Tag Archives: Constitution

Roundup: A Swedish state visit

Posted on by

The King and Queen of Sweden on a state visit to Canada, for the first time since 2006, bringing with them some top ministers and business officials. It was also the first visit since Sweden joined NATO, and has been noted that Canada was the first country to support that membership, and that Swedish troops are now under Canadian command in Latvia. Prime minister Mark Carney announced that Canada and Sweden have signed a strategic partnership, before there was a state dinner in their honour, hosted by the Chief Justice as Mary Simon is still recovering from her recent hospitalisation.

Of course, one of the things looming over this visit is Sweden trying to convince Canada to buy Gripen fighter jets, given the reconsideration of the F-35 purchase thanks to American unreliability (particularly when their president muses openly about nerfing the planes they sell us, and where they could hold software or necessary upgrades hostage). Mélanie Joly made it known yesterday that Lockheed Martin has not exactly been generous with its industrial benefits for the F-35 programme—as participants in the Joint Strike Fighter programme, Canadian firms are part of the manufacturing process, but that’s fairly limited, and doesn’t include any of the intellectual property concerns. (That participation in parts manufacturing is being labelled by activists as “complicity” in Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, incidentally). SAAB, meanwhile, is dangling the prospect of 10,000 jobs in Canada as part of assembling Gripens, not just for Canada, but also to expand their production capacity for orders from countries like Ukraine. The question is essentially becoming whether we want a mixed fleet, which is more expensive, but may provide better reliability given the state of relations with the US, even though we will likely need some number of F-35s as part of continental defence with the Americans.

Meanwhile, I also learned that the King of Sweden’s great-grandfather was Prince Arthur of Connaught, who served as Governor General in Canada in the 1910s, and lived at Rideau Hall, which meant that it was a bit of a homecoming for said King. The more you know.

From the state dinner pool report: "In his speech, King Carl XVI Gustaf thanked Canada for the warm welcome and said it was a "pleasure" to be back in the country. He said his great grandfather, Prince Arthur of Connaught, was Governor General of Canada in the 1910s, and lived in Rideau Hall."

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-11-19T02:42:11.788Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones struck an apartment building in Kharkiv, injuring at least thirty-two, while drones and missiles have also been hitting civilian targets in Ternopil and Lviv in the western part of the country. President Zelenskyy is off to Türkiye this week try and jumpstart negotiations with Russia (for all the good that will do). Russian intelligence is being blamed for railway sabotage in Poland, on lines that connect to Ukraine and carry vital supplies.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1990722262274613257

Continue reading →

Roundup: The second tranche of PONIs

Posted on by

Yesterday was the day that Mark Carney announced the second tranche of PONIs to be referred to the Major Projects Office, which consisted of six existing projects and one “concept,” which I’m pretty unsure how it was supposed to work. Three of those projects are mines—Sisson Mine for tungsten in New Brunswick, Crawford Nickel project in Ontario, and the Nouveau Monde Graphite phase 2 project in Quebec. Those very much align with the desire to make Canada a more trustworthy supplier of critical minerals than China (though pat of the problem is that they have a near-monopoly on refining and processing). A hydro project for Iqaluit was on the list, as was a transmission line between northwestern BC and the Yukon, and an LNG Project on the BC coast that has some Indigenous partnerships (but  not every First Nation in the area is in favour, and there are concerns about its ownership structure). As for that “concept,” it is referred to as the Northwest Critical Conservation Corridor, also between northwest B.C. and Yukon., and it could include critical minerals and clean power transmission developments in the area. Again, I’m not sure how that works with no actual project or proponent.

In some of these cases, as in the first tranche of projects, some of them are fairly well developed and along the process, while in others, they’ve been discussed forever and have some Indigenous buy-in, but shovels have never been in the ground (like the Sisson Mine). It again raises questions about what the MPO is supposed to do here, but its head, Dawn Farrell, was talking about ensuring that these processes happen in parallel and not sequentially, and would also do things like security financing, guaranteeing pricing, and ensuring a supply of skilled labour, which seems like an awful lot of things for them to try and control for.

And then there’s Alberta and its imaginary pipeline, which Danielle Smith insists she’s still working on, so she’s supportive of these projects, because she is still “negotiating” for that pipeline to the northwest BC coast that neither the province nor the affected First Nations want, while there is a growing supply glut in the market. I’m pretty sure another pipeline won’t save her province’s finances, but she’s going to keep trying.

Ukraine Dispatch

Kyiv was under another “massive” attack early this morning, and at least eleven people have been wounded. President Zelenskyy visited troops near the front lines in Zaporizhzhia.

https://twitter.com/KI_Insight/status/1988670405981118746

Continue reading →

Roundup: Running the party like a frat house

Posted on by

With the House of Commons not sitting this week, one can expect the drama of the Conservative ranks to continue to reverberate this week, seeing as the government’s big budget roll-out has been ringing a little bit flat, in part because they already announced everything ahead of time, but also the fact that it’s missing the mark in some key places. Regardless, MP Chris d’Entremont is now speaking to media a bit more now that he’s crossed the floor, and it’s revealing.

d’Entremont told the CBC over the weekend that he hadn’t been 100 percent on board with crossing the floor until his remarks were published in Politico, and Andrew Scheer and Chris Warkentin barged into his office to yell at him and call him a snake, which was the point he knew it was time to go. And frankly, that’s not a surprise, but my dudes, this did not work for Erin O’Toole when he was in the dying days of his leadership, so why do you think that bullying your caucus is going to work for you? And for Poilievre’s office to respond by saying that d’Entremont is a “liar” for “wilfully deceiving his voters, friends and colleagues” is rich coming from known liars like Poilievre and Scheer. And d’Entremont also said that it wasn’t just Poilievre, but his entire leadership team who are running the party like a frat house, which sounds about right because there are no adults in the room.

I will add that something that has come up a couple of times online but not in the media was the fact that d’Entremont has been a pro-life voter throughout his political career and time in Parliament, which was something that would have mattered in the Trudeau years, but looks like Carney has dumped (possibly because he is more devoutly Catholic than Trudeau was). That wasn’t to say that certain pro-life Liberals weren’t still in Trudeau’s caucus, likely under some kind of promise extracted from them not to vote in certain ways on those issues, but there has been no discussion as to whether any similar promise was extracted from d’Entremont, or if being resolutely pro-choice is no longer a requirement for the Liberal caucus.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-11-09T15:08:04.404Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Over the weekend, Russia targeted the power sub-stations to two nuclear power plants, killing seven, along with other strikes on cities like Dnipro. Ukrainian strikes have apparently disrupted power and heat in two Russian cities near the border.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Red flags around the “grand bargain”

Posted on by

The more I read about the budget’s “climate competitiveness,” the more I find myself questioning just what is on offer from Mark Carney. There is an attempt to build this so-called “grand bargain” that failed the last time it was tried, where approving the Trans-Mountain Expansion was supposed to help fund the green transition and provide the social licence for doing things like the tanker ban on the northwest coast of BC, and yet here we are, where the oil and gas sector and by extension, the provincial government of Alberta, have not lived up to their end of the bargain at all. The companies that insisted they were going to meet their 2025 Net-Zero targets suddenly started to complain that it was too hard, and when the greenwashing legislation kicked in, suddenly all of those Net-Zero pledges vanished, as though they were never real to begin with.

That’s why I’m particularly unimpressed that one of the promises in the budget is to water down the greenwashing legislation, which sounds an awful lot like Carney is looking for the industry to lie to him once more about all of the reductions that they’re totally going to make in the future—really! You just need to let them have a free hand with even fewer environmental regulations in the meantime. As well, the fact that Carney is pinning his hopes on so-called “decarbonized” oil production with the Pathways project is even looking like he’s going to lose a tonne of money trying to get it to scale up, because hey, he’s offering a bunch of tax credits for them to operate, which is a de facto subsidy for oil operations. But it’s extremely expensive, and all of those oil companies want even more taxpayer money to make it work, while they pocket their profits, naturally. Nevertheless, it looks an awful lot like Carney is going to capitulate to that sector and remove the emissions cap on a bunch of half-hearted greenwashed promises and pretend that he still cares about the environment.

Speaking of the tanker ban, BC premier David Eby and the coastal First Nations are organising a pushback against any move by the federal government to lift it in order to push a pipeline through the region, while Danielle Smith puts ever more pressure on the federal government to approve that project (even though there’s no proponent, or route, or even just a line on a map). Will it be enough to dissuade Carney? At the pace he’s going, I’m not taking any bets.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-11-05T14:25:06.884Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The fighting continues in the streets of Pokrovsk, which is the kind of fighting that can’t be done with the same kind of drone warfare that the rest of the front line has become accustomed to.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Any excuse to delegitimise the Court

Posted on by

There was a big eruption yesterday after the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the mandatory minimum sentence for possession or accessing child sexual abuse materials, but nearly all of the outrage is based on the headline and not actually reading the decision, because of course it is. Who wants to actually read when you can just rage? While I would suggest you read my story on the decision (go ahead, I’ll wait), the highlights remain that the Court strongly denounced this kind of activity, that the two accused in this instance did receive sentences that met the mandatory minimum, but that the decision focused on the scope of the mandatory minimum. Essentially, it is a challenge to Parliament—if you make laws overly broad, they are vulnerable to being struck down because you risk giving a grossly disproportionate sentence to someone on certain sets of facts, so maybe craft better laws.

That of course didn’t stop the demands for the Notwithstanding Clause to come from Pierre Poilievre, Danielle Smith, Doug Ford, and Scott Moe, who charmingly added that this kind of decision is why Parliament alone should make laws. None of them bothered to actually read the decision. None of them actually thought about what it said, and why using blunt instruments can do more harm than good in certain cases. More than that, there was an immediate need to delegitimise the Court on manufactured outrage rather than accept that the Court still has to safeguard rights when Parliament doesn’t do its job properly. Oh, but wait—these are all premiers and leaders who are less interested in rights than they are in targeting and scapegoating minorities for their own political ends, so of course they want to keep the courts at bay.

Watch out! Kenney's decided to start stroking his rage-boner again!

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-11-01T02:43:07.978Z

We are at a place in this country right now where rights are under attack by populist leaders, be it Alberta, Quebec, Saskatchewan, or Ontario (though Ford is more likely to back down when actually confronted). They like to use language like “the will of the people,” which means that it becomes open season on minorities, which is antithetical to a liberal democracy like ours, and they don’t want any checks on that, which is why they take every opportunity to delegitimize the Court. This particular situation was just too easy for them to weaponise, and so they went with it, to hell with the facts. There is an outcome they want, and that is unchecked power.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-31T22:56:01.799Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy says that Russia has deployed some 170,000 troops to try and claim Pokrovsk, but Ukraine is slowly whittling them away. To that end, special forces troops have been landed at the city. Meanwhile, Ukraine reports that they have successfully struck 160 Russian oil and energy facilities this year.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1984173351720440022

Continue reading →

Roundup: Alberta uses Notwithstanding Clause against teachers

Posted on by

The Alberta legislature sat until about 2 AM on Tuesday morning to pass their bill to end the teacher’s strike with the invocation of the Notwithstanding Clause, with time allocation limiting debate at each stage of the bill to a mere hour apiece, which makes this an affront to both parliamentary democracy, and the very notion of rights in the province given that Danielle Smith has decided there is little to fear from her tramping over them. Oh, and while the legislature was sitting until 2 AM, Smith herself was in an airport lounge on her way to Saudi Arabia.

There are too many disingenuous arguments made to justify invoking the Clause for me to rebut here, but suffice to say, merely saying that the Clause is part of the constitution therefore that justifies its use is horseshit, or that the Supreme Court of Canada invented a right to strike, therefore the Clause is justified to pushback against judicial activism is also motivated reasoning. Even more than that, Smith’s government is claiming they can’t meet the teachers’ demands because they’re too expensive is also risible—they’re the richest province in the country, but they made the choice to double down on resource royalties (whose value has been plunging) in order to cut taxes once again. This is self-inflicted, ideological, and one has to wonder when Albertans are going to wake up that their government is quite literally undermining the entire public sector in the province quite deliberately.

https://bsky.app/profile/lindsaytedds.bsky.social/post/3m4azh342fk27

Populations on whom Canadian governments have used or threatened to use the notwithstanding clause, allowing them to override Charter rights: – trans and nonbinary kids- religious minorities – homeless people – teachersedmontonjournal.com/news/politic…

— Anna Mehler Paperny (@mehlerpaperny.bsky.social) 2025-10-28T00:33:22.757Z

We’ll see what the next steps are in terms of responses, given that the teachers’ union has decided against work-to-rule, but for the moment, say goodbye to extra-curricular activities as teachers exempt themselves from them. There is talk of mass protest from other labour unions in the province, and a general strike is always a possibility. But can I just take a moment to say that those of you who are bringing out the “No Queens” stuff already to please just not. We live in a constitutional monarchy and we have a Queen, and aping American protests is lazy and gauche. Find a different slogan.

Guys. Come on.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-28T12:56:29.934Z

effinbirds.com/post/7810977…

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-28T21:22:02.896Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy says that he won’t cede land in any future peace talks, just in case you were wondering.

https://twitter.com/KI_Insight/status/1983180684031349128

Continue reading →

Roundup: Only premiers can make pharmacare happen

Posted on by

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

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

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

effinbirds.com/post/7813695…

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

Ukraine Dispatch

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

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1982823855799554100

Continue reading →

Roundup: Carney won’t retaliate

Posted on by

Prime minister Mark Carney has dismissed calls by Doug Ford and others to retaliate against increasing American trade actions, insisting that this is not the time, and that this is the time to keep negotiating. But to what end? There is no deal to be had, and any deal they come up with isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. The talks keep “stalling,” and every time, the Americans make another demand to restart them, and Carney capitulates, and then the talks resume for a few days, and then they “stall” again. Because there isn’t a deal to be had. Sure, we currently have the “best deal” of everyone, which doesn’t amount to much given the constant tariffs under bullshit “national security” reasons, but their demands are increasingly encroaching on our sovereignty and ability to make our own policy decisions, again, for nothing. When do we start saying no more? Hopefully before we’re a vassal state.

Carney also said that he got “reassurances” from Stellantis about the Brampton plant that they decided to move production away from, but again, what good is that if they decide to keep shifting production south to avoid the tariffs, as Trump wants? Carney also isn’t saying if he’d drop Chinese EV tariffs for the sake of saving the canola trade, but again, that would be foolish because the next time China wants to make a point, they would tariff canola again, or come up with some kind of falsehood about “concerns” about the product, like they constantly do. It would be great if Carney could actually articulate that concern, rather than give false hope that this would be some kind of lasting solution to the canola issue.

Meanwhile, Carney announced his bail and sentencing reform plans, most of which are pretty much the opposite of what the legal community has warned against, and which does nothing about the fact that the real problem with bail is provinces under-resourcing their court systems, or that their jails are overcrowded, and that they’re not funding community supervision programmes, or that their underfunding social programmes means more people are going to find their way into crime. Tinkering with the Criminal Code and endangering people’s Charter rights will do nothing about this. And it’s so infuriating that Carney just capitulated to a bunch of complete falsehoods by the Conservatives, and this will change nothing (other than crowding those provincial jails even worse), and they’ll still get blamed when another case slips through the cracks.

They say they're going to work with the provinces, but rest assured that those provinces won't do what they need to do (resource their court systems), and that the situation is going to get even worse, and the federal government will again take the blame, and tinker with the Criminal Code even more.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-16T15:39:15.421Z

Also, as Dale notes, provinces have no room to incarcerate more people. Judges are reducing custodial sentences because jail conditions are so bad. bsky.app/profile/jour…

— Anna Mehler Paperny (@mehlerpaperny.bsky.social) 2025-10-16T18:03:49.009Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks on Ukrainian gas facilities will force them to import more gas this winter. A large Russian assault near Dobropillia was repelled by Ukrainian forces. Reuters takes a deeper dive into Russia’s attacks on Russia’s energy industry. AP has a photo gallery of displaced Ukrainians at a hostel in Dnipro.

Good reads:

  • Lina Diab says that there will be some adjustments coming to the provincial nominee programme numbers.
  • Tim Hodgson says the Americans are interested in “energy security” as part of conversations about reviving the Keystone XL pipeline.
  • Both Alberta and Saskatchewan’s health ministers say that Marjorie Michel hasn’t approached them about joining the federal pharmacare programme.
  • DND and the Canadian Forces are suing NSIRA to block the release of a report on their intelligence activities, claiming the redactions aren’t sufficient.
  • FINTRAC has levied a $600,000 fine on the First Nations Bank for lack of proper controls over money laundering, which they acknowledge.
  • Former PBO Kevin Page and the head of the IMF both say that Canada’s finances are sustainable and could increase spending without issue.
  • As Mélanie Joly tries to press Lockheed Martin for more industrial benefits for F-35s, the company points to 30 companies in Canada providing components.
  • A study shows that Canadian passport holders outpace Americans for visa-free access to other countries.
  • Here is a look at the process to create the Supreme Court of Canada’s new ceremonial robes.
  • In more Dollarama Trumpism, Poilievre is calling for the RCMP to investigate and jail Trudeau for past ethics scandals, saying the senior ranks are “despicable.”
  • The premier of PEI is calling for a federal investigation into allegations of Chinese foreign interference and money-laundering in the province.
  • Wab Kinew is lobbing broadsides at other premiers over their use of the Notwithstanding Clause as he moves a bill to refer future all uses to the courts.
  • Rob Shaw chronicles BC Conservative leader John Rustad’s plummeting fortunes.
  • John Michael McGrath makes the depressing point that Canada has very little leverage when it comes to trying to preserve our auto industry.
  • My Xtra column points out that Carney’s hate crime bill is mostly empty symbolism because the real problem is a lack of police enforcing existing laws.
  • My (delayed) column makes the case that youth may be avoiding politics because they no longer have an entry point with grassroots party organisations.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/RichardAlbert/status/1978906504154489171

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.

Roundup: Cold water on that fantasy pipeline

Posted on by

Ever since Alberta premier Danielle Smith started her latest scheme of trying to get the ball rolling on a bitumen pipeline to the northwest coast of BC, everyone has been trying to get some kind of answer as to whether this project—which has no actual proponents, no route, and no hint of buyer contracts—is going to get some kind of fast-track approval. Of course, that’s the kind of thing that the government’s Major Projects Office push has engendered by its very existence, because Smith and the Conservatives federally have been ratcheting up their rhetoric to stake the future of the country on this imaginary project.

At a committee appearance, Major Projects Office CEO Dawn Farrell didn’t answer MPs questions as to whether her powers include being able to violate the BC tanker ban, which would be essential for such a project to happen. But of course, this response was because there is no project, no route, nothing to judge any hypotheticals on, so the safest course is not to answer, because hypotheticals have a way of spinning out of control. And such a question may not wind up mattering at all, because natural resources minister Tim Hodgson came out to say that any pipeline through BC needs approval of the provincial government and affected First Nations. So good luck with that.

So now we will start seeing the fallout from this, with more threats from Danielle Smith, and howling denunciations from the Conservatives. Apparently, the country can’t work so long as we have things like environmental laws, and who cares that oil production increased while emissions as a whole declined (though not necessarily within the sector), so it’s not like those laws were exactly detrimental to the sector. “Oh, but we could have been making even more money!” Really? Would pumping more supply into the market not have possibly depressed prices? There is no guarantee that just trashing our environmental laws would increase investment and make us more prosperous, because things are complex, and climate change has costs. We need to start talking about that fact.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-09T14:05:25.084Z

Programming Note: I’m going to take the full long weekend off, so have a great Thanksgiving everyone.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack on Kyiv hit an apartment building and targeted energy sites. Here is a look at the use of saboteurs in the war, both in Russia recruiting them in Ukraine, and Ukraine employing them within Russia. President Zelenskyy is taking credit of the gas shortages in Russia, thanks to new missile and drone strikes against Russian energy facilities. That could be one reason why the Russian war economy has stalled, forcing producers to furlough staff.

Continue reading →

QP: Trillion dollar fallacies, redux

Posted on by

With so many developing stories happening, it was probably a good thing that the PM was in attendance for a second day in a row, though it remained to be seen just how many of these issues would merit attention. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and immediately jumped into the complete falsehood about what the $1 trillion figure around investment in the American market, and said that if it’s supposed to be private money, if the government would “force” them to invest in the US or to just invest in Canada—which makes no sense whatsoever. Mark Carney responded in English that it was a momentous day and that they should recognise the Middle East peace plan, which he offered his support of. Poilievre, still in French, said that while they congratulate Trump on negotiating peace, but he asked a question in French about jobs and that the prime minister owed respect to answer the question, again about the falsehoods about the trillion dollar figure. Carney responded with his canned bullet points about having the best trade deal, and that they are still negotiating a better deal, and finally that as a result of the agreement, there would be more investment in Canada. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the same bad faith question on “forcing” investment in the U.S. Carney reminded him that he was there, before repeating his same bullet points that did not correct the disinformation or the bad faith reading. Poilievre insisted that we have he fastest-shrinking economy in the G7 (untrue), and again tried to insist that Carney was somehow going to force Canadian private money to invest money in the U.S., or just send them fleeing with high taxes. Carney reminded him that they cut income taxes, the capital gains tax, and the carbon levy, and then touted the forthcoming “generational investment budget.” Poilievre read Carney’s words on the trillion dollar investment, and framed it misleadingly, and wondered if there was an agreement that Trump would send the same north. Carney reminded him that there are no tariffs on auto parts or finished goods, and that they are working toward an agreement that will increase investment in Canada—which again, did not actually answer the question. Poilievre switched topics to energy, and the support for the a Keystone XL pipeline which can’t be filled so long as the emissions cap is in place (which is patently false). Carney said that the motion he voted against was about something that does not exist—being the supposed taxes on groceries. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried about the ongoing softwood lumber tariffs. Carney said that Canada currently has the best deal with the U.S. in the world, and that they are working to bring the steel and aluminium tariffs, and that the tariffs an autos and trucks are the lowest in the world. Blanchet then concern trolled that a new pipeline to the U.S. was not diversifying out economy. Carney patted himself on the back for the recent agreement with Indonesia and that more deals are coming for South America. Blanchet then pointed out that money for support programmes for steel and aluminium have not flowed yet, and Carney responded that they will have an opportunity to vote for that support in the budget.

Continue reading →