Tag Archives: Lebanon

QP: Demanding a strategic oil reserve

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The PM was on his way to Yellowknife, and Pierre Poilievre was elsewhere, in advance of his own trip to the US, leaving it up to Melissa Lantsman to lead off. She complained that there is no strategic oil reserve, and demanded the government adopt their plan to create one, to which Tim Hodgson explained how the IEA works, which is that net importers have reserves while net exporters don’t. Lantsman shot back that just because you don’t need one it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, before she demanded the government scrap environmental laws to pump more oil. Hodgson responded that the Conservatives apparently can’t take a lesson from the Alberta government in working together to build. Gérard took over in French to demand the same oil reserve, to which Steven MacKinnon repeated Hodgson’s first response in French. Deltell accused the government of having “contempt” for Canadian energy, before he pivoted to food price inflation, and this time MacKinnon reminded him that he voted against all help for Canadians who needed it. Chris Warkentin took over, and in English, he too read the script on food price inflation with the falsehoods about “hidden taxes.” Wayne Long took a swipe about Poilievre going to Europe for no reason while Carney was in the Asia Pacific to sign trade deals including uranium. Warkentin tried again and Julie Dabrusin reminded him that the industrial carbon price has zero effect on food prices.

"A ten-year record of shutting down our oil and gas sector"

— Aaron Wherry (@aaronwherry.bsky.social) 2026-03-12T18:23:43.134Z

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she worried about the government not informing the public about Canadian personnel at a military base in Kuwait being targeted by Iran. Anita Anand said that Canada is not participating in the conflict, but could not say more for security reasons. Normandin tried again, and Anand again stated that all Canadian Armed Forces personnel in the region are safe and sound, and then made a pitch for international law. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay tried this yet again, and Anand repeated her same answer.

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Roundup: Credulous takes on private members’ bills

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There have been a few stories over the past few days that have raised my ire, so I’m going to take a few minutes to point a few things out. One of them is this CBC story yesterday about Jenny Kwan’s private member’s bill, and that as many as sixteen Liberals are considering supporting it. My beef: the sub-hed on the story reading “Vote would mark first time some in caucus split from government line under Carney.” Split from the government line? It’s a private member’s bill. Those are free votes by default. That’s the whole point of them. CBC should know better, and frankly, I really don’t like it when the media tries to play party whip while at the same time wishing that MPs were more independent.

The other story yesterday was about Conservative MP Dan Albas’ private member’s bill, which purports to empower Canada Post to deliver alcohol across provincial lines. Most of the stories in various outlets talked about how Dominic LeBlanc appeared to support the bill in Question Period, which he actually did not. What LeBlanc said was that this is an area of provincial regulation (which only the Star’s story mentions), but that he would bring it up when he meets with his provincial counterparts in a few weeks because he thinks it’s a good idea. And more to the point, this bill is a gimmick, which Albas and Pierre Poilievre insist overrides provincial regulation, but it actually doesn’t because, and just puts Canada Post in a bind. It would be great if any story could point that fact out, or talked to a lawyer, but nope, they focused on LeBlanc’s answer in QP, and even then couldn’t get the nuance right.

The third is a story from CBC on Monday, which was very concerned that a lot of bills are passing “on division,” meaning without a vote. The problem was the initial sub-hed on the story which stated “Half the bills passed in the House this session have cleared 3rd reading without a head count or consensus,” which is wrong, because “on division” is consensus you don’t need a vote—the “or consensus” was later dropped from the sub-hed. Of course, the real reason is that the Conservatives don’t want to go to an election, so they’re not going to force a vote and have Andrew Scheer and Scott Reid hide behind the curtains again to ensure that the math is right and that they won’t accidentally do something stupid with the vote counts given how everything is so close, but the person you reached as your source for your explainer is Peter Van Loan? Possibly the worst Government House Leader in decades (which is saying a lot)? It came across as amateurish, and like CBC’s parliamentary bureau has a hard time understanding how parliament works, which is not a good look.

When your parliamentary bureau doesn't understand parliament, dumb things happen.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-09T13:50:45.982Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-03-10T21:22:01.632Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia dropped three guided bombs on Sloviansk in the east, and hit Kharkiv and Dnipro with drones, injuring another twenty people. Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian invaders out of Dnipropetrovsk region, while Russia claims to be making gains in Donbas. Ukraine hit a missile plant in Bryansk region in Russia.

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Roundup: Conflating failed with fraudulent

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The Conservatives went ahead with their Supply Day motion of scapegoating asylum claimants for the strain on the healthcare system, and so many of their claims are based on falsehoods. The claim that a failed claimant is “bogus” of “fraudulent” is not true, and plenty of claimants rejected by the IRB win their appeal in Federal Court. The numbers of actually fraudulent claims are very small, and even rejected claimants may be rejected on technical grounds. Trying to conflate everyone as “bogus” or “fraudulent” is more of the MAGA mindset that they’re trying to tap into, because this is who the party has become. It’s too bad the government is too invested in their own attempts to scapegoat newcomers for problems that the premiers mostly created and refuse to fix, because they should be absolutely savaging the Conservatives on this, and they can’t—and won’t.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-02-24T22:22:02.270Z

Ukraine Anniversary

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which was supposed to be a “three-day war.” There were a number of speeches and a moment of silence in the House of Commons to mark the occasion, so it didn’t go unnoticed. Prime minister Mark Carney announced that Canada will extend Operation Unifier to keep training Ukrainian troops for another three years, as well as donating another 400 armoured vehicles, and extending more sanctions. (Not announced were any resources or a competent federal policing agency to enforce those sanctions).

Four years have passed since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia was supposed to win in three days. Instead, Ukraine reinvented modern warfare, built a drone industry, and can destroy a thousand Russian soldiers in a day. Ukraine can win.

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T09:58:52.954Z

Prime minister Carney's statement on the 4th anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T15:30:17.057Z

Conservative statement on the 4th anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T15:26:12.386Z

NDP statement on the 4th anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T15:26:12.387Z

https://twitter.com/SenGagne/status/2026324346189283440

Ukraine Dispatch

European leaders were in Kyiv to show support on the anniversary of the start of the war. Here is a look at how the attacks on energy infrastructure is dragging down Ukraine’s economy, and here is a look at how drone warfare has changed the nature of the conflict over the past four years.

https://twitter.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/2026404778884932075

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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 Pollyanna about Tuesday’s outcome

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I have not said much about the American election because not my circus, not my monkeys, and I really can’t get worked up about a contest I have no say in, however, comments made by the US ambassador to Canada this weekend have utterly boggled my mind. “I firmly believe that regardless of the outcome of the election, the United States is going to remain the most durable democracy in the world,” David Cohen said, and went on about how democracy will “easily” survive whatever the outcome of that election.

No. America has been teetering on the brink of autocracy for a while now, and while I get that his job is to be blandly reassuring as the ambassador, this just smacks of being a giant Pollyanna. And for Canada, where so much of what happens in the US leaks over the border and affects our politics here, those autocratic impulses are not far behind either. We already have provincial governments using tactics lifted directly from the authoritarian playbook, as is Pierre Poilievre, and he’s not shy about it either. And if America stops defending other democracies around the world under an autocratic regime, things are going to get very difficult indeed as these democracies are under threat from Russia and other autocratic actors who want to break them in order to show their own populations that democracy doesn’t work, so better to suck it up and live with the corruption of their autocratic states. And then there is Trump’s vision of NATO as a protection racket, that he fully intends to upend, and already Viktor Orbán is salivating at the thought of a Trump victory handing Ukraine to Russia, destroying a democracy the way he has been doing in Hungary.

There will be consequences, and I don’t think it helps anyone for Cohen to shrug it off like that.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided bomb hit a supermarket in Kharkiv, injuring at least five. Ukrainian forces destroyed 66 out of 92 Russian drones sent into the country overnight Saturday, and fortunately, no casualties were reported. Russians have also taken control of the village of Vyshneve in the Donetsk region, while Ukrainian forces hold back one of the most powerful offensives since the start of the invasion.

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Roundup: So he is hiding something?

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Over the past couple of days, Justin Trudeau and Karina Gould have been intimating that Pierre Poilievre has “something to hide” by not seeking his security clearance. It’s a stupid talking point, it trivialises the seriousness of the issue, and it descends to the same childish accusations that the Conservatives are lobbing at the government over the refusal to turn over certain unredacted documents related to SDTC as part of a banana republic production order (as the subject of the current privilege filibuster). It’s not cute, and it doesn’t make them look like the adults in the room.

And then along comes Michael Chong, who gave this cockamamie story to the Globe and Mail that because security clearances can involve invasive questions like sexual partners or past drug use, and that Trudeau is “so desperate” that he would use that information to publicly undermine Poilievre. But, and former CSIS director Ward Elcock made the point in the same piece, CSIS would never turn that information over to the PM, no matter the political pressure, so not only is Chong just making up conspiracy bullshit (as he has been wont to do increasingly of late), he is actually adding fuel fire by making it look like Poilievre does indeed have something to hide. Like, my dude, did you even think about your stupid conspiracy for five whole seconds before you blurted it out to Bob Fife? Honestly.

Remember when Michael Chong was a man of principle and didn't just constantly make up shitty conspiracy theories to suck up to his leader? #cdnpoli www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-10-24T17:20:23.744Z

We all know that the reasons Poilievre won’t get the clearance is because it would require him to lie slightly less than he does currently. Poilievre even tacitly admitted this when he declared in QP “This prime minister will not gag me!” (Phrasing!) But by trying to take this “hiding something” schtick across the board is just tiresome when everyone should be striving to be grown-ups about this.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians launched a thermobaric ammunition attack on Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, while Ukrainian forces shot down 40 out of 50 drones overnight. Russian forces have been making a fast advance into the town of Selydove, which they have been trying to take control of. Ukrainian intelligence suggests that North Korean troops are already in the Kursk region.

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Roundup: Inappropriate behaviour but no traitors

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Of the testimony at the Foreign Interference committee yesterday was the prime minister’s current National Security and Intelligence Advisor, who spoke about the allegations surrounding MPs in the NSICOP report. She stated that, having seen that intelligence and its updates since the report, she’s seen no indication of “traitors” in our Parliament. What she saw in the intelligence was inappropriate conduct and a lack of judgment in certain individuals, but no espionage, sabotage, or putting of Canadian security at risk.

This brings us back to the next steps in terms of any bad behaviour by MPs or lack of judgment, and what should be done about it, and once again, the answer is and always has been that the party leaders need to get involved. That means security clearances, and full briefings on the materials, so that they know what has been alleged, and that they can take corrective action in some fashion. (And before you say anything, yes Poilievre has a clearance as a former minister, but he has refused to be briefed under the specious reason that if he gets briefed, he’ll be “gagged,” which is nonsense and he knows it).

But as Philippe Lagassé points out, the chair of NSICOP also should have done more to be transparent than simply say what was in the report is enough, and leave it at that. Most people didn’t and won’t read the report, and media outlets taking those two or three sentences without context elsewhere in the document didn’t help either. Elizabeth May demonstrated that he could have gone further and said more without breaching any kind of confidentiality, but he chose not to for his own reasons, and so we’ve had months of suspicion for little reason.

#cdnpoli, all day every day.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-10-09T13:27:43.894Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile hit the port in Odesa, killing six, injuring eight, and damaging a Panamanian-flagged container ship. A further drone attack in the same region hit an apartment building, injuring another five. A Ukrainian drone strike has hit another Russian arms depot, which includes arms provided by North Korea.

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Roundup: Unserious about monetary policy

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Amidst party leaders making boneheaded tax promises in the three provincial elections going on right now (no, BC, you can’t forgo taxes on tips without trying to change federal tax authorities), economist Stephen Gordon has decided to revisit Pierre Poilievre’s promise to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada—something he doesn’t have the power to do—and looks at the supposed reasons why. Unsurprisingly, they don’t add up.

In other words, Poilievre is performatively trying to once again blame inflation on someone other than the global supply chain crunch, or the climate-related droughts that impacted food prices (to say nothing of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), and has been pursuing bullshit attacks as a distraction. Those attacks included trying to bring the Bank under the purview of the Auditor General so that they could order her to do “performance audits” on their decisions during COVID (something she has no expertise in doing), because they are not serious people, and get all of their ideas about macroeconomics from crypto bros on YouTube. It’s really, really depressing that anyone thinks they are remotely qualified to govern.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling killed one person and injured six in the eastern city of Sloviansk. A Russian missile also struck near a major Ukrainian airbase, while Russians fired missiles at two grain vessels on the Black Sea. Russian forces have also entered the outskirts of Toretsk, which is another frontline settlement. Ukrainian forces took credit for the strike on an oil depot in occupied Crimea, which has been fuelling Russia’s war effort, as well as sabotaging a Russian minesweeper in its Black Sea fleet.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1843234630754836742

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Roundup: Filibustering their own motion

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The current privilege fight has ground business in the House of Commons to a complete halt, thanks to the tactics of the Conservatives, and they are trying to use this as some form of blackmail on the government, particularly as the government has been unable to move the legislation around the capital gains changes. Andrew Scheer even tried to be cute during the Thursday Question yesterday and said that if the government can’t conduct its own business, then they should call an election. Because of course he did.

While I won’t relitigate why this is an abuse of privilege that sets a terrifying precedent, it has been called out by the Government House Leader that the Conservatives are filibustering themselves because the whole point of this is that it’s supposed to go to the Procedure and House Affairs Committee so that it can be decided upon what should happen, but that’s inconvenient for the Conservatives. They would rather put up every single MP to speak to this issue to run out the clock, and so that they can all recite prepared scripts that scream “Liberal corruption!” even though that’s not what the Auditor General found. (Yes, there were conflicts of interest, but the government was not implicated in this at all). Gould asserts that the Conservatives are trying to keep it away from committee because the moment that committee starts calling witnesses, legal experts will point out the abuse of the parliamentary privilege powers and that this is banana republic behaviour, and she’s not wrong, but the bigger issue here is that the plan  of the Conservatives is to make the House of Commons as completely non-functional as possible through abuse of this privilege debate (which again, should have been over in a couple of hours at most with the matter sent to committee) so that they can claim further justification for an election.

If the other opposition parties wised up and stopped playing along with the Conservatives in their desire to embarrass the government for their own partisan aims, Parliament could be functioning a lot more smoothly and things they want to get passed could, but none of them seem to care much about the long-term implications of their actions (like the banana republic precedents) because scoring points is too much fun. There also remains that the government could prorogue Parliament for a day or two in order to kill the privilege motion, but that could set them up for bigger headaches, particularly as they want certain bills out of the Sente and prorogation would reset the clocks on them. In any case, the dysfunction is intentional, and the Conservatives need to be called out on the lies they are spreading to justify this behaviour.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a major drone attack over Ukraine, targeting 15 regions; casualties included two adults and a child after a drone struck a fuel truck in Chernihiv. Ukraine did hit Russian radar stations inside the country with long-range missiles, while Ukraine’s top commander has ordered defences bolstered in the east after the loss of Vuhledar. New NATO secretary general Mark Rutte visited Kyiv as his first trip in his new role.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1841746253052321929

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Roundup: A promise to waste millions of dollars

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There are a lot of stupid, performative things being said right now, particularly in those three provincial elections, but one of the dumbest yesterday was courtesy of incumbent New Brunswick premier Blaine Higgs, who promised that if re-elected, he will mount a new legal challenge of the federal carbon levy. And to make that worse, several Conservative MPs picked that up and declared during Question Period that the challenge was already underway (it’s not), as though it were a devastating argument for their demands to “axe the tax” or to call an election.

Higgs’ promise is premised entirely on bullshit. There is no basis for him to mount a new challenge because nothing about the programme has changed since the Supreme Court of Canada already ruled that it’s constitutional and within the powers of the federal government, particularly because of the existential challenge that climate change poses to Canadians. The fact that the price is increasing or that we have been though a bout of higher inflation—which has already stabilised and returned to target, and for which the carbon levy did not actually cause any of said inflation because that’s not how inflation works—don’t change any of the legal bases or arguments around the levy. And because the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled, any lower court that Higgs tries to mount a new challenge in is going to tell him to go pound sand.

Higgs is essentially promising to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, because you know that when the courts tell him to go pound sand, they’ll also tell him to reimburse the legal costs of the federal government because they wasted everyone’s time and money in bringing such a frivolous suit in the first place. But there is a political calculus, particularly on the right, where they are prepared to waste millions of dollars in doomed legal challenges because they think that it’s good electoral calculus to show that you’re fighting. Federally, Conservatives have made this argument a number of times when the government didn’t pursue doomed appeals and just made changes, and no doubt Higgs figures that this will work the same way for him. But then again, I guess they’re not bothered by the cognitive dissonance of “we need to balance the budget” and “we need to waste millions of dollars on a doomed legal crusade,” because that might require introspection or self-awareness, both of which are in incredibly short supply in politics these days.

Pretty much all of #cdnpoli. It's really hard to be optimistic about any of it right now.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-10-01T14:21:44.377Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Six civilians were killed and more wounded when Russian artillery struck a bus stop in Kherson. Russian troops have also reached the centre of Vuhledar, a Ukrainian bastion in the strategic high ground of the Donbas region, which is significant because of where it borders and the supply routes it controls. Ukraine is also investigating an apparent shooting of sixteen POWS by Russian troops.

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