Tag Archives: Federalism

QP: Thursday scripts with Friday faces

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It was an unusual Friday-on-a-Thursday QP, with the usual Friday start time, thanks to the Conservatives having their convention this weekend, and with the PM meeting with the premieres and Poilievre having already left for Calgary, it was going to be the b-team in play. That left it up to John Brassard to led off and accuse the prime minister of “seducing” Canadians with their own money, and accused the supposed “hidden taxes” of raising food prices. Peter Fragiskatos dismissed this and accused the Conservatives of being unserious. Brassard tried again, and Fragiskatos listed this as a populist distraction tactic. Rob Moore read the same script, and Evan Solomon recited talking points about the GST rebate and how the Conservatives are blocking their plans to build. Moore tried again, and Solomon repeated his same points. Gérard Deltell took over in French to read the same points, and this time, Marjorie Michel pointed to the previous tax cut and the GST rebate. Deltell raised food bank line-ups, and was reminded that they are following Food Banks Canada’s suggestions. 

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she raised the problems with the OAS payment system and said it was worse than claimed. Steven MacKinnon said that one error was one too many, and encouraged people to reach out to Service Canada if they have an issue. Normandin tried again, and MacKinnon again offered bland assurances that the modernised services were positive on the whole. Andréanne Larouche took over to ask the same again, and MacKinnon gave his assurances for a third time.

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Roundup: All smiles with the premiers

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Mark Carney is meeting with the premiers today, after having them all over for dinner last night, and already everyone is having a big love-in, showing that they have a big united front as the country deals with the ongoing threats from the US and Trump administration. They’re all in agreement that these aren’t “normal times,” and David Eby and Danielle Smith played nice on the issue of Alberta looking to ram a pipeline through their territory (which appears to have Carney’s enthusiastic support, per Question Period on Tuesday), and I will admit that this is a big change from the latter Trudeau days, where nearly all of the premiers were lining up to take shots at the federal government.

However. Carney is letting them get away with all of their bullshit, particularly on the big things that the provinces need to be doing to Build Canada Strong™, whether that’s building housing, or taking care of their major infrastructure, or doing something about healthcare rather than letting the collapse continue. If you have a “Canada is broken” complaint, you can pretty much be guaranteed that it’s because of provincial underfunding, but the federal government is taking and will continue to take the blame, because the federal government refuses to call them out on it, and Carney is keeping this up. It’s all smiles and laughs, when it was the premiers who created the situation with immigration that the federal government had to step in with (to the long-term detriment of the country), and it’s the provinces who are exacerbating things like the affordability crisis. If Carney wants to fix things, that means leaning on the provinces to start doing their gods damned jobs.

With that in mind, I’m going to look askance as the territorial premiers want dual-use infrastructure funds to flow to them rather than have the federal government fund these projects directly, because we’ve never had provinces or territories take federal funds and spend it on other things before. And Gregor Robertson is calling on premiers to increase their spending on transitional housing, given the scale of need. Oh, you sweet summer child. The premiers don’t want to spend their own money on these things, even though it’s in their wheelhouse. They want you to spend federal dollars instead, because that’s how they’ve learned how to play this game. Just asking them to increase spending nicely isn’t going to do anything, but I can pretty much guarantee that the federal government won’t play hardball on this so that they don’t look like the bad guy, even though they’re going to take all of the blame. What a way to run a country.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-01-28T23:01:45.031Z

Ukraine Dispatch

More Russian drone and missile attacks on Kyiv and across the country overnight, and it could be as much as three weeks for some Ukrainians to get power back because of the attacks on infrastructure. Meanwhile, the US keeps stalling to give more time for Russia to keep up these attacks.

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Senate QP: Hajdu highlights the problems with provincial data

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Ministerial Question Period in the Senate was actually being held a time that wasn’t counter-programming with QP in the Other Place, and so I was able to make it for a change. Today’s minister being grilled was Patty Hajdu, minister of jobs and families and minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario. As is usual for ministerial QP in the Senate, there is a longer clock for questions and answers, and the whole exercise is about 65 minutes and not 45, so it’s quite a different exercise than in the Commons.

At the Senate to watch Patty Hajdu for #SenQP.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-12-09T21:01:30.634Z

Senator Housakos led off, and he read a script about food insecurity and grocery costs, housing, and cost of living. Hajdu thanked the Senate for the invitation, before rattling off the government’s support programmes, and those benefits that are indexed to inflation, with some added back-patting for the school food programme. Housakos demanded the government change their methodology to get a different results, and Hajdu raised that report after report points to climate change affecting the price of food, they can control the supports for families who need it, which again got some back-patting for their programmes.

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Roundup: Heavy-handed caucus management

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The Ways and Means motion on the budget survived its second confidence vote, on the Bloc’s amendment, as no other party supported it (unsurprisingly). But outside of that, the drama inside the Conservative caucus room continues to spill out into the open as the party tries to deflect scrutiny. Leaks are talking about ten to fifteen very unhappy members, though nothing to indicate they’re going to cross the floor or leave caucus. At least not in the immediate future. Nevertheless, it is probably not lost on anyone that Andrew Scheer and Chris Warkentin storming into Chris d’Entremont’s office to yell at him when he let it be known he was contemplating crossing the floor is probably not great caucus management.

To that end, Scheer huffed and puffed his way out to the Foyer after Question Period yesterday to claim that it’s the Liberals who are harassing Conservatives, and it was that “harassment” that drove Matt Jeneroux to tender his resignation when there are accounts about how he was meeting with senior Liberals and was allegedly “eighty percent there” in terms of being convinced to cross over before this all blew up. Of course, nothing Scheer says is remotely believable, and his trying to claim that the Liberals are manufacturing this to “distract” from their budget is beyond risible considering just how complete and total their sales job on said budget is. The fact that Scheer is resorting to that kind of a dismissal is a sign of just how completely out of his depth he is here.

Scheer says Liberals are trying to “undemocratically” get a majority through backroom deals and accuse Liberals of harassing Conservatives to cross the floor. (Sure, Jan)

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-11-07T17:16:03.099Z

Scheer claims Jeneroux was pressured into resigning because Liberals were harassing him. He’s actually claiming that.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-11-07T17:18:59.423Z

What gets me is that no one in that caucus seems to have learned a single gods damned lesson after Erin O’Toole’s final days. For those of you who memory-holed the whole incident in trying to rehabilitate O’Toole’s image while trying to turn him into a statesman, in the dying days of his leadership, he weaponized the (garbage) Reform Act to kick out any member of caucus who dared to question him, and that member of caucus was Senator Batters, which was a big mistake because she has some pretty deep networks. Within days, the vote in caucus on O’Toole’s leadership was organised and he lost decisively. And despite this object lesson, Poilievre and Scheer are trying to use a heavy-hand and threats to enforce loyalty? Seriously? The other thing that seems to be emerging is a rift between the eastern and western flanks of the party, as eastern Tories are much more progressive and even-tempered than the Reform-rooted Conservatives, who are increasingly turning MAGA, and Poilievre needs to get a handle on this and start mending some fences before this blows up in his face.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-11-07T14:24:04.975Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The fighting continues in Pokrovsk, while Ukrainian forces are stepping up their assault on Russian forces in Dobropillia to ease the pressure on Pokrovsk. Ukrainian soldiers fighting with drones are being rewarded with points for confirmed hits and kills, leading to ethical concerns about the gamification of war. Ukraine says that 1400 Africans from dozens of countries have signed up to fight for Russia as mercenaries, but mostly are just used in “meat assaults.”

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Roundup: Only premiers can make pharmacare happen

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The Star takes a deep dive into the notion of pharmacare as a nation-building project, instead of just thinking of mines, pipelines or other major infrastructure, and it’s an interesting piece to read. This being said, it once again ignores the problem of the premiers in the equation, which is starting to feel like a pattern for a newspaper that actually has the resources and the bench depth in their Queen’s Park bureau to actually take on this state of affairs. You can’t look at an issue that is almost entirely squarely within an area of provincial jurisdiction, whether that’s pharmacare or bail courts, and then ignore provincial culpability, and yet, this is what keeps happening in legacy media.

As for the pharmacare issue, yes, there are plenty of good arguments to be made for a universal single-payer system, and yes, the Liberals did spend years trying to build up this system on the back-end before the NDP made this a condition of their supply-and-confidence agreement, and put in the work of doing things like establishing the Canadian Drug Agency and getting an agreement with PEI off the ground for a full co-pay system (because they had no provincial drug plan), but that went entirely unrecognised as the NDP demanded a useless piece of legislation that tried to do things backwards, to legislate before an agreement had been made with provinces, and this is what the media kept their focus on, in particular because the NDP made such a dog-and-pony show about it, while at the same time, refusing to call out their provincial counterparts who actively resisted signing onto a federal pharmacare programme. Former BC premier John Horgan was particularly vociferously opposed, but did Jagmeet Singh, Don Davies or Peter Julian say a gods damned word about it? Nope.

Premiers have been allergic to this issue for decades now, because they don’t want to have to pay for one more thing, particularly as they are trying to starve the existing healthcare system in the hopes that they can privatise it to relieve themselves of the burden of paying for it. But nobody wants to hear that. They’d rather blame the federal government for supposedly under-funding (they don’t), or that they aren’t working hard enough to get a pharmacare deal with the provinces when the Trudeau government worked for years before NDP made their demands, and got an extremely limited agreement and called it a win. And premiers continue to be let off the hook.

effinbirds.com/post/7813695…

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-27T13:08:08.642Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces are reinforcing positions in Pokrovsk as some 200 Russian troops have infiltrated the city in small groups. A UN inquiry has found that Russians have been using drones to hound and hunt down civilians who live near the front lines.

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Roundup: An “explainer” that ignores provincial culpability

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The Star had a supposed explainer piece on bail reforms over the weekend, which talked a lot about over-incarceration, and poorly explained stats about certain offenders being out on bail with no context as to the charges they were facing prior to the alleged second offence, but absolutely nothing about the actual problems that the system faces, which is the continued and pervasive under-funding of courts by provinces, and Ontario most especially. It’s absolutely maddening how an explainer piece can lack that whole entire and most vital piece of the supposed puzzle. (It’s not a puzzle).

Part of the problem is who the reporter spoke to, being the “balanced” choices of the Toronto Police Association and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. The CCLA is just fine, because they provided a lot of relevant points about lack of data that means we don’t actually have any proper information on reoffences on bail, or anything like that (because—wait for it!—provinces have refused to fund that data collection). But police associations, by and large, are not credible sources. (Police associations, by and large, exist to protect bad apples within police forces, and remain a huge problem when it comes to reforming police services). There was nobody from the broader legal community interviewed for this piece, neither Crown nor defence counsel, who could have explained the resourcing issues. Am I biased because I write for legal publications? A little, but the perspective from my piece on bail reform differs vastly from the “explainer” in the Star for that very reason.

This is one of the most quintessential policy issues of our times where provincial underfunding is having an outsized impact on the system in question, this being the justice system, and it keeps getting ignored by the vast majority of legacy media, while the federal minister is behaving naively when he says that his provincial counterparts say they understand the problems in the system. But the problem is them, and their governments not funding the system. They like to complain that the problem is the Criminal Code, or that judges are being too lenient, but no, the problem is the provincial funding, and no changes to the Criminal Code will ever change that. And for yet another legacy media publication to ignore this, and let the provinces off the hook yet again, is beyond irresponsible.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-25T21:10:02.092Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks on Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk killed four and wounded at least twenty early Saturday, while attacks early Sunday wounded at least 29 in Kyiv.

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Roundup: Federal-provincial meetings without provincial commitments

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The federal and provincial justice ministers wrapped up a two-day meeting in Kananaskis yesterday, where they discussed shared priorities, particularly around the supposed big problem of bail reform. But did they come up with any commitment to do the actual thing that would make a measurable difference with the bail system, which is for the provinces to actually properly fund the court systems, including hiring and adequately paying Crown prosecutors, training justices of the peace, ensuring there are enough functional court houses that are properly staffed, and that they have enough provincial court judges (who deal with the bulk of criminal cases)? Hahahaha, of course they didn’t.

Readout from the federal-provincial justice ministers' meeting.I don't see a commitment in here from the provinces to properly fund their court systems (but more money for police!), which means all of these promised Criminal Code reforms are next to useless.Slow clap, everyone.FFS

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-17T20:09:12.929Z

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-17T20:11:58.895Z

Without any of these commitments by the provinces, any tinkering that the federal government does to the Criminal Code is going to mean nothing. It’s just going to clog the justice system even more; it’s going to crowd the already overcrowded provincial jails even more. It’s going to ensure that there are sentencing discounts when people do go to trial and get sentenced. It’s going to mean more lawsuits for keeping wrongfully accused in those overcrowded provincial jails for longer while awaiting trial, only to be acquitted after their lives have been destroyed. Because the federal government refuses to apply enough public pressure to the provinces for them to do their jobs. It’s not actually that difficult, but they absolutely refuse, and so nothing is going to get better, and they will continue to take the blame every time there is another high-profile incident that happens when someone is on bail.

Meanwhile, the federal and provincial health ministers had their own meeting in Calgary, where they totally pledged “deeper collaboration,” but as with justice, there is no commitment by the provinces to do their jobs and properly fund their systems, nor any commitment to reforming things like how family doctors can bill the system, or the practical things that doctors themselves demand. No, instead we get certain ministers like Alberta’s who want more federal support and a move away from “one-size-fits-all” funding programmes, which is ridiculous because the last round of healthcare transfers required the provinces to come up with their own action plans for their own priorities, and those action plans acted as the strings for future tranches of funding by ensuring that priorities were actually met. So again, this is just setting up future failure where they will again blame the federal government. Because apparently this federal government is incapable of learning.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims it has captured three more villages—one in Dnipropetrovsk region, and two in Kharkiv region. President Zelenskyy was in Washington, where Trump waffled on promised military equipment support again, so no surprise there.

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Roundup: More “Blame Ottawa” clown performance

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Sometimes, it gets very, very difficult to take the state of politics seriously in this country because so much of it is just clown performance. Two examples from yesterday:

1) Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner held a press conference to announce that she was going to table a Private Member’s Bill to stop courts from considering possible deportation in sentencing decisions—even though the sentencing rules were about asking judges to be aware of the potential for unintended consequences, so this bill is really about punching down—and along the way wound up talking about the wildfire situation. In her estimation, the federal government is to blame, and she blamed the federal government for the “forest bans” in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick…except those rules were from the provincial governments. And wildfires are provincial jurisdiction. Nevertheless, she thinks that the federal government needs to do more, but this gets back to the whole point I was making in my latest Quick Take—provinces have the responsibility but have been under-funding their emergency management systems because they know they can call on the Canadian Forces and get them to do it for free. That’s a problem. Rempel Garner is just feeding into this problem through this performance of hers.

2) Pierre Poilievre demanded that the federal government cancel the loan for the BC Ferries contract which will have those new ferries built in China, in retaliation for the latest round of Chinese tariffs on canola. Erm, except that’s a provincial Crown Corporation who contracted for those ships, and the federal government didn’t make the loan, the Infrastructure Bank did, which the federal government doesn’t exercise control over, and even more to the point, no Canadian shipyards bid on that contract. This is just more performance for social media, rage-bait to get his followers angry and opening up their wallets.

1) It is not a "Liberal" loan or a government loan. It's from the Infrastructure Bank, which is arm's-length from government. The loan was made before the procurement process was completed.2) NO CANADIAN SHIPYARDS BID ON THIS PROJECT!Is Poilievre going to force a Canadian yard to build them?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-08-13T17:53:19.054Z

The absolute mendacity of all of this is just exhausting, which is part of the point. It’s a common authoritarian tactic to lie about everything so that people give up trying to inform themselves, and not a single legacy media outlet in this country will actually call them on it. It’s a problem, and we need to do something about it now, before we get any further down the path that the US is taking.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-08-12T14:08:02.942Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy says that he told Trump ahead of his meeting with Putin on Friday that Putin is “bluffing” about his desire to end the war—and he’s correct.

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Roundup: More proof the carbon levy didn’t raise food prices

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Pierre Poilievre is at it again, railing about food price inflation, but lo, he can no longer blame it on the carbon levy because that was never actually the problem or the cause of food price inflation, but he certainly vilified it, and Mark Carney capitulated and allowed Poilievre’s vilification to work. Poilievre is now blaming government spending on food price inflation, which is hilariously wrong, but Carney has also capitulated to that as well and is ushering in a new wave of austerity, because why actually explain things when you can just surrender to the bullshit?

Meanwhile, here’s Andrew Leach walking you through why it wasn’t the carbon levy and never was the carbon levy.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians broke through the front lines near Dobropillia, but were quickly contained (but it’s a poor narrative for the upcoming Trump-Putin talks). Ukraine has also been regaining territory in Sumy region. President Zelenskyy says that Russia wants the remaining 30 percent of Donetsk region for a ceasefire, which they won’t give him.

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Roundup: Creating a duplicative federal body?

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The Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs want the federal government to take action on creating a national forest-fire coordination agency, and look at American bodies like FEMA (well, as it used to exist rather than the hollow shell it is now). The problem? That disaster management, which includes wildfires, is squarely within provincial jurisdiction in this country, and if such a body were to be created (and it’s a big if), then provinces would have to agree to sign onto it, and good luck with that—unless maybe you’re willing to shell out a whole lot of money to “compensate” them for it.

The other problem? We already have such a body, called the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, which is a not-for-profit owned and operated by existing firefighting bodies at all levels, which does the very work that these fire chiefs want it to do—coordinating to share resources, mutual aid, information sharing, and so on. If they don’t think this agency is doing enough, then they should say so. But if this is really just a backdoor way of saying the federal government should pay for everything, well, maybe they need to be honest about that.

We have a big problem in this country where provinces have learned that they can get away with short-changing their emergency management systems because they can call on the federal government to deploy the Canadian Armed Forces to do all kinds of said management, and even though the federal government has the option of cost-recovery from those provinces, they don’t, because it would be bad optics to be “nickel-and-diming” the provinces whom they give assistance to. Except of course, the provinces know that’s the case, so they cut their spending further, and the cycle continues because no federal government will stand up and say “We know you cut your funding to get free federal assistance, so we’re going to charge you for the services.” This is why I’m deeply suspicious of any move to create a federal civilian disaster emergency response agency, whether for wildfires, or other natural disasters, because it will give the provinces licence to cut further, and then beg for more federal assistance once they do.

Ukraine Dispatch

That gas interconnector that the Russians attacked in southern Ukraine appears to still be operating. Investigations have found that in spite of sanctions, Russians have been using Siemens technology in their factories, obtained by middlemen in China.

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