Tag Archives: Elizabeth May

Roundup: Miller back in Cabinet

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Mark Carney had a small Cabinet shuffle yesterday afternoon, counter-programming the latter part of Question Period, where he appointed Marc Miller to Cabinet to replace Steven Guilbeault after his resignation last week in protest over the MOU with Alberta. Miller becomes the new minister of Canadian Heritage, now dubbed “Canadian identity and culture and official languages,” because it sounds a little more like it’s holding the line against the onslaught of Americanisms. But there were a couple of other adjustments made to Carney’s front bench—environment minister Julie Dabrusin took over the responsibilities for Parks Canada, which were under Heritage for some strange reason (much of which involves the fact that they are responsible for things like historical designations, but which created all kinds of problems around things like marine protected areas), while Joël Lightbound was named the new Quebec lieutenant, though I’m mystified why that required a swearing-in as opposed to it simply being a ceremonial title, like deputy prime minister (which Carney does not have). It also bears noting that no one was put in as new transport minister, and that Steve MacKinnon continues to do double-duty.

Miller is an interesting choice—he was a good minister, and I’m glad he’s back in Cabinet, because he was one of the best communicators, hands down, in the Trudeau government, and that kind of frankness and candour is desperately needed in the current front bench where the rule of “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” means that most of what comes out of every minister’s mouth is back-patting, if they say anything at all. But it’s also a choice that is going to ruffle feathers in Quebec because he’s not Québécois (though he is a Montrealer and speaks French, Swedish and Mohawk). There is so much anxiety around Quebec language and culture in the province that the Canadian Heritage portfolio might as well be a Quebec-focused one, and certainly there have been jokes floating around Ottawa for years about how if you got a meeting with the minister of heritage, he or she would tell you to come back when you were French.

Nevertheless, Miller is going to be responsible for some big files coming up with new online harms legislation, as well as a potential mandate review/transformation of the CBC, which didn’t take off under the previous government following the release of a discussion paper on the subject, and then Carney having his own ideas about what to do with CBC during the leadership contest, none of which has actually happened in the six months he’s been in power. I do think Miller will be suited to the task—he’s handled big, tough files before, and going up against web giants is something I think he can be pretty good at.

Ukraine Dispatch

Four people were killed and more than 40 injured in a Russian missile attack on Dnipro. Putin has again claimed that Pokrovsk has been taken over by Russian forces, along with Vovchansk, but Ukraine has not confirmed.

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QP: Food prices versus budget back-patting

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In advance of the budget vote, the PM was present today, as were most of the other leaders. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, where he trotted out his new line likening the budget to credit card spending “with no limits,” and that this created surges in inflation and taxes, and raise the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s concerns that the size of the deficit has doubled. (And no, a federal budget has absolutely no relation to a credit card, and I wish to the gods our politicians would stop making these comparisons). Mark Carney praised the budget as a “generational investment” budget, and cited the PBO that the policy was sustainable in the long term. Poilievre cried that this was multigenerational debt that is driving up food prices (it is not), and read the food price inflation data from this morning, and blamed “Liberal taxes” (which is also nonsense). Carney reminded him that inflation has slowed down and has been within the Bank of Canada’s target for the past two years. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the line about the national credit card and inflation. Carney repeated in English that it’s a day because inflation is down, unemployment is down, and they have an opportunity to vote for their budget. Poilievre was not slowed, and uttered some complete bullshit about food price inflation, and repeated his nonsense about credit cards. Carney repeated the lines about inflation and unemployment while confidence in our economy is “sky high.” Poilievre repeated nonsense about “hidden taxes,” and Carney pointed out that wages have grown faster than inflation, and exhorted the Conservatives to vote for their budget. Poilievre switched to the rise in extortion, calling it a result of “soft-on-crime policies” and “open borders,” which is a foghorn and not a dog-whistle, and Carney called on them to support their future legislation.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, worried about tariffs, and wanted the PM to admit his strategy has failed. Carney reminded him that we have the best trade agreement currently and they are working to a better on. Blanchet mocked this, and demanded the same, and Carney said that Trump is calling his back, before praising investments for Quebec in the budget. Blanchet then demanded that the government capitulate to their requests for the budget, and Carney again repeated the investments for Quebec in the budget.

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Roundup: Freeland out—for good this time

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It was nine months to the day since Chrystia Freeland first resigned from Cabinet, previously under Justin Trudeau, when he told her that he planned to replace her as finance minister with Mark Carney, but would she mind first delivering the fall economic update that had a bigger-than-promised deficit number in it? Carney had not said yes to the position at the time, and things went downhill from there. This time, Freeland says she’s leaving to take up new opportunities—in this case, a position of special envoy related to the reconstruction of Ukraine. Her roles got split up, as the transport portfolio was given to Steve MacKinnon, and the internal trade to Dominic LeBlanc.

https://twitter.com/cafreeland/status/1967994021227401685

I do think that this move solidifies a few narratives that have been floating around, one of which is that Carney is consolidating loyalists. Freeland supporters were pretty much entirely frozen out of Cabinet and other senior roles, and Freeland herself was made a minister as a gesture of unity in the party, but six months later, she’s out. That’s fairly problematic on its face. As well, it’s one more woman out of a senior role, and one who had influence behind the scenes, which again consolidates the bro atmosphere in the PMO, which is not good, and will cause plenty of problems going forward as the blind spots start to grow. For the moment, Freeland is keeping her seat, but will eventually resign it once she has consulted with her riding association and so on. With rumours that Carney plans to offer diplomatic posts to at least two other former ministers, he could be looking to free up a handful of fairly safe seats that he can put more friends or loyalists into (like he did with Evan Solomon).

Alberta carbon price

Danielle Smith is making changes to her province’s industrial carbon price, exempting companies from paying it if they invest in their own emissions reduction projects. You know, which the carbon price incentivised them to do so that they didn’t have to pay as much, because that’s the whole gods damned point of carbon pricing. Absolutely unbelievable stupidity on display here.

About that ovation

There has been a lot of talk about how the House of Commons gave a standing ovation about Charlie Kirk on Monday. That’s not exactly true, and has been torqued by people who may or may not be acting in good faith. The ovation had more to do with standing against political violence rather than Kirk himself. That said, of course it was Rachael Thomas who got up to praise a fascist like Kirk, because this is who Thomas is. She has been marinating in the fever swamps of the American far-right discourse for years, and imports it into Canadian politics all the time, including the very careful creation of an alternate dystopian reality where Justin Trudeau is a “dictator,” and the Liberals are busy censoring tweets on the Internet and are generally being authoritarians, in all defiance of the logic and reality. Thomas absolutely deserves to be called out for venerating a fascist, but I think everyone needs to calm down about the applause that happened afterward because it’s pretty clear the context was about the broader message.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-16T21:22:02.480Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy is calling for a combined European air defence system given that Russia’s attacks are now extending beyond just Ukraine. Here is a look at the struggle for Ukrainian authorities to identify their war dead.

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Roundup: Undue back-patting for Poilievre

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It really should not have been a surprise to anyone that Pierre Poilievre won the by-election in Battle River—Crowfoot by around 80 percent, which is why he chose that riding after all. But that won’t but an end to the back-patting about the “hard work” he put in, and so on. What I find particularly odd is this narrative that has emerged, from Jason Kenney and others, about how this somehow proved that Poilievre stuck it to the so-called “separatist” movement in the province, and exposed them for the empty shell that they are. Because I don’t see him having done that at all.

https://twitter.com/jkenney/status/1957815691299713180

This was a federal by-election and there was no real “separatist” presence, particularly when the ballot question in the riding was whether Poilievre deserved a second chance after he was defeated in his own riding. There was no actual separatist narrative being advanced, and even if there was, Poilievre basically said that they have “legitimate grievances,” which is not exactly a rousing condemnation. More to the point, those separatists are focused on the provincial level, because they know that they can wedge Danielle Smith internally within the UCP, because these are the same face-eating leopards that Jason Kenney invited into the party while he kicked out the centrist normies (and those leopards subsequently ate his face). Smith is the one giving these losers oxygen, especially as she has tried to do everything she can to ensure that they get the referendum that they’re looking for, so that she can play it to her advantage in trying to leverage concessions from the federal government. It’s going to blow up in her face eventually, but this has nothing to do with Poilievre and everything to do with Smith, so giving Poilievre any credit here is grasping.

As for Poilievre’s return to Ottawa, could legacy media be less credulous about his supposed change in tone, or his bullshit about how he’ll work with the government on “non-partisan solutions,” which in his mind is the obliteration of environmental legislation, and the other bullshit in his so-called “Canadian Sovereignty Act.” He has explicitly stated this outright. Stop pretending he’s going to act “prime ministerial” or “statesmanlike,” because he is completely incapable, nor is he willing because that doesn’t get him clicks on social media/funds in the party’s coffers.

Ukraine Dispatch

Within hours of the “peace” talks in Washington, Russia launched their biggest overnight attack of the month, with 270 drones and ten missiles, striking energy facilities in Kremenchuk and Chernihiv. But hey, they’re going to draw up options for “security guarantees” that Russia won’t agree to, because their goal is the elimination of Ukraine. (Why are we pretending otherwise?)

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Roundup: Greetings, Exalted One

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In a very real sense, the day was pretty anticlimactic given the build-up. Prime minister Mark Carney arrived at the White House, didn’t succumb to an intimidation handshake, and when they got to the Oval Office, Trump rambled and dissembled, and Carney got in a word or two edgewise that was both obsequious flattery, but also deep shade, saying that Trump was a “transformational” leader and got the world re-engaged in defence issues. (Yes, he has, but for reasons other than those Trump believes. When the topic of annexation came up, Carney phrased it in the language of real estate in that some things are not for sale—the White House, Buckingham Palace, and Canada—and while Trump said “never say never,” Carney kept mouthing “never.” But that was about it. There was no pile-on by JD Vance, no attempt at humiliation, though Trump gratuitously insulted both Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland (who is still in Carney’s Cabinet).

https://bsky.app/profile/lsaffs.bsky.social/post/3lojcqx6ptk24

One of the things that was notable was that Trump insisted that the New NAFTA isn’t dead, which is funny since he’s stomped all over it and broken it so many times that it’s not worth the paper it’s written on, but there you have it. Carney says this is the first step of many, and he’s keeping expectations super low, talking about controlling the things we can control (which obviously excludes Trump himself). He also insists that he pushed back on the annexation talk in private, not that I’m sure it’ll have any effect. The Canadian Press fact-checks some of Trump’s nonsense here. Some more reaction quotes from the day here.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-05-06T21:22:13.862Z

Conservative caucus

The other news was that the Conservatives held a day-long caucus retreat, and they voted to once again abide by the (garbage) Reform Act provisions that claim to let them topple a leader (even though they don’t actually need the Act’s provisions to do so, and the Act merely reinforces a pattern of learned helplessness among MPs who have surrendered their power), and they decided that Andrew Scheer will be the parliamentary leader in Poilievre’s absence until he can get himself a seat. Why Scheer? Because he’s a) loyal to Poilievre, b) is in no danger of trying to keep the leadership himself as a former failed leader, and c) the party doesn’t have to worry about a Rona Ambrose-kind of leader who proves popular and sane, and whom the public would demand to be made leader permanently. Yes, that’s a sad reflection of where the party is at, as is the fact that they don’t really seem to want to learn the right lessons from their election loss. (More reaction from caucus here.) Oh, and Poilievre did finally call Bruce Fanjoy to congratulate him on winning in Carleton, so that only took a week.

*Sigh* No, the (garbage) Reform Act doesn't give MPs or caucus more powers. They have all the power they need to depose a leader if they really wanted to. The Act's provisions actually constrain MPs' powers. #PnPCBC

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-05-06T21:53:41.456Z

https://twitter.com/TabathaSouthey/status/1919898954335916144

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians launched drones overnight at Kyiv, killing two people. This after a missile attack on the city of Sumy killed three people. Drones from Ukraine shut down Moscow’s airports in advance of their Victory Day in WWII celebrations, and Russia’s unilateral 72-hour “ceasefire.” Ukraine’s army chief says that they have stalled Russia’s attack on Pokrovsk, which is a logistics hub in Donetsk region. Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 205 prisoners of war each.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1919779056641265687

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1919672711413973378

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Roundup: 611 votes short

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In more election fallout, it looks like the Liberals were just 611 votes, between two Ontario ridings and Nunavut, from getting a majority Parliament. That’s an incredibly close number for this race, and once again goes to show how every vote really does count, particularly in smaller ridings. There is also some pretty good analysis from the numbers to show that all those southwestern Ontario seats that went Conservative was not because of progressive vote-splitting, but because they were quite clearly turned off of the NDP. That clarity is going to matter if the party wants to start rethinking their path forward. Oh, and the vast majority of NDP candidates didn’t make their ten percent vote threshold for Elections Canada rebates, so the party is going to really be hurting financially for the next couple of years.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1917541319209046324

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1917541365925253229

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1917678086385959124

Elsewhere, every legacy media journalist is trying to get a story about NDP MPs crossing the floor to the Liberals (they won’t), or about Elizabeth May either becoming Speaker or getting into Cabinet, neither of which is going to happen. Ever. Especially Speaker because, as much as I respect May, nobody in the House of Commons is going to vote to put her in the Big Chair because they don’t want a sanctimonious scold in the position. There’s a reason they have voted in incredibly weak chairs for the past couple of Parliaments, and why they didn’t vote for Geoff Regan a second time when he was being a firmer hand. Stop indulging in these stupid fantasies. It’s not going to happen. Oh, and no, official party status isn’t something that is going to be negotiated, much as Don Davies likes to claim that the magic number of 12 MPs is “arbitrary,” but it’s not. You need that many MPs to fit onto committees, and that’s already doubling up. You physically cannot have enough MPs to be in all places when there are six+ committees meeting at the same time outside of QP.

Meanwhile, taking advantage of Carney’s win for her own ends is Danielle Smith, who introduced a very Trump-like package of electoral law amendments which brings back big corporate money into Alberta politics, feeds conspiracy theories, and lowers the threshold for citizen-initiated referendums, and while she didn’t outright say she would bring a separation referendum, essentially encouraged someone else to, and they already started gathering signatures. You might ask whose interest this serves, and the answer is hers, in part because she is facing a major growing scandal about health services procurement that is getting bigger by the day, and the former Cabinet minister she has since expelled from caucus, who tried speaking up about the issue, tabled a bunch more documents about what he knew, and it’s pretty damning stuff. So, what is Smith’s best weapon of mass-distraction? Stoking separatist sentiment, pretending she’s not behind it, and watching it take over the news cycle. It’s terrible, and nobody should take their eye off the ball while she pulls the fire alarm.

"If you or any other Canadians are not happy living on Treaty lands, they are free to apply for citizenship elsewhere."Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation issues a scathing rebuke of Danielle Smith's talks on a national unity crisis.

— Courtney Theriault (@ctheriault.bsky.social) 2025-05-01T03:29:35.719Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones attacked Odesa early morning, killing two and injuring at least five. A Ukrainian drone strike hit a weapons factory in Russia. South Korean intelligence says that some 600 North Korean troops have been killed out of a deployment of 15,000 soldiers.

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Roundup: Lies about Brookfield to own the Libs

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For the past couple of days, the Conservatives have been trotting out new talking points about Mark Carney, and the fact that Brookfield Asset Management plans to move their head office to New York, but absolutely everything the Conservatives say about the move is false. The move is because they want easier access to New York stock indexes, but it remains incorporated in Canada, it’s not changing its operations, strategic plans, or tax treatment. Everything that Poilievre and his MPs have said about this is a lie, and they are utterly brazen about it.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1852429076470083823

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1852429080404341190

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1852429083327836651

Meanwhile, the Conservatives keep trotting out claims of the Liberals’ so-called “economic vandalism,” particularly in the resource sector. But again, this is utter bunkum.

It’s lies all the way down. But does legacy media say absolutely anything? Nope. The Elder Pundits? Are you kidding? They just keep shrugging it off, but when the Liberals stretch credulity with their own talking points? Well, that’s a scandal. Honest to Zeus, you don’t need to recreate what’s happening in the US. There is no “good parts only” version. Stop pretending there is.

Has Poilievre said a truthful thing ever? Nope.Have the Liberals stretched credulity with their recent talking points. Yup. Has the Post ever freaked out about the former as they have the latter? Of course not. There are two standards being applied.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-11-02T02:30:49.830Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile attack on Kharkiv killed a police officer and injured 40 others. Over the course of October, Russia attacked Ukraine with 2,023 drones. Ukraine’s ability to produce more mortar shells is being stymied by a global shortage of explosives. President Zelenskyy is calling on allies to take action to tackle the presence of North Korean troops in Russia before they engage in combat. From Ottawa, South Korea’s foreign minister said that all scenarios are under consideration for aiding Ukraine because the North Koreans have entered the field.

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Roundup: Hearings before the investigation concludes

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As we’ve been expecting the Commons public safety committee met yesterday, and held the usual performances about just how very seriously they take the situation of the two accused terror suspects, and the questions about how they made it to Canada and in one case was given Canadian citizenship. But rather than waiting for the internal investigation to complete so that they could scrutinize the results, they all decided to go ahead and start holding hearings before they have those answers, because what’s important is getting clips for their socials. To that end, they have agreed to hold six meetings starting in the last week of August, but there are competing agendas at play.

For the Conservatives, the agenda is pretty clear—outraged clips, and showcasing their MPs badgering and hectoring witnesses, most especially the ministers who will appear before them. For the Bloc and NDP, it’s quite obviously to embarrass the government at every opportunity, like they are keen to do with every single other issue that rears its head. For the Liberals, however, they believe they are being clever and want to make this into an exposé into the cost of Conservative austerity, because it would seem that the timeline would match up to a point where Conservatives had cut thousands of CBSA agents and civil servants in the immigration department, before the Liberals were able to really reinvest and reinvigorate the processes (if that ever did happen—remember, it’s incredibly difficult to recover capacity once you’ve lost it through cuts). They think they have some kind of gotcha here, but I suspect that they’re going to mishandle this so badly that it’ll blow up in their faces like it always does.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched 38 drones and two missiles overnight Monday, and while 30 of those drones were destroyed, one person was injured as a result. Russian shelling killed at least one civilian in the Sumy region, and the government has restricted civilian movement in that area. Russians have been increasing their assaults in the Pokrovsk area of Eastern Ukraine. Russians claim that they halted Ukraine’s advance in the Kursk region, while Ukraine says they actually have no interest in holding that territory (but their ultimate goals remain unclear).

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1823306864097988712

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Roundup: The usual NATO narratives

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Because the NATO summit is happening right now in Washington DC, you may have noticed that the entire media narrative in Canada is around the two-percent-of-GDP defence spending target (which is a stupid metric!) and how Canada has not managed to miraculously achieve it, and tossing around words like “free-rider” and “unserious.” The Elder Pundits have declared that this is the narrative by which the entire event must be framed by, and ignore absolutely all other context or counterfactuals.

Indeed, we shall not mention that the GDP denominator is a much bigger hurdle for Canada because of the size of our economy relative to many other NATO member countries, and that because our economy is growing, that pushes our spending requirements even higher. (Conversely, if we crashed the economy, we could reach that two percent target really quickly). We shall not mention that Canada contributes to NATO operations in a meaningful way, unlike many other NATO countries who may be meeting the two-percent spending target—holding the fort in Kandahar when no one else would, hitting moving targets in Libya, managing one of the most difficult missions in the Baltics right now (being the Latvian mission) as well as training Ukrainian troops into being effective soldiers who were able to hold off the invasion. Nor shall we mention that other countries claiming to reach their two percent targets have only done so through the accounting trickery of front-loading their capital spending (meaning future spending will drop off), or promising the spending in spite of constitutional restrictions around the size of deficit spending. None of these facts matter to the Elder Pundits and the narrative they have decided upon.

Yes, Canada needs to spend more, but you can’t just throw money at National Defence—they haven’t had the capacity to spend their full budget, which is why the spending lapses (which the PBO did get right in his report). It is taking time to build the capacity back up to spend the money, and part of that is fixing the recruitment and retention crisis (which has gone very, very slowly). But they are recapitalising the Forces in a significant way, and once we get to the submarine procurement, those numbers are going climb precipitously, but again, we want to do that cautiously to avoid the procurement problems of the past. Minister have been saying that we need there to be something to show for the increased spending, which media and the Elder Pundits have had a hard time comprehending. So, when you hear the usual “free rider” nonsense, remember that we are actually contributing, unlike a lot of other member countries.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1810866983534997849

Ukraine Dispatch

Here are more accounts from the bombing of the children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday. Russia claims that the hospital was hit by Ukrainian fire, but offers no evidence, while the UN assessment is pretty sure it was the Russian missile that was observed. From the NATO Summit in Washington, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Americans to keep funding Ukraine’s war effort rather than waiting for the election results in November.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1810640148444709169

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Roundup: Trudeau weighs in—sort of

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It was another big day on the foreign interference/NSICOP file today, with Elizabeth May holding another press conference to clarify her previous remarks and to assure everyone that she doesn’t think there’s nothing to see here, and that like Jagmeet Singh, she’s alarmed by what she read, but no, there is nothing to indicate that any sitting MP has committed treason (the only possible exception of course being the one former MP), but a few MPs may have compromised themselves by accepting favours from certain embassies in order to secure their nominations, which was stupid and possibly unethical, but certainly not treason (which has a strict Criminal Code definition).

Shortly after this, Justice Marie-Josée Hogue sent a letter saying that her commission can look into these issues, that she has access to all of the documents that went into the NSICOP report, and that she’s going to try to include this assessment as part of the final report by the end of the year, which isn’t the October 1st that MPs wanted when they voted on this stupid motion in the first place, but hey, she didn’t tell them to go drop on their heads (like she should have), and this pushes the ability for the party leaders to put on their grown-up pants and actually deal with this political problem even further into the future, which is a problem. This should not have happened, she should have told them to deal with their political problems on their own and not fob them off onto a judge, but she didn’t, and so nothing gets solved.

But then, Justin Trudeau himself appeared on Power & Politics, and kept up his evasive talking points on the issue and the report, wouldn’t really clarify what exactly it is that he disagrees with NSICOP about, and kept pointing to how great it was that we have an independent commission that’s looking into all of this, so people can rest assured. Which doesn’t actually help, especially when the biggest accusation is that he has done nothing with this information for months. About the biggest thing to come from that interview was Trudeau saying that there are a range of issues with foreign interference in all parties, and that false accusations may well be a goal of some foreign regimes. He also threw a bit of a bomb at Singh by implying that maybe the NDP isn’t as clean as Singh insisted after he read the classified report, so this is going to extend the media circus tomorrow, particularly when Singh has his usual media availability tomorrow before Question Period.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile struck dwellings and power lines in the Poltava region, injuring twenty-two and knocking out electricity in the area. Ukrainian troops have been massing in the Kharkiv region, pushing out the Russian incursions. Ukraine is having difficulty restructuring their bonds, and might fall into default.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau and Mélanie Joly are expected to meet with the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Ottawa today.
  • Bill Blair, being far too diplomatic, suggests his critics were “confused” about the purpose of Canada sending a warship to Havana (when they spread disinformation).
  • Blair also made it clear that he is not contemplating sending trainers back to Ukrainian soil. (Current training is happening in the UK, Poland and Latvia).
  • Patty Hajdu committed $1.2 billion for a hospital near James Bay, which will flow to the province, who is doing the actual construction (as it’s their jurisdiction).
  • The government is prevaricating on the question of whether Canadian news outlets should be compensated when “AI” chatbots train on them as copyrighted sources.
  • Here is an explainer of the stupid fight happening at the Canadian heritage committee over the CBC not airing certain hockey games.
  • At committee, the Parliamentary Budget Officer now says the government hasn’t gagged him, it was all a misunderstanding of translation. Convenient!
  • Liberal MP Rachel Bendayan talks about her severe concussion and how that has sparked advocacy for how concussions affect women differently.
  • Liberal MP Andy Fillmore is resigning his seat in order to make a run for the mayor of Halifax.
  • While former Supreme Court chief justice says she’s stepping down from the Hong Kong court to spend time with family, she renewed her tenure on Singapore’s court.
  • New Brunswick’s government site about the carbon levy overestimates the costs and doesn’t mention the rebates, because why tell the truth?
  • Paul Wells spent a day on the Hill to see the current state of the place, and well, it’s not great. (And thanks for the shoutout!)

Odds and ends:

My Loonie Politics Quick Take looks at the PBO’s big mess, and the spin over the “secret report” which wasn’t a secret or a report.

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