Tag Archives: Immigration

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: Carney won’t retaliate

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Prime minister Mark Carney has dismissed calls by Doug Ford and others to retaliate against increasing American trade actions, insisting that this is not the time, and that this is the time to keep negotiating. But to what end? There is no deal to be had, and any deal they come up with isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. The talks keep “stalling,” and every time, the Americans make another demand to restart them, and Carney capitulates, and then the talks resume for a few days, and then they “stall” again. Because there isn’t a deal to be had. Sure, we currently have the “best deal” of everyone, which doesn’t amount to much given the constant tariffs under bullshit “national security” reasons, but their demands are increasingly encroaching on our sovereignty and ability to make our own policy decisions, again, for nothing. When do we start saying no more? Hopefully before we’re a vassal state.

Carney also said that he got “reassurances” from Stellantis about the Brampton plant that they decided to move production away from, but again, what good is that if they decide to keep shifting production south to avoid the tariffs, as Trump wants? Carney also isn’t saying if he’d drop Chinese EV tariffs for the sake of saving the canola trade, but again, that would be foolish because the next time China wants to make a point, they would tariff canola again, or come up with some kind of falsehood about “concerns” about the product, like they constantly do. It would be great if Carney could actually articulate that concern, rather than give false hope that this would be some kind of lasting solution to the canola issue.

Meanwhile, Carney announced his bail and sentencing reform plans, most of which are pretty much the opposite of what the legal community has warned against, and which does nothing about the fact that the real problem with bail is provinces under-resourcing their court systems, or that their jails are overcrowded, and that they’re not funding community supervision programmes, or that their underfunding social programmes means more people are going to find their way into crime. Tinkering with the Criminal Code and endangering people’s Charter rights will do nothing about this. And it’s so infuriating that Carney just capitulated to a bunch of complete falsehoods by the Conservatives, and this will change nothing (other than crowding those provincial jails even worse), and they’ll still get blamed when another case slips through the cracks.

They say they're going to work with the provinces, but rest assured that those provinces won't do what they need to do (resource their court systems), and that the situation is going to get even worse, and the federal government will again take the blame, and tinker with the Criminal Code even more.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-16T15:39:15.421Z

Also, as Dale notes, provinces have no room to incarcerate more people. Judges are reducing custodial sentences because jail conditions are so bad. bsky.app/profile/jour…

— Anna Mehler Paperny (@mehlerpaperny.bsky.social) 2025-10-16T18:03:49.009Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks on Ukrainian gas facilities will force them to import more gas this winter. A large Russian assault near Dobropillia was repelled by Ukrainian forces. Reuters takes a deeper dive into Russia’s attacks on Russia’s energy industry. AP has a photo gallery of displaced Ukrainians at a hostel in Dnipro.

Good reads:

  • Lina Diab says that there will be some adjustments coming to the provincial nominee programme numbers.
  • Tim Hodgson says the Americans are interested in “energy security” as part of conversations about reviving the Keystone XL pipeline.
  • Both Alberta and Saskatchewan’s health ministers say that Marjorie Michel hasn’t approached them about joining the federal pharmacare programme.
  • DND and the Canadian Forces are suing NSIRA to block the release of a report on their intelligence activities, claiming the redactions aren’t sufficient.
  • FINTRAC has levied a $600,000 fine on the First Nations Bank for lack of proper controls over money laundering, which they acknowledge.
  • Former PBO Kevin Page and the head of the IMF both say that Canada’s finances are sustainable and could increase spending without issue.
  • As Mélanie Joly tries to press Lockheed Martin for more industrial benefits for F-35s, the company points to 30 companies in Canada providing components.
  • A study shows that Canadian passport holders outpace Americans for visa-free access to other countries.
  • Here is a look at the process to create the Supreme Court of Canada’s new ceremonial robes.
  • In more Dollarama Trumpism, Poilievre is calling for the RCMP to investigate and jail Trudeau for past ethics scandals, saying the senior ranks are “despicable.”
  • The premier of PEI is calling for a federal investigation into allegations of Chinese foreign interference and money-laundering in the province.
  • Wab Kinew is lobbing broadsides at other premiers over their use of the Notwithstanding Clause as he moves a bill to refer future all uses to the courts.
  • Rob Shaw chronicles BC Conservative leader John Rustad’s plummeting fortunes.
  • John Michael McGrath makes the depressing point that Canada has very little leverage when it comes to trying to preserve our auto industry.
  • My Xtra column points out that Carney’s hate crime bill is mostly empty symbolism because the real problem is a lack of police enforcing existing laws.
  • My (delayed) column makes the case that youth may be avoiding politics because they no longer have an entry point with grassroots party organisations.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/RichardAlbert/status/1978906504154489171

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Roundup: Dollarama Trumpism back on blast

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I regret to inform you that Pierre Poilieve is back on his MAGA-lite™ bullshit, and he’s going after DEI in order to “bring back merit.” It’s Dollarama Trumpism where they think that they can harness the “good parts only” energy of authoritarian populism without the overt racism—but they’re still going to wink to that racism. And it’s been pretty relentless, whether it’s deciding to target “DEI” or “wokeness,” the recent decision to go hard after immigration—sorry, “Liberal immigration policy” *wink*— or birthright citizenship. I’m not sure who they think they’re fooling, other than maybe that segment of the party’s base that Poilievre wants to keep on-side ahead of his leadership review.

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3m3bgx3sgek2d

The thing with insisting you want to focus on “merit” is that we have empirical proof that “merit” is only ever applied to straight white men who don’t have to fairly compete with women or minorities. They can’t get a fair shake because of ingrained prejudices, but if they get their positions entirely based on merit, they are dismissed as “DEI hires.” (It’s even more hilarious when women in the Conservative caucus insist that they got their positions due to merit, but any women in the Liberal Cabinet are just “DEI hires.”) All of this is entirely well-founded, but they have decided that they’d rather wink to racists and claim that they’re doing it to avoid “bloated bureaucracies” and “checkboxes” when it really just boils down to racism/misogyny/homophobia, every single time, but they insist on lying to themselves about it.

Hits harder than any legacy media outlet.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-15T14:37:40.489Z

Meanwhile, Poilievre is ramping up his “get out of the way” bullshit, and has his caucus not only repeat it to absurd lengths, but also try to force it into situations that don’t make any sense. For example, one Conservative MP was on Power & Politics and trying to insist that if government “got out of the way” that we would have spent the past decade building critical mineral mines and pipelines to tidewater and that would have given us leverage over Trump. And while David Cochrane pushed back on this, none of it makes any sense because you would think that American dependence on our oil/aluminium/steel/softwood lumber/electricity would already give us leverage, but that doesn’t actually matter with Trump. Nobody was in a rush to build pipelines to tidewater because the Americans were a captive market. We weren’t in a rush to build critical mineral mines because the market was being well-supplied by China, and nobody builds mines overnight. And frankly, putting aside the fact that these projects were in fact advancing, this notion that governments should just abandon all environmental regulation, property rights, or Indigenous rights and title for the sake of letting industry loose, so that they could line their own pockets while forcing the environmental and social devastation in their wake onto governments to take care of—at a time when CO2emissions are spiking because of wildfires—is frankly just incompetence and lunacy.

I mean, who cares about things like the environment, or property rights, or the rights of Indigenous people whose land these projects are on? We should just let it all burn and watch the dollars flow in (to the pockets of a few select rich people).

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-16T02:31:38.710Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks hit power infrastructure in seven regions across Ukraine. Russian drones are getting more precise, and are increasingly targeting Ukraine’s rail infrastructure.

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Roundup: A last-minute trip sans journalists

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Prime minister Mark Carney took a last-minute trip to Egypt over the weekend to attend the Middle East peace summit, where he did things like praise the release of hostages, and commend the “leadership” of Trump in reaching this moment (which ignores a whole lot of what has happened up until this point). But a lot of things about this trip were unusual. For one, he ended up chartering a private plan because no military aircraft were available on short notice, which is odd in and of itself (and I can’t wait for the pearl-clutching when the Access to Information request is released about the costs of said charter). For another, he did not alert the media to the trip until he was taking off, and no accredited journalists accompanied him on the trip.

Statement from the president of the Parliamentary Press Gallery:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-14T23:14:12.452Z

This is a very big warning sign about how Carney is treating the office, and his obligations to transparency. Perhaps more egregiously was the fact that the PMO comms team spent the long weekend emailing journalists and pointing them to links to his posts on Twitter, as though that was some kind of substitute. It’s not. Social media posts are carefully curated and present a very stage-managed view of the world, which is not a substitute for journalism. In fact, it’s usually a form of propaganda, because it delivers a carefully crafted message in a way that is intended to influence the voting public in a certain way.

To be clear, Carney is not the first prime minister who has tried to limit media access in favour of his in-house photographers and media team, and these photographers and videographers are given privileged access to both document history, and set up carefully curated narratives. And yes, the press is going to complain about it because it’s our job to present a wider view than what the PMO wants us to see, and the public expects more transparency, which has been in retreat under Carney’s leadership because he still thinks that this is like being a CEO where you don’t say much because it might affect your stock price. That’s not how you behave in the top political office of the country, and he needs to get that message.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian glide bombs hit a hospital in Kharkiv in the early morning hours of Tuesday, while attacks on the energy grid continued. A UN humanitarian convoy in southern Ukraine was also hit by Russian drones. Ukrainian authorities have ordered the evacuation of dozens of villages near the city of Kupiansk given the deteriorating security situation, while Russia claims they took control of another village in Donetsk region. President Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian troops have advanced in their counter-offensive in the Zaporizhzhia region.

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QP: Demanding a win from the Trump meeting

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The PM was in town but readying himself for a meeting with Danielle Smith before he flew out to Washington, but only some of the other leaders were present for QP. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he recited a scary crime story before exhorting the government to pass their “jail not bail” bill. Sean Fraser said that they have made commitments to reforms to the system, and that they are willing to work across the aisle to advance sensible legislation and not cut-and-paste American legislation. Poilievre switched to English to recite another scary tale, decried so-called “Liberal bail,” and demanded the vote on their bill. Fraser reminded him that some of the laws he decries came in under Harper, when Poilievre was in his Cabinet. Poilievre returned to French to wonder if Carney was going to announce the elimination of tariffs with the U.S., and Dominic LeBlanc gave a general assurance of issues they will be discussing but no promises of announcements. Poilievre switched back to English, and repeated the same demand, and got the same response from LeBlanc. Poilievre was outraged that there was no deal, and decried all of the capitulations, and LeBlanc reminded him that we remain in the best position of any other country, and wondered if Poilievre would turn down an invitation to a working lunch if he was in government. Poilievre tried to poke holes in the assurance that we have the best deal, as though it wasn’t all relative. Mélanie Joly accused Poilievre of talking down workers and the economy, before she listed new job announcements.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she praised the visit to Washington before lamenting his past capitulations, and demanded some gains for Quebec. LeBlanc got back up praise the work they are doing to get a deal. Normandin again listed failures, and demanded the government let the promised aid for the forestry sector flow to companies. Joly said that different streams of funding “will be available,” but didn’t give an indication as to when. Xavier Barsalou-Duval worried about immigrant truck drives in Ontario who don’t have proper certification and demanded the government do something about it. Patty Hajdu read a statement about truckers advancing the economy, and that they have created a specialised inspection team to enforce the law rigorously, while working with provinces to fight against false classifications.

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Roundup: A digital asbestos task force

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Everyone’s favourite bullshit Cabinet minister, Evan Solomon, is putting together a task force to determine the next steps in the government’s digital asbestos strategy. While we wait to see just who is going to be on this task force, because that will say volumes, it’s almost inevitable at this point that this is mostly going to wind up being more hype, because Solomon has guzzled it all down, while prime minister Mark Carney has also bought into it as the cure for Canada’s flagging productivity and other problems (rather than the obvious fact that corporate Canada is lazy). We’ve all heard everything Solomon has said so far. I’m not optimistic at all.

It's gonna be so much more hype. We are so boned.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-24T15:21:05.227Z

I’m also extremely sceptical about Solomon insisting that they’re going to take the lessons from the Privacy Commissioner’s investigation into TikTok and its privacy violations in order to shape the new digital asbestos laws, because that would be too much intervention for what Solomon has been preaching about “light touches.” Part of the problem with the TikTok violations are that this is their business model, and while they insist that they are trying to keep children off the platform, they put more effort into hoovering up private data for marketing purposes than they did in using those very same tools they developed to keep kids off the platform, as it was hoovering up their data at an alarming rate. So much of what makes up digital asbestos is similar business models about siphoning that personal data, as well as using techniques to keep users engaged on that platform, hallucinations and all, and not caring about it sending them on delusional spirals that craters their mental health. They don’t care because it’s the business model, and that’s why I can’t trust Solomon to actually regulate—because he has bought into the hype around that model, and if he regulates, the tech bros will cry and whine that they can’t operate in those rules, and he’ll kill the industry, and gods forbid, we couldn’t have that.

Evan fucking Solomon says they'll take the lessons from the TikTok privacy report in order to shape new digital asbestos laws. www.thestar.com/politics/fed…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-25T03:13:46.890Z

Meanwhile at the UN, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is warning about the destructive arms race happening right now with digital asbestos and drones, and is calling for international rules about limiting its spread. But of course, I can just hear someone like Solomon insisting that we don’t want too many rules, because that will “stifle innovation,” and so on. Absolutely nobody is taking any of this seriously (and no, we’re not talking about Skynet), and we’re heading for some serious problems in the very near future as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine has attacked the petrochemical complex in Salavat for the second time in a week, further reducing Russia’s refining capacity.

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Roundup: Ford casting blame for his own failures—bail edition

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While the federal Conservatives are tabling a litany of “tough on crime” bills in order to make themselves look like they’re offering solutions to what they term the “warzone” on Canadian streets, Ontario premier Doug Ford decided that he didn’t want to be left out. Ford tasked his attorney general with sending an open letter to the federal government to call for a bunch of performative nonsense like mandatory minimum sentences or “three strikes” laws, most of which are unconstitutional, and is making all kinds of noises about the problems with the bail system and demanding that the federal government fix them. The problem? The biggest problems with bail are Ford’s fault.

The administration of justice is a provincial issue, and the biggest problem with bail by far is resourcing in the court system. There aren’t enough functional courthouses (especially in Peel Region), there aren’t enough clerks and other staff at these court houses to run trials, there are not enough provincially-appointed judges who handle the bulk of criminal cases, there are issues with the appointment and training of justices of the peace, who deal with nearly all bail hearings. The province isn’t hiring enough Crown attorneys to prosecute cases, and they are burnt out and nearly went on strike fairly recently because of being underpaid. Oh, and provincial remand facilities are overcrowded and they can’t keep people in custody there, and those who are will wind up getting sentencing discounts if they are convicted, because the conditions are so terrible. All of these things are on Ford. But he would rather blame the federal government. Oh, and during this all, Ford is also going to war against photo radar, because of course he is—apparently, it’s all well and good to break traffic laws (which are provincial jurisdiction), but he’s big mad about other laws being broken. Just incoherent.

This being said, I am once again absolutely livid that the media outlets who did report on this letter couldn’t be arsed to get the basics right, such as the provincial responsibilities. It was straight-up stenography from both The Canadian Press and CBC, both of whom should know better. (Neither the Star nor the National Post ran this story). So once again, Ford gets his bullshit repeated uncritically, the federal government again gets blamed, and the very real problems that are his responsibility will again go unchallenged. Utterly infuriating.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-21T20:02:03.613Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s attack on Zaporizhzhia early Monday morning killed three and injured at least two others.

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QP: Two ministers under fire

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The PM was away on this grey and rainy Monday, off to the UN General Assembly in New York, while that meant other leaders felt they could get away with not showing up. Pierre Poilievre, however, was present, and led off in French, and he raised the story of the secretly recorded call with Gary Anandasangaree about the gun buyback. Anandasangaree said that his comments were “misguided.” Poilievre repeated the question in English, and this time, Anandasangaree talked about Canadians demanding gun control after mass shooting. Poilievre repeated phrases from the recording, and again thundered about playing politics with guns. Anandasangaree repeated his same points about the mass shootings. Poilievre said Liberals only tell the truth when they think nobody is listening, and Anandasangaree said it was a good thing it was on tape, and accused Poilievre of playing politics. Poilievre decried the entire gun buyback scheme, and this time Sean Fraser railed about Poilievre’s record in opposing gun control. Poilievre demanded the government pass their “three strikes” law instead, and Fraser pointed out their tabling the hate crimes legislation and said that more legislation is on the way.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and suggested the government was engaging in conspiracy theories with their factum to the Supreme Court. Fraser said they were working toward the national interest in protecting the constitution, and that the Supreme Court was the right forum to debate these issues. Normandin said that this should be litigated in Parliament, and Steven Guilbeault said that her assertions were misinformed, and that their factum doesn’t put forward that provinces can’t use the Notwithstanding Clause. Rhéal Fortin gave his own jab at the factum, which was similarly devoid of facts, and Guilbeault pointed to his own pride in being a Quebecker before pointing to the government’s record on supporting Quebec.

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Roundup: New hate crime legislation tabled

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The government tabled new hate crime legislation yesterday, and while I’m not going to delve too deeply into it here because I’m writing something more substantial about it for another outlet, I wanted to make a couple of observations, starting with the complaints of every reporter in the room during the press conference, which was that they didn’t have copies available at the time, nor did they have press releases available, so everyone was essentially flying blind. Part of this is a function of parliamentary privilege—no one can see the bill until it has been tabled in the House of Commons (or it violates the privileges of MPs), and upon first reading it can be ordered printed, which is why there is a delay on seeing the bill. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, and you would think that some of the more senior reporters would know this, but of course not. It was also the fact that they had the press release immediately after it was tabled, but that was in part a function of the clock (the minister had a flight to catch). But the inability to at least furnish press releases was a legitimate complaint, and the minister’s staff (or the department) should have known better.

This being said, much is being made about the fact that certain symbols are being criminalized if used in the context of promoting hate, and some of the reporters in the room just could not wrap their heads around that context. “But what if someone is wearing a t-shirt?” “What if they have Nazi memorabilia in their house?” The minister was not going to engage in hypotheticals, but the fact that there is context to these offences was a little too abstract.

Some of the reactions were expected, such as the concerns that this is going to impact legitimate protest even though the government has tried to make a clear delineation in the language of the bill that intention to intimidate because of hate is the target, and yes, there are specific legal tests about this. Of course, one of the biggest problems is that we already have laws for most of these offences, but police simply don’t enforce them, and that could be the case after this bill passes as well. Or it could wind up that this bill provides more clarity for police and prosecutors than the existing jurisprudence, but that remains to be seen.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims it has taken control over two more village in Donetsk region, while president Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces have inflicted heavy losses on Russians on the frontline counteroffensive near two cities in the same region. Russian jets violated Estonia’s airspace as part of their latest test of NATO resolve.

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Roundup: Asking for declaratory powers, not limits

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There is a bunch of confusion and/or bad faith arguing going on around just what the federal government said in their factum to the upcoming Supreme Court of Canada hearing on the challenge of Quebec’s Law 21, which they claim is “state secularism” but is really just wholesale discrimination and racism. The reporting hasn’t been great—in fact, the National Post’s is downright misleading—because they keep describing this like it’s a reference question to the Court, which it isn’t, but rather, the argument that they’re putting forward during the existing challenge, and something that they feel the Court should address (which is how factums tend to work).

What their argument consists of is that the Court should be able to declare when a law that is protected by the Notwithstanding Clause is actually unconstitutional. They can’t strike it down, but they can weigh in and say “Yeah, this contravenes Charter rights.” They also want the Courts to be able to do this when something has been ongoing in its use of the Clause (which only lasts for five years before it needs to be renewed in legislation), and to rule on whether it may result in the “irreparable impairment” of rights, because they argue that repeated use of the Clause amounts to “indirectly amending the Constitution.” This is also not coming out of nowhere—the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal just recently ruled that they have this right when it comes to the challenge around the province’s attack on trans youth, saying that invoking the Clause should not be the last word.

Why is this important? Because the point of the five-year time-limit on the Clause is that it allows that government to be voted out before it can be renewed. Having the courts weigh in and say “Yeah, this is discrimination,” even if they can’t strike down the law, is powerful information for voters to have. And it’s absolutely democratic. But you have conservative thinkers who are trying to say that this will cause a “constitutional crisis,” or a national unity crisis if it offends Quebec or Alberta, is frankly absurd. It’s trying to give cover for attacks on minority rights and abuse of the Clause, and they should be honest about those intentions rather than trying to sow confusion and undermining the Court.

Ukraine Dispatch

An overnight Russian attack on the Kirovohrad region has partially cut power and disrupted railway operations. A top Russian commander claims they are advancing on all fronts, in contravention to Ukrainian reports. Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies say they need more resources to crack down on the “shadow economy.”

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