Tag Archives: Immigration

QP: Worrying about (below-target) inflation

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With the (non) drama around the first “confidence vote” (which wasn’t really either) out of the way, MPs were back for Thursday QP, but this time most of the leaders were absent. While Andrew Scheer was present, it was Jasraj Hallan who led off, citing that the PBO was “concerned” about the size of the interest payments on the federal debt, and demanded to know what date the budget would be tabled on. François-Philippe Champagne thanked him for voting for the Ways and Means motion on the tax cut, and couldn’t wait for the Conservatives to support the main bill. Hallan demanded Champagne apologise for collecting the carbon levy (erm, which went back to people), railed about inflation, and demanded a budget. Champagne patted himself on the back for not only the tax cut, but the GST break on first-time house purchases. Leslyn Lewis read the same script demanding a budget with the same false threats about inflation, and Champagne enthused about all of the good things that were in the Estimates, such as dental care and child care. Lewis read the same concern from the PBO and accused the Liberals of breaking their promise to cap spending, to which Champagne proclaimed that they were proud to support people with their programmes. Chris Lewis read the script about counter-tariffs and demanded a budget, to which Dominic LeBlanc said that they are negotiating a new agreement with the Americans because the tariffs are unjustified and ridiculously punitive. Richard Martel read the French script about aluminium tariffs, and LeBlanc praised the aluminium workers, and he denounced the tariffs again, saying they will support workers.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and worried there was still no help for the aluminium industry, and demanded action. LeBlanc repeated his praise for the industry and that they are working to protect the workers. Normandin worried about forestry and aerospace also being targeted, and again demanded action. Mélanie Joly raised her meetings with the CEOs in the industry and insisted they are protecting the sector. Jean-Denis Garon took over to also demand support, along with a budget being tabled, and Champagne insisted they are fighting against tariffs and protecting industry while they build Canada.

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QP: The difference between budgets and estimates

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A Tuesday in June, and the prime minister was present today, as were the other leaders. Even though Andrew Scheer was present, but stayed seated, and left it up to Dan Albas to lead off, who crowed that the House voted last night to make the government table a spring budget (the motion doesn’t actually require, it merely “urges”) and went on to mischaracterise how the Budget and Estimates work, and gave the nonsense quote about how people need a budget before they spend, before demanding that the “minority” government table a budget immediately. Mark Carney praised the London Knights hockey team, and patted himself on the back for his successful meeting with the premiers. Albas listed supposed “facts,” and demanded to know when a spring budget would be tabled. Carney listed a bunch of other non sequiturs, also punctuated by “fact.” Kelly McCauley read another demand for the spring budget, and Carney noted that Canadians deserve the transfers in the Main Estimates. McCauley said those things would be in a budget, and again demanded one. Carney said that he knows the difference between the Main Estimates and the budget, unlike the members opposite, and there was an uproar. When things calmed down, Carney repeated the line and said that they know how to grow the economy without spending money. Joël Godin took over in French to read the same demand for a budget and falsely called the Estimates a “blank cheque.” (It has line items for departmental spending, for fuck sakes). Carney said in French they took note of the vote, but they stand with the premiers of Quebec to have one Canadian economy. Godin trotted out the nonsense line about people needing a budget before spending, and Carney said that they would be a budget, but in the meantime they would boost growth with a bill to build a strong economy.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and wondered about the potential project to create a pipeline to Hudson Bay. Carney said that they had plenty of projects around infrastructure and green energy. Blanchet wondered whether they were trying to find markets in Europe or refine heavy crude in western Canada. Carney said they hadn’t come to any decisions, but the projects need to have environmental standards and have a big impact. Blanchet demanded that the prime minister respect Quebec’s environmental agency. Carney said that they discussed the possibility with the premier, and that they need to have commitments around environmental standards.

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Roundup: Retaliatory tariffs on American non-compliant cars

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Day twelve, meaning we’re about a third of the way through, and so much of the day was all about the fallout of Wednesday’s tariff announcement. Mark Carney was in Ottawa where he had yet another virtual meeting with the premiers before meeting with the media. There, he said that the era of trade where America leads is over is over, that Trump’s actions will rupture the global economy as it has been since the end of World War II, and that while this is a tragedy, it’s the new reality. Canada’s response is a matching 25 percent tariff on vehicles from non-CUSMA-compliant vehicles coming from the United States, but not on auto parts, where the proceeds would go back to the auto workers. Carney will start the day in Montreal, before heading to Woodbridge, Ontario, and then Scarborough.

https://twitter.com/flaviovolpe1/status/1907890689330778611

Pierre Poilievre was in Kingston, where he promised to remove the GST on Canadian-made vehicles (which the NDP initially proposed), and a fund to help keep workers stay on the job in affected industries. It is also noteworthy that Poilievre distanced himself from Danielle Smith and Preston Manning’s crybaby separatism comments, saying that they need to unite the country. Poilievre will be Trois-Rivières, Quebec, today.

We're back to Poilievre just sanewashing Trump.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T17:03:07.441Z

https://bsky.app/profile/jrobson.bsky.social/post/3llwvxlkeo22j

Jagmeet Singh was in Ottawa to propose the creation of Victory Bonds to fund public infrastructure, in addition to reannouncing his previous protectionist plans. Singh will be in Montreal again today.

The NDP have a tense problem here.They haven't launched anything because they are not in government. They are proposing launching these bonds. There is a difference.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T13:43:56.546Z

In other campaign news, Carney said that legislation to protect Supply Management was unnecessary (which is true, but also because you can’t bind a future government so you’re just wasting everyone’s time). Poilievre insisted that their willingness to dump candidates (so far) shows that they’re different from the Liberals (which is a specious argument before the cut-off date).

Ukraine Dispatch

Hundreds of Ukrainian troops are allegedly holed up in a monastery as Russian troops try to drive them from Kursk region. President Zelenskyy visited the neighbouring Sumy region yesterday. Ukraine appears to have resolved some of its manpower challenges.

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Roundup: Axing the other tax, just because

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Because he is unable to pivot, or have any kind of plan B, Pierre Poilievre went to a steel plant yesterday to announce that he will not only repeal the full legislation that implemented the carbon levy, but he’ll also repeal the industrial carbon price under the bullshit magical thinking of “technology, not taxes.” The problem? Most provinces have their own industrial pricing schemes, and the federal backstop only applies to a couple of provinces, and mostly it set a price floor so that provinces can’t undercut one another. None of this is actually news, thought, as he’s been saying it for months, but most legacy media treated this as new and novel. Industry doesn’t like his plan—they prefer the industrial pricing system because it provides stability. But Poilievre needs a tax to axe, so he’s going all-in on making this a carbon price election after all, because he’s that incapable.

 

The problem with “technology not taxes” is that the price signals sent by carbon pricing are what incentivise companies to invest in the technology to reduce emissions. They won’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They need to feel the squeeze before they’ll invest to make the changes, and that won’t happen if they are given free licence to just pollute without consequence. You would think that a conservative party would understand market dynamics, but no. They don’t have an intellectual grounding any longer, they’re just rage-baiters looking to “own the Libs” by any means necessary. Oh, and the EU is going to start putting in carbon border adjustments, so if we’re pivoting our trade to those markets, well, our not having a price will find us being punished by their markets, so maybe this is a really dumb idea after all.

Feeling this so hard.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-18T01:50:50.104Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s military shot down 90 out of 170 drones overnight Monday, with damage and injuries reported in Odesa. Russians also claim that they are moving ahead in Zaporizhzhia region, saying they are pushing through Ukrainian lines. Ukraine has attacked energy facilities in Russia’s Astrakhan region, sparking a fire.

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Roundup: An ambush in the White House

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It was an ambush. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the White House, ostensibly to sign some kind of agreement around access to critical minerals in exchange for some kind of military support or security guarantees was a set-up for Trump and JD Vance to try and humiliate Zelenskyy in front of the cameras, with one of the reporters from Russian state outlet TASS in the room (who was removed at one point by the Secret Service, but it was obvious that someone in the White House arranged for him to be there). The whole video is sickening to watch.

Vance blew up that meeting on purpose

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) 2025-02-28T20:00:00.112Z

I've just looked again at the Starmer meeting – Vance tried to blow that up too. But Trump didn't take the bait.

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) 2025-02-28T20:38:07.909Z

While Trump and Vance started broadcasting this for their followers as a supposed sign of strength, and their lackeys and apologists broadcast Russian propaganda to justify it, word also started leaking out that Trump is planning on cutting off military aid to Ukraine for Zelenskyy’s supposed intransigence and lack of desire for peace, which is of course mendacious and part of the set-up.

This was the plan all along

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) 2025-03-01T04:52:42.168Z

In the wake of this, world leaders started tweeting their support for Zelenskyy and Ukraine, and this was probably the death knell of NATO as we know it. The one leader who has been silent is Keir Starmer, but he is also hosting a summit in London today about Ukraine and European security, which Justin Trudeau will also be attending.

I have to wonder what words are going to be had between Trudeau and Starmer…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-28T23:49:23.352Z

I wonder if this was planned at the Munich Security Conference?

— Stephanie Carvin (@stephaniecarvin.bsky.social) 2025-02-28T23:57:08.362Z

Here are some hot takes from Tom Nichols and David Frum, while Philippe Lagassé has some additional thoughts on the situation.

Closer to home, in an interview with the Spectator, Trump took credit for Chrystia Freeland’s supposed “firing” (she was not fired), and said that Poilievre’s problem is that “he’s not a MAGA guy.” Which is true—Poilievre doesn’t have much of a coherent ideology, but he’s not MAGA. What he is, however, is someone who will say anything that he feels he needs to in order to attract the MAGA crowd to his banner, no matter how ridiculous it is, and he has no morals, ethics, or scruples about it. Poilievre jumped on this to declare that he’s “Canada First,” and later did tweet support for Zelenskyy and Ukraine, and immediately got roasted in the comments by his MAGA supporters for it. Funny what happens when you play with fire.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1895631503469449464

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones struck a medical facility, among other targets, in Kharkiv. The framework for a mineral agreement that Ukraine was supposed to sign with the Americans, before the ambush, contained a number of gaps around security or dispute resolution, before it turned out to be a sham.

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Roundup: Starmer sputters instead of speaking up

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UK prime minister Keir Starmer visited the White House yesterday, and a couple of bizarre scenes erupted. One was that he presented an invitation from King Charles for Trump to make a second state visit to the UK, which way too many people took as a personal invitation rather than one at the behest of the government—because the King does not act unilaterally, and does not make state visit invitations on his own. Later, when Starmer was asked about the annexation threats, Stamer didn’t stand up for Canada, but sputtered about there being no divisions before Trump cut him off with a sharp “That’s enough.” And worse, when Starmer was asked by a journalist if the King had anything to say about the annexation threats, Starmer said that he can’t say what the King’s opinions are and that he’ll let them be known in his own way.

*seethes*

On the one hand, Starmer is sucking up to Trump to avoid being tariffed, which probably won’t work, but I get his self-interest here, but it’s nevertheless a sign of the shifting global order and a sense of who our allies really are. (Thus far, only Germany has expressly said that they have Canada’s back). On the other hand, the fact that reporters are trying to drag the King into this is wildly inappropriate, and I’m not sure whether that’s because American journalists cannot grasp what a constitutional monarchy is (seriously, it makes their brains melt), but the fact that so many people in this country who should know how constitutional monarchy works because we are one, are rising to take the bait and are raging about how the King is supposedly “betraying” us is really disheartening because it’s a reflection of just how poor our civics education is, and how ignorant our own media are about how the very basic rules of our system of government operate.

The King does not freelance, he does not say things without advice, and his governments do not drag him into their fights because the first rule of constitutional monarchy is that you DO NOT involve the King. Starmer should have given a better answer in both cases, and Canadians following along shouldn’t take the bait.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians launched air attacks on energy sites in the Kharkiv region. Ukraine’s top army commander visited sites on the front lines in eastern Donetsk region.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1895048627690656241

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Roundup: Freeland’s smaller Cabinet promise

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Chrystia Freeland released another policy statement/promise yesterday which says that she will cut the size of Cabinet and the PMO in half—both to make Cabinet more efficient, and to give ministers more control over their files, rather than PMO dictating everything for them. While on the one hand, every incoming prime minister has promised to cut the size of Cabinet and then it starts to grow over time, I also suspect this is a bit of a screw you to Katie Telford, who runs Trudeau’s PMO, and who selects the chief of staff for all ministers with her own loyalists, and who has been a bottleneck for so much of this government’s business as it flows through her office. Caucus has been calling on Trudeau to get rid of Telford for a while now, correctly identifying her as the source of some of their problems (including the fact that she is in the caucus room taking notes, which was never the case under previous leaders), and Freeland appears to be heeding those concerns as endorsements pile up (mostly for Carney).

I do think it’s a fairly bold plan, and it reminds me of Trudeau’s initial attempt to have a “government by Cabinet” in the early days, but all ministers are not created equal, and gradually PMO started to exert more control for many of those ministers who were having trouble managing their files. It also looks like Freeland would be reverting to an older model of having the hard cap of twenty ministers, while additional responsibilities would be filled by ministers of state, which is also essentially how the UK operates, where there is a hard cap on Cabinet, but there are numerous junior ministers. Trudeau did away with this and made everyone a full minister as part of the gender parity promise, given that it would be likely that there would be an imbalance between how many women were in senior versus junior portfolios, and by making everyone a full minister, they also got a full minister’s salary. It seems clear in Freeland’s promise that she feels this was bloating Cabinet, particularly as Trudeau made it the practice that all appointments and Orders in Council needed to be presented to the full Cabinet, which took up a lot of time and focus. Does that mean that a lot will change if junior positions are restored? I guess it will depend on her leadership style if she’s successful, but it is an interesting signal nevertheless.

I will also note that Freeland has been consistently putting out these kinds of statements, unlike Carney. Meanwhile, Ruby Dhalla is turning out to be a clown show of braggadocious claims that the online right is amplifying.

Ukraine Dispatch

The Russians claim to have taken control of Novoielyzavetivka in the Donetsk region, near Pokrovsk. An overnight Ukrainian drone attack hit an oil pumping station and a missile storage facility, while a drone attack has hit Russia’s fourth-largest oil refinery in Kstovo. Ukraine’s corruption watchdog has opened an investigation into the defence minister over a procurement dispute.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1884525942229364847

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Roundup: Foreign interference commission final report released

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Justice Marie-Josée Hogue released the final report of the Foreign Interference public inquiry yesterday, and there really weren’t too many surprises involved. While there have been attempts at foreign interference, it hasn’t affected the outcomes of any elections, and that our institutions have held up rather well—though not perfectly. Government has been too slow to respond in many cases, and we don’t have enough transparency around national security issues, nor is there a culture of national security in government to make these issues a priority. There has been progress, but we’re not there yet. In many respects, this report proves that David Johnston’s report was right, and we’ve spent a year-and-a-half duplicating efforts because opposition party leaders decided it was more fun to smear Johnston than take him seriously.

One of the most significant aspects was a repudiation of the NSICOP report that claimed there were parliamentarians that were somehow compromised, and Hogue went through how the intelligence didn’t actually say that, and how NSICOP’s characterisation torqued what had been alleged—and frankly, much of the news reporting torqued further because they didn’t bother to read the context in that report. Hogue also noted that much of the reporting that drove this moral panic and the subsequent inquiry was wrong, though she didn’t necessarily blame the journalists because they only had so much to go on. (Nevertheless, this should be a warning about just how absolutely credulous some of those reporters have been on this file since the beginning, and why they failed to adequately question the motives of those doing the leaking).

Two cents: The Chair of NSICOP should have been far more willing to explain what message the committee's report was meant to convey last summer.NSICOP reports have exaggerated things in the past. Hopefully, the next chair takes a more measured approach.

— Philippe Lagassé (@plagasse.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T17:55:57.033Z

Hogue's call for greater transparency in the national security space is key, too. That should be a key priority for whichever party is in government after the next election.

— Philippe Lagassé (@plagasse.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T18:02:26.554Z

Probably a good thing that the pressure to 'name names' wasn't followed through on, eh? We could have outright destroyed innocent people with potentially empty innuendo.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2025-01-28T17:38:06.873Z

A couple of other notables—Hogue noted that transnational repression is probably a bigger threat, but her mandate didn’t give her the latitude to explore that, so that remains a big flag for this or the next government to address. Even more to the point, she flagged disinformation as the most existential threat to our democracy, and called for a dedicated federal watchdog to monitor and intercept foreign meddling that uses social media platforms and “AI” tools like deep-fakes. She also recommended developing digital and media literacy among Canadians, which feels a bit like a “perfect world” wish, or at least something that we may be able to impart onto the next generation but I worry that the current one may be lost in that regard.

For more, here’s a thread from Stephanie Carvin who went through the report:

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, here is the summary

— Stephanie Carvin (@stephaniecarvin.bsky.social) 2025-01-29T00:25:45.506Z

In the wake of this, Pierre Poilievre has let it be known that he’s not going to take that CSIS threat reduction briefing after all, because he can’t talk about what it says, so he is once again relying on the false notion that this, or any other security clearance, is somehow going to “gag” him. It won’t, but it would mean he has to be responsible with his commentary, which he does not want to do. He wants to be bombastic, and to lie at every opportunity, and so he will keep refusing a clearance or briefings, because he only cares about “owning the Libs,” not national security or the good of the country.

Because he's a self-interested venomous partisan who wants maximum freedom to be act like a weasel. I'm not sure why some Liberal partisans decided there was anything more nefarious than that at play.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2025-01-28T19:12:35.197Z

exactly so.Phil and I found in our work that the average MP would rather speak ignorantly than know more and then have to be somewhat responsible.PP is the extreme version of this–rather be a bomb thrower than have any responsibility.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T19:23:04.269Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Overnight Russian air attacks wounded eight and damaged residential buildings around Ukraine on Monday night. Ukrainian drones are targeting power and oil facilities in the west and northwestern regions of Russia.

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Roundup: Ford’s false “mandate” demands

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Ontario premier Doug Ford confirmed that yes, he will be calling an early election on Wednesday, and spouted a bunch of bullshit about needing a “strong mandate” to deal with Trump, which is fiction. He went so far as to call for the “largest mandate in Ontario history,” which veers dangerously close into one-party-state delusions. And incredibly, Ford said “So you better pray that we get elected, because I’m going to protect everyone’s job, including the media’s job,” which no he won’t, and then said, “Imagine Bonnie Crombie or Marit Stiles sitting across from President Trump negotiating a deal. It would be an absolute disaster. And God help us if that ever happens.” Premiers do not engage in international negotiations. Ever. That is explicitly outside of their jurisdiction. Ford is not going to negotiate with Trump, even if he thinks that “businessman to businessman” they can work something out.

This is pure distraction. Ford has been planning on an early election for months, and now he has Trump as a fig-leaf of an excuse. He wanted to go to an election before the federal election because he doesn’t want Pierre Poilievre to taint his chances in 2026, when the next election is supposed to be held, and he’s afraid of this nonsense “theory” that Ontarians like to have different parties in power federally and provincially. And by running against Trump, he figures he can distract everyone from his corruption (RCMP investigation ongoing) and absolute mismanagement of the healthcare system to the point of its collapse, his dismantling of the post-secondary education system, and the size of the deficits he’s been running after all of his lamentations about Kathleen Wynne’s record when he has done worse by absolutely every metric. But Trump? Well, that’s a real distraction, and his playacting the “Captain Canada” role has been helping him build that, even though he hasn’t actually filled any federal vacuum in leadership (there is a conscious decision not to react to every Trump utterance), and it’s already had the Baby Spice effect on people’s brains.

Meanwhile, his constant claims that he needs a “mandate” is a fraught political concept that doesn’t actually mean anything in a Westminster system. He has a majority legislature. His opposition parties are largely ineffective or in disarray (and he has invoked the Notwithstanding Clause to neuter third-party groups from campaiging against him). Those opposition leaders said they will support anything he needs to do to counter the effect of any Trump tariffs. His claims that he needs a “mandate” to do this is an import that doesn’t actually mean anything. He was elected to govern for four years—he doesn’t need to call an election every time a crisis comes up to say that he needs a “mandate” to deal with it. Nothing would get done if he did. This is naked self-interest, and it needs to be exposed as such, but the Queen’s Park media won’t, and I suspect that Uncle Doug will sail to another election victory, both because he continues to beguile the population, and the opposition parties continue to be useless. It’s absolutely embarrassing.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a drone barrage against residential buildings in Kyiv overnight Friday, killing three. Russians claim they are about to overtake the town of Velyka Novosilka in the Donetsk region. Ukraine launched an overnight drone attack against one of Russia’s largest oil refineries in the Ryazan region, causing an explosion and damage. Reuters got access to the drone unit that is launching these long-range attacks into Russia to damage their war capabilities.

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Roundup: Day one depravity

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Yesterday was inauguration day in the US, and it was pretty much as horrible as you can imagine, with the pardoning of insurrectionists, and the executive order that made a full-on assault on the rights of trans people (which is always the first target of authoritarian regimes, followed by the rest of the queer communities). Oh, and Elon Musk threw a Nazi salute. So yeah, it was pretty much everything you thought it would be.

I think the pardons are the worst thing thus far because they signal that political violence on behalf of Trump is to be rewarded.But the anti-trans stuff might be worse because it is directly targeting a vulnerable minority.So many choices for the worst. It will be a daily thing.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman.bsky.social) 2025-01-21T01:25:06.197Z

What didn’t happen on day one was the tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Instead, word came out early in the morning that Trump wouldn’t sign them on day one, and he would instead order an investigation into trade imbalances, and so on. So that was a reprieve, or a stay of execution, right? Danielle Smith certainly thought so, and started taking credit for it. Her followers and media apologists quickly amplified that self-praise. And then, after a few hours, Trump said that yes, the tariffs would be coming as of February 1st. Oops.

How did these age?

— Greg MacEachern (@gregmaceachern.bsky.social) 2025-01-21T01:25:33.384Z

That was day one, and we can only imagine what worse predations are to come. There will be a number of demands for retaliation, but the government is keeping their powder dry for the moment, as is probably best. This may yet come to nothing, because Trump believes he’s an ace negotiator and these are his usual tactics to extract some kind of “win” from us, because that’s who he is. It may yet come to naught, but it could still be a kneecapping of our economy. It’s still too early to say, but nobody should be doing victory laps right now—especially those who tried to obey in advance.

https://bsky.app/profile/jrobson.bsky.social/post/3lg7y2jnygs2t

Yes. Yes it is.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-20T18:35:12.136Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s state investigation bureau has detained two generals and a colonel accused of negligence in failing to adequately defend the Kharkiv region last year.

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