Tag Archives: Jason Kenney

Roundup: Mixed messages about deeper integration

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Late last week, prime minister Mark Carney was at the Global Progress Action Summit in Toronto, and gave a speech that seems to be a bit of a Rorschach test about how you feel about him and the job he’s doing. While I believe he’s correct in saying that the loss of control people feel with affordability and the rise of digital asbestos leads to a “politics of grievance,” I am less convinced the same is true for immigration, and that it has proven a reliable scapegoat by everyone, Carney included, which is absolutely dangerous—especially when he uses phrases like “taking back control.” He also says that the current moment has been “seized by politicians who seek to destroy and dismantle and progressives must answer by building,” but he has been eroding and quietly dismantling the actual progressive programmes brought in by his predecessor. The fact that he is calling himself a “progressive” is stretching the definition to its breaking point.

Amidst this, there was another statement that raises even more eyebrows, which is that “Like Mexico, Canada remains open to deeper integration, including options for fortress North America in (certain) sectors. And to be clear, those offers are on the table.” Deeper integration? Fortress North America? So, after all of the talk about how being solely dependent on the US as a single trading partner has been a strategic weakness and that we need to diversify so that we have options and can’t be held hostage, we want to integrate even more closely in strategic sectors with the same country that has been trying to hold us hostage, threatening our sovereignty, and which has taken to bullying us because they think they can get away with it without consequence? I mean, I get that we cannot fully decouple from the US because of geography (and even Taiwan trades mostly with China, because of geography), but this message seems at odds with everything happening, and it’s really hard to see how he can promise this without some pretty heavy caveats up front, and I’m not exactly seeing anything that inspires me with confidence.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-05-10T23:08:01.480Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia violated the ceasefire by making drone strikes on the front lines, and Ukraine launched a few drones in response. Putin claims the war will be winding down soon, but said they will be victorious, but are even further away from their aims, so we’ll see. Here is a look into the dispute between Ukraine and Israel over shipments of stolen grain, and why Israel is uncomfortably close to Russia.

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Roundup: Taking what advice on appointments?

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Prime minister Mark Carney once again said on Wednesday that Senate appointments will be made “in due course,” which doesn’t help when nearly ten percent of the Chamber’s seats are vacant or will be before summer is out, but for the first time, he indicated that he would be preserving the independent appointment committees. Sort of. (Currently only the federal members of these committees remain in place, and those for Nova Scotia, but none of the other provinces). “I will take into account the advice of the independent advisory committee that was established by my predecessor,” was what Carney said.

The problem is that’s not actually saying anything. Taking advice into account? Either these committees will be providing short-lists for appointments that Carney will choose from, or they won’t be. That was the point—they took the applications (which was always a mistake—they should have been doing the searching for worthwhile nominees to tap on the shoulder), vetted them, and honed them down to the short-lists, which Trudeau would then choose from, because he remains constitutionally responsible for those appointments. But what “advice” are they supposed to be offering if not a short-list of candidates? Will he look at their list and then decide to choose one of his friends from another hedge fund or big bank? Will he give them a list to do due diligence on? Maybe. None of this is clear, and it looks like he either doesn’t understand this responsibility that is part of his office, or he doesn’t care, and I’m not sure which is worse at this point when he’s been in office for a year now.

Meanwhile, Carney also said that he’s waiting on the joint parliamentary committee report before coming to any decision on the MAiD expansion for irremediable mental health issues, but it cannot be understated that said committee has been an absolute sham process. The two co-chairs are hostile to MAiD and have stacked the witnesses to be overwhelmingly against it, and have sidelined groups like major national psychological and psychiatric organisations who might actually argue that they can provide adequate safeguards. This is just going to result in more Charter litigation, and so many people will continue to suffer needlessly because a bunch of MPs and senators were too squeamish to actually listen to evidence that they didn’t want to hear.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-05-06T19:08:02.023Z

Ukraine Dispatch

In spite of Ukraine giving Russia an early start to their Victory Day ceasefire, Russia attacked several cities in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 27 people. The new Hungarian government returned to Ukraine the confiscated $82 million USD in cash and gold that was seized while transiting the country.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/2051983745297617183

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Roundup: Some noticeable omissions from the GDP concerns

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The latest GDP data was released on Friday, when the House wasn’t sitting, so the Conservatives spent yesterday making up for it, both with concern-trolling questions during QP, plus a lengthy statement about their concern about the “grim picture” of the Canadian economy. Yes, real GDP was flat in November, but that seems to be about as far as they are willing to read, because if you scratch the surface, one of the biggest drags on the economy was the fact that those motor vehicles and parts numbers were down 6.4 percent as a result of the global shortage of semiconductors. That is most assuredly not the fault of the Liberal government. Without that drag, it’s likely that the GDP would have been in the positive for the month, in spite of the other economic drags.

All of these words from the Conservatives, and none of them point out that Trump's trade war is the primary cause of this economic malaise (for which we have been surprisingly resilient to date). No, it's all the Liberals' fault.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-02-02T21:38:44.075Z

The thing is, much as with Poilievre’s big speech on Friday, there is absolutely no mention of Trump in their statement like there wasn’t in the speech. Trump and his trade war are having a deleterious effect on our economy, because we grew over-reliant on them as an export market because they’re right there, and they were a willing market that was simply too easy to trade with. Disentangling parts of our economy from theirs is going to take time, and we are taking damage from it, but to be frank, most economists figured we’d be in a recession by now as a result of Trump, and we haven’t been, showing that we had some more resilience than they initially thought. But the fact that the Conservatives cannot acknowledge the reality of the situation in order to blame the Liberals is sad and pathetic.

And it’s not just the GDP data. They’ve been doing this with food price inflation, and putting out a bunch of absolute nonsense to “prove” that their obsession with imaginary “hidden taxes” and environmental laws are the real problems, not climate change, not Trump, not factors beyond our control. Nope, it’s all Liberals and their deficits. And because they get so little pushback on it, from either the government or the media (though, to be fair, David Cochrane was actually producing data to push back on Power & Politics yesterday), they get away with this false version of reality and people believe them. It’s a problem, but nobody wants to actually acknowledge it because that seems like work, or math, which they are allergic to.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-02-02T14:08:02.462Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia is once again attacking Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other major centres, destroying energy infrastructure after a “ceasefire” for a whole couple of days. Russia also claims to have taken another settlement in Zaporizhzhia region.

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Roundup: Trying to jam the Liberals on the MOU

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Because Pierre Poilievre thinks he’s a tactical genius, he has announced that next week’s Conservative Supply Day motion will be about the MOU with Alberta, and forcing a vote on the language about a pipeline to the Pacific, in defiance of the tanker ban.

It’s a transparent attempt to try and jam the Liberals, at least rhetorically, into supporting the motion in order to show support for the MOU, after which Poilievre can keep saying “You supported it!” and “Give me the date when construction starts,” as though there’s a proponent, a project and a route already lined up (to say nothing about the long-term contracts about who is going to buy the product once it’s built, because yes, that does matter). The thing is, these kinds of motions are non-binding, and really means nothing in the end. So if a number of Liberals vote against it, it doesn’t actually mean anything, other than the rhetorical notion that lo, they are not fully in lock-step on something, which actually sets them apart from pretty much every other party where uniformity and loyalty to the leader and all of his positions are constantly being enforced in one way or another. Maybe he will tolerate differences of opinion—or maybe he’ll crack the whip. We’ll see when Tuesday gets here.

Ukraine Dispatch

The International Atomic Agency says the protective shield around Chornobyl has been damaged by Russian strikes.

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Roundup: “Clarifying” only to the media

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

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

Immigration polling

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

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

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

Ukraine Dispatch

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

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

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Roundup: No First Ladies in Canada, so stop asking

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Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, I’m going to sigh and rub the bridge of my nose, and maybe massage my temples a few times of this particular doozy of a piece in The Walrus about Mark Carney’s wife, Diana Fox Carney. The subhed refers to her as the “unofficial First Lady,” but in the story itself, it just refers to her as a “First Lady” along with other spouses of heads of state or heads of government interchangeably, and I just can’t you guys.

Guys. Stop it.Canada's "First Lady" is Queen Camilla. Stop trying to import Americanisms, even if you try and couch them in "unofficial" status.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-15T11:44:05.416Z

First of all, it matters that we’re a constitutional monarchy and not a presidential republic. That means that our “First Lady,” if we were to have one, would be Queen Camilla. If you were discounting the Canadian monarch, the next candidate would be the spouse of the Governor General (who once upon a time was called the “Chatelaine/Chatelain of Rideau Hall” as an unofficial title). Yes, this matters, in particular because the difference between a head of state and a head of government matters a great deal, particularly when it comes to the kind of role they play within government, and just because the American system fuses the two together, that’s pretty much unique in the world, and is a far cry from how our Westminster system operates. And right at nearly the very bottom of the piece, she writes:

In this way, being a first lady in Canada is fundamentally different from being one in the US, where the position, while unofficial, comes with an office and staff. In Canada, the prime minister’s spouse has no formal role or institutional support, and technically isn’t even the partner of a head of state. As a result, the title “first lady” doesn’t really apply in the same way.

No kidding! In fact, it undermines the whole gods damned point of your story. You just tried to compare apples and hedgehogs, tried to mash two fundamentally different concepts together, and then was like “Oh well, maybe she’ll get more active at some point!” No! We don’t elect spouses, and they don’t have a role for a reason. If she wants to have a role, she should seek a seat. (This especially goes for Poilievre’s wife, by the way). But trying to jam the spouse of a prime minister into the “First Lady” box is both fundamentally wrong, and a sign of really lazy conceptualizing of how our system of government works. The Walrus should absolutely know better.

Speaking of terrible reporting, the Globe and Mail put out a story yesterday that had the headline that “Liberal staffers strategized over $1-billion loan for Chinese ferries while Freeland dismissed federal connection,” which sounds like they were maybe somehow involved in the loan or procurement while claiming otherwise. But no. The story was about how comms staffers in ministers’ offices were trying to spin the story. That’s it. I saw lots of reactions on social media from people who read the headline and assumed that something hinky was going on that should be looked into by parliamentarians, but no. It’s about comms staffers spinning. Can we just not? This was not a story, and it especially was not a story about some kind of cover-up.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-14T20:02:07.093Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a massive attack against Zaporizhzhia, killing at least one and injuring at least seven so far. International monitors say that cluster munitions have resulted in over 1200 civilian casualties since the Russian invasion began in 2022.

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Roundup: Kenney’s omitted immigration changes

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The Conservatives are full-on throwing everything they can at the wall to see what sticks, and yesterday it was the moral panic over immigration figures. Pierre Poilievre put out a press release decrying that permits issued had blown past the proposed caps, and that the system is “facing collapse,” which I’m pretty sure is bullshit, before promising to propose “fixes” in the fall, which you can already be assured will mostly be comprised of dog-whistles. (And remember, the problem is less with immigration numbers than it is with premiers who are not doing their jobs with regards to building housing of properly funding healthcare).

Enter Jason Kenney, who went on an extended rant about how he “fixed” the system when he was minister, and how Trudeau and company broke it, but this is also revisionist history. He talks about the sweeping reforms he brought in in 2010, and how everyone praised it, but he omitted that he blunted most of those reforms before they could be implemented. You see, in 2010, it was a hung parliament and the Conservatives couldn’t push through draconian immigration legislation, so they needed to work with the opposition (most notably Olivia Chow as the NDP’s immigration critic), and they passed a bill that had plenty of safeguards in place. In 2011, there was an election where they got a majority, and before the 2010 bill could be fully implemented (because the coming-into-force provisions were going to take as long as a year), Kenney rammed through a new bill that curtailed most of those safeguards, and used tales of international migration cartels, and human smuggling rings that would bring people into the country to collect social assistance, which those cartels would then collect, and so on. Yes, there were problems with high rates of claims from certain countries, but like most things, Kenney was less than honest and building his scaremongering case, while also doing the thing where he played economic migrants against asylum seekers, and made “good immigrants versus bad asylum claimants” arguments to justify his legislation.

https://twitter.com/jkenney/status/1960088637925961993

The other thing that Kenney is blatantly ignoring is that the world is not the same world as it was in 2010, and the migration situation is vastly different than it was back then. So yes, the current government is facing different challenges, but I wouldn’t expect Kenney to be honest about well, pretty much anything, because that’s who Jason Kenney is.

effinbirds.com/post/7790141…

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-08-24T20:02:02.229Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine has been stepping up drone attacks on Russian oil refineries and fuel terminals, squeezing their war economy.

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Roundup: A Harper-esque repackaging

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Day twenty, and it was a pretty quiet day in terms of announcements, where both the Conservatives and NDP just repackaged their existing promises. Mark Carney was in Ottawa to meet with his Canada-US Cabinet committee, and didn’t make any announcements, and had very limited media availability. When he did speak, Carney warned that global economies were slowing because of the US tariffs, and said that part of the meeting was about giving instructions to officials for preparing for negotiations with Trump post-election, whoever forms/retains government.

Pierre Poilievre was in St. Catharines, Ontario, where he repackaged his announcements to date and called them the Canada First Economic Action Plan™, because he decided that what he really needed a Harper-esque branding. He later put out a release about making banks recognise skilled trade apprenticeships to be able to put RESPs toward. He also declared that a Conservative government wouldn’t legislate restrictions on abortion (but I suspect there is a truck-sized loophole to that promise around private members’ bills about the rights of the unborn or some other chicanery which would get an ostensible free vote), and rejected Kory Teneycke’s assessment of “campaign malpractice.” Poilievre will be back in Ottawa today, and making an announcement in Nepean.

Jagmeet Singh was in Ottawa at the Broadbent Centre’s Progress Summit, where he packaged his recycled policy ideas to date as protecting “what makes Canada, Canada.” Singh will be in Timmins, Ontario, this evening.

In other campaign news, here is a comparison of the Liberal and Conservative policies on criminal justice. The CBC decided to start fact-checking crowd size claims at Liberal and Conservative events using crowd science experts, and they are both over-reporting (though the Conservatives are doing so much more egregiously).

Ukraine Dispatch

The Ukrainian parliament looks to extend martial law powers, which pushes back the possibility of new elections. The Americans’ special envoy on peace negotiations with Russia wants Ukraine to give up four regions that Russia only partially occupies, which Ukraine is rejecting.

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Roundup: Running interference for Scott Moe

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There is no shortage of terrible opinion pieces in Canadian media, but I believe that the prize for utterly missing the point comes from the Globe and Mail yesterday, where John Ibbitson tried to lay the blame for Saskatchewan’s flirtation with lawlessness on Justin Trudeau, with the headline accusing him of “botching” national unity. It’s a…curious accusation, because the implication therein is that if the federal government doesn’t accede to every demand or tantrum of the provinces that they can be accused of damaging national unity. I take that back. It’s not curious, it’s utterly absurd and wrong.

Ibbitson goes to great pains to both point out how unprecedented it is that Saskatchewan is going to break federal law, but then turns around to run interference for Scott Moe and tries to insist that this is really Trudeau’s fault because he used federal spending powers to “bend provinces” to his will rather than negotiate, and in imposing the federal carbon price on provinces who failed to meet national standards. Both of those are half-truths at best—there is nothing illegitimate about using federal spending powers to get provinces on board to ensure that there are equitable services across the country, particularly for programmes with greater economic good such as early learning and child care. As for the carbon price, provinces had an opportunity to come up with their own system that met minimum standards, and most provinces refused. He also didn’t explain that when the system was enacted, most provinces already had carbon pricing in place (Alberta and Ontario both changed governments who dismantled their systems and were subsequently subjected to the federal system), and he doesn’t spell out that BC and Quebec have their own systems that meet the standards.

Yes, the federal government should have found a different solution to the problem of heating oil than the “pause,” and doomed themselves when they announced it with all of their Atlantic MPs behind them. I’m not disputing that. But while Ibbitson insists that this doesn’t justify Saskatchewan’s lawlessness, he thinks that the best solution is to “reach some sort of compromise.” Like what? He won’t say. He just laments that “Canada doesn’t work like that right now.” Did it ever? What compromise can there be when one province breaks the law and tries to justify it with a fig leaf of “fairness” but obscures the facts and truth of the situation? This kind of white bread, milquetoast “Why can’t we find a compromise?” handwringing is a hallmark of a certain generation of punditry, and it serves absolutely no one.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces downed 33 out of 37 Russian drones fired at Odesa, the remainder of which damaged infrastructure, though there were other attacks in the north in Sumy and Kharkiv that cost civilian lives. There are concerns that safety is deteriorating at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as the international community keeps trying to convince Russians to leave the site. India says they have encountered a human trafficking racket which promises young men jobs in Russia, and then forces them to fight in Ukraine on their behalf.

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Roundup: Arguing over an appearance already scheduled

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It’s not even a sitting week, and yet we were treated to another instalment of the parliamentary clown show that has infected our House of Commons. The Procedure and House Affairs committee held an emergency meeting to demand that David Johnston appear before them to explain his reasons for not recommending a public inquiry. But the moment they got there, the chair said that Johnston was already scheduled to appear at the committee on June 6th, and that this had been arranged previously, and it just confirmed that this insistence he appear right away was just really, really bad theatre.

And then it went downhill from there, as MPs spent the next four hours debating a motion for Johnston to appear even sooner than the 6th, for no less than three hours, alone, because remember, they need to put on a bit song and dance about how they’re so serious! about all of these allegations. As I said, bad theatre. And then, the Liberals and NDP decided to try and be clever about this, and include a recommendation in the motion that all party leaders go through the security clearance process in order to read the full report and all of its classified evidence used to compile it. Well, that didn’t go over very well, and in the end, the Conservatives voted against their own motion because they didn’t want to be called out for refusing to actually read the full documents.

Spending four hours to try and sound tougher about a pre-scheduled meeting, to give themselves the last word, is just one more reason why our Parliament is no longer a serious institution. It’s appalling that they have wasted everyone’s time and resource like this, because Michael Cooper needed to make himself look like a tough guy. Inexcusable.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Wagner Group mercenaries are preparing to turn over control of their positions in Bakhmut to Russian soldiers, while Ukraine says that Wagner is only turning over positions on the outskirts of the city, and that they have drawn Russian forces into the city, where they are inflicting high casualties and weakening Russian defensive lines elsewhere. A prisoner swap took place for 106 Ukrainian soldiers, some of them captured in the fighting in Bakhmut. Russian control of one of the dams along the Dnipro river is causing flooding because they haven’t been working to level the water flow with the other dams in the network.

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