Tag Archives: Environment

Roundup: Moving the majority motion

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Government House Leader Steven announced yesterday that he will be moving a motion in the House of Commons today regarding changing the committee make-up for the remainder of this parliament in order to reflect the government’s new majority status, which feels a little bit like jumping the gun. While he does need to give notice of the motion, it won’t be debated until next week sometime at the earliest (because Thursday is a Supply Day for one of the Opposition Parties, and I doubt he would debate this motion on a Friday), but there’s no way the government can vote on it yet. Why? Because the three new MPs haven’t been sworn in yet, and it’s generally a three-to-four-week process for Elections Canada to fully certify the results and report back to the Commons so that the swearing-in can happen, and well, it’s only been a week-and-a-half.

I do find it interesting that they have decided to go the route of adding MPs to the committees to make them twelve members instead of ten, which may be a mistake on the government’s part. Yes, removing a Conservative instead of adding a Liberal to each committee might have seen them howl more, but the things is, we actually barely have enough MPs to go around when it comes to staffing committees properly (remember, this is the reason why official party status is twelve MPs—so that they can have coverage on every standing committee). During Trudeau’s majority parliament, committees were down to ten MPs, which meant that parliamentary secretaries didn’t have to be voting members, which is better for all because they couldn’t essentially be putting their thumbs on the scales on the government’s behalf, but when they were back to minority parliaments, committee memberships went back up to 12 in order to accommodate more opposition members, thus meaning parliamentary secretaries were back to voting members. It looks like Carney and MacKinnon have no problem with this, even though they should—it’s bad form for the independence of committees, but they don’t actually care about that.

It also looks like MacKinnon is doing this now and not later is a power move. I had previously suspected that this move wouldn’t be fully implemented until autumn because the last four sitting weeks before summer would have the committees slammed to get things passed before the break, but now they’re going to mess up their ability to work until the Procedure and House Affairs Committee can produce their report on the new committee memberships because the Conservatives decided to play stupid games on the Ethics committee and force a vote on making François-Philippe Champagne appear before them to answer theatrical questions about his non-existent conflict of interest with the Alto high speed rail project. By pushing this motion and vote to as soon as the government can make it, once the new MPs are sworn-in, it gives them a chance to try and head off the committee before Champagne appears for the sole purpose of having the Conservatives (and probably Bloc) call him corrupt on camera so that they can get clicks on their social media channels. Just ridiculous, and even more ridiculous that MacKinnon has to get in on the dick-swinging in the process.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-21T19:08:01.767Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims to have captured 80 settlements and 1700 square kilometres since the start of the year, while Ukraine has recaptured some of that territory back. As Ukraine is about to resume pumping oil through the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary, now that repairs are completed, it looks like Ukrainian drone attacks have reduced Russian oil export capacity by 300,000 to 400,000 barrels per day.

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QP: A trio of bad faith assertions

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The PM was in town but otherwise preoccupied, while Pierre Poilievre was also absent, which led Melissa Lantsman to stand up and lament the lack of investment building in the country. Tim Hodgson stood up, suggested she stop the clickbait, and then listed major projects approved in each province. Lantsman dismissed this as nothing actually built (because it can happen overnight), before lamenting the food inflation numbers and demanded the government bring down the cost of government. François-Philippe Champagne got up to list the “good news” of IMF projections, and high Canadian Forces recruitment. Lantsman went on a tear about affordability, to which Patty Hajdu accused the Conservatives of sticking “spokes in the wheels” of Canadians. Pierre Paul-Hus took over in French to slam Carney’s video and the lack of pipelines built of new trade deals. Dominic LeBlanc thanked him for his support of C-5 and noted the projects that are getting underway. Paul-Hus lamented food prices, and Champagne reiterated his “good news” talking points en français. Paul-Hus then mischaracterised the deal with China and falsely claimed Carney had promised a trade deal by now, and LeBlanc got back up to remind them that they are working to improve the situation, which included diversifying trade with other reliable partners and building major projects.

In advance of today's #QP and the inevitable wailing and gnashing of teeth about food price inflation, here is what StatsCan said the biggest driver was last month.Spoiler: It's still climate. www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quo…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-20T15:07:22.716Z

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she also raised Carney’s video and the lack of a deal with the U.S. as they keep imposing new tariffs. LeBlanc repeated his line about diversifying trade partners and building national projects while understanding the importance of steel and aluminium at home. Normandin demanded ties with the U.S. be strengthened and not discarded (which nobody is actually proposing), and Champagne got back up to note that he was in Washington last week and they are still talking, while pointing to the importance of diversifying trade. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay lamented that Carney is not consulting enough on his files, to which LeBlanc disputed the premise of the question. 

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Roundup: Carney’s Forward Guidance

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On Sunday morning, prime minister Mark Carney released a ten-minute piece on his YouTube channel called “Forward Guidance,” because he’s still doing his central banker shtick, and it was a direct-to-camera (with three other cameras intercutting) discussion about the place we find ourselves in. Most of this was not new, repeating the same lines from past speeches including the one at Davos, while promising to never sugarcoat things—but he kind of did. I also have to question why this had to be over YouTube and not a speech in the House of Commons, which is why there is allotted time every day for ministers to make statements if they so choose. This could have been done there.

Carney pointed to a “statue” of Isaac Brock that Mike Myers gave him, but by statue he meant two-inch figurine, and that led him to launch into a whole War of 1812 narrative about the people who built this country, which, okay, sure, but you’re not doing much to show you’re not just the second coming of Stephen Harper. When he talked about the building of big things in the post-war period, this is again where things got a bit sugar-coated because there was still complexity to these old projects, and usually practices that would be unacceptable today for good reason. (I also noted that he mentioned universities being built in this period, without mention of the fact that provincial governments are in the process of dismantling our university systems). He also spoke about protecting social programmes (except for letting the funding of a bunch of groups who deliver services lapse), and he mentions pharmacare like it’s not limited to two types of drugs in a handful of provinces. And further sugar-coating was essentially by omission—the fact that so many Canadian businesses have become apathetic to growth or increasing productivity because they have taken the lesson that all they need to do is become rent-seekers.

Predictably, Pierre Poilievre decided he was going to have something to say about this, and that it was all just an illusion because nothing has actually been built yet (because you can build things overnight). He railed about Carney just enriching “well-connected elites,” but Poilievre’s whole scheme is to double down on trickle-down economics, which by definition enriches a small group of elites because the money does not, in fact, trickle down. Melissa Lantsman put out her own rebuttal that included the incredulous and false claim that the Liberals have cost the economy a trillion dollars in the past decade, which is completely fiscally illiterate, but that’s how the Conservatives roll.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-19T23:08:01.392Z

Ukraine Dispatch

There was a massive overnight attack Saturday on Chernihiv which killed a sixteen-year-old boy, and wounded others. Ukraine is continuing its own drone strikes on Russian oil facilities in Samara, occupied Crimea, and the Baltic Sea.

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Roundup: The 44th Charter anniversary

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Yesterday was the 44th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and it comes at a time when the Charter is increasingly under attack by provincial governments who have realised that the prohibition against using the Notwithstanding Clause has worn off, and that the public no longer cares about it—at least not enough to actually punish a government that does it, mostly because it’s right-wing governments using the Clause to punish minorities, and there isn’t enough political will to care about trans and gender diverse youth, or the rights of visible minorities in Quebec.

While everyone waits for the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in the Law 21 case out of Quebec, there is some using about ways that the federal government could try and introduce some kinds of guardrails against its use federally, but that immediately had the Bloc Québécois howling, and the brand new Quebec premier striking a combative tone, until she got reassurances from Carney and a text message apology from the federal justice minister, which strikes me as far too much appeasement. And then you have people calling for the constitutional power of disallowance if a province invokes the Clause, but that’s extremely dangerous. Disallowance is a constitutional dead letter—it existed mostly as a way of ensuring provinces would stay within their constitutional lanes, and that function has been taken up by the Supreme Court of Canada’s reference function. Disallowance would essentially be a declaration of war, which is a very bad thing for any federal government.

So, what can we do about provinces who abuse the power? The same way you effect any political change—you organize, and you protest, and you get out the vote. But that’s hard, and people don’t want to do that, even though that’s the way politics works. There is no easy way to curb the abuse of these powers other than the public letting it be known that it’s unacceptable, and that’s hard work. But it’s the only way to ensure that you not only get change, but that said change is actually durable. Make premiers afraid of you. It’s the only way we’re going to fix what’s wrong with this country.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-17T13:13:12.555Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones hit the Danube port of Izmail once again, and at least one drone strayed into Romanian territory as a result. Ukrainian drones made hits at oil facilities in the Black Sea port of Tuapse and Krasnodar.

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QP: Zombie statistics to justify gas tax whinging

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The PM was in town but not at QP for reasons unknown, while Pierre Poilievre was off in Toronto giving another speech to the Canadian Club. That left it up to Luc Berthold to lead off in French, dredging up the false zombie statistic about the number of Canadians who are a mere $200 away from insolvency (guys, that stat doesn’t say what you think it says, and it’s never been accurate), before whining that the government voted down their Supply Day motion on removing all gas taxes (even though the clean fuel standard is not a tax, or even a charge). Steven MacKinnon listed all of the supports for Canadians that the Conservatives voted against, before noting that wages in Canada have been rising at 4.7 percent year-over-year, while that figure is just 3.5 percent in the U.S. Berthold complained that gas is twenty percent cheaper in the U.S. than in Canada, called the government’s policies inflationary, and again made a plea for the government to cut all gas taxes. MacKinnon reminded him that in February (the last month for which there are statistics), inflation was at 1.8%, which is within the Bank of Canada’s target band. Melissa Lantsman took over in English to repeat the same first question, and Tim Hodgson got up to remind her that they already cut gas taxes by 28¢/litre with the consumer carbon levy, and have the enhanced GST credit and income tax cut. Lantsman also complained that their Supply Day motion was voted down, and again all gas taxes be cut, and Hogson noted that while this government cut gas taxes by 28¢/litre, the Americans have not cut theirs at all. Shuvaloy Majumdar took over and made the same plea to cut gas taxes, and this time Sean Fraser got up to expound on the two visions of Canada, where the Conservatives’ was to cut taxes for the wealthy while the Liberals are building a strong economy. Majumdar repeated the falsehood about $200 from insolvency, and Patty Hajdu got up to proclaim how much families are saving thanks to the current government.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she raised the issue of the added aluminium tariffs, to which Dominic LeBlanc appreciated her concern, and he assured her that they were working on the issue, and that he has raised it with this American counterparts. Normandin worried about businesses suffering from this, and LeBlanc repeated his assurances. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay took over to ask the same again (because they need more clips), and LeBlanc repeated the same assurances yet again.

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Roundup: The Senate rumour mill churns

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There has been a raft of rumours out about the Senate the past couple of days, the latest being that there could be yet another caucus forming, possibly out yet another split within the Independent Senators Group, because there is some friction over the current leadership—erm, “facilitatorship”—and that is not entirely unsurprising. The ISG is large and unwieldy, and when you have that many type-A people in a room who all have their own ideas on how to do things, and their own agendas, it’s little wonder that they can barely organise themselves to do anything. So we’ll see if this happens, but nevertheless, I can confirm that I’ve heard grumblings about the current state of the ISG.

Meanwhile, there is another rumour circulating, both from the Globe and Mail and iPolitics that prime minister Mark Carney is looking to appoint Tom Pitfield to the Senate—the same Tom Pitfield who won a turf war within the PMO that saw David Lametti take a job as UN ambassador instead of the post he was supposed to take up within PMO. The rumours also state that he would take over as Government Leader in the Senate and take up a seat in Cabinet like the post is supposed to be, but this too is being denied. The source of this rumour also hints that Carney is going to start appointing partisan Liberals to the Senate again, which I’m not necessarily opposed to, provided that there is no expectation of a whip, which never really existed in the Senate before, but with almost no former Liberal senators left, the new batch may be under some false pretences.

Meanwhile, I find myself baffled by the notion that Carney is looking to appoint Pitfield and partisans in order to move bills through the Senate, as though there is obstruction happening there. There is not. Government bills are passing through at a pace that is actually too fast for proper scrutiny in many cases because of an exaggerated sense of faux urgency, while the real problem remains in the House of Commons, which has barely passed any legislation, leaving senators bored and preoccupied with their own hobby-horse bills, and frankly, some of this talk about splitting caucuses is likely a result of that boredom.

Programming Note: I will be taking the full long weekend off. See you next Wednesday.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a daytime drone attack and killed four people in the central Cherkasy region, damaging more energy infrastructure. Russia also claims to have fully taken control of the Luhansk region, which Ukraine denies. Ukraine struck a missile component factory in Russia’s Bryansk region.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith’s Soviet-style political neutrality

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Yesterday was Trans Day of Visibility, and because of the times we live in, it was treated as an excuse to attack trans rights. In the US, the US Supreme Court struck down Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy in an 8-1 ruling, under the ludicrous rubric that banning “talk therapy” was impacting free speech (even though talk therapy should be classed as medical services, as the dissenting judge pointed out). And in Idaho, the governor signed a bill to make it a felony for a trans person to use a public washroom that is not their assigned sex at birth.

Back in Canada, Alberta premier Danielle Smith tabled a bill that purports to “remove politics and ideology” from schools, which among other things, means ensuring there are no Pride flags ever raised at Alberta schools. (Noted is that the current ban on informing parents if a student joins a GSA is not being changed). There are a lot of questions around what this is supposed to mean, and whether it’s only in classrooms, or if teachers are allowed to post opinions online, or anything like that, but it’s a weird and troubling decision by Smith to pursue this particular line of attack, and especially because it’s going to create a system of surveillance and denunciations, which is starting to sound pretty Soviet for a self-professed “libertarian” like Smith.

This can be taken is so many dangerous directions. And once something like this is enshrined in legislation, it creates a culture of surveillance where educators are going to live in fear of being secretly recorded and reported (look at what's happening in the U.S.!!)

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2026-03-31T21:14:57.962Z

The bill seeks to "bar school divisions or employees from making statements on “political, social or ideological matters” outside the school division’s purview."Curious if the government will think a teacher talking about being LGBTQ2S+ issues at all is "outside the school division's purview."

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2026-03-31T21:07:49.094Z

"Nicolaides also wouldn’t say whether the flag limitation would apply to stickers or magnets or other imagery teachers might have in their classrooms, except to say they can’t have ideological symbols."In a similar vein, could teachers get in trouble having, say, a Pride flag sticker on desk?

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2026-03-31T21:09:05.569Z

For a government who loves free speech, this seems a massive affront to freedom of expression for teachers and school staff on like, a very basic level.Very curious what the unions will say about all of this …

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2026-03-31T21:10:49.732Z

This in and of itself is a problem—it treats straight, white men as the default norm, and everyone else as “political,” and when you are effacing queer and trans people in the dame of “neutrality,” that is very, very political and is not neutral in the slightest. And Smith is going to keep getting away with this kind of thing because nobody is protesting around the clock or organizing a general strike to stop her.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian drones struck the Russian oil terminal at Ust-Luga for the fifth time in ten days. European diplomats were in Bucha to commemorate the 2022 massacre by Russian forces there. President Zelenskyy is hoping the Americans can convince Russia to enter into an “Easter truce” (and good luck with that).

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Roundup: Poilievre’s anti-trans colours

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Yesterday, Pierre Poilievre tweeted an endorsement of JK Rowling praising the International Olympic Committee’s decision to ban trans women from sport, using a photo of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif as illustration. In spite of conspiracy theories and slander, Khelif is not trans (and is from a country where being queer is a crime). Poilievre should know this, but he is choosing to double down on anti-trans rhetoric (with a dose of misogyny and slander along the way). This is not the first time he has shown himself to be anti-trans, but this is the first major opportunity since he’s been trying to cast himself in a new light.

In case you needed any clarification where Poilievre stands on trans rights.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-27T17:16:48.712Z

The discussion of this online turned to Mark Carney’s stance on trans rights (he has been blandly supportive, and one of his children identifies as non-binary), and whether he is going to do anything about provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan, who have invoked the Notwithstanding Clause to protect their anti-trans legislation from court challenges. The answer is that he doesn’t have the constitutional tools to do anything about it other than moral suasion. And then someone will pipe up and say that he can use disallowance.

No, he can’t. Disallowance is a constitutional dead letter because it was largely meant to prevent provinces from intruding into areas of federal jurisdiction, and that power was essentially adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada’s reference function. This means that any residual disallowance power would be a declaration of war on a province, at a time when you have two provinces that are flirting with separatist agitation. It’s not going to happen. Stop pretending that it’s a possibility because it’s not.

For the last time:The federal government is NOT going to use disallowance.Stop pretending it is a magic wand to deal with asshole premiers. You want to stop them? Get off your ass and organize, organize, organize. That's how politics works.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-28T04:36:47.504Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-03-27T13:24:01.622Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s economy minister said that the rise in fuel and fertilizer prices thanks to the Iran conflict are not expected to impact Ukraine’s spring planting season.

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QP: NATO back-patting and “radical environmentalism”

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The PM was off in Halifax for his military announcement, while Pierre Poilievre was also absent, and attendance was down because this is essentially a Friday as the House is not sitting tomorrow. That left it up to Andrew Scheer to lead off, and he complained that the dollar was not rising with oil prices, and blamed the government’s “radical environmental agenda.” Mysteriously, Jill McKnight rose for the government,  to to answer the question, but to pat herself on the back for the government’s announcement that we have met the former NATO two percent spending target. Scheer said nothing about this, and kept on with his script about affordability, and blamed the industrial carbon price for declining productivity. (Seriously?!) this time, Sherry Romanado got up, and no, she didn’t answer the question either, but delivered the NATO back-patting en français. Rob Moore took over, and continued with the same script about the “radical environmental agenda” driving up the cost of living, to which Tim Hodgson got up to note that he received praise from members of the American cabinet earlier in the week for Canada’s record oil and gas production helping to keep prices down. Moore recited the lines about the industrial carbon price, to which François-Philippe Champagne got up to proclaim the “good news” of the NATO target, as well as their new bill boost home construction. Luc Berthold took over in French to decry the rising food and gasoline prices, and Champagne repeated his same response en français. Berthold then ranted about how everything was the same old Liberals, and this time Mélanie Joly pointed to inflation being stable while wages are rising at a faster rate.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she denounced Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau, and claimed the government only helps anglophones in Quebec. Marc Miller reminded her that they have invested $4 billion in French across the country, and that the are disappointed by the CEO of Air Canada. Normandin took a swipe at the Anglo speech writers in the PMO and that they are just encouraging more Michael Rousseaus. Miller reminded her that the Liberals have a historic number of Quebec MPs, and the PM has done a lot of work to improve his French. Mario Beaulieu took over and made his own swipe at Rousseau, and Miller reminded him that anglophones do have rights in Quebec.

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Roundup: Hallucinating an immigration application

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There were a couple of immigration stories of note yesterday, the first of which was the revelation that a post-doc researcher at McMaster University—who has a PhD from the Sorbonne—had her permanent residency application rejected because it looks like the immigration department used generative digital asbestos to process the claim and it hallucinated a bunch of things about her job. Worse, while there was a disclaimer about the use of said digital asbestos, it said that a human verified it, which someone clearly did not. This is outrageous, and exactly the kind of thing that some of us were warning about when Mark Carney and Evan Solomon crowed about how great this digital asbestos was going to be for the productivity and efficiency of the civil service. Clearly that’s not the case, and now they not only need to redo her application, but it demonstrates what most of us knew was going to happen—that the humans were going to start cutting corners and not verifying the work because there is a belief in the infallibility of these programmes. This is scandalous and worthy of a resignation if we actually believed in that anymore.

The other story was that justice minister Sean Fraser says that when he was immigration minister, he would have handled things differently with the student visas, but there is one thing that is buried in the piece that everyone is going to overlook:

However, he also said the federal government was negotiating as part of “a good-faith relationship with the provinces who were requesting additional access to immigration programs at the time.”

He said those negotiations failed, leading to the federal government placing a cap in January 2024.

The provinces are very much to blame, but they keep avoiding responsibility. They were screaming for more immigrants and temporary foreign workers. They allowed these strip mall colleges to run rampant—Ontario most especially. Not one of them did anything at all about building more housing, or not keeping their healthcare system from collapsing, and not one of them stopped from the blame pile-on with the federal government. I keep making this point because nobody wants to listen—we have a problem with the provinces, and nobody wants to acknowledge it so that we can start holding the premiers accountable.

Could Carney possibly stop using Nigel Farage's framing? Why is it so hard to learn the lesson of not giving the far-right any ammunition? FFS.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-26T03:14:49.967Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks on Kharkiv killed two, and damaged Danube port infrastructure in Izamil. It has been calculated that Russia has lost some 40 percent of its oil export capacity thanks to Ukrainian attacks.

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