Tag Archives: GLBT

Roundup: The King is coming!

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Mark Carney gave his first post-election news conference yesterday, and he ensured that it was something of a news tsunami, but also that the tone and tenor of his government is vastly different from that of his predecessor. (Well, his predecessor post-2017ish. For the first couple of years, Trudeau was still trying pretty hard to hold to the things he campaigned on in a promise to be a generational change). This included some timelines for the next few weeks, and it’s a lot. So with that in mind, Carney goes to Washington on Tuesday to meet with Trump, the new Cabinet will be sworn in on the week of the 12th, Parliament will be recalled on the 26th for the election of a new Speaker, and then the 27th will be the Speech From the Throne, and it will be delivered by the King, for the first time since 1977 (and the first time a monarch has opened our parliament since 1957). In addition, he says we have the biggest reorientation of our economy to accomplish since the Second World War, and he’s going to balance the operating budget within three years with no cuts to services (indeed, the rollout of full dental care is continuing on schedule), and he’s not going to enter into any kind of formal arrangement with the NDP as there is no point in doing so. Here are five of the priorities outlined by Carney.

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1918325678144884794

There will, of course, be a bunch of grumbling about the King arriving to deliver the Speech, but the thing we need to get out of the way is that he’s the King of Canada, not the King of the UK (or England, which hasn’t had a separate Crown since 1707) as far as we’re concerned, and so he’s not a “foreign monarch.” Canada has had a separate Crown from the UK since the Statute of Westminster in 1931, and even before that, the Crown in Canada manifested in very different ways from the UK since Princess Louise was the Chatelaine of Rideau Hall. (I have more on this in the Crown chapter of my book). The fact that we are bringing out the King to play a bigger role as our sovereignty is threatened is a reflection of just how different we are from the US, and why we will never be part of them, and because Trump idolises the royals, this becomes a thumb in his eye. We cannot forget that.

The other major development yesterday was that Conservative MP Damien Kurek has offered up his seat to Pierre Poilievre, so that he can return to the House of Commons, and surprising nobody, it’s one of the most conservative (and indeed, whitest) ridings in the country, where he got 81.8 percent of the vote in Monday’s election. While Carney said he would call the by-election at the earliest opportunity, Kurek can’t actually resign until a certain point because of rules in place, after which it’s a five-week campaign, and so that means it probably won’t happen until early July, so Poilievre will be out of the Chamber for the entire spring sitting (which is only slated to be about four weeks long). Kurek was six months away from qualifying for an MP pension, so one imagines that the party will work to compensate him in some way.

Ukraine Dispatch

A mass drone attack late Friday hit an apartment block in Kharkiv, injuring 46 people. The US State Department has approved the sale of $310 worth of training and sustainment for Ukraine’s F-16 fighter jets.

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Roundup: Admitting to threats on the call with Trump

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Day thirty-three, and while the leaders made their final pitches, the talk remained mostly about Poilievre’s own riding, whether the polls could be believed, or the fact that he scheduled a last-minute rally on the last night of the campaign there, or the fact that people from the war room who were supposed to be sent to Peterborough were sent there to canvas instead. So there’s that.

Mark Carney was in Port Moody, BC, and gave another BC-centric campaign pitch, where he faced questions about his call with Trump in March, and whether Trump did make 51st state comments. Carney admitted he did because this is Trump we’re talking about, but the rest of the discussion was about sovereign countries making a deal, and so he left it at that. That didn’t stop the Conservatives and NDP from howling about it, the Conservatives in particular going off about how Carney is a liar (erm, you have looked in a mirror, right?) and so on. From there, Carney headed to Winnipeg for a campaign event. Carney will be in Sault Ste. Marie this morning, and then heads to Georgetown, Cambridge, and London, Ontario.

Pierre Poilievre was in Halifax at an auto dealership to proclaim his promise to scrap the electric vehicle mandate, but made up a completely bullshit claim that said mandate would impose a “$20,000 tax on gas-powered cars,” which was ludicrously untrue. The Conservative platform also claims that they would somehow get billions in revenue from scrapping said mandate, but he also promised to uphold any of the deals with manufacturers or battery plants for EVs in Canada, so it’s another case of magical growth projections with no basis in reality. From there he headed to a rally in Saskatoon. Poilievre starts the day in Saskatoon, and heads to Nanoose Bay, BC for another rally.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1915501642373640336

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1915428323624206805

Jagmeet Singh was in Winnipeg to declare that he would ensure that the government didn’t put a laundry list of things on the table as bargaining chips in trade talks, most of which they never would anyway, so it’s yet another example of empty posturing. Singh then headed to Toronto. Singh starts his day in Toronto, before heading to Hamilton and London, looking to hold onto their seats in those ridings.

In other campaign news, the CBC has a look at Calgary, where the Liberals have a chance to win as many as four seats. There is also talk about how the federal Conservatives fell out with their Nova Scotia brethren, which included a threatening call from Jenni Byrne. Meanwhile, Singh tells the Star that he didn’t go for an early election (in spite of the constant threats) to hand Poilievre a majority, even if it meant they could win more seats, and insists he has no regrets. This while the NDP are back to running phantom candidates in Quebec ridings, meaning they still have not grassroots in the province.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-04-24T21:27:18.825Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The death toll from the massive attack on Kyiv has reached 12, with at least 90 injured, which also prompted Trump to react (but then said Putin’s concessions included not invading all of Ukraine, which…is not a concession). The missiles used in that strike were North Korean in origin.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1915360570745786543

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Roundup: No blows landed in the French debate

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Day twenty-five, and right as the day got started, the Greens were disinvited from the leaders’ debates because they had told the media that they held back several nominations for “strategic reasons,” and the commission could no longer say that their not meeting the candidate threshold was for “innocent” reasons like not getting enough signatures in time. The Greens complained that it wasn’t democratic and that it favoured parties that already had “their turn,” but seriously? You made that choice.

Mark Carney had a photo op in Montreal where he got some poutine to “fuel up” for the debate, while neither Pierre Poilievre nor Jagmeet Singh had public events, and it looks like it’ll be more of the same today before the English debate.

In other campaign news, the Conservatives unveiled a fisheries policy,

And then the French debate.

It was…fine. There really wasn’t much in the way of standout moments, and it was relatively well-behaved, barring one or two exceptions, and the moderator was the one punctuating it with a few editorial comments and jabs. Carney showed greatly improved French, and he was frequently brief and concise on some issues, but at others he went into details (albeit slowly) and got cut off for it. But he didn’t really screw up on anything and came away unscathed. Poilievre was frequently a robot with a rictus grin, reciting his pre-prepared talking points about his platform plans, and occasionally trotting out the swipes at Justin Trudeau, which Carney shrugged off, and ultimately, Poilievre wasn’t able to land any punches. Yves-François Blanchet would frequently take over and dominate conversations, and on several occasions would “speak for Quebec,” never mind that he certainly doesn’t speak for much of the province in spite of claiming to. Singh, in spite of his being under the weather, was the one constantly interrupting and demanding attention. He kept trying to bring healthcare into the debate, in spite of it not being a topic, and got cut off at one point when he didn’t stop, and toward the end, he threw a tantrum and attacked the moderator because he *gasp!* tried to do his job and keep the leaders on topic, and not bring up something unrelated. Imagine that.

(Recaps from The Canadian Press, CBC, National Post, and the Star, and here are seven notable moments).

Trying to nail Poilievre down on whether he'd force pipeline through provinces or First Nations, Poilievre keeps refusing to admit that anyone would refuse. It's a bit weird. #debate

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-04-16T23:05:51.576Z

He says he wouldn’t subsidize a pipeline and says red tape reduction would stimulate investment in them. That is…a whopper lol.

— David Moscrop (@davidmoscrop.com) 2025-04-16T23:06:00.095Z

And we're into Century Initiative bullshit.*sigh* Will anybody challenge it? Of course not. #debate

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-04-16T23:24:23.826Z

A couple of the exchanges stood out, one being the moderator asking the leaders which American products they’ve given up, and it just turned into interminable jokes about strawberries, after the issue during the Cinq chefs interviews a couple of weeks ago, where the interviewers asked Carney if he buys American strawberries and he didn’t have an answer for them. There was also a question that asked whether the federal government should create its own health programmes or just increase transfers to the provinces, and it was a lot of back-and-forth that said very little, and as you might expect, there was absolutely nothing about holding any premiers to account for their allowing healthcare to collapse.

After the debate were the scrums, and it turned out that Rebel “News” had bullied the debate commission into letting them bring five reporters, each supposedly representing a “division” of the organisation, whereas legitimate organisations each got one reporter and one cameraman. It’s an admission that bullying and lawfare works, which it shouldn’t, but here we are.

Ukraine Dispatch

Glide bombs and artillery struck Kherson Wednesday morning, killing one and wounding nine. There was a mass drone attack on Dnipro overnight, killing three and wounding at least thirty.

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Roundup: Positive feelings about a useless meeting

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We seem to be caught in a pattern where Donald Trump will invite a world leader to the White House—yesterday it was NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte—and he goes on an unhinged rant while they’re sitting there, trying to avoid saying anything that will set him off. And yesterday’s rant included a full-on threat to annex Greenland (while Rutte tried to downplay NATO’s involvement in any way, which is true to the extent that it only operates by consensus), and went on an extended rant about Canada not working as a real country, and made up the lie that America pays for our military (not true in the slightest), before repeating the falsehood that the US subsidizes us.

Half-point to #CBCNN for not both-sidesing that caption.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-13T18:09:44.596Z

Meanwhile, Dominic LeBlanc and François-Philippe Champagne had their meeting with Howard Lutnick, with Doug Ford along for the ride as he continued to try and make himself the main character (and I watched Conservative talking head pundits also putting forward this distorted view of reality). Ford came out of the meeting, effusive about how “positive” it was and how they were going to have more meetings next week (and was later corrected that officials were going to meet, not him), while the two ministers basically talked a lot and said nothing, because nothing could be accomplished here. But they had to pretend that something came from this meeting when obviously nothing did, as there were no changes to any tariffs, and Ford’s pressure tactic around the electricity “surcharge” remains off the table again.

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3lkc6vantcc2f

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3lkc76do6g22f

Elsewhere, Trump’s pick for US ambassador to Canada had his Senate confirmation hearing, and when asked, he said that Canada is a sovereign country, and tried to claim that Trump’s expansionist rhetoric is about “negotiation tactics,” but it certainly doesn’t seem to be. And yeah, he said the bare minimum to ensure that he wasn’t PNGed before he could even arrive in the country. Closer to home, Scott Moe continues to call for capitulation to China regarding their tariff fight, because of course he did, and claimed it was about protecting Quebec’s industries over Saskatchewan’s, except Quebec doesn’t really have much of an auto sector, but Moe’s brain is pretty smooth, after all.

Ukraine Dispatch

An overnight attack on Dnipro injured three women and damaged apartment buildings. Ukrainian forces are in retreat in parts of Kursk region, which means losing a bargaining chip in possible peace negotiations. And Putin has all kinds of conditions on a possible ceasefire, because he’s not serious, and Ukraine only went along with the plan to call his bluff.

Surprise! The Russians, who have repeatedly said they don't want a ceasefire, have once again said they don't want a ceasefire

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) 2025-03-13T11:42:16.938Z

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Roundup: Clutched pearls over a paper move

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Because everything is stupid, the Conservatives spent the whole day screaming, both at a media availability and over social media, that Mark Carney “lied” about his involvement with Brookfield Asset Management relocating their headquarters to New York, and tried to tie this to Trump inviting companies to relocate to the US. This is something that the Conservatives have been howling about for months, but they claim that there is “proof” now that Carney “lied” because his timeline of events doesn’t match up. And maybe he was wrong, but this has pretty much been a non-story from the start, because this was largely a paper move to their pre-existing New York office in order to get access to the New York Stock Exchange, while their parent company remains headquartered in Toronto. It’s not an actual scandal, but the Conservatives have been ginning up faux-outrage over Carney for two years now, and this is just the latest example.

But I can’t get over the fact that every single Conservative has been lining up to declare that Carney “lied,” when pretty much every single member of that party has been lying about everything under the sun for years now, because they know they can get away with it. The fact that someone like Andrew Scheer isn’t bursting into flames over the abused irony of him of all people trying to call Carney a liar is just too much. It’s not just projection—it’s a complete lack of self-awareness that they lie so much about everything (especially things they don’t actually need to lie about!) that they don’t even realise that they’re doing it anymore, and then they start running for their fainting couches over this absolute non-issue. Unbelievable.

The Conservatives have also taken to calling Carney “sneaky,” and claiming that he’s hiding the truth about his assets, and whether this business activities were benefitting from his advising the government. But as this fact-check explains, he is under no obligation to comply with conflict-of-interest laws because he is not yet a public office holder, but if he does win the contest and becomes prime minister, lo, he will be subject to the disclosures. Again, this is just more faux outraged being ginned up, and making the Conservatives look like they are desperate.

Ukraine Dispatch

The overnight attack on the Kyiv region overnight Tuesday killed two and damaged energy facilities. Russia claims that it retook two settlements in the Kursk region, as more North Korean troops arrive. Ukraine’s drones have hit Russia’s Tuapse oil refinery. Ukraine’s prime minister says a preliminary agreement has been reached with the Americans on an economic deal that includes access to rare earth minerals.

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Roundup: A trio of interim leaders

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Rob Lantz was sworn-in as the new premier of PEI yesterday, but he’s officially an interim party leader because outgoing premier Dennis King didn’t bother to hang around long enough for a successor to be chosen (as Justin Trudeau has), which frankly just adds to the mystery surrounding why he resigned in a hurry. Usually that only happens when there’s a scandal of some variety. But what I didn’t realise was that the other two parties who have seats in the legislature also only have interim leaders, and that it’s been two years since the last provincial election, and no party has a permanent leader.

Here’s former PEI journalist Teresa Wright with more.

While I will push back on the “only chosen by 18 members” comment, because we should actually let the caucus choose the leader, it is nevertheless a problem that there are no permanent leaders in that legislature after two years. It’s malpractice, frankly, and a sign about how broken leadership politics have become in this country. I’ve seen it happen over multiple parties federally, particularly where they feel that they need between nine months and two years to find a new permanent leader so that they can generate ideas or “excitement” in the race, which again, is not how this is supposed to happen. The leader should not be the one bringing policy to the table—that should be the responsibility of the grassroots membership. And leaders should be within the caucus and not some outsider who thinks they can sail into the position without ever having run for office in the past. *coughs*

This tactic of waiting until closer to the election to pick a new leader smacks of opportunism and just having leaders to be election figureheads rather than doing the actual work that MPs/MLAs should be doing the rest of the legislative session. This is Very Bad for democracy. Legislative work needs to be done. Constituency work needs to be done. Leaders are supposed to have other responsibilities within parties than just leading an election. PEI used to be known for having a pretty robust civic culture, so this is not only disappointing, but a bad sign for the state of democracy in this country.

Especially in politics.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-21T14:38:53.896Z

Ukraine Dispatch

An overnight drone attack killed a rail worker outside of Kyiv, while falling debris damaged buildings inside the city. Russians claim to have taken three more villages in east Ukraine. American negotiators are threatening to cut Ukraine off from Starlink services unless they sign the document that demands fifty percent of their resource wealth in exchange for no protection or security guarantees.

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Roundup: “Canada First” is mostly just Poilievre’s greatest “hits”

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Pierre Poilievre had his “Canada First” rally on Flag Day, Saturday, and in front of a crowd of about 800 in the smallest room in the Rogers Convention Centre in Ottawa, laid out his new vision of Canada, being the attempted pivot from just an “axe the tax” slogan, to the aforementioned “Canada First.” (Full speech transcript here). And aside from some newer talking points about retaliatory tariffs if Trump goes ahead, he nevertheless was incoherent even in his performative toughness. In saying that America has two options—a trade war, or an even deeper trade relationship with Canada, in the very same breath, he castigated the Liberals for “forcing” dependency on the American market for entirely bullshit reasons, with some revisionist history about the ghosts of energy project proposals past. Like, what? You say you want an even deeper relationship, but the Liberals were bad because they couldn’t force businesses and industry to divest from that market? What?

From there, it went into his greatest hits of stupid talking points, like his refrain about how we have the most land but aren’t building houses on it—as though we’re building residential subdivisions on the Canadian Shield or the Arctic tundra. He claimed he was right about everything, from the carbon levy to the capital gains changes (he wasn’t), and then played the victim about how nobody believed him but he was proven right. (He wasn’t). He went on some bullshit about pipeline projects that was, again, revisionist history, and then went on a tangent about the Canadian Pacific Railway and how Liberals wouldn’t get it done today. “Would some squeaky, keep-it-in-the-ground liberal cabinet minister like Guilbeault have chained himself to a tree to stop it?” My dude, do you know how many people died to make it happen? The dispossession of land, the immigrants coming over as indentured labour, those indentured immigrants blowing themselves up to create passageways through mountains? Seriously? Meanwhile, his promise to rapidly approve projects won’t actually get them built, and neither will bribing local First Nations with the promise of a greater share of royalties, and his vision of a west-east pipeline won’t change the economics.

https://twiiter.com/andrew_leach/status/1890058822175347027

There as more reheated nonsense about how he’s going to miraculously abolish interprovincial trade barriers with a magic wand. He promised to militarize the border, which is a Very Bad Thing. There was more rehashed tough-on-crime nonsense with repeated promises to repeal laws that have nothing to do with what he claims they do. He repeated his promise from last-week to unilaterally build a base in Iqaluit, with no input from the Inuit. And then it was the usual culture war bullshit, with the absolutely risible claims about how the Liberals “divide people by race, religion, gender, vaccine status.” No, they acknowledge that differences exist, that it’s not all middle-aged straight white men as the “neutral” and “norm.”

While centre-right pundits swooned at the notion that Poilievre was laying out a vision, he wasn’t really saying anything more than he’s been saying for the last two years, and all of it was vacuous noise. He was still playing it incredibly safe to avoid pissing off the MAGA supporters he’s trying to court so that they don’t go back to voting for Maxime Bernier, no matter how performatively tough he was about Trump’s threats, because he still had to mediate them with claiming that Trump was still right about the border and fentanyl (which he’s not). Apparently, nobody has actually paid attention to anything he’s said over those two years, but just instead paid attention to his churlish tone. (Oh, and I am also looking very askance at CBC for their credulously repeating everything he said without actually challenging any of it. That’s not journalism, guys, even if you’re stuck on the weekend shift).

Lots of spending going on here but if they honestly care about a balanced budget (more than rhetoric) spending cuts have to come. Like big cuts. Like more than $100b by my count

— Dr Lindsay Tedds (@lindsaytedds.bsky.social) 2025-02-16T18:25:45.143Z

https://bsky.app/profile/lindsaytedds.bsky.social/post/3licue34m6c2h

Pretty much the whole of #cdnpoli these days.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-17T03:30:20.152Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine downed 33 out of 70 Russian drones overnight Friday, and an overnight drone attack on Saturday damaged a thermal power plant in Mykolaiv, leaving 100,000 people without power in subzero temperatures. Russian troops have also intensified their attacks toward Pokrovsk. Elsewhere, the ammunition acquisition programme on Ukraine’s behalf has delivered 1.6 million shells to date and is carrying on, while Emmanuel Macron is hosting an emergency European summit on Ukraine in the wake of JD Vance’s attack on liberal democracy.

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Roundup: Carney’s boneheaded “green incentives”

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Liberal leadership hopeful Mark Carney revealed his plan to replace the consumer carbon levy yesterday, and it’s a handwavey bunch of “green incentives” for things like improving your home insulation, furnace, appliances, or buying an electric vehicle. This would be offset by maintaining or increasing the industrial carbon pricing system, along with carbon border adjustments. Carney claimed that the current system isn’t working, which is false, because emissions have been driven down, and then shrugs and says it’s “too divisive,” which is the Liberals’ own gods damned faults for being such incompetent communicators about how the levy works, the rebates (remember when they thought that calling them “climate action incentives” was a genius idea?), and how reducing one’s own carbon footprint maximises those rebates. The government was absolutely incapable of communicating any of it, and Pierre Poilievre swooped in and filled the space with lies and disinformation.

This is so unbelievably stupid. "Green incentives?" I live in an apartment. I can't change the insulation or heating system. Instead, with the rebate from the carbon levy, I get cash, which is a pretty nice incentive given that I don't have a car or do much that I need to pay the carbon levy for.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T15:13:28.930Z

This is just about as moronic as Erin O'Toole's "airmiles for carbon" plan, where you would get more rewards the more you pollute, and those of us who are already living low-carbon lifestyles get nothing. The carbon levy was fine if the Liberals could actually properly defend it.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T15:13:28.931Z

I find Carney’s plan absolutely infuriating for a number of reasons. One of them is that this imparts a false narrative that carbon emissions reductions can happen for free for consumers. Even if there is no consumer-facing price, industrial emitters will pass along costs, and people won’t get a rebate for those higher costs, which hurts lower-income households harder. Everyone fawning over Carney’s economic credentials should be smacking themselves upside the head because of this fiction he is trying to perpetrate and just how economically illiterate it actually is.

Meanwhile, how much of an “incentive” can it really be for one-time purchases? You can only really re-insulate your house once, or buy a new furnace once every twenty years. There is no price disincentive to increased carbon use, and there is no ongoing reward for a low-carbon lifestyle, which the rebates provide. Again, very few people actually understand this because the government steadfastly refused to actually communicate how the levy and rebates actually work, how to maximise them, and how it rewards ongoing low-carbon behaviour. They hoped that legacy media and would communicate that (they absolutely will not), and it was basically up to five economists on Twitter, which is useless to ninety-five percent of the population. So now the people who have done the work to reduce their carbon footprint will now be punished, and people will take advantage of those one-time purchases for what? The pat on the back that they can give themselves? Everyone involved here needs to take a long, hard look at some of their life choices, but then again, if they had any modicum of self-reflection, they likely wouldn’t be in politics. What an absolute disaster.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones injured four in Odessa, damaging a hospital and grain warehouse, while a missile attack seriously damaged a historic centre in the same city. Russian forces are also tightening their approach to Pokrovsk, which is a key logistics hub in the region. Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian command post in the Kursk region, and are also reporting that they haven’t seen any North Korean troops in the area for three weeks. Ukrainian drones also damaged an oil refinery in Russia’s Volgograd region.

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Roundup: Enduring mythologies around cancelled energy projects

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The continued predations by Trump are giving people amnesia about energy projects in this country, and mythologies about what actually happened with projects are taking hold. Energy East is a good example, and people continue to believe fact-free versions of history, or that these projects are somehow still just waiting for approval and that enough political willpower is all that’s needed to get them signed off. But they don’t exist any longer, and the reasons they didn’t move ahead are more complex than the comforting lies they like to tell themselves. As usual, Andrew Leach brought the receipts.

Pierre Poilievre then decided to weigh in, because he’s a trustworthy authority on the history of energy investments in this country, particularly in the Harper era. Oh, wait—this is Poilievre, and everything he says is a lie.

There are so many projects that got approved under the Harper years that never went ahead even during Harper’s majority parliament, but they are happy to blame Trudeau, because it’s a pathology. The 2014 oil crash did permanent damage to the industry, and the recognition of a carbon-constrained future has not helped either. And as much as they like to bemoan “government regulation” on these projects, their attempt at massive de-regulation in the Harper era merely led to a succession of lawsuits and uncertainty, which is what proper regulations seek to avoid. It’s too bad that they refuse to understand that particular lesson.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a drone and missile strike against Zaporizhzhia overnight Wednesday, killing one and wounding at least 31, leaving tens of thousands without heat or power. Ukraine is drafting new recruitment reforms to attract 18- to -25-year-olds currently exempt from mobilisation orders. NATO’s Secretary General says that he wants the US to keep sending arms to Ukraine, and that he’s sure that Europe will pay for them if necessary.

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Roundup: Moe looks to capitulate as well

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There was another virtual first ministers’ meeting yesterday to discuss ongoing preparations for dealing with threats from Trump, and yes, Danielle Smith was in attendance (virtually, from Washington), and most of the premiers are on board with the need for dollar-for-dollar retaliation. Most. Smith herself was trying to sound conciliatory and saying that things were “better” from her perspective this time, but now Scott Moe is starting to say that he’s not in favour of dollar-for-dollar retaliation, because he too is more interested in capitulation to Trump. Then again, Moe is one who has a history of capitulation, like the time he caved to the demands of the so-called “Freedom convoy” and then begged them not to blockade the border crossings in his province. That’s who Scott Moe is.

For no reason at all, I am reminded of when Scott Moe capitulated to the convoy, and then begged them not to blockade border crossings in his province. Because that's who he is.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-23T03:10:09.276Z

Meanwhile, Danielle Smith says that the premiers agreed that they need to build more east-west pipelines, and good luck with that, mostly because people in Eastern Canada aren’t really keen on paying the premium that shipping Alberta oil and gas would cost (particularly on the east coast), particularly if we are moving to a carbon-constrained future where it would probably be cheaper and better in the longer-term to simply invest in building up capacity for a faster adoption of EVs rather than spend billions on infrastructure for stranded assets. Oh, and don’t think that more pipelines to the west coast are going to mean a boon for LNG either, considering that there are numerous LNG proposals on the books that have all of their approvals, but haven’t been built because the market hasn’t found a case for them, either in terms of investments or a willingness to sign long-term contracts for these projects.

There is some hope that the current situation may finally let provinces see the wisdom of eliminating internal trade barriers, largely around regulation and credentials recognition, but then again, this has been an irritant since Confederation, and that kind of inertia is really hard to overcome.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian-installed officials claim that Ukraine launched a drone attack near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility.

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