Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: Questions about the “energy accord” with Alberta

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The news broke early yesterday that Alberta and the federal government are getting close to striking an “energy accord” of some variety with a memorandum of understanding that could allow for a bitumen pipeline to the northwest coast of BC with “limited exemptions” to the tanker ban so long as conditions are met, including changes to industrial carbon pricing, carbon capture, and lowering or eliminating the emissions cap. There were also Sources™ who said that it would require a private sector proponent, buy-in from coastal First Nations, and environmental approvals, which could mean it won’t happen at all.

As the day went on and other outlets started to get their own sources to confirm the story, differing details emerged. While Tim Hodgson said in Question Period that the BC government would need to be on-side, his office later said that no, they’re not getting a veto as part of the MOU. And then there are the Liberals themselves, many of whom are deeply opposed and will point out that ending the tanker ban will risk billions in ongoing projects from First Nations in the region. And those First Nations are not going to give consent, which would seem to make this whole thing moot anyway, unless the plan is ultimately to run roughshod over their rights yet again.

So, while we await the details, where the devil will lie, I am once again going to point out that we shouldn’t count on any kind of “grand bargain” with the oil companies or Alberta as a condition because they won’t live up to it. They have proven time and again that they won’t, or that they will lie to claim that they will do all kinds of things to reduce their emissions and to decarbonise when they actually have no intention of doing so. Meanwhile, the market may ultimately prove to be the veto here, because it’s no longer the world from before 2014, and nothing the federal or provincial government will do is going to change that fact.

Ukraine Dispatch

The death toll from the attack on Ternopil early Wednesday has risen to 25, with more than 73 injured. The latest US “peace plan” proposal is just more of the same rehashed Russian propaganda. Ukraine also plans to seek $44 billion in damages from Russia for their carbon emissions as a result of the war.

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Roundup: Playing chicken with the budget vote

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The vote on the Ways and Means motion around the federal budget will be held early this evening, at the collapse of debate, and as of yet, nobody is willing to say just how it’s going to pass. And rest assured, it will pass, because nobody wants an election, and the NDP in particular have no way of affording going to an election (with an interim leader, no less), but absolutely nobody wants to actually look like they’re going to back down when they can swing their dicks around instead.

And so, we’re now in a game of chicken. The Government Whip says they’re ready to go to an election on this budget if they have to, but it’s an empty threat because nobody actually wants to go to an election. The real problem is there being a potential accident where someone isn’t supposed to vote (for the sake of the numbers) does, because everyone can vote on their phones now (which, I remind you, is a parliamentary abomination and should be stopped), and it goes over the edge. But I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen, because again, nobody wants to go to an election, especially the Conservatives and the NDP. So, I suspect the Conservative whip is going to ensure that someone has unforeseen circumstances that they “just can’t vote,” and oh, well, the budget passed by the narrowest of margins. Oh darn.

Because we’re not going to have an election over this.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile struck the city of Balakliia in Kharkiv region, killing three and wounding at least ten. Russia claims it has taken two more settlements in the Zaporizhzhia region in the south. President Zelenskyy says he is working on another prisoner exchange with Russia.

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Roundup: Ahistorical expectations about project timelines

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A couple of quick notes for the weekend. First is that for all of the projects referred to the Major Projects Office, none have actually officially been designated a PONI (Project of National Importance), so my calling the referred projects as such is admittedly premature. But that also means that none of them have the special rules that trigger the Henry VIII Clause from the legislation, which again, leads to the same question that Althia Raj asked in her most recent column about why the rush to ram that bill through Parliament with almost no debate and little stakeholder input if they haven’t bothered to use it, nearly six months later.

The other note is that the talk about timelines remain ahistorical and nothing but wishful thinking. “We used to build big things. We built a railway in four years.” Erm, not really. This is likely a reason why most of the projects that have been referred to the MPO so far have been in the works for years is for the very reason that they’re much further along. This is likely going to be one of the death knells of Danielle Smith’s pipeline plan, which is that it’s starting from zero, and there is no way, even with the magic wand of the Henry VIII clause, that they can make it go from concept to shovels in two years.

They didn't go from "Shall we build a railway?" to a railway in four years.The CPR was a Confederation promise before 1867. Construction began in 1881.Or, actually, in 1875, when they started a section in Manitoba and northern Ontario. Which hooked up to other rails built on their own earlier.

— David Reevely (@davidreevely.bsky.social) 2025-09-14T23:17:30.293Z

There were planning, scandal, false starts, re-awarding of the contract. And not a lot of attention to, you know, Indigenous people's rights.Or working conditions, which were eventually the subject of Heritage Minute you might recall. www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE3I…

— David Reevely (@davidreevely.bsky.social) 2025-09-14T23:20:55.646Z

What's the right length of time to plan and build a new high-speed rail line in 2025? I don't know.But they didn't do the entire CPR from concept to completion in four years, and I don't think we want a dead temporary foreign worker for every mile of track.

— David Reevely (@davidreevely.bsky.social) 2025-09-14T23:23:15.475Z

And then there’s Poilievre’s completely nonsense demanding that government “get out of the way,” or Ontario’s Stephen Lecce talking about the problems with federal regulations killing projects when that also relies on a very selective reading of history and what happened. Northern Gateway started planning before Harper took over, and over his nine years in power, Mr. “Get government out of the way” couldn’t get it past the finish line either (in part because they couldn’t even be arsed to live up to their own consultation process with First Nations). Nothing Poilievre is saying is true, so We The Media need to stop treating it like it’s credible.

Ukraine Dispatch

The attack on Kyiv early Friday killed six and injured dozens, along with more strikes on energy facilities. Ukraine hit the oil port at Novorossiyk the same day, suspending oil exports. Ukraine is now mass-producing interceptor drones to bolster their air defences.

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Roundup: Not being a trained seal

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Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith put out a video on his YouTube channel where he gives an honest assessment of the budget, including places where it fails to live up to the hype. As a backbench MP, this is not only his right, but his obligation, but boy howdy, a bunch of partisans from all stripes are losing their gods damned minds over this. A backbencher who doesn’t just lobotomise himself to read the scripts handed to him by his leader’s office? The nerve!

It's possible that Erskine-Smith has normalized dissent sufficiently — at least from him — that he can do stuff like this without it becoming a huge deal.www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jtC…

— Aaron Wherry (@aaronwherry.bsky.social) 2025-11-10T23:00:21.434Z

I was particularly struck by the partisan talking heads on Power & Politics last night who kept going on and on about how politics is a “team sport,” and that as a “member of the government,” he needs to be on-side. Erm, except he’s not a member of the government. Government=Cabinet, and while he is on the government side of the aisle, he is not a member. This is not be just being pedantic—it’s the very nature of how our parliamentary system works. Every member of Parliament, no matter which side of the aisle you’re on, are supposed to hold the government to account, and to keep them in check. Yes, that means government-side backbenchers too. That’s the whole raison d’être of Parliament, but everyone has become so used to the us-versus-them aspect that they have lost sight of that, and it really doesn’t help that Canada has largely lost the culture of backbenchers holding their own side to account because they are so desperate to get into Cabinet, or at least become a parliamentary secretary, that they are generally one ministerial screw-up away from a promotion, so they keep their mouths shut and stand up and clap and read their scripts like a good boy or girl, and that’s something that is fundamentally wrong with how the Canadian parliament operates.

Brad Lavigne and Kate Harrison telling Nate Erskine-Smith that he needs to be a trained seal is some bullshit.Backbenchers have an obligation to hold government to account as much as opposition MPs do. Learn how a Westminster system works, FFS. #PnPCBC

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-11-10T23:05:20.204Z

The UK, where you have a Chamber of 650 MPs, and a smaller Cabinet (though generally a larger number of junior ministers), generally means you have a lot of backbenchers who know they’ll never get into Cabinet, so they feel empowered to stand up to their own side. Some of them are former ministers who are still serving their constituents, and will let the current government know where they are going wrong. (There are some fantastic videos of Theresa May doing just this, and some videos of her absolutely savaging her successor, Boris Johnson, in PMQs). This is a culture we need to develop here. Of course, adding another hundred or so MPs to our chamber would help (and would really help us have enough bodies for committees without having parliamentary secretaries on them).

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-11-10T23:08:02.225Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Fighting continues in Pokrovosk, Dobropillia, and towns surrounding. Here is a look at life in Kherson, where Russians hunt civilians with drones on a daily basis. The anti-corruption bureau says it has found a $100 million kickback scheme in the state nuclear power company.

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Roundup: Red flags around the “grand bargain”

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The more I read about the budget’s “climate competitiveness,” the more I find myself questioning just what is on offer from Mark Carney. There is an attempt to build this so-called “grand bargain” that failed the last time it was tried, where approving the Trans-Mountain Expansion was supposed to help fund the green transition and provide the social licence for doing things like the tanker ban on the northwest coast of BC, and yet here we are, where the oil and gas sector and by extension, the provincial government of Alberta, have not lived up to their end of the bargain at all. The companies that insisted they were going to meet their 2025 Net-Zero targets suddenly started to complain that it was too hard, and when the greenwashing legislation kicked in, suddenly all of those Net-Zero pledges vanished, as though they were never real to begin with.

That’s why I’m particularly unimpressed that one of the promises in the budget is to water down the greenwashing legislation, which sounds an awful lot like Carney is looking for the industry to lie to him once more about all of the reductions that they’re totally going to make in the future—really! You just need to let them have a free hand with even fewer environmental regulations in the meantime. As well, the fact that Carney is pinning his hopes on so-called “decarbonized” oil production with the Pathways project is even looking like he’s going to lose a tonne of money trying to get it to scale up, because hey, he’s offering a bunch of tax credits for them to operate, which is a de facto subsidy for oil operations. But it’s extremely expensive, and all of those oil companies want even more taxpayer money to make it work, while they pocket their profits, naturally. Nevertheless, it looks an awful lot like Carney is going to capitulate to that sector and remove the emissions cap on a bunch of half-hearted greenwashed promises and pretend that he still cares about the environment.

Speaking of the tanker ban, BC premier David Eby and the coastal First Nations are organising a pushback against any move by the federal government to lift it in order to push a pipeline through the region, while Danielle Smith puts ever more pressure on the federal government to approve that project (even though there’s no proponent, or route, or even just a line on a map). Will it be enough to dissuade Carney? At the pace he’s going, I’m not taking any bets.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-11-05T14:25:06.884Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The fighting continues in the streets of Pokrovsk, which is the kind of fighting that can’t be done with the same kind of drone warfare that the rest of the front line has become accustomed to.

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Roundup: A new pipeline study—to what end?

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Ontario premier Doug Ford announced that his government would be launching a study about a potential new west-east pipeline, that could either head to existing refineries in Sarnia, or ports along the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay or James Bay. This sounds a lot like it’s going to be a waste of time and money because contrary to what Danielle Smith likes to think, the oil and gas industry has been irrevocably altered since 2014-15, and there is very little demand for these options. Enbridge isn’t going to want to strand its existing pipeline network running through the US, in spite of the arguments about energy security to build a (longer, more expensive) line on Canadian soil, and using northern ports makes no sense as they are only good for a few months of the year when demand its lower.

Energy economist Andrew Leach released a new paper yesterday that takes a look at the case for whether we need another pipeline, and it puts a lot of this in perspective. The oil market has changed since the major price drop in 2014, and American demand has fallen down a lot. While there might be a case for another pipeline to the Pacific, the timelines involved mean running the risk of stranding assets as global demand falls off. Keystone XL, if revived, is likely simply to be used for re-export at the Gulf Coast, while the eastern Canadian market is already well served, and would likely mean more transportation costs, and Alberta would see bigger discounts as compared to world prices. Danielle Smith says that the industry can double production, but that’s not what industry is saying, and more pipelines run the risk of eroding the value of oil, particularly as the rise of electric vehicles and heat pumps push down demand.

One of the other points that the paper makes is that for as much handwringing as there is about how long it takes projects, most of the delays that people point to were regulatory shortfalls and not structural delays. When proponents try to cut corners, or not do proper Indigenous consultations, that is what leads to court challenges and delays, not the actual regulatory system itself, but that’s an inconvenient narrative for certain players. These are things we need to be more cognisant of, and call bullshit on, as the drumbeat for “just one more pipeline” or even “a pipeline in every direction” get more intense.

effinbirds.com/post/7808260…

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-30T14:05:46.292Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched sustained drone and missile attacks on Ukraine’s power infrastructure early Thursday, and killed at least three people. Two others were killed in a bomb strike on a thermal power plant in Sloviansk. Ukrainian forces are bolstering their defences in Pokrovsk as Russian forces have entered the city.

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Roundup: Predictable threats over passing the budget

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The whole thing about Government House Leader Steve MacKinnon openly going on media to decry that they don’t have enough votes to pass the budget is turning into a very tiresome bit of melodrama in Parliament, now that every party is trying to mug for the camera on it. The Conservatives say they want a hard cap on the deficit (which is far below what they promised in their own election campaign), plus the destruction of environmental programmes like the industrial carbon price under the bullshit excuse that it’s causing food price inflation. The Bloc say they want to negotiate, but presented a list of “non-negotiables” which are both expensive and foolhardy, like a bunch of transfers with no strings attached (because premiers have never taken that money and spent it on other things or delivered tax cuts instead. Looking at one Jean Charest most especially). And the NDP say they want to see the budget first, but are making noises about how they don’t want austerity.

And so, the threats are now in place—or blackmail, as some have termed it. MacKinnon’s new line in Question Period has been about how he hopes the opposition doesn’t send Canadians to a Christmas election, which is not exactly subtle. Andrew Scheer rushed out to the Foyer after QP to breathlessly decry that the Liberals are trying to engineer an election with their budget, which is overplaying things just a little, especially considering that the Conservatives, as official opposition, would never vote for the budget in any case, even if their demands were actually reasonable (which they’re not). That leaves either the Bloc to swallow themselves whole in accepting anything less than their unreasonable “non-negotiables,” or the NDP to pretty much debase themselves by once again propping up the Liberals, even though they have absolutely no choice because they have no leader and the party’s coffers are completely bare and they can’t even mortgage their office building for a second time to pay for an election as they have no way of currently paying off the last one. The government knows this. They are also not looking like they want to get into bed with the NDP yet again, after they pretty much derailed the government’s agenda in the last parliament with the supply-and-confidence agreement that the NDP couldn’t be bothered to live up to their own end of. Nobody wants an election (and you have a bunch of Liberals being a bit theatrical about this), and it’s not going to happen, but instead, we’re going to have to live through this dog-and-pony show for the next five weeks or so. Gods help us.

effinbirds.com/post/7810072…

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-29T13:25:05.419Z

Meanwhile, it looks like the budget leaks are starting early, as Senior Sources™ are talking about cuts to the civil service that go beyond attrition, and more aggressive capital cost write-downs. As well, François-Philippe Champange and Rechie Valdez said that there will still be some funding for women’s organisations and for security at Pride events, but this still means cuts to other programmes. Tim Hodgson announced millions for clean tech projects, including four carbon capture projects. (Here is the updated tally of budget promises to date).

Ukraine Dispatch

Putin claims that Russian troops have encircled the cities of Pokrovsk and Kupiansk, which Ukrainian officials vigorously deny. They are, however, struggling in Pokrovsk, which is strategically valuable.

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Roundup: More than just the CRA in the Auditor General’s gaze

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It was Auditor General Day yesterday, and boy were there some doozies. Pretty much all of the media attention was focused on the CRA audit, and the finding that call centres pretty much didn’t answer the phones, and when they did, they only gave correct information about seventeen percent of the time in the calls the Auditor General’s office made—yikes! The government is quibbling with the methodology, because of course they are, but also calling the report “constructive criticism” instead of “scathing,” and because these are the Liberals, François-Philippe Champagne thundered that the “good news” was that they had already started their one-hundred-day action plan to fix things without waiting for the report. (No, seriously—he declared this to be “good news” in Question Period). That said, when pressed about whether inadequate staffing was a problem, and what the coming civil service cuts were going to mean, the Secretary of State, Wayne Long, had no answer for it, which you would think is a pretty important detail considering just how embarrassing this is for the government. He also had no answers as to why things deteriorated this badly under the Liberal watch, and just kept saying that he was appointed on May 13th. Come on.

But there were plenty of other reports that were also not good:

  • There are plenty of cybersecurity vulnerabilities, not the least of which is because Shared Services Canada still can’t do their jobs properly since they were established under Harper.
  • Military housing is tremendously inadequate and much of it in a state of disrepair, and housing for single members is needed most especially.
  • Military recruitment is a gong show, and they couldn’t even ask why twelve out of every thirteen applicants abandoned their application.
  • There are still barriers to ending the remaining boil water advisories on First Nations reserves, even though they’ve been at this for a decade, and half of previous AG recommendations still haven’t been implemented.

The good news is that most of the legacy media outlets actually sent reporters to do reporting on these reports rather than just relying on CP wire copy, but really, only the CRA story got attention in QP and on the evening talking head shows, which is too bad because there was plenty more to talk about. But that’s indicative of the state of media these days.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-21T14:08:04.164Z

Ukraine Dispatch

There was a Russian attack on Kyiv overnight. Ukraine struck a Russian chemical plant with its newly acquired Storm Shadow missiles, which was a key supplier of gun powder and rocket fuel.

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QP: Blaming so-called “inflationary deficits” for food prices

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The PM was again in town but otherwise absent from QP, and the same dynamics were at play in the Chamber. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he raised today’s Statistics Canada inflation numbers, blaming government spending any taxes (even though taxes are anti-inflationary). François-Philippe Champagne praised the upcoming budget and the IMF suggestion that Canada and Germany had room to make generational investments. Poilievre then turned to the Auditor General’s report on the CRA and its call centres. Champagne responded with the “good news” that they are already partway through a one-hundred day action plan. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first question on inflation, and Champagne repeated his same response from the IMF Director General. Poilievre repeated his same question on the Auditor General’s report on the CRA, and got a “take no lessons” from Champagne, who listed the things that Poilievre voted against. Poilievre dismissed “costly slogans” from the other side and got shouted down, and once things calmed, he raised the 1200 jobs at the GM plant in Ingersoll, and accused the government of betraying workers. Mélanie Joly assured him that Carney would fight for their jobs, and that she had a conversation with the CEO of GM this morning. Poilievre dismissed her efforts as all talk with no action (as though he could do anything differently if he were in power), and he repeated the accusation of betrayal. Joly said that they would hold these companies to account, before reading the new jobs at other plants.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and he raised a “hate preacher” for a second day, and demanded the government close the religious exemption for hate speech. Steven Guilbeault agreed that hate speech has no place in Canada, and implored him support Bill C-9. Blanchet said that the bill doesn’t get to the issue of religious exemptions, and Guilbeault repeated his same answer. Blanchet insisted it would be easy to solve the problem, and said that they would be moving amendments they hoped the government would support. Guilbeault said that they are willing to hear amendments at committee.

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Roundup: “Clarifying” only to the media

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The issue of Poilievre’s attack on the leadership of the RCMP has not gone away, and the party spent the day trying to manage the fallout, both with the new scripted talking points they handed out to their MPs when faced with media questions (obtained by the Star) that were intended to “clarify” what he meant, and the fact that Poilievre’s comms people have been sending statements to the media to again, clarify that he was only trying to cast aspersions on former commissioner Brenda Lucki and not the current management (even though the current commissioner was Lucki’s deputy, and frankly, should have disqualified himself from the position based on his response to the Mass Casualty Commission’s findings).

The thing is, Poilievre has not made any clarifications on his social media channels, or on the party’s official website, or any place that his supporters might actually see it—only to media outlets so that his followers can dismiss them as “fake news” precisely because they don’t see it on his social media channels. It is a deliberate choice, and this is not the first time that has happened, and rest assured, it won’t be the last. This is Poilievre trying to tell two different groups two different things, but unlike Erin O’Toole, he thinks he’s being cleverer about it because his followers can’t see the version he’s telling the media on his direct-to-voters channels. This is not clarification—this is fuckery, and we should be calling it out for what it is.

Immigration polling

The CBC has been working on a story about polling about feelings of immigration, and feeding the bullshit narrative that the “consensus has been broken,” when there wasn’t really a consensus to begin with. That poll also shows that the Conservatives’ feelings about immigration spiked to the negative, but kept making pains to say that this doesn’t mean that they’re xenophobic (even though that’s kinda what it means). But then they went and interviewed Jason Kenney on Power & Politics, and guys, just stop. Don’t interview Jason Kenney. All he does is 1) lie; 2) get indignant; and 3) lie some more. In this case, he kept insisting that this rise in anti-immigrant sentiment wasn’t because people are more xenophobic, but because Justin Trudeau broke the system. Oh, and Indigenous people are the most anti-immigrant. Nothing about far-right propaganda going mainstream on social media, nothing about his party pushing MAGA talking points, nothing about the scapegoating because premiers like him did fuck all to provide housing or healthcare for the immigrants that they were demanding to fill labour shortage, or when their strip-mall colleges were defrauding foreign students as they were imported to be cheap labour. Nope—it was all Justin Trudeau.

It’s not like Kenney brought in a bunch of far-right loons into his provincial party’s fold while he kicked out the centrist normies, who then poisoned the discourse further. It’s not like he wasn’t playing stupid games trying to get newcomers to turn against one another for his benefit. It wasn’t like he wasn’t doing his part to poison the sentiment toward asylum seekers when he was immigration minister. No, everything is Trudeau’s fault. I wish the CBC would wise up to this, but of course they don’t. Both-sides! *jazz hands*

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-20T22:08:02.371Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack knocked out power in much of Chernihiv region on Monday. Ukrainian attacks have forced Russia’s Novokuibyshevsk refinery to stop production, and the Orenburg plant to reduce production coming from Khazahkstan.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1980176600818651155

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