Tag Archives: Digital Asbestos

A long-term food strategy

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Yesterday, before jetting off to the G7 in France, prime minister Mark Carney was in Toronto to unveil the details of his national food security strategy. The initial announcement was a couple of months ago, when he announced the rebranding and expansion of the existing GST credit, and the details for this new strategy could bear fruit (groan!) in the long-term, but I worry that he is raising expectations that these measures will lower food prices immediately. They won’t. Building up new food production infrastructure via greenhouses and vertical farms will take time and a lot of dollars to get off the ground, as will creating new domestic processing capabilities, which we may not even have the necessary labour for. Same thing with bolstering the rules around competition in order to attract new entrants into a marketplace dominated by oligopolies—you can’t unwind that in a day, and certainly not without just inviting in more American companies, which would go against the notion of trying to ensure food sovereignty.

Again—these kinds of investments and commitments to increasing domestic production and processing are good, and overdue. But in the vein of you can lead a horse to water, corporate Canada is not all that keen on investing in things, including productivity measures, because they are too accustomed to relying on trade with the US (which they keep pinning all of their hopes on normalising once more, as though there will be no lasting damage from the country descending into outright fascism), and their whole modus operandi is about getting monopolistic power and becoming a rent-seeker rather than investing in productivity or innovation. And yes, Canadian food prices are very high, and only part of that has to do with the fact that we’re a cold-weather country that needs to import a lot of what we eat. This is a strategy built for the long-term, and that’s great, but I know that by September, Pierre Poilievre will stand up in Question Period every day and declare that this new strategy hasn’t reduced food prices, so therefore we must burn everything down for the sake of tax cuts and going harder on trickle-down economics (and the government will respond by patting themselves on the back). They’re going to have to do the hard work of pushing this and then actually defending, and I have doubts that they are capable of doing just that.

Jennifer Robson has additional thoughts on the announcement.

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My Xtra column points out how much Mark Carney patted himself on the back for doing the absolute bare minimum at this year’s Pride flag raising.

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Political blackmail under the guise of a unity speech

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Pierre Poilievre kicked off his supposed “unity campaign” in Calgary yesterday (as he skipped the installation of the Governor General to do so), and gave a speech which was little more than a remix of the same campaign speech he’s been giving for three years now. And not even a good remix, but a shitty extended dub mix that is mostly just a lot of electronic noise. In it was the usual litany of invented grievances that Albertans have been touting for years—pretending that the federal government is somehow interfering in their jurisdiction, or that Justin Trudeau’s environmental policies were somehow strangling the province’s resource sector and that the global oil price crash of 2014 didn’t happen (just like the oil price crash of 1981 didn’t happen, and all of their woes were the fault of Pierre Trudeau). It’s a tired mythology that is not true, but is so intrinsic to the core of the invented grievances that have dominated Alberta politics for more than four decades.

But what is particularly dangerous about this kind of tactic is that it hijacks a potential national unity crisis for partisan ends. It makes unity conditional on the conservatives, federally or provincially, getting their own way as though there aren’t political considerations in the rest of the country either. As Andrew Coyne puts it, this message posits that the rest of the country needs to “prove” that it’s worth saving, and if that means dismantling what little federalism we have in this country, then so be it. The notion that the only Canada worth having is their narrow vision of the country, which is exclusionary and frankly mean, is not a unity message. It’s little more than the same kind of blackmail that Danielle Smith and Jason Kenney before her were trying to use in leveraging separatist sentiment to hold a knife to their own throats to force concessions from the federal government because they think it worked for Quebec. (It did not, and Quebec’s economy has never actually recovered). It’s fundamentally undemocratic, and shows them to be little more than crybabies who can’t handle the fact that sometimes democracy means you lose at politics.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-06-08T19:08:01.492Z

My Latest:

  • My latest for National Magazine on Friday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision and the warning they gave to judges about how to do a credibility analysis.
  • My weekend column takes note of the way in which Poilievre’s rhetoric tends to catastrophize what is happening, along his tendency to rewrite history.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take on that Conservative MP trying to refuse his raise, and why that kind of populism is poisonous to democracy.

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Digital Asbestos For All!

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The prime minister and his minister of digital asbestos, Evan Solomon, released their “Digital Asbestos for All” strategy in Toronto yesterday, which involves giving half a billion dollars to firms to scale up their adoption of said digital asbestos, and doing a lot of back-patting about sovereign capability—or at least laying the foundations for it—and there were some utterly fantastic estimations of just how many jobs this will create. And by fantastic, I mean it looks an awful lot like fantasy. But it’s also a lot about trying to get people hooked, through giving access to ‘trusted [digital asbestos] agents” to all post-secondary students, which is not what professors want and is going to make their lives more difficult as they already have a hard enough time preventing cheating using these tools. They are also promising a “National [digital asbestos] Literacy Initiative” that involves training and tool-kits available to educators, which feels a lot like giving pot to high school students and telling them it’s good for them.

"Provide access to trusted AI agents for every post-secondary student – from the arts and commerce to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and medicine."I'm pretty sure that nobody who teaches in a post-secondary institution asked for this, and this makes their jobs even harder.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-06-04T15:46:27.206Z

If this wasn’t bad enough, there was a whole lot of handwaving from Solomon about “building trust” and “safety” without actually saying how they’re going to ensure that these platforms can be trusted, or what kinds of safety measures they’ll put into place. On Power & Politics, David Cochrane was giving Solomon the gears about how he can possibly make these kinds of promises when the tech bros controlling these companies have more money than many economies at their disposal so fines won’t be of any use, and they have the weight of the Trump administration behind them, so trying to force them to build any kinds of safety features that they don’t want to build are extremely unlikely to happen. And Solomon wouldn’t answer, but just kept repeating his lines. “Trust” is a whole lot of “just trust me,” and I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough. But that’s all that this government is going to offer, because Mark Carney and Solomon have guzzled all of the tech bro hype, and they’re going to pour all kinds of money into this just as the bubble is about to burst. We’re going to lose so much money, while this government is already cutting spending to programmes that need it, and we’re all going to pay the price because they couldn’t stop guzzling the hype.

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QP: The second time as farce

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The PM was once again away, off to Toronto for his big digital asbestos announcement, while Pierre Poilievre was also absent, leaving it up to the very masculine Jacob Mantle, who started listing countries, quoted Big Bird, and wondered which of them was in a recession. Steven MacKinnon noted that we are facing headwinds thanks to the trade war the U.S. launched, and wondered which of those countries he listed he would rather live in. Mantle reasoned that he would rather live in a Canada led by a Conservative government, before giving the “is this a recession or is this technical?” Talking point. François-Philippe Champagne listed the G7 countries and noted the OECD forecast of our having the second-fastest growth. Rhonda Kirkland tried to give Poilievre’s line about a recession or a technical recession, and Wayne Long listed countries that the government has signed agreements with. Kirkland made a Beetlejuice quip before repeating the same talking point, and David McGuinty lamented that the Conservatives have no plans. Gabriel Hardy read the script in French, and Mélanie Joly praised their recent announcements in Quebec. Hardy tried again, and this time Joël Lightbound wondered what Hardy would say to the people in his riding who are benefitting from programmes he voted against. 

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and lambasted the government for capitulating on the streaming levy, and Marc Miller considered it hypocritical that they weren’t supporting their new money for the cultural sector. Normandin noted that these funds were from taxpayers and not the web giants, and that in other countries, their levies haven’t raised prices. Miller repeated his same points. Martin Champoux gave the same again, and Joël Lightbound says the Bloc have voted against their cultural funding.

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Roundup: Concerning nomination irregularities

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Liberal MP and provincial Liberal leadership hopeful Nate Erskine-Smith has formally filed an appeal over the results of Saturday’s nomination vote in Scarborough Southwest, listing a number of irregularities that included there being more votes in the ballot box than the number of people who registered to vote—34 added votes, when he lost by a mere 19 votes. There were also accusations that a suspicious number of people arrived to vote who “just lost their drivers’ licence” or “just moved to the riding,” and even more suspicious allegations of those who were on speakerphone or video calls in the voting booth, being directed how to vote.

The party’s interim leader had already dismissed this as Erskine-Smith being a sore loser, but there were scrutineers at the event, who are providing affidavits, who pointed to these irregularities, and they are people who have done election monitoring abroad, so we should be fairly confident in their observations. And even more to the point, Erskine-Smith has effectively removed himself from the race and wants an investigation for the sake of an investigation, because these are serious allegations. There have been operatives from both Liberals and Conservatives over on social media saying these kinds of tactics are endemic, but unfortunately most are pointing to the fact that the party allows temporary residents to vote, meaning that again, there is scapegoating happening (and to be clear, when Erskine-Smith says that there were temporary residents voting, his primary complaint was that they appeared to have no idea why they were there, which is not the same as a temporary resident who got involved in the riding association or campaign. There are problems with how these contests are run, but I’m also not certain that putting them under the jurisdiction of Elections Canada or the provincial election agency is necessarily the answer given how much of an expansion of their mandate and capacity would need to be, to the point that it would be unwieldy.

As for Erskine-Smith’s future, he has confirmed that he is resigning his federal seat regardless by the time the Commons rises for the summer. After that, he’s not sure. He lost this nomination, and it’s clear that there is a segment of the establishment within the Ontario Liberal Party that is going to resist him and his plans to make changes to how things are run, so it may not be worth his time and energy if this is how things will play out. It would be a loss for the provincial party, which needs a good kick in the ass, and he might be the best placed to do it, but if the party establishment is going to pull out all the stops to prevent him from getting that far, is there a point? (Meanwhile, Doug Ford will chortle and be premier for ever).

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched over 200 drones early Tuesday, killing at least six people in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Zelenskyy is facing a new challenge now that his former chief of staff has been charged with money laundering.

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Roundup: The separatists continue their takeover

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Things in Alberta continue to go poorly for people who care about things like democracy and accountability, while separatist leaders are encouraging their followers to all take out UCP memberships so that they can nominate separatist candidates for the party in advance of the next election, so that they can further push Danielle Smith to ensure that they get their referendum, and everything they want to go with it. The party is de facto separatist already, as they control the bulk of the UCP grassroots mechanism, and this would just be completing the takeover provided that no centrist normies also take out memberships to stop them. That is, if they consider the UCP actually worth salvaging.

"I never thought leopards would eat MY face," sobs politician, who encouraged leopards to keep eating faces and hold province-wide vote on face-eating

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2026-05-11T16:28:13.006Z

The fact that when he created the party, Jason Kenney didn’t provide for any adequate failsafe mechanisms to prevent hostile takeovers is not unsurprising, considering how he crowed about how this would be a “grassroots party,” but then he chased out the centrist normies who would have provided a check on the absolute loons that came to dominate the membership. Of course, Kenney thought that he could control these face-eating leopards, while they noticed that this face was right there, so they ate it. And now Smith continues to believe that she too can control these leopards, even though they’ve fully backed her into a corner and she is doing their bidding rather than the other way around, and it’s only a matter of time before her face is fully eaten as well, while the province goes to absolute shit because she was too self-interested to do the right thing at any point in time.

Meanwhile, as the voter list leak scandal rolls along, it sounds like the UCP staffer that attended the Centurion Project webinar was the caucus executive director (which is an odd title), but she didn’t pass along any information to Smith’s office about the fact that they doxxed Jason Kenney and Rachel Notley as part of the demonstration. That’s kind of embarrassing for Smith, given that she chastised Naheed Nenshi for not informing her about what happened, while her own staffer was there, watched what went down, and thought it was a-okay and not worthy of reporting. That’s not good.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-05-11T13:08:04.717Z

Ukraine Dispatch

As attacks resumed on Ukraine, president Zelenskyy noted that Russia has no intention of ending the war. Ukraine has is making drone deals with some twenty countries, including Canada.

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Roundup: Preparing to gut environmental laws

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The federal government is openly musing about changes to the Impact Assessment Act and the Fisheries Act in order to speed up project approvals, which sounds like it could be a dubious proposition. Federal Sources™ still insist that they will need Indigenous consultations and “robust” environmental assessments for projects, but if they keep “streamlining” these processes, they’re not robust. And then you just get more litigation. They don’t seem to learn this lesson.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, continue to demand that all environmental laws be repealed as “anti-development,” and continue to propagate falsehoods about projects that didn’t move ahead for reasons that have nothing to do with the assessment regime. They seem to have no concept of the fact that there are other factors at play, whether it’s the crash in oil prices in 2014, or the fact that there were no customers willing to sign long-term contracts that would make these projects viable enough to pursue.

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2052386968798118276

And then there are the oil companies themselves, who continue to try and flex their influence in order to scrap environmental laws. While whinging that any carbon pricing makes them uncompetitive (blatantly untrue given the credits in the system), Canadian Natural announced yesterday that they are moving ahead with two steam-driven oilsands projects, but still holding off on expanding one of their mines. Looks like they can still operate within the regulatory environment, even while grousing about it. These companies are not fragile babies who are one look askance away from insolvency, and government needs to stop treating them as though they were (while the Conservatives really need to stop credulously believing everything that these companies say).

Ukraine Dispatch

Ahead of its ceasefire, Russia fired dozens of more drones into Ukraine, hitting a kindergarten in Sumy, claiming Ukraine violated their own ceasefire first. President Zelenskyy has warned that if Russia continues to violate the ceasefire, then Ukraine will carry on with its long-range strikes.

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Roundup: Taking what advice on appointments?

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Prime minister Mark Carney once again said on Wednesday that Senate appointments will be made “in due course,” which doesn’t help when nearly ten percent of the Chamber’s seats are vacant or will be before summer is out, but for the first time, he indicated that he would be preserving the independent appointment committees. Sort of. (Currently only the federal members of these committees remain in place, and those for Nova Scotia, but none of the other provinces). “I will take into account the advice of the independent advisory committee that was established by my predecessor,” was what Carney said.

The problem is that’s not actually saying anything. Taking advice into account? Either these committees will be providing short-lists for appointments that Carney will choose from, or they won’t be. That was the point—they took the applications (which was always a mistake—they should have been doing the searching for worthwhile nominees to tap on the shoulder), vetted them, and honed them down to the short-lists, which Trudeau would then choose from, because he remains constitutionally responsible for those appointments. But what “advice” are they supposed to be offering if not a short-list of candidates? Will he look at their list and then decide to choose one of his friends from another hedge fund or big bank? Will he give them a list to do due diligence on? Maybe. None of this is clear, and it looks like he either doesn’t understand this responsibility that is part of his office, or he doesn’t care, and I’m not sure which is worse at this point when he’s been in office for a year now.

Meanwhile, Carney also said that he’s waiting on the joint parliamentary committee report before coming to any decision on the MAiD expansion for irremediable mental health issues, but it cannot be understated that said committee has been an absolute sham process. The two co-chairs are hostile to MAiD and have stacked the witnesses to be overwhelmingly against it, and have sidelined groups like major national psychological and psychiatric organisations who might actually argue that they can provide adequate safeguards. This is just going to result in more Charter litigation, and so many people will continue to suffer needlessly because a bunch of MPs and senators were too squeamish to actually listen to evidence that they didn’t want to hear.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-05-06T19:08:02.023Z

Ukraine Dispatch

In spite of Ukraine giving Russia an early start to their Victory Day ceasefire, Russia attacked several cities in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 27 people. The new Hungarian government returned to Ukraine the confiscated $82 million USD in cash and gold that was seized while transiting the country.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/2051983745297617183

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Roundup: Poor widdle baby oil companies

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The oil and gas sector in Alberta has decided that with the situation in Iran going on, and the federal government’s stated desire to export more in order to be the so-called “energy superpower,” that they are going to flex their muscles more, and demand that carbon pricing or other regulatory measures need to go. It’s a load of bullshit, however there are a whole lot of people who will uncritically believe that the sector are just widdle babies who are so hard done by and that any carbon pricing is just too much for them to handle.

Energy economist Andrew Leach is calling bullshit, because if they are so fragile that they can’t withstand pennies on a barrel (because remember, they are also generating a tonne of credits under Alberta’s carbon pricing system) then it’s incredibly suspect. And these are the companies who also insisted that Pathways was their future, and that with that technology, they could increase production without emissions. Now they’re claiming it’s impossible to do without the federal government paying for the whole thing, which is pretty much just tearing off the fig leaf—either they were lying the whole time (which is why they panicked when greenwashing legislation came into effect), or they simply think they can get away with crying poor and that the federal government needs to pay for everything. Neither case looks good on them, but they figure they have the leverage, and they fully intend to use it.

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2051299335846178946

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2051304919945371814

May the 4th

In past years, a lot of government departments got in on the action. This year? Hardly any. StatsCan used the opportunity to launch the census, and CSIS of all departments put out a tweet, but that seemed to be it. Which is too bad. Departments used to really get into it, and you had some really good tweets, and some abysmal ones, and it was fun to rank them. (Also, valiant effort by CSIS, but they got the wrong photo. That’s not Cracken—this is. They got Blount. And yes, I am a Star Wars nerd).

https://twitter.com/Canada/status/2051312054875603265

https://twitter.com/StatCan_eng/status/2050983876684554321

Ukraine Dispatch

A mid-morning Russian missile attack hit the Kharkiv region, killing two and wounding over thirty. Russia also hit five energy facilities in the past day. Data shows Russia has targeted port facilities ten times more than the past year. Russia claims they will observe a ceasefire for their Victory Day festivities, and Ukraine says they will abide by it.

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Roundup: A call to ignore Pathways

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In a sit-down interview with The Canadian Press, prime minister Mark Carney says that an oil pipeline out of Alberta is “more likely than not,” and this doesn’t mean the revived Keystone XL (aka “Bridger Pipeline”). But he’s also not saying anything about Pathways, which is a bit suspicious because he tied the approval to Pathways getting underway, and industry has made it very clear they’re not interested in paying for it.

To that end, who showed up in the op-ed pages of the Globe and Mail but Martha Hall Findlay, former Liberal MP and now head of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, who put on a big show to say that she found it hard to write, but lo, she must recommend that the government “pause” Pathways, because it’s useless on a global scale, and “the world changed.” And then there was more hand-wringing and rationalization that Canada is such a small contributor to global emissions that it doesn’t matter.

The world didn’t change. Facts didn’t change. Climate change didn’t stop with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, so quite frankly, this is bullshit and special pleading. The notion that we don’t contribute enough to global emissions is such a poor argument because it’s a common action problem. We have some of the highest emissions on a per capita basis, and yes, that matters. Hall Findlay was going on about how this is all about ego, and we just want to look like we’re leaders, but guess what—every action matters. And if you think that it’s too expensive to reduce emissions now, well, it’s going to be even more expensive the longer we push it down the road, when the effects are even more entrenched globally. We’re already spending billions of dollars in insurance payouts every year that are directly related to climate. The vast majority of food price inflation is climate-related, even if people don’t want to admit it. Frankly, these arguments of hers are tired and baseless and not worth listening to, no matter how much she insists she still believes in climate action…eventually.

My favourite moment in any oil price shock cycle is when the Very Serious Energy People explain why this — again! — is not the time to give a shit about the climate crisis

— Chris Turner (@theturner.bsky.social) 2026-05-01T15:21:29.234Z

If Canada can make that argument at 1.4% then presumably so can Saudi Arabia (1.5), Iran (1.9) and Japan (2.0).Then I imagine both Indonesia (2.3) and Brazil (2.5) would say, "hey, us too." And at that point, you've ruled out 204 countries accounting for roughly 46% of all national emissions.

— Aaron Wherry (@aaronwherry.bsky.social) 2026-05-01T15:02:42.580Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-05-01T19:08:02.330Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched yet another attack on port infrastructure in Odesa early Friday, and then launched more than 400 drones in a daytime attack that injured ten people in Ternopil in the west. Ukraine is planning an overhaul of its military rotations, particularly after an outcry over images of emaciated soldiers emerged.

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