Tag Archives: Digital Asbestos

Roundup: The Coastal First Nations aren’t budging

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Prime minister Mark Carney was in Prince Rupert, BC, to meet with the coastal First Nations, and by all accounts, it was a welcome and cordial meeting, and most of what they discussed were ongoing projects and conservation commitments in the region, along with the promises of renewed funding for ongoing projects in the area. This being said, nothing has changed on the part of these First Nations when it comes to their opposition to a pipeline in their territories or on lifting the tanker ban. The prime minister’s readout from the meeting talked glowingly about the commitments, but what was absent was any kind of commitment in writing to respecting their right to consent to projects in their territories.

Readout of Carney's meeting with Coastal First Nations.I don't see any commitment to respect their wishes if they don't grant consent to a pipeline through their territory.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T21:02:12.244Z

While this was happening, Pierre Poilievre decided to concern troll that there hadn’t been any meeting sooner, which wasn’t going to get things built faster. Of course, this concern is false because Poilievre has already declared that any consultation he will do will be perfunctory, and that he will ram through projects without any kind of consent (and a former Alberta minister was on Power & Politics to again insist that the obligation is consultation not consent, but that is dated with the adoption of UNDRIP which stipulates free, prior and informed consent).

Quite the concern troll given that Poilievre has flat-out said he'll build pipelines regardless of First Nations' objections.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T15:20:49.737Z

Meanwhile, when it comes to the Pathways project that Carney insists needs to move ahead if a pipeline is to move ahead (while the MOU also states that a pipeline needs to happen for Pathways to happen), this is your reminder that it’s a scam that will only happen if the government pays for it (and it’ll only remove about 12 percent of production emissions, to say nothing about downstream emissions).

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-01-13T15:08:05.432Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones have struck infrastructure in Kryvyi Rih, forcing power cuts, while the attacks overnight Tuesday consisted of nearly 300 drones, 18 ballistic missiles and seven cruise missiles, hitting eight regions and killing at least four people. Ukraine’s parliament rejected former prime minister Denys Shmyhal as the new energy minister.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/2010987717274861983

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Roundup: Loosening the advertising rules they put into place

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The federal government, in their infinite communications wisdom, has decided to change the rules around government advertising so that they can do things like more easily use slogans, and to advertise programmes before they have been passed by Parliament. Worse, their excuses for doing so are utterly ridiculous, saying that the more “dangerous and divided world” needs faster communications and the old process was “too slow and duplicative.” Sorry, you think you need to be able to advertise slogans or programmes that do not officially exist yet because it’s faster? Are you kidding me?

The point of these rules is to create a separation between party and government, and the Harper government had incidents where this got them into trouble, such as when Pierre Poilievre, as minister of Employment and Skills Development, showed up at a government announcement in party-branded attire and got in trouble with Elections Canada for it. These rules exist for a reason, but Carney has decided that they’re inconvenient for him, so he needs to alter them. If the Liberals’ usual kryptonite is arrogance, Carney’s personal brand of it is acting like a magnifying glass. He should be reminded of this fact, before he drives the party off the very cliff he rescued them from.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia used hypersonic medium-range missiles to strike Lviv early Friday morning, which is being considered a “warning” to Europe. That same day, drones hit two foreign-flagged civilian vessels in ports in the Odesa region. Here are Kyiv residents dealing with damage to their homes as a result of these attacks.

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Roundup: Twenty years of ignoring a warning

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I find myself a little bit fascinated with the story of the main water feeder pipe break in Calgary, mostly because of what it exposes about municipal politics in this country. Council was presented with a report today that shows that they were warned about this twenty years ago, and that nobody did anything about it during all that time. Twenty. Years. The report was commissioned after the 2024 pipe break, and here it is, broken again, because they didn’t finish the job.

Here is the independent panel's timeline of how risk was identified with the Bearspaw Feeder Main 20 years before it ruptured in June 2024.

— Adam MacVicar (@adammacvicar.bsky.social) 2026-01-07T21:19:54.037Z

City councils didn’t prioritize it because they have been so preoccupied with keeping property taxes as low as possible that these kinds of major infrastructure projects continue to be underfunded and overlooked. City staff apparently have unclear reporting structures so nobody becomes responsible for this kind of an issue, and the author of the report was saying he wouldn’t lay the blame on any one individual or era of council. “This problem existed. It repeated itself. It did not surface to the right level of decision-making. And so it’s very difficult, in my opinion, to lay specific blame on any individual. We had a process weakness that was not corrected.”

The thing is, we have a lot of city councils in this country who are also focused solely on keeping their property taxes down, and placating NIMBYs, and we there is other critical infrastructure in this country that is bound for failure. Councils adopt a learned helplessness when city staff don’t do their due diligence about these kinds of failures, and vanishingly few councils are doing their jobs in ensuring these kinds of issues are actually being dealt with. This could be a warning for other cities to take a second look and ensure that they are doing the inspections and maintenance that was ignored here…or they will rely on normalcy bias and leave it for later because clearly it won’t happen to them, right? I have a feeling I know which is more likely.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia attacked two seaports in the Odesa region on Wednesday, while late-night strikes knocked out power in two southeaster regions.

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Roundup: Appointing another friend to an important post

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It’s now official—prime minster Mark Carney has announced his plan to name his friend Mark Wiseman to the role of Ambassador to the US as of February 15th. Wiseman has no prior diplomatic experience, but was a mergers & acquisitions lawyer before becoming an asset manager at Blackrock, and yes, he was a donor to Carney’s leadership campaign as well as his election campaign, donating the maximum for each.

There were immediate howls about this appointment from the Bloc and the Conservatives because of Wiseman’s involvement in the “Century Initiative,” which was a proposal to triple Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100, which we were on track to do regardless (before the current decision to halt immigration to the point where our population was in decline last quarter). The Bloc are treating this kind of thing like their own version of “Great Replacement Theory” because a) they are an ethnic nationalist party, and b) they see an expansion of the rest of the Canadian population as diminishing Quebec’s influence, because they heavily limit their own immigration (because again, ethnic nationalism) and their birth rate is very low. The Conservatives are treating it like Great Replacement Theory writ-large, and use it to scaremonger about Muslims and such, while also pretending to care about Quebec. There was also that stupid brouhaha about when Wiseman retweeted an Andrew Coyne column headline about said Initiative and people took it to be Wiseman insulting Quebec, so that’s great. Oh, and he apparently said he’s opposed to Supply Management, so of course Quebec and the majority of Conservatives are also opposed to his appointment.

This being said, I find myself increasingly uncomfortable by the fact that Carney keeps naming friends and former colleagues to top jobs, some elected (Tim Hodgson), some appointed (the head of the Defence Investment Agency), is a worrying trend because it’s starting to reek of cronyism. I also am reminded of the fate of Bill Morneau, who also did not grasp the ethical considerations in government of just calling up your friends and network to do things (in Morneau’s case, those friends were WE Charity), because that’s how you do them in the corporate world. Government is not the corporate world, and I know we’re all tired of hearing it, but no, you should not run government like a business or a corporation. Nothing good can come of this.

Programming Note: And that’s it for 2025. I’m taking a break from the blog until the first week of January, so enjoy your holidays everyone.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-22T23:08:01.593Z

Ukraine Dispatch

There was yet another strike on Odesa, the second within twenty-four hours. President Zelenskyy says those kidnapped villagers from Sumy region had long had dealings across the border without incident. Here is a look at Ukraine’s new low-cost interceptor drones, taking out attacking Russian drones for much cheaper. (Gallery here).

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Roundup: Naïve assumptions about the energy transition

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There were a couple of longreads over the weekend that are worth your time when it comes to understanding where we are at with the current government. The first was a deep dive into Carney’s past climate “leadership,” from his time at central banks to the UN, and a pattern emerges throughout where much of this “leadership” was fairly surface-level. Scratch the surface, and you find a lot of on naïve assumptions around a market response to the clean energy transition, coupled with some arrogant beliefs that he was right and no one could tell him otherwise (as those companies he was touting were also heavily invested in fossil fuels). In the time since, we have all watched as Carney has systematically betrayed that former climate leadership, and continues to rely on a “just trust me” approach to that clean energy transition as he breaks his word with little regard.

The second longread was in the Globe & Mail about Tim Hodgson and his adjustment going from banker CEO to Cabinet minister, with his belief that government bureaucrats are essentially lazy and stupid, and needing to learn how to be politically sensitive to the realities that he has little patience for as he looks to secure deals as quickly as possible. Along the way, he is learning that things don’t work like that, and that there are plenty of other considerations that he continues to ignore, like obligations regarding First Nations. And how he continues to alienate the actual clean energy people in his own department, along with the part of the Liberal caucus that actually care about climate change, because hey, he needs to be Mr. Business. This is what “running government like a company” is bringing, and it comes with a hell of a lot of ideological blind spots, while they insist that they’re not being ideological.

As well, in year-enders, Carney has been criticising the Trudeau approach to climate change as “too much regulation, not enough action,” which goes back to his particular assumptions about the market and why the government wasn’t able to rely on carbon pricing alone to achieve its goals, Oh, and he’s still completely sold on the belief that carbon capture is the route to go, even though it only captures a fraction of the emissions from the production process (and none of the downstream uses), so the math doesn’t even work there. He also talks about “guardrails” in dealing with China, but considering there has been no hint of that with India, I’m not holding my breath.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-20T15:08:01.975Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Following more Russian airstrikes and bombings in the Odesa region, president Zelenskyy says that Russia is trying to cut off Ukraine’s Black Sea access. Russian forces have crossed the border in Sumy region and kidnapped 50 villagers. Ukraine has signed an agreement with Portugal go co-produce sea drones. Here is a look at a Ukrainian artist who is reflecting the war through his collection and work.

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Roundup: Shrugging off the trade irritant list

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Prime minister Mark Carney made remarks on the trade situation with the US yesterday, saying that the timelines being what they are, hope for any sectoral tariff deals will likely be rolled into the broader New NAFTA review taking place next year, in spite of the fact that we had apparently been close to a deal before they got blown up by the Reagan ads (though one should contend that it is more than likely that if it wasn’t the ads, something else would have been used as justification to call off the talks, because this is Trump exercising the so-called “art of the deal.”)

Carney was somewhat dismissive of the capitulation list that the US Trade Representative has laid out, and insisted that this was really nothing, that there are dozens of irritants on all sides, but made the promise again to protect Supply Management, because reasons. This being said, there has been commentary that within the existing market cap there could be better efforts for US dairy access, because of how the supply management system works in that only certain producers are allowed to hold the quotas for imports, and if they want to make it difficult, then the market cap doesn’t get reached. This has long been a complaint for Europe, because frankly, the Canadian system is designed with fuckery in mind. Fixing that might help alleviate some of the complaints, but it would take political will to actually do that (though I’m not sure just what American dairy we would be so eager to import, given that their cheese is nothing special compared to Europe or the UK).

Nevertheless, I am most especially worried about the Online Streaming Act and Online News Act complaints from the Americans, and that Carney would be tempted to dump those as capitulation for the sake of “continuing negotiations” like he did with the Digital Services Tax. The problem here is that Trump is going to bat for the tech broligarchy because they have pledged their fealty to him and offered him up large bribes, so he is bullying other countries on their behalf because they don’t want to be regulated. The fact that these specific complaints continue to be treated as trade irritants and not just tech bros being whinging babies is a problem, and will continue to be a problem so long as they remain his loyal backers.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling near Odesa has killed one person, and hit power systems. This comes after an attack on power systems in five regions the night before. European countries have agreed on another €90 billion loan for Ukraine, putting off the question of frozen Russian assets once again. Here is a look at Russia’s hybrid warfare sabotage operations across Europe, designed to distract and overwhelm those country’s resources.

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Roundup: Getting played by your leakers

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The Department of National Defence is investigating the leak of selective information by F-35 proponents that made that fighter look like a clear winner in the competition with the SAAB Gripen-E fighter, and the journalists who accepted the leak and wrote that story is getting a bit huffy about it. His story on the investigation quotes a Quebec journalists’ union about how important it is that journalists “do their work freely,” and that such a big purchase deserves scrutiny. This kind of self-righteousness is not unexpected.

That said, he also quoted security expert Wesley Wark who basically took him to the woodshed because the leak was quite obviously propaganda as it was selective, they didn’t provide information on the criteria that the scores were based on (just that it looked like the F-35s were the clear winner with no actual context), and this should have been completely obvious as part of the original story. It’s no secret that there is a cadre within the Canadian Forces that is heavily invested in acquiring as much American military tech as possible, in part because they operate so closely with American forces, but also because they are socialised into believing that it’s the very best and they want the very best, so they have been doing everything they can to manipulate the purchase of these fighters from the very beginning, starting with the Harper government who credulously just said “okay, we’ll sole-source it” on the military’s recommendation in the first instance, before it turned into something of a scandal because of the escalating price tag. (This is not how you do civilian control, guys). These same military folks seem to think that the Americans will never turn on us, and that Trump’s threats are not to be taken seriously.

I should be surprised—but really, I’m not—that the journalist in question allowed himself to be played like this, and clearly it did the job the leakers wanted because you had a bunch of pundits take the story to proclaim that the F-35 is the fighter for Canada, hands-down. That’s ultimately why I find the self-righteous response to a leak investigation to be…funny? Sad? Either way, I’m not a defence expert, but I do read and I do talk to people a lot, and I could see clearly that what got leaked was a frame-up job, and the journalist who wrote the original piece should have seen that as well, and done a better job of canvassing dissent to the leak rather than seeking out sources to confirm what the leakers were selling. But he didn’t, and so he got the head of a journalists’ union to get self-righteous on his behalf. It’s not great for the trust in the institution of journalism if we let ourselves get played like this.

Ukraine Dispatch

An underwater Ukrainian drone struck and disabled a Russian submarine docked at a Black Sea naval base (though Russia denies this). European leaders are meeting in The Hague to launch an International Claims Commission to compensate Ukraine for hundreds of billions of dollars in damages from Russia’s attacks and war crimes.

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Roundup: Ignoring the true meaning of the Statute of Westminster

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Yesterday was the Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster (1931), which is one of the most pivotal moments in our evolution as a sovereign country, but it rarely gets much mention. When I was in junior high, I remember them talking about how this ensured that Canada could control its own foreign policy, but they never said why. And it turns out that no official account or even the Government of Canada’s web page gave the reason either. The reason is that this was the creation of the Canadian Crown as a separate and distinct legal entity from the Crown of the UK, which mean that we could control our own foreign policy, and were seen as an equal to the UK and not a subordinate. But absolutely nobody mentions the Crown of Canada as the reason. Nobody.

The government's page undersells the importance of this date, because today is the anniversary of the creation of the Crown of Canada as a separate and distinct entity from the UK crown. That's why we gained control over our foreign affairs and "our own voice" on the world stage.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-12-11T14:17:20.569Z

The Governor General did not put out a release about the day or its importance to the Canadian Crown. Mark Carney did not put out a release about the day at all. Pierre Poilievre did, but not only did he not mention the Canadian Crown, but he talked up conservative figures from the era of history to try and distract from the fact that Mackenzie King was prime minister at the time, which was frankly sad and a little bit pathetic. Nobody else put out a release, and absolutely nobody mentioned the anniversary of the Canadian Crown.

Nothing about the Crown of Canada.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-12-11T21:53:33.606Z

The creation of the Canadian Crown is one of the most pivotal moments in our history, and it goes completely unremarked because the department of Canadian Heritage is full of republicans, and too many members of civil society are quietly embarrassed by our status as a constitutional monarchy, as though it’s still colonial or “not grown up” when it’s not that at all. The separate Canadian Crown means we are grown up, that we control our own Crown and destiny. And if you don’t want to time-share the monarch with the UK and the other Realms, well, we can change that at any point as well (with the unanimous consent of Parliament and the provinces), and I for one would not be averse to making Princess Anne the full-time Queen of Canada, as she is not only the best royal, but her grandchildren are already Canadian, so that helps with the succession issues. Suffice to say, we have to stop effacing the fact that the Canadian Crown is the central reason why we gained full independence then.

Another floor-crossing

After both Houses of Parliament rose for the winter break, and just before the Liberals had their Christmas party, Conservative MP Michael Ma crossed the floor to join the Liberal ranks. He’s from Markham—Unionville, which is John McCallum’s old riding, so it’s flipped back-and-forth between the Liberals and Conservatives, and Ma has been almost anonymous in the House of Commons, pretty much never put up in QP to read a script for the sake of clips, so he has no profile in the party. His statement talked about “unity and decisive action” for Canadians, which could translate to the fact that he (and possibly his constituents) is tired of the petty little games that Poilievre and his caucus spend all of their time doing.

It also puts the Liberals one seat away from a workable majority, and the House Leader, Steve MacKinnon, hinted that there are more conversations ongoing with Conservatives, and according to the journalists and pundits on the political talk shows, Ma’s name has never been bandied about as a possibility, so this was a complete surprise. But it will also serve to shut Don Davies up if they do get that one more MP, because Davies will have no leverage to try and blackmail Carney with. So, I guess we’ll see what happens by the time Parliament returns.

Well. That happened.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-12-11T23:22:51.428Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian commanders claim to have taken Siversk in the east, but Ukraine denies this. Here is an analysis of how the potential fall of Pokrovsk won’t collapse Ukraine’s front lines. In the back-and-forth on “peace” plans, the US wants to turn ceded lands in the Donbas into a “free economic zone,” and no, I don’t get it either.

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Roundup: MOU motion down in flames

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As expected, the Conservatives’ Supply Day motion to try and force a vote on some of the language from the Alberta MOU went down in flames as the Liberals were wise to their bullshit, and didn’t play ball. They made it clear that the language was deliberately provocative in what it excluded, so Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives scrambled to try and amend their own motion, so that it included a bunch of other things, except one thing—any mention of the carbon price (without which, the Pathways carbon capture project can’t operate because it’s not fiscally viable). And so that’s what the Liberals hung their arguments on—that this wasn’t the full MOU, and it didn’t include the carbon price, or methane regulations, or anything else, so they weren’t going to vote for it. And nobody did.

The Conservatives could have probably done more damage to the Liberals if they tried to force a vote on the entire MOU, to really suss out the divisions in the caucus about it, but they couldn’t actually do that, because the MOU has the carbon price as part of it, and if the Conservatives voted to support the full MOU including the carbon price, they would be hypocrites because every day in Question Period, they falsely blame said carbon price for food price inflation (when in reality, the industrial carbon price’s impact on food is statistically zero). Their attempt at being clever blew up in their faces, because they’re not clever. They’re not the slightest bit intelligent. Of course, that isn’t going to stop them from shouting for the next eight weeks that “The Liberals voted against their own MOU! They don’t want to build a pipeline!” Of course, it’s not true because the Conservatives ensured that they weren’t voting on the actual contents of the MOU, but it’s not going to matter. They’re going to record videos of them claiming the Liberals voted against their own plans, and spread them across social media, but well, it’s not like we can expect the Conservatives—and Poilievre and Andrew Scheer in particular—to actually be honest for once.

Speaking of honesty, Tim Hodgson took to the microphone in the Foyer during the day to denounce the Conservatives’ stunt, but in the process declared that “caucus is united” behind the full MOU, when he knows full well that they are not. If the point of the day was to make the Conservatives look like the clowns, well, Hodgson didn’t exactly do his part. Then again, Hodgson is one of the worst performers on the front bench and he has absolutely zero political skills, so I’m not sure why anyone would be surprised here.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-09T22:22:02.273Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s top general says they are advancing their “entire front line” and moving into the town of Myrnohrad, which Ukraine denies, and says that Russia is paying a heavy cost for modest advances. Likewise, Ukraine still holds out in parts of Pokrovsk, and it has not fallen. President Zelensky has been rallying European allies as he says that any “peace” deal will not include ceding land to Russia. Ukraine is rolling out more restrictions on power usage as they repair their infrastructure from Russian attacks.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1998317649025966396

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Roundup: Being too clever about the MOU’s language

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ukraine Dispatch

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

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