Tag Archives: Ethics Commissioner

Roundup: First list of major projects incoming

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Today is the day where the first tranche of major projects to be tackled by the Major Projects Office gets announced, and surprising nobody who has paid the slightest bit of attention, there are no pipeline projects on that list. And the reason is because there are no proposals on the table—you can’t approve a project that doesn’t exist, but that hasn’t stopped Pierre Poilievre or Danielle Smith from making hay about it. Instead, what will be on the list is not too surprising—phase two of LNG Canada, the new nuclear project at Darlington, expanding the Port of Montreal, a copper mine project in Saskatchewan, and expanding the Red Chris mine in BC, with a further list of potential projects for the second tranche. The Indigenous Advisory Council for the Major Projects Office was also announced yesterday, for what that’s worth.

Carney did address the media at the opening of the caucus retreat yesterday, and while he spoke about the dire economic situation (in a way that defies it being taken seriously), and talked about diversifying trade with Europe and Asia, and the launch of Build Canada Homes next week, there was one thing that did bother me in particular. Carney said that they were shifting from a question of if we want to build projects to a question of how, which I think is a gross misreading of the situation. It wasn’t really a question of if before—most any project proposal that was submitted for review was serious, but the question of how was predominant all along. The thing is that the “how” changed dramatically over time because the old ways of doing things were no longer acceptable, whether that was in regards to environmental standards, or ignoring the wishes of local First Nations, or making a bunch of promises to those First Nations and then screwing them out of the revenues and jobs that were promised to get their support. Yes, there is lip-service being paid to Indigenous consultation or UNDRIP principles, but Carney has yet to demonstrate that he actually understands what this all means (as he gave himself a giant Henry VIII clause to exempt himself from any of it, he doesn’t want to deal with), so you can understand why there is trepidation about what this is supposed to all mean. And if he doesn’t understand that “how” was always the question, then that’s also a very big problem in how he conceives of things going forward.

Meanwhile, Carney said that there needs to be heightened pressure applied to Russia after the drone attack on Poland (and it sounds like there will be a NATO Article 4 meeting in the near future about it), not that I would expect the Americans to be serious about it. Carney also said that there needs to be a “focused approach” to the temporary foreign workers programme, after former immigration Marc Miller called out Pierre Poilievre for stoking anti-immigration sentiments (because that’s what he’s doing for engagement).

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-10T13:25:07.322Z

Ukraine Dispatch

All of the talk yesterday was about how Poland found 14 Russian drones in its territory in the aftermath of the overnight attack, and western leaders rushing to condemn Russia for the attack. President Zelenskyy said that Ukraine and Europe need to work together to create an effect air defence shield.

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Roundup: Ontario MPPs get a raise

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I don’t often write about Ontario politics, but I did want to make a couple of remarks on the fact that Doug Ford pushed through both pay raises for MPPs, as well as a restoration of their pensions, and this actually a Good Thing. MPPs have had their salaries frozen since 2009, when Dalton McGuinty froze them in response to the global financial crisis (which is always one of those dumb populist moves that astroturf groups like the so-called “Canadian Taxpayers Federation” demand, and it always ends up bad). Ford’s legislation will peg MPP salaries at 75 percent of those of MPs, who already have their own salaries adjusted automatically per a particular formula, and it pegs itself to something like judges’ salaries, all in an attempt to depoliticise the issue (and has largely been successful).

The thing about salaries for elected officials is that you want them to be high enough to discourage them from either freelancing on the job, or being susceptible to financial inducements (aka bribery) by keeping them at a reasonably comfortable level (without being obviously lavish or ostentatious). And frankly, the fact that anyone who is in a profession, like a doctor or lawyer, needing to take a pay cut to get into elected politics is usually a bad sign, because it discourages them from running or contributing in a meaningful way. And as for pensions, which Mike Harris killed in more populist excesses, it again helps to keep MPPs from pursuing other remuneration given the low salaries they’re already accepting, when they’re not earning pensionable income from their previous employers. Over time, there have been complaints that certain MPPs wouldn’t retire because they couldn’t afford to, and there was recently one story about a former Toronto MPP who wound up sleeping in a shelter after a financial collapse from a divorce. This was pretty sad indictment of how petty Ontario’s legislature had become on these questions.

This having been said, I’m still dubious about Ford’s motives, given that he has stuffed his Cabinet with MPPs in order to give them raises while going on about how hard they work. This feels a little bit like spoils of war as the province’s books get in worse and worse shape, but again, this is still the right thing to do. I know the books are a mess, and hospitals are crumbling, and they’re dismantling post-secondary education, but not giving these raises doesn’t fix any of that. Let’s hope that we’re not going to witness a bunch more hand-wringing about how nest-feathering, otherwise I can see the dumb populism making things even worse, as they force MPPs to start competing over who does sackcloth and ashes best.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-05-29T21:27:21.302Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy says that Russia is engaging in yet another deception by not handing over its peace settlement proposal ahead of their planned talks.

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Roundup: A faux keynote to sanewash Trump

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Day eleven, and the countdown was on for the major tariff announcement from Trump, which he dubbed “Liberation Day” in the most Orwellian sense. Mark Carney was in Ottawa, meeting with his Canada-US advisory council before the announcement, and then the Canada-US Cabinet committee after the announcement, but with more tariffs coming into play later today, the announcement on retaliatory measures is still forthcoming. Carney did say that this latest global tariff imposition will “fundamentally change the global trading system.” And while he didn’t campaign, Carney did, however, have François-Philippe Champagne make a campaign announcement on his behalf in Granby, Quebec, about the agrifood sector, which not only vows to protect Supply Management, but makes pledges around more funding for various agricultural programmes including trying to build more domestic processing capacity. Carney will remain in Ottawa for the morning, and head to Montreal for a Radio-Canada event.

I listen to arguments against retaliatory tariffs, as they do hurt us more than the other side.But, the point is to hurt the other side and get the US tariff reversed. Our ability to withstand pain is greater, but not infinite.So, I'm in favour of smartly targeted retaliatory tariffs.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-04-02T15:45:21.125Z

But some argue against *any* retaliation. Not pro-Trumpers themselves, but people who say "they are big and we are small and we can't possibly do anything we should just submit."This argument I resolutely reject. If not quislings, they are at least cowards. Fight for your country or GTFO.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-04-02T15:48:45.703Z

Pierre Poilievre was in Toronto to give a “keynote speech” to an invited audience meant to resemble a Chamber of Commerce speech on the response to Trump, and it was…middling, because he seems to think that Trump is actually interested in renegotiating the New NAFTA, or that the tariffs are for legitimate reasons rather than the ludicrous belief that they can be used as income to replace taxes that billionaires pay. And he made some particularly odd promises, like using the tax windfall from increased trade to fund the military, or that the Americans actually care about stopping their guns from crossing our border. And a lot of it was falling back on his same economically illiterate beliefs that the Liberals killed the resource extraction sector (which is only operating at record production levels) and that more oil and gas will solve all of our problems (it most assuredly won’t). Poilievre will remain in Kinsgston this morning, and then head to Oshawa for a rally in the evening, and will attend the Radio-Canada event virtually.

Jagmeet Singh was in Winnipeg and made his own pledges to protect workers from the tariffs, which were mostly just reannouncements. Aside from the pledge to meaningfully reform EI (which is far easier said than done—the current government has been working on this for years), he pledged investments in a few sectors, reannounced things like his GST cuts (which disproportionately benefit the wealthy), and he pledged more protectionist measures, which feels like it’s missing the mark for the moment we’re in as a country. Singh will be in Ottawa for the morning, and then head to Montreal later in the day for the Radio-Canada event.

In other campaign news, Conservative spending on Facebook and Instagram ads has fallen sharply while the Liberals have increased theirs.

As for the tariffs, it looks like Canada and Mexico were exempted from this particular round, and that the New NAFTA-compliant exemption remains in place, but the steel and aluminium tariffs are still there, and the auto tariffs come on today in some fashion but they are making those up as they go along, so those remain significant issues overall. But as for how they arrived at their apparently random list of tariffs today, well, it’s even dumber than you could have imagined.

Guess where they got their weird trade deficit math from?

— dan sinker (@dansinker.com) 2025-04-03T00:32:21+00:00

https://bsky.app/profile/jrobson.bsky.social/post/3llustvcjuc2q

Apropos for World Tariff Day.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T00:34:45.942Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone attack hit an energy substation in Sumy region, as Russia claims that Ukrainian forces’ drone and shelling attacks in Kursk region cut off power to 1500 households, thus claiming each side violated the “energy ceasefire.”

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Roundup: No reporters on the plane

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The Conservatives have declared that there will be no media contingent on their campaign plane or busses, while still mouthing words like claiming they’ll be the “most transparent” campaign out there. (Full letter here). They won’t be, of course, because not allowing journalists on the plane/bus means that they can’t see unscripted moments (from their limited vantage point), but stage-management is much of what this is really about—giving that added bit of message control that the Conservatives are very desperate to maintain.

The claim they are advancing is that they’ll give two- or three-days’ advance notice of stops so that local media can be there, or that national media can fly (last minute, driving up costs), and that people can use “technology” to connect to the campaign, but that generally means relying on the party’s infrastructure and feeds, which allows for greater chances of manipulation (especially if they delay their feed). And before you say it, yes, media do pay for seats on that plane/busses. Thousands of dollars. For comparison’s sake, the Liberals’ proposed fees for the campaign were $1,500 per day; $6,600 per week; or $33,500 for the full campaign. Those fees cover travel, food, access to filing rooms, and Wi-Fi (but not hotels). So let me reiterate—this isn’t about costs, it’s about control. And because the Conservatives claim that they will balance local and national coverage at events, we’ve seen what this means in recent press conferences, where they refused questions from English-language national media, and only took questions from local ethnocultural outlets, and so-called “independent” faux-news outlets like Rebel “News” or Juno.

Ukraine Dispatch

Putin claimed he was willing to engage in a thirty-day ceasefire on energy infrastructure only (which doesn’t mean much given that this is the time of year Russia would be letting up on attacking those targets—they prefer to do so in the winter to freeze out the Ukrainians), and lo, continued to bomb other civilian targets. Some “ceasefire.” Ukraine then stopped an attempted Russian incursion into the Sumy region, because of course.

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Roundup: Bringing in the spouses?

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The fallout from Jagmeet Singh’s confrontation with members of the Asshole Brigade who are harassing people in front of Parliament Hill has taken a couple of strange twists. In his post about the incident, Singh said that “That’s the country that Pierre Poilievre wants,” which of course sent the Conservatives into the usual bit of performative victimhood. Among those was Michael Cooper, who was seen hanging out with some of those members of the Asshole Brigade, and he tweeted out that he didn’t know them, that they approached him at the restaurant he was eating in…but there is video that shows him meeting with them before the restaurant, so perhaps that’s a very judicious use of the truth.

The stranger part was that Anaida Poilievre wrote a long Twitter missive to rebut the accusation and to praise Poilievre’s good character, while taking shots at Singh and Justin Trudeau. There has been a long-held convention in Canadian politics that spouses stay out of things, and they get a semblance of anonymity as a result. The fact that she has been very active in Poilievre’s campaign is a sign that she could be much more active in a future where Poilievre becomes prime minister, and that’s a bit of a problem because we don’t have “First Ladies” in this county like the Americans do, because our “First Lady” is Queen Camila. If she plays an active role, does she then become a target for other parties? Does that open up attacks for their spouses? I worry about that given the coarsening of politics as it is, and the fact that far too many people are already targeting MPs’ homes as part of protests. We don’t need them to become fair game as things continue to race to the bottom.

https://x.com/AnaPoilievre/status/1836225640938508466

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling in Zaporizhzhia killed one woman and injured two others, while another attack targeted energy facilities in the central city of Kropyvnytskyi. Ukrainian drones have struck a Russian military base north of Moscow, causing an “earthquake-sized” blast. President Zelenskyy will be addressing the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday.

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Roundup: Ministers don’t control committees

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In a bid to try and extend the Status of Women committee imbroglio story for another day, The Canadian Press tried to draw the Minister for Gender Equality and Youth, Marci Ien, into the fray to comment on what happened. Ien, who isn’t an idiot, refused, which was the right thing to do. Why? Because as a minister, she has no authority over committees, nor should she, because that’s how Parliament works.

Parliament exists to hold the government, meaning Cabinet, to account. Committees are tasked with holding ministers to account over specific subject matter areas, which is one of the reasons why ministers must come before their respective committees as part of the Estimates cycle (because one of the primary means by which Parliament holds the government to account is by controlling the public purse). Hence, the Status of Women committee is tasked with holding Ien to account for her department, and in fact, they should be doing a whole lot more of that accountability work because frankly, this government’s record on doing gender-based-analysis-plus (GBA+) is actually terrible, and most of the time consists of them just saying “GBA+” and not actually doing the work. A functioning committee would be addressing this, and even though Anita Vandenbeld wrote in her op-ed this week that the committee was functional and worked by consensus, this is a major issue that they have not been tackling like they should, not that this is a surprise. It is absolutely not Ien’s place to comment on what happened at that committee, and it would in fact be a major breach of decorum if she did.

It shouldn’t surprise me that a reporter couldn’t make this distinction for herself before writing the story, but honestly, this is basic parliamentarianism. It should be embarrassing for them to even make this basic error and not understanding the roles between ministers and committees, but this is also the state of political journalism, where actual knowledge of the system has become a rarity among those who are supposed to cover it.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided bomb killed two when it hit a schoolyard in the Sumy region. Ukrainian forces have confirmed that they have breached Russia’s Kursk region, sending Russians into disarray and panic, and have launched a massive drone attack further into Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls this proof of Ukraine’s ability to surprise on the battlefield.

https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1821336708916347359

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Roundup: It’s not logistically impossible

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For the past week-and-a-half, it has been nothing but handwringing over the Toronto—St. Paul’s by-election results, and the demands that Justin Trudeau either step aside, or to at least meet with his caucus. I took a full week for Trudeau to finally take questions from the media and said that he’s “committed” to staying on the job. And in response to the demands for an in-person caucus meeting now and not in September, Trudeau said he’s having one-on-one conversations with members of the caucus, and some of them are saying he needs to change “key players.”

And then comes along Liberal caucus chair Brenda Shanahan, who insists that it’s “logistically impossible” to have an in-person caucus meeting before September, to which I call bullshit. MPs can all get on a plane to Ottawa at any point, even if it means they have to cancel a barbeque appearance at some point. It’s not impossible, it’s a choice, and that choice is to not respect the members of the caucus, because frankly the leader doesn’t feel the need to be afraid of caucus because we have trained MPs to believe the falsehood that they are powerless and that the leader can push them around. That’s not actually true, and the caucus collectively has the power to vote non-confidence in the leader if they actually had the intestinal fortitude to do so. But therein lies the problem.

I’m also going to point out that all of the breathless reporting on Thursday about Chrystia Freeland saying that the Cabinet is fully behind Trudeau—of course they’re fully behind him. If they weren’t, they’d be out of a job. This isn’t rocket science, guys.

In case you missed them:

  • My weekend column where I talked to the author of the book Theatre of Lies about the situation we find ourselves in Canadian politics and what to do about it.
  • My column points out that one of the problems the Liberals face is how they choose their leaders, and that a proper Westminster system would have solved this by now.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take wonders just what Danielle Smith thinks she wants to “opt out” of around dental care.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces shot down 21 out of 22 Russian drones overnight Thursday. Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat from one neighbourhood in Chasiv Yar after their defensive positions were destroyed, risking further casualties. A Russian missile strike in Odesa killed a woman, while a guided bomb in Kharkiv region killed a man. Russians have started targeting Ukrainian air bases in advance of the delivery of F-16 fighter jets. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán went to Kyiv for a frosty meeting as Hungary assumes the rotating presidency of the EU. Orbán then headed to Moscow, no doubt to get fresh orders from Putin.

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Roundup: Huffing those culture war fumes

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My absolute exasperation with the need to constantly import American culture war bullshit into Canadian politics continues to grow, as we see yet another example playing out in the House of Commons. This time, it’s opposition whip Kerry-Lynne Findlay using the far-right gotcha of “What is the definition of a woman,” in the hopes that the response is some kind of confused mess in order to include trans women in the definition of women.

This being said, I’m not surprised that it was Findlay, because she has a growing record of doing things like this, most especially when she was tweeting her concern about how Chrystia Freeland once interviewed George Soros when she was a journalist. Findlay was greatly alarmed by what she saw, and in case you’ve been living under a rock, the attacks on Soros are largely rooted in antisemitic tropes that date back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Findlay has repeatedly shown that she hasn’t learned her lesson from that incident, and this latest one is more proof of that.

The panic over trans people continues to infiltrate the discourse in Canada. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a thinktank that initially billed itself as a centrist endeavour in the mode of the two pivotal prime ministers who helped build and shape the country as we know it, has increasingly been pulling further and further to the right, and adopting anti-trans rhetoric as part of their offerings, which is a little alarming (and people who are associated with the Institute should start distancing themselves the more this kind of bullshit takes hold). This is also in the context that CSIS is seeing threats coming from the “anti-gender” movement, and for a group like MLI to pander to those sentiments is irresponsible, and dangerous.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia launched one of its biggest air strikes against Ukrainian thermal power generation stations in weeks, causing blackouts throughout the country. A separate air attack hit a school stadium in Kharkiv. It was Victory Day in Russia, celebrating their victory in WWII, and it should be noted that they did not take Chasiv Yar like they were hoping to beforehand.

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Roundup: Brian Mulroney passes away

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News came down last evening that former prime minister Brian Mulroney had passed away after some health challenges.

The Star has a pretty good obituary here, as well as some of the reactions to his passing, and the CBC has a series of photos over the course of his life.

https://twitter.com/yfblanchet/status/1763346642294411713

Bloc MP Louis Plamondon, who was first elected as a PC MP in 1984 along with Mulroney, reflects on Mulroney.

In reaction, Susan Delacourt notes that it’s hard to imagine a Canada without the larger-than-life Mulroney given his lasting legacy, and also reflects on the political lessons that she learned in covering him during his time in office. Ian Brodie praises Mulroney for his strategic sense in global affairs at a time of great upheaval.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian forces are pushing hard against the front lines in the east and southeastern parts of Ukraine, which Ukraine has repelled, and they do keep shooting down Russian warplanes, downing another three on Thursday alone. Ukraine is using more domestically-manufactured military equipment, as they strive to move more toward self-sufficiency and away from faltering Western aid.

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Roundup: The Winnipeg Lab documents revealed at last

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We finally got a look at the Winnipeg Lab documents yesterday, and the reason why those two research scientists were fired, and it’s certainly far more innocuous than the lurid tales that certain Conservative MPs have been telling over the years. The short version is that the scientists in question, likely out of sheer naïveté and belief in the goodness of science, were far too trusting of Chinese counterparts, and didn’t like to follow rules and protocols when they didn’t feel like it, and eventually, lied to CSIS security screeners about their activities. This doesn’t appear to be some kind of major espionage, but a pair of scientists were entirely too precious, and were used to having their own way, and became security risks as a result, hence their termination.

It shouldn’t have taken this long to see the documents, but this was a whole dog-and-pony show for the Conservatives, who demanded—bizarrely­—that the Commons’ law clerk do the redactions for the documents rather than trained public servants, never mind that the clerk has no national security training and doesn’t know what to look for in terms of potential security issues. Even though the government turned the documents over to NSICOP in an unredacted form, the Conservatives went and boycotted the committee for theatrical reasons alone, and eventually, the government came up with an ad hoc process that involved MPs from all parties and retired judges to go through the documents, and it took years longer than it should have if they just let NSICOP do its work in the first place. There was no reason for them to object and to do this song and dance, and make false accusations about what was being hidden, and yet they carried on like this for years for absolutely no reason.

Predictably, Pierre Poilievre is trying to make this an issue about Justin Trudeau “allowing” this potential security breach, except that these scientists did most of their work in the Harper era, and the Public Health Agency of Canada is an arm’s-length agency, which the government cannot micro-manage. Kind of like CBSA. There has been zero contrition from Michael Chong about the fact that he has been spinning outright fictions and conspiracy theories about these documents for the past four years, but he sold out his integrity years ago, so none of this is surprising. And now that these documents have been released, I will point out that reporter Dylan Robertson was getting these stories and had the context of their firing correct when he was reporting on this for the Winnipeg Free Press years ago. That reporting all stands up with the release of these documents, and he deserves major props for it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians bombed the Kharkiv region, killing four people including a six-year-old girl and a priest. Here’s a look at the new chief of military intelligence for Ukraine, who has hinted that the country’s previous counter-offensive plans wound up in Russian hands before it had begun. Ukraine’s finance minister says they need about $3 billion in foreign aid per month in order to maintain macroeconomic stability through the year.

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