shipments to stop (because he’s clearly not running his own show).

https://bsky.app/profile/united24media.com/post/3ltixwozuor2a

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Roundup: Bad pancakes and fantasy pipelines

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It was Mark Carney’s in his first Calgary Stampede as prime minister over the weekend, and it started off on Saturday with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters pancake breakfast, where Carney struggled with flipping pancakes, and was subjected to taunts about how he was worse than Justin Trudeau at it, which he insisted he was better at other things than Trudeau was. He also quipped that he was better with Eggo Waffles, so at least he had a sense of humour about it. He ran into Danielle Smith at said event, but didn’t run into Pierre Poilievre because Poilievre stayed in his vehicle until Carney left.

From the pool report at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters pancake breakfast at the Calgary Stampede this morning:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-07-05T19:18:51.244Z

Carney also gave some local interviews, and of course, the subject of a future pipeline came up, and Carney said he was “confident” that they would get those projects built, and that the private sector was going to do it. But there are no proponents looking to build a pipeline anytime soon, so this remains a fantasy in the eyes of a number of conservatives who insist that it’s still 2014. There was also more special pleading about the Pathways Alliance carbon sequestration project, which again misrepresents what the issue is, which is that they want the government to pay for it, because it’s not economically viable, particularly with the price of carbon as low as it is industrially (and now free for the consumer).

I also need to remind everyone that in all likelihood, the federal government’s plan to use their big Henry VIII clause to simply bypass existing legislation is just going to do the same thing that Harper’s 2012 environmental rewrite did—land projects in court, because it created more uncertainty, not less. And once again, I’m going to adopt a Mallory Archer voice to ask “Do you want litigation? Because that’s how you get litigation.”

Ukraine Dispatch

While there was more trading of drone attacks over the weekend, it looks like Ukraine struck a Russian airfield and its glide bomb stores. Russia has started a new offensive in the Kharkiv region, while they claim to have taken control of two more settlements in the Donetsk region.

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Roundup: Questions about the barriers to building

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There was an interesting piece from The Logic yesterday where they asked the proponents of three projects to describe what their barriers are, and they’re…not all that coherent? One of them was complaining that they don’t really know where to apply for things and that it’s a black box once they do. And I find that curious, because there is a city full of consultants, lobbyists and government relations professionals out there whose job it is to help you navigate these kinds of processes. These people exist. It’s their jobs. Other proponents are complaining about federalism—some things trigger federal rules, some provincial, and they just want a one-stop shop. Which, sure, I get, but there are joint review processes available for certain projects that have both federal and provincial assessment components, but also that’s the nature of a federal state. Neither jurisdiction is going to abdicate their sovereignty, and I think that there are legitimate concerns if you expect one level of government to give up their process to “avoid duplication,” because it’s not actually duplication—they each look at different things, and I would not trust certain provincial governments to adequately address the concerns of federal legislation in their own processes.

The other complaint that these proponents have has to do with negotiating with provincial electricity suppliers for their projects, and the process of trying to negotiate adequate electricity for the project so that they can advance their proposals, which again, is not a barrier the federal government can do anything about. And sometimes hard things are hard, but I didn’t see any particular barriers in these descriptions that seemed insurmountable—it was a lot of “we don’t know what we’re doing,” and “I don’t want to have to do it,” particularly where there are environmental concerns. Which is one of the reasons why I’m particularly concerned about Bill C-5 federally, which can essentially ignore rules with the wave of a pen, and Ontario’s Bill 5, which literally can declare certain zones in the province to be lawless. These are not good approaches, but they seem to be what our leader have settle on, particularly because Mark Carney seems to operate on an ethos of seeking forgiveness rather than permission, which is not a good look for a government.

Meanwhile, here is Andrew Leach with a couple of added observations about these projects:

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia has launched an all-night attack on Kyiv that has injured at least fourteen. There were also strikes against port infrastructure in Odesa that have killed two people, and shelling of Pokrovsk has killed five people. There was also an airstrike against Poltava that his a military recruitment office that killed two people. Meanwhile, the EU was discussing how to adapt to Trump’s decision to withhold needed arms to Ukraine, as some cannot be sourced elsewhere.

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Roundup: Didn’t quite meet the Canada Day goals

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We have just passed Canada Day, and did Mark Carney live up to all of the promises he made that were supposed to happen by then? Erm, not really. He set some pretty lofty goals for himself, and some of those promises he started to backpedal on the closer the time got, like on internal trade barriers. First it was eliminating them all by Canada Day. And then it was federal barriers. And even then, while the legislation has passed, it’s a bit of a mess. Why? Because the approaches to lifting those barriers is a patchwork of mutual recognition agreements between some provinces and not others, and that could in turn be new barriers in and of themselves, because there aren’t any consistent approaches.

Meanwhile, his bill to cut taxes didn’t pass, but it’ll still take effect on July 1st because of the Ways and Means motion that got passed. He got the ball rolling on the ReArm Europe programme, but it is not a done deal. He also said that he wanted all departments to undertake reviews to cut “red tape” within sixty days, but when exactly that kicks in was a bit ambiguous, not that I think 60 days is an adequate enough time to do a review of all of a department’s regulations to find inefficient rules. They’ve been doing that for years, so it’s not like there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit. I guess we’ll see what they turn up before the fall.

https://twitter.com/CanadianUK/status/1940419524375072985

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1940002704295596284

It is nice to see Prince Edward make an appearance, and say a few words, and to bring greetings from Their Majesties with a promise of a longer royal tour to come."I speak for all of my family when I say that we take immense pride in Canada and Canadians." #MapleCrown

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-07-01T16:38:04.203Z

In case you missed it:

My weekend column points out that Danielle Smith’s attack on immigrants in her “Alberta Next” panel telegraph how desperate she is to find new scapegoats.

My Loonie Politics Quick Take looks at that NATO “five percent” goal, which isn’t five percent, and the conversations we should be having instead.

My column shows how Bill C-5 is the latest in a series of ways in which our Parliament has been slowly hollowing itself out, becoming a Potemkin village.

Ukraine Dispatch

The US is delaying or halting shipments of promised weapons to Ukraine, just as Russia has been ramping up attacks, because this is who Trump is. Meanwhile, Russia appears to be ramping up its offensives in Donetsk and Sumy.

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Senate QP: The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?

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Things got underway early for a marathon day of debate on Bill C-5, but before that could start, Routine Proceedings and Senate Question Period had to take place, which promises to be the last sitting day of the spring, and also Senator Marc Gold’s last sitting day as Government Leader in the Senate. Some of the statements made were farewells to Senators whose terms are expiring in the coming months, another statement was about the two people who lost their lives in the recent landslide near Banff.

Back in the Senate for #SenQP, early today ahead of marathon hearings on Bill C-5.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-06-26T13:07:16.620Z

Senators Housakos led off, asking about the opioid crisis, calling the government’s response flawed and reactive and wondered why there wasn’t a national strategy to deal with it. Senator Gold noted the tragedy of these deaths, and that the government is setting up a plan to tighten the border, and noted recent statistics that use has fallen. Housakos decried the failure of the government, and wanted a more effective response that would achieve results. Gold noted that the government is working with provinces to protect people.

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