Tag Archives: Immigration

Roundup: A predictable 87.4 percent

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After a speech that was mostly a rehash of his same talking points—falsehoods about the cost of living, blaming the Liberals for the rise of separatism, promising more trickle-down economics, and talking about hearing his autistic daughter speak for the first time, while also not talking about Trump—Pierre Poilievre won a predictable 87.4 percent approval in his leadership review. It’s not unexpected, and it endorses his current path, because these are the things his base apparently wants to hear in spite of the fact that it’s apparently not what most Canadians are looking for, particularly because his personal numbers remain so negative. If anything, this will just reinforce his behaviour, because that’s what we all need.

Could Poilievre or any of his lackeys actually look up what "post-national" means?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-31T04:28:44.469Z

Catherine O’Hara

The loss of Canadian icon is gutting. As author Kate Heartfield put it, she was like every Canadian’s cool aunt, and her loss will be deeply felt. I believe that the government should declare a national funeral be held for her (which is one step below a state funeral), because she is that important to us as a nation. Here is a collection of tributes.

She deserves a national funeral.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-30T18:55:31.866Z

Message from the Governor General on the passing of Catherine O'Hara.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-30T22:14:10.099Z

From @glasneronfilm.bsky.social:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-31T04:53:49.181Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Putin has allegedly agreed to halt strikes on Kyiv until Sunday, but that hasn’t stopped Russia from claiming to have captured three more villages.

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Roundup: The domestic speech and the response

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Back on Canadian soil, prime minister Mark Carney gave a speech to a domestic audience in advance of his Cabinet retreat, in which he used the location of the Plains of Abraham—where the retreat is being held, at the Citadelle in Quebec City—to praise the foundation of Canada (which the Bloc took exception to), our pluralism and shared values, and our choice to offer a vision of something different to the world. Oh, and he clapped back at Trump saying we live only because of the US. It might have been nice, but he kept veering off onto weird tangents about praising digital asbestos, or federal social programmes like pharmacare that he hasn’t done a single thing with in the past year and has outright stated he’s not interested in expanding. And if anything, the speech exposed a streak of hypocrisy—Canadian values, and pluralism, but we just signed a “strategic partnership” with a country genociding an ethnic minority. We’re going to create thousands of good-paying union jobs, but we just signed “strategic investments” with a country that employs slave labour. If you’re going to pat yourself on the back for your values, maybe try and at least pretend you’re trying to live up to them?

This Carney speech is giving me whiplash. Hooray for Canadian values! (But we’re also going to do deals with people who commit genocide and practice slave labour, and scapegoat immigrants).Hooray for our social programmes, but let’s do more digital asbestos!

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-22T19:04:50.878Z

Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre released his own statement in response to Carney’s speech at Davos. The gist of Poilievre’s remarks is that of course Carney isn’t doing enough, that we shouldn’t alienate the Americans and by that we should engage with allies in the country who will help us post-Trump, and that he plans to move a motion next week to pass his ridiculous Canadian Sovereignty Act bill at all stages. (Transcript here).

And make no mistake—that bill is ridiculous. The primary gist of it is to tear up any and all environmental regulation to build more pipelines (who cares about a market case of First Nations consent?), to incentivise the reinvestment of capital gains in Canada (which was a plan so complex that Jim Flaherty walked it back after trying to do it during the Harper years), paying provinces a “bonus” for eliminating any remaining trade barriers, and to require the government to stop letting innovators in this country sell their intellectual property to Americans (and good luck with that one). It’s stupid and unfeasible and will only create a tonne of new problems while solving absolutely none, but he somehow thinks this is genius.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-01-22T15:05:14.665Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian strikes hit locations in Zaporizhzhia, as well as Kryvyi Rih. At Davos, president Zelenskyy gave a speech highly critical of Europe’s indecisiveness and inability to organise enough to project any strength. (Transcript here).

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Roundup: Not doing anything about Xitter

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The federal government has been pretty quiet about just what they plan to do about Xitter, given the recent explosion of “deep fake” nudes and child sexual abuse images that its digital asbestos chatbot has been creating, to say nothing of the fact that the site has been gamed to be a far-right disinformation platform. In spite of all of this, government department and ministers continue to use the platform, and feel they have little choice given that its adoption was once wide-spread (but now it’s a haunted house full of bots interacting with one another and gaming each other’s replies).

Of course not. That would make the tech bros that Solomon is sucking up to very angry. What an absolutely useless waste of a Cabinet minster.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-01-11T06:22:14.369Z

In spite of media reports saying that Canada, the UK and another country were looking at joining forces to impose some kind of ban, that clearly isn’t happening, nor would I expect it to because both Mark Carney and Evan Solomon have bought into the digital asbestos hype, and have been promising few regulations for the tech bros because they don’t want to “stifle innovation” never mind that we are seeing in real time what online harms look like. Saying that these images are illegal is not enough because it requires people alerting the police to specific images that the chatbot generates, and then police resources to investigate and charge the individual before prosecution. This is too big of a problem for individual prosecutions.

The government has plenty of tools at their disposal, but they are afraid to use them because they know that Elon Musk or any of the other tech bros will go crying to Daddy Trump if someone tries to regulate them, and Carney is too keen to get a deal from Trump that he keeps capitulating on regulating these web giants and the tech bros behind them. But that might require someone like Solomon to demonstrate a modicum of courage or backbone, which don’t seem to be qualities he possesses.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-01-10T15:08:01.416Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians attacked Kyiv late Sunday, setting fire in one city district. A thousand apartment blocks in Kyiv are still without heat after Friday’s attack.

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Roundup: Appointing another friend to an important post

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It’s now official—prime minster Mark Carney has announced his plan to name his friend Mark Wiseman to the role of Ambassador to the US as of February 15th. Wiseman has no prior diplomatic experience, but was a mergers & acquisitions lawyer before becoming an asset manager at Blackrock, and yes, he was a donor to Carney’s leadership campaign as well as his election campaign, donating the maximum for each.

There were immediate howls about this appointment from the Bloc and the Conservatives because of Wiseman’s involvement in the “Century Initiative,” which was a proposal to triple Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100, which we were on track to do regardless (before the current decision to halt immigration to the point where our population was in decline last quarter). The Bloc are treating this kind of thing like their own version of “Great Replacement Theory” because a) they are an ethnic nationalist party, and b) they see an expansion of the rest of the Canadian population as diminishing Quebec’s influence, because they heavily limit their own immigration (because again, ethnic nationalism) and their birth rate is very low. The Conservatives are treating it like Great Replacement Theory writ-large, and use it to scaremonger about Muslims and such, while also pretending to care about Quebec. There was also that stupid brouhaha about when Wiseman retweeted an Andrew Coyne column headline about said Initiative and people took it to be Wiseman insulting Quebec, so that’s great. Oh, and he apparently said he’s opposed to Supply Management, so of course Quebec and the majority of Conservatives are also opposed to his appointment.

This being said, I find myself increasingly uncomfortable by the fact that Carney keeps naming friends and former colleagues to top jobs, some elected (Tim Hodgson), some appointed (the head of the Defence Investment Agency), is a worrying trend because it’s starting to reek of cronyism. I also am reminded of the fate of Bill Morneau, who also did not grasp the ethical considerations in government of just calling up your friends and network to do things (in Morneau’s case, those friends were WE Charity), because that’s how you do them in the corporate world. Government is not the corporate world, and I know we’re all tired of hearing it, but no, you should not run government like a business or a corporation. Nothing good can come of this.

Programming Note: And that’s it for 2025. I’m taking a break from the blog until the first week of January, so enjoy your holidays everyone.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-22T23:08:01.593Z

Ukraine Dispatch

There was yet another strike on Odesa, the second within twenty-four hours. President Zelenskyy says those kidnapped villagers from Sumy region had long had dealings across the border without incident. Here is a look at Ukraine’s new low-cost interceptor drones, taking out attacking Russian drones for much cheaper. (Gallery here).

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Roundup: Naïve assumptions about the energy transition

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There were a couple of longreads over the weekend that are worth your time when it comes to understanding where we are at with the current government. The first was a deep dive into Carney’s past climate “leadership,” from his time at central banks to the UN, and a pattern emerges throughout where much of this “leadership” was fairly surface-level. Scratch the surface, and you find a lot of on naïve assumptions around a market response to the clean energy transition, coupled with some arrogant beliefs that he was right and no one could tell him otherwise (as those companies he was touting were also heavily invested in fossil fuels). In the time since, we have all watched as Carney has systematically betrayed that former climate leadership, and continues to rely on a “just trust me” approach to that clean energy transition as he breaks his word with little regard.

The second longread was in the Globe & Mail about Tim Hodgson and his adjustment going from banker CEO to Cabinet minister, with his belief that government bureaucrats are essentially lazy and stupid, and needing to learn how to be politically sensitive to the realities that he has little patience for as he looks to secure deals as quickly as possible. Along the way, he is learning that things don’t work like that, and that there are plenty of other considerations that he continues to ignore, like obligations regarding First Nations. And how he continues to alienate the actual clean energy people in his own department, along with the part of the Liberal caucus that actually care about climate change, because hey, he needs to be Mr. Business. This is what “running government like a company” is bringing, and it comes with a hell of a lot of ideological blind spots, while they insist that they’re not being ideological.

As well, in year-enders, Carney has been criticising the Trudeau approach to climate change as “too much regulation, not enough action,” which goes back to his particular assumptions about the market and why the government wasn’t able to rely on carbon pricing alone to achieve its goals, Oh, and he’s still completely sold on the belief that carbon capture is the route to go, even though it only captures a fraction of the emissions from the production process (and none of the downstream uses), so the math doesn’t even work there. He also talks about “guardrails” in dealing with China, but considering there has been no hint of that with India, I’m not holding my breath.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-20T15:08:01.975Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Following more Russian airstrikes and bombings in the Odesa region, president Zelenskyy says that Russia is trying to cut off Ukraine’s Black Sea access. Russian forces have crossed the border in Sumy region and kidnapped 50 villagers. Ukraine has signed an agreement with Portugal go co-produce sea drones. Here is a look at a Ukrainian artist who is reflecting the war through his collection and work.

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Roundup: Lessons learned for the NDP?

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NDP interim leader Don Davies have his year-ender to The Canadian Press, talking about getting out to listen to Canadians, and reflect on the party’s devastating loss, and joking that the best part about being burnt to the ground is the ability to rebuild the foundation. And he’s not entirely wrong there, so long as he’s taking the right lessons. But in the same interview, he’s waxing poetic about pharamacare without actually seeming to understand what the issues are (i.e. the provinces), and totally ignoring the work that Trudeau did into building up the programme from the ground up (such as establishing the Canadian Drug Agency) so that provinces could sign on once they were ready, as PEI did (and NDP provinces refused to, particularly BC and John Horgan most especially).

On the same day, the NDP’s Renew and Renewal Report from the last campaign was also released, and it has a few interesting things to say. Once you get past the usual back-patting about how hard everyone worked and how it didn’t feel like it was doomed, and how the leader’s campaign went well, you start getting into some of the structural problems within the party that really do need addressing. Things like the sense that there is an allergy to fundraising in the party, and that nobody wants to actually do it, which doesn’t really help anyone (but also perpetuates the weirdness that bequests from the estates of dead people are one of the party’s top fundraising sources). And there was also a lot in there about the party not properly developing riding associations, and relying too heavily on the central party at the expense of those associations. And to be frank, this should have been a lesson the party internalized after they got nearly entirely wiped out from Quebec in 2015, because they didn’t build up their riding associations during the “Orange Wave,” but assumed that somehow those MPs would have incumbency advantage forever when they didn’t really establish grassroots after all of those accidental victories.

The other thing that is worth noting is that once again, it draws American examples for inspiration, and again it’s Zohran Mamdani. I suspect the reason for this is that too many people in the NDP’s brain trust are terminally online, and as with so many things, the American discourse pervades and they simply think that it can apply to Canada if you divide it by ten, even though we are very separate countries and that we are not just a maple cupcake version of Americana. I’m also going to note that the report said pretty much nothing about the NDP constantly trying to interfere in areas of provincial jurisdiction (particularly with their “bold progressive ideas”), because again, their American analogues don’t translate to Canada in the same way, but this was apparently an area of introspection they didn’t want to engage in. Alas.

This reminds me of something I've been wondering about. Given the various examples of the NDP being the government or official opposition at the provincial level, I'm not sure why federal New Democrats so often — or so recently? — look to the U.S. for inspiration.

— Aaron Wherry (@aaronwherry.bsky.social) 2025-12-19T21:14:07.891Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-19T14:24:03.406Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched another missile attack on Odesa, killing seven and wounding at least 15 late Friday. There was an exchange of bodies by both governments—1003 dead Ukrainian servicemen for the bodies of 26 Russians. Ukraine and Poland are working out a cooperation agreement around drones.

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Roundup: More bespoke agreements that undermine certainty

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Prime minister Mark Carney is set to sign an agreement with Doug Ford about “reducing the regulatory burden” for major projects in the province, again with the “one project, one review” line (which I have reservations about as I mentioned yesterday). Ford is keen to use this to develop the “Ring of Fire” region, in spite of the fact that a) there are much more accessible critical mineral projects that could be more easily developed, and b) they have yet to get most of the First Nations in the region to agree, mostly because they are looking for revenue-sharing agreements because they have been burned by proponents who promised them all kinds of things for previous developments and didn’t live up to their agreements. Funny that.

As Andrew Leach points out, this pattern of bespoke deals with provinces is going to wind up being a bigger problem than it winds up solving because there won’t be consistent rules across the country, and inconsistent rules and malleable agreements mean regulatory uncertainty, particularly because they are likely to change further as governments change on either level of government. Letting Alberta undermine federal standards as part of the MOU was a prime example of just that (not that Alberta plans to live up to their end of the agreement).

Meanwhile, here’s a callout about the things the oil and gas industry likes to promise before reneging because it will cost them too much money, such as with the methane regulations that were announced yesterday. Funny that.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-17T14:25:03.817Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia has attacked Zaporizhzhia, injuring at least 26 people. Ukraine reports that they control over 90 percent of Kupiansk, which Russia claimed to have conquered weeks ago. President Zelenskyy says that any territorial concessions would need to be put to a referendum (which would fail).

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QP: Like ABBA Gold, but worse

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For what promised to be the final QP of 2025 (for real this time!), the PM was once again absent in spite of being in town. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and after claiming that his was the party of “hope,” he denounced the “hidden taxes” increasing the cost of food and demanded they be repealed. Steve MacKinnon replied that nobody calls the Conservatives the party of hope, but we wishes them a Merry Christmas all the same, and then reminded him that these taxes don’t exist. Poilievre took a swipe at Mark Carney’s absence, got his question taken away by the Speaker, and then he claimed the Liberals were blocking the attempts to pass crime bills. MacKinnon pointed out that the Conservatives have been the ones blocking except for the final day when they suddenly decided to want to move them ahead. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first question on imaginary taxes, and Patty Hajdu stood up to remind him those taxes don’t exist, and then praised that the Canada Child Benefit cheques were going out early. Poilievre read about the Clean Fuel Regulations, and called them a tax, and Julie Dabrusin suggested he read the entire report, and pointed out that those regulations are good for canola farmers who can feed into the biofuel sector. Poilievre then returned to his horseshit assertions about the Liberals “blocking” their bail bill. MacKinnon accused Poilievre of living in a parallel universe and listed the crimes the Conservatives have been blocking the Liberals from fighting.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she said that under Carney, Canada has become a business which no longer cares about climate change, and took a swipe at Carney’s French. Dabrusin insisted that they have committed to strengthening the price on carbon and methane regulations, as clean electricity. Normandin went further on her analogy, calling Carney the CEO of Canada Inc., who needs to be reminded he is in a democratic Parliament. Joël Lightbound praised all of the measures the government is taking, and the things the Bloc voted against. Patrick Bonin took over to again lament the abandonment of climate, and this time Nathalie Provost said that they will meet the goal but needed to change their strategy because of changing circumstances.

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QP: Relitigating the Century Initiative, again

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Despite being in town and on a Wednesday, the PM was not present for what could very well have been the final QP of 2025. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he accused Mark Wiseman, potential candidate for the new ambassador to Washington, of advocating throwing open the borders to cause the decline of housing, healthcare, and French in Canada, as part of the Century Initiative, and accused the government of planning to reward him. Steve MacKinnon said that he first wanted to wish the best to Ambassador Kirsten Hillman, but the Century Initiative has never been and will never be the government’s policy. Poilievre said that regardless, the person behind the policy was Wiseman, saying he showed contempt for Quebec and cannot negotiate on their behalf. Dominic LeBlanc gave his own thanks to Hillman, and said that Poilievre was trying to get a clip for the news but this wasn’t going to be the one. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the “radical open doors” accusation about Wiseman. MacKinnon repeated praise for Hillman, and that the Century Initiative was never government policy. Poilievre segued this to taking swipes at the PM for the trip to Egypt and the costs of the private plane, where he played no role at the ceremony. MacKinnon pretended to be aghast that Poilievre was suggesting the PM miss an auspicious event as signing a peace accord for Gaza. Poilievre continued to be agog at the cost of said flight, and this time Anita Anand praised the prime minister’s role in global events. Poilievre groused that Carney himself wasn’t answering, and then pivoted to his imaginary “hidden taxes.” Patty Hajdu dismissed these imaginary taxes and pointed to drought and climate change hurting crops and herds, which was why the governor was ensuring they have money in their pockets.

Christine Normandin rose for the Bloc, and she too complained about Wiseman and the Century Initiative. MacKinnon reminded her that was never the policy of the government and never would be. Normandin suggested one of the Liberal Quebec MPs stand up the prime minister to push back against his appointment. This time Joël Lightbound reiterated that this was not their policy, before taking a swipe at the Bloc for not caring about culture in Quebec. Yves Perron raised the “sandboxing” provisions in the budget and called them anti-democratic, to which MacKinnon dismissed the concern as they were debating it right now.

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Roundup: Being too clever about the MOU’s language

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Today is the Conservatives’ big Supply Day, where they are bringing forward their motion that cherry-picks two phrases from the MOU with Alberta, and hopes to jam the Liberals with it. Pierre Poilievre may claim that the language is “lifted directly from the MOU,” so the Liberals should put up or shut up, but of course, he’s being too cute by half. It’s not language directly lifted from the MOU. The MOU states a “private sector constructed and financed pipelines, with Indigenous Peoples co-ownership and economic benefit, with at least one million barrels a day of low emission Alberta bitumen with a route that increases export access to Asian markets as a priority” whereas the motion simply says “pipelines enabling the export of at least one million barrels a day of low-emission Alberta bitumen from a strategic deepwater port on the British Columbia coast to reach Asian markets,” and adds “respecting the duty to consult Indigenous people.” One of these things is not like the other.

— Kady O'Malley (@kadyo.bsky.social) 2025-12-08T22:44:00.568Z

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3m7jbmdjkfk2i

Liberal MP Corey Hogan, the party’s sole Calgary MP, called out these shenanigans, both in a media scrum and on his Twitter, where he points out entirely why the Conservatives haver phrased it this way—to either make the Liberals look like they’re ignoring Indigenous consultation and consent, or to make it look like they’re not serious about building it, and in either case, it sends a signal to someone that will cause doubt and will inevitably delay any decisions. And the government indicated last night that they’re going to vote against it, citing that the Conservatives are not using the full language from the MOU. This in turn will set up weeks of Conservatives screaming that they knew the Liberals were lying the whole time and never had any intention of building a pipeline.

https://twitter.com/coreyhoganyyc/status/1998142565791477875

The thing we need to remember in all of this is not the shenanigans, or the Conservatives thinking they’re too clever, or any of that—rather, it’s that they think they can ram through these projects without Indigenous consent. Sure, they’ll talk about “meaningful consultation,” but consultation is not consent, and in their press releases, consent is never mentioned, nor is even consultations. That’s not realistic, nor even legal in the current framework. Of course, they also think a new pipeline will “unblock the trillions of dollars of privatesector energy investment to produce more oil and gas, build profitable pipelines and ship a million barrels of oil to Asia a day at world prices.” My dudes—this is a post-2014 world. It’s not going to be trillions of dollars, and world oil prices are tanking because of a supply glut. All of this is fantasyland.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-12-08T14:08:03.419Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians have attacked Sumy for the second night in a row, cutting off power in the region. Here is a look at those remaining in Kostiantynivka, as Russians approach.

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