Tag Archives: Mark Carney

Canada’s reputation up for sale

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Prime minister Mark Carney is currently in Türkiye to sign a new “strategic partnership” with the Erdogan regime, and once again pretend that there are no human rights concerns in that country, or that the government of a supposed democracy hasn’t been acting in an autocratic manner and delegitimizing its opposition parties, and civil society groups including a recent crackdown on LGBTQ+ groups in the country. Even when a number of European countries put out a statement about the crackdowns, Canada refused to sign on because we’re trying to sign a bilateral trade deal with Türkiye before the end of the year.

In case it hasn’t become perfectly obvious, the government’s line that “Where we have differences of opinion, we discuss those in private” is clearly not good enough. What the public silence means is that a country like Canada doesn’t have a problem with what they’re doing, so it becomes a signal that they can continue such behaviours without repercussions. I’m sure a private scolding is really going to make them sorry! It’s also a tacit signal that our reputation as a defender of human rights is now up for sale. If countries with horrific records (China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and now Türkiye) want Canada to shut up about it, well, all they have to do is wave some dollar signs in front of Carney’s face, and suddenly he’s their best friend, and touting “pragmatism” and “realism.” This kind of transactionalism isn’t values-based (which, remember, Carney claims to care about), nor is it “realistic” or “pragmatic.” It’s crass, money-grubbing, and a betrayal of the things that Canada has at least publicly claimed to stand up for over the past number of decades (even if we had our own issues).

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3myirjyqqu22o

There is a whole other discourse around this about Canada doing business with unsavoury regimes rather than just democracies, because that’s somewhat limiting, but even if that’s the case, it doesn’t mean that we need to be silent and tacitly endorse the things that they’re doing. We can publicly say we’re going to trade with you, but we want to actually engage on human rights. We’ve done it before, and had a whole human rights agreement as part of the free trade deal with Colombia that included reporting mechanisms. The silence is damning, and if Carney wants to at least pretend that he’s a Liberal, he should actually say something out loud for a change.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-10-22T19:08:02.001Z

My Latest:

  • My column worries about the fact that Mark Carney has signalled an openness to constitutional negotiations with some bad actors among the premiers.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take points out that it’s going to be impossible to deprive Alberta separatists of oxygen if we keep treating the false grievances as real.

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Alberta separatists are not chastened

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Even though ballots are still (still!) being counted as of writing time, the general sense is that the remain side of the separation referendum won by approximately 75-25, which is a stomping, but not a roflstomp, and despite what some people are claiming, this is not putting anything to bed. Because Danielle Smith was venal and grasping enough to hold this referendum to appease the separatists she cultivated in her base, she has given them no end of gifts in this referendum—organization, voter lists, and now MAGA-run apps to help with voter identification and organizational support. This is not trivial, because it means that a small but dedicated base can have an outsized impact on the electoral process as a whole in the province, and we’re already seeing that, and they will continue to howl that they are one in four voices in the province (never mind that of that 25 percent, a not insignificant percentage were people who voted yes to “send Ottawa a message,” meaning they didn’t learn their lesson after sending a message to Jim Prentice got Rachel Notley elected). Separatist leaders are already organizing to ensure that Smith doesn’t survive a leadership challenge so that they can install one of their own in the leadership position in the party, and turn the UCP into an actual separatist vehicle. (This may derail the party entirely, mind you, but they have determined that this is their vehicle to achieve their goals without actually organizing their own party). This did not put anything to bed—it has entrenched and emboldened a group who should have been kept marginalized, so thanks for that.

"I'm going to keep feeding you grievance porn but you need to believe in Canada and our capacity to make them give us what we want."What utter fucking bilge.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-21T02:25:13.320Z

And then there are the noxious nine other questions. It looks like a lot of voters didn’t even bother with them, but for those that did, eight of the nine are on track to pass with a little over 50 percent each. (The only one failing is the question on letting the province opt out of social programmes and still getting federal dollars, because there is enough distrust in the competence of a provincial government that is routinely mired in corruption). Nevertheless, the purpose of the exercise was for Smith to manufacture consent to go harder on scapegoating immigrants for the problems she caused with her incompetent government, and the worst part is that a) Pierre Poilievre is chomping at the bit to join in, and b) Mark Carney is also participating, and talking about how they’re going to work with provinces to reduce immigration numbers even more. This is not a good look for a country that is going to be in dire need of more labour to help build the big things they want to build, while it continues to let chronically incompetent provincial governments off the hook for doing fuck all about expanding housing, health care and education capacity for new arrivals which are needed to keep us from population decline.

They're both just going to go gung-ho on scapegoating immigrants, and take this referendum as permisison to do so.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-21T03:14:30.435Z

There is a further issue out of this referendum is that this is yet more confirmation of the rural-urban split in the province, where you have rural areas much more in favour of separation (and opposing immigration, of course). This is one more problem for Danielle Smith and the UCP, as the demographics are irrevocably shifting in the province in a way that will disadvantage them moving forward (which is why she is trying to gerrymander the next provincial election in a desperate move to preserve the status quo). This is something that needs addressing.

https://bsky.app/profile/blakeshaffer.bsky.social/post/3myctl24t5227

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-10-20T19:08:02.085Z

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The aftermath of the referendum starts now

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While the votes for the referendum are being tallied at the time of this writing, the question is mostly how badly the separatists got stomped, but also what comes next. Even if they get roflstomped, as the kids say, this won’t go away quietly, because the separatists are now better organized, they have voter lists, and they are organizing to consolidate power in the UCP, which means Danielle Smith’s days are very likely numbered. But that also isn’t stopping people like Pierre Poilievre and his chosen Alberta referendum appointee, Dane Lloyd, from feeding more grievance porn to the separatists to keep feeding their movement.

This is exactly the problem with the "Lead Not Leave" crowd and the federal Conservatives in this referendum debate—they refuse to disavow any of the manufactured grievances, so they just keep feeding the separatists' machine. www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/opi…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-18T02:16:11.388Z

But it’s not just the separatists, but also the other questions from Smith’s noxious nine questions, which has a lot of immigrants worried about their futures, and is creating a worse environment for everyone involved. Scapegoating immigrants is a Very Bad Thing, but don’t worry, Poilievre thinks he’s clever when he says “It’s not the immigrants, it’s Liberal immigration policy!” Yeah, that’s not what people hear, and frankly, it’s not the lesson that the white nationalists that make up the separatists are taking. The fact that Poilievre doesn’t get that isn’t surprising, but he’s also not nearly as clever as he thinks he is, and that’s a problem.

Meanwhile, the Carney government’s responses are not exactly encouraging either. It sure sounds like they are already capitulating on the immigration question, talking with the province about how they can do more to accommodate Alberta’s wishes (remember two years ago when Smith complained she needed MOAR IMMIGRANTS and that Justin Trudeau was hobbling their economic growth as a result?) This just rewards their bad behaviour and scapegoating. And now Carney himself is essentially opening the door to constitutional talks, but says he needs there to be consensus, but this just sounds to me like inviting trouble. Premiers can’t even get their shit together long enough to finally deal with interprovincial trade barriers, and now you want them to start finding ways to come up with constitutional amendments? How is this remotely responsible given the urgency of the crisis that Carney keeps insisting we’re in. Completely irresponsible behaviour, and I would say he should know better, but it’s not like he’s exactly paying too much attention to how federalism is working these days.

Danielle Smith Needs Albertan Separatists To Keep It Together Todayyoutu.be/eB_hFFSZboM?…

— Clare Blackwood (@clareblackwood.bsky.social) 2026-10-19T14:43:34.058Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-10-18T23:08:01.909Z

My Latest:

  • For National Magazine, I delve into Friday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision on how “rape-shield” laws don’t automatically extended to questions on past sex work.
  • My weekend column points to the choice that Danielle Smith now has with the UCP—kick out the separatists, or let them drag her and her party to defeat.

New episodes released early for C$7+ subscribers. This week I'm with @hscoffield.bsky.social to talk about the Canadian Tax Observatory's recent reports on the "Mega Deductions" and the Disability Tax Credit. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-19T04:13:40.097Z

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Carney says no to the nine

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It was the first of two days in Alberta for Mark Carney in advance of the Alberta referendum, where he spent the day in Calgary doing a bunch of glad-handing in places across the city, including an Indian restaurant and the University of Calgary in advance of his appearance at the Forever Canadian rally. What was most notable was that Carney did tell the attendees of one of his events to “Vote no to the nine,” as a reference to the noxious nine other referendum questions, which include attempting to manufacture consent for further racist scapegoating of immigrants, and to try and get a faux “mandate” to pursue constitutional changes, even though the question on trying to insist on provincial paramountcy of laws under the constitution would actually make it harder to build interprovincial pipelines.

There has never been an "open borders" policy in this country, and she knows it. She was demanding more immigrants until it became convenient to scapegoat those immigrants for the very failures of her government in housing and healthcare. She's just bald-faced lying for her own political benefit.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-16T01:36:15.030Z

Danielle Smith got pissy about Carney’s “No to the nine” statement, and insisted that Carney just doesn’t understand the horrors of the supposed “open-border policy” of Justin Trudeau, which is one hundred percent abject horseshit. There were never open borders, and premiers like Smith decided it was suddenly acceptable to scapegoat immigrants for their failures to properly fund healthcare and education or build housing, or in the case of Ontario especially, to crack down on their scam strip mall colleges, so that’s what they did. Never mind that Smith just two years before was writing to Trudeau to demand more immigrants for their economic growth—the tides turned (thanks in part to a poisoned information ecosystem and far-right actors), so suddenly it was “immigrants bad.” It’s frankly disgusting that this narrative goes unchallenged (and no, both-sidesing is not challenging scapegoating).

Meanwhile, the Star wrote about the “Christian” push for Alberta separatism, but couldn’t bring themselves to write that this is not “Christianity,” it’s Christian nationalism. The most galling part is that it named an American who is part of the Christian nationalism movement in that country as though it’s separate and distinct when in fact, it’s the very same movement in Alberta. And I cannot stress this enough—Alberta separatism is a white nationalist and Christian nationalist project. There is nothing to be cute about, or to try and downplay—it’s explicitly the roots of the movement, and the animating discourse throughout it (including why Smith is going hard on her scapegoating). Legacy media shouldn’t soft-pedal this because it needs to be called out for what it is.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-10-15T19:08:03.898Z

My Latest:

My column points out that with separatism at low levels of support in Alberta and Quebec, the problem is not national unity, but populist politicians exploiting division.

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Detroit Theatre

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In a bit of bizarre theatre, Pierre Poilievre went to Detroit yesterday to talk to business leaders about the benefits of tariff-free trade. In other words, something every rational person already knows, but that Trump refuses to believe, and along the way, others have become convinced of the benefits of tariffs, including certain Democrats and the United Auto Workers. But first, he had to hold a press conference in Windsor to give his usual talking points about how the two governments need to get a deal, even though there is no deal to be had.

Poilievre is off to Detroit to engage in some more theatre.This is solely for the benefit of his online audience.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-12T18:39:06.830Z

But perhaps more bizarre was how his trade critic, Kyle Seeback, went on Power & Politics later in the day to articulate that apparently, the Carney government just hasn’t found the proper win-win with Trump yet. No, seriously, that’s the position of the Conservatives, because clearly, this is Carney’s fault and Trump must be a rational actor. He then had to choke out a bunch of bullshit when pressed about how there could possibly be a deal when Trump can’t live up to any agreement he makes (and then spiralled as he insisted that the government taking over TMX was bad, and that nationalizing Stelco would be bad, but having the government build Pacific Link would be good, because tHaT’s DiFfErEnT!) Seeback revealed himself to be terminally unserious, as much as his whole party is terminally unserious, particularly on this file. They keep insisting that Carney needs to get a deal when there is no deal to be had, while their idea of “helping’ is magical thinking. Just risible from top to bottom.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-10-13T19:08:01.544Z

My Latest:

  • My Xtra Magazine column contrasts two LGBTQ+ group’s demands on Parliament Hill, and why one is more likely to achieve something than the other.
  • For National Magazine, I delve into Friday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision to resolve the tension in sentencing when there is an Indigenous accused and victim.
  • My long weekend column praises Liberal backbencher Patrick Weiler for standing up for his constituents in the face of his party’s own bill as a backbencher should.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take explains the unusual committee process for Bill C-39.

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The thing about diesel prices…

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As you may have gathered, the Conservatives are demanding the government adopt their “emergency diesel price relief” Supply Day motion, whose key features are to extend the excise fuel tax relief until Canada Day next year (beyond where the Liberals are proposing to under C-38), and to kill the industrial carbon price (which has precious little bearing on the price of diesel), and ending the Clean Fuel Standard (which again, has nothing to do with the price, and the government points out is creating a market for biodiesel using canola from Canadian farms, with a production facility in Poilievre’s own riding). It’s pure theatre and is, by sheer coincidence, the same demands Poilievre makes for everything.

But it’s all so stupid. They should have an inkling of the diesel market in this country, and clearly, they have no idea. They’re more interested in rage-bait and fear-mongering than they are in facts, because of course they are. So here’s Andrew Leach with a few correctives:

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2103509626641915953

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2103514404348465165

Andrew Scheer is also not helping himself by making big pronouncements about the energy market that are decidedly false. Because Andrew Scheer.

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2106776520077533326

Conservatives demanding the National Energy Programme 2.0 will never not be absolutely hilarious.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-10-06T13:08:04.325Z

My Latest:

For Xtra Magazine, I get some reaction to the Canadian government’s curious silence about the LGBTQ+ crackdown in Türkiye, while they negotiate a trade deal.

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Danielle Smith gets her shiny PONI

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Prime Minister Mark Carney was in Fort McMurray yesterday to announce what we all knew was coming—that the proposed new west coast pipeline, now named “Pacific Link,” will formally be designated as the country’s first PONI (Project of National Interest). But let’s remember what got us here—the MOU with Alberta was supposed to have a number of conditions checked off before this could go ahead, most of which they either fudged. There is no private sector proponent. There is no Indigenous buy-in. The Pathways Project was supposed to be a mandatory component, but they then downgraded its obligations so that what it will capture will be a miniscule fraction of the emissions generated to fill the pipeline. There are no commitments to fill the pipeline or buyers for the product, and by the time it gets built, countries will be further along the decarbonization route as they accelerate their plans following the conflict in Iran, and we’ll just be pumping more product into an overall global supply glut which will further depress prices, making production less attractive.

The Indigenous component is a big question mark here, because the Major Projects Office did “consultations” with 110 First Nations communities over two months, and from the sounds of it, it was mostly junior staffers. This is clearly insufficient, and shows that they haven’t learned from past mistakes. When Trans Mountain was going through, one of the things that they needed to do was have the minister do face-to-face meetings, and that was the only thing that would satisfy many of these communities, which did not happen here. “We want to build faster,” and mouthing all of the right things about working with Indigenous communities, but you can’t even learn how to avoid the same problems that plagued the previous project? What exactly do they think they’re doing?

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3mwu2c3n3ic2y

Meanwhile, Carney continues to fraudulently claim that this oil will be “low carbon,” which it absolutely won’t be. And for everything he has capitulated to Danielle Smith to make this happen, it will win him exactly nothing with Alberta. Remember how much goodwill Justin Trudeau got when he gave supports to the province during their oil recession that Harper refused to, or when he created special orphan wells projects during the pandemic, or when he burned all of his political capital and environmental goodwill to ensure that Trans Mountain got built? Oh, right—it was none, and they continued to blame him for the oil price crash of 2014, before he was even in office. Yeah, Carney will get nothing from this, and Smith will just take this as a sign that threatening separation gets her what she wants, so she’ll just continue to find new ways to level threats. Carney has played himself, once again.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-10-01T13:08:05.385Z

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Never missing an opportunity to be himself

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For Truth and Reconciliation Day yesterday, the prime minister was in Edmonton (as he’s still on his oil and gas announcement tour), and gave the usual assurances that this is a process and a journey we are all on, but there didn’t appear to be much in the way of firm commitments on a renewed push for action, and when you consider that his government has been slowly walking back from commitments around the environment, or their shameful walking back of the rights that were expressed in the previous government’s version of the clean drinking water legislation, well, it’s a reminder that a lot of the things Carney says when it comes to his commitments to things tend to be somewhat tenuous and vulnerable to being walked back.

Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre decided that he couldn’t resist a moment to keep being his worst self, so he put out a statement that blamed residential schools on “government interference,” which is what he’s also blaming Alberta separatism on. (When all you have is a hammer…) One probably shouldn’t be too surprised at just how much he completely missed the point in all of this, or the fact that he’s making this all about his faux grievances and bugaboos rather than about the truth of what Canada as a whole perpetrated, or to making any commitment to doing better in the future. Because of course not. This is Poilievre we’re talking about.

Only Pierre Poilievre could turn Truth and Reconciliation Day into a gripe about federal government "intrusion."

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-09-30T20:38:11.023Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-09-30T19:08:01.442Z

My Latest:

My column wonders why Mark Carney seems so eager to go along with the Big Lie that underpins the referendum that Danielle Smith has engendered.

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Poilievre endorses the Big Lie

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Pierre Poilievre gave a “major speech” in Edmonton last night, which was supposed to be his big speech for the Remain side in the upcoming Alberta referendum, and wouldn’t you just know it, he endorsed Danielle Smith’s Big Lie, once again insisting that the fake grievances that successive provincial leaders have drummed up for political gain were not only real, but that they were because the federal government—not saying “Liberal”—was guilty of constitutional overreach. The problem is not only that by endorsing the Big Lie, he feeds the separatists’ cause, but that he’s articulating a fairytale version of federalism that has never existed and that no province actually wants.

According to Poilievre, Albertans keep having their “personal freedoms” trampled on by a federal government, who are supposed to only take care of “borders, national defence and criminal law,” while provinces should be left alone to deal with health care and education. But this is fantasy—the federal government may write a common criminal code, but provinces enforce and administer it. The federal government has steered clear of education, and when it comes to healthcare, the provinces were not strong-armed into accepting federal dollars for it. If anything, they would rather not pay for any of it at all (while still insisting on retaining full control). And add to that, the federal government has not been “regulating our resources”—there is shared jurisdiction over the environment, particularly because emissions do not stop at provincial borders, but the federal government is not regulating the resources. The market has done that after the oil price crash of 2014 (which Poilievre conspicuously ignores). And frankly, not that many Albertans are that exercised about hunting rifles.

But what pisses me off in addition to the capitulation to Smith’s Big Lie is the fact that the National Post (the only major outlet to actually write about the speech), insisted that Poilievre “never once mentioned the federal Liberal Party or Prime Minister Mark Carney, leaving aside politically-charged attacks in favour of a more statesmanlike appeal to the problem of government excess.” He didn’t say “Liberal” but he spoke about the previous decade of government, which was the Liberals. That’s not being “statesmanlike.” It’s being a petulant child who continues to lie because it suits his purposes. Stop trying to give him a pass because he can barely manage the bare minimum.

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The lessons from Trump’s lies

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Circulating online over the weekend was a piece by Daniel Dale over on CNN about what it’s been like fact-checking Trump for ten years, and what this kind of industrial scale lying is doing to the landscape. He does correctly lay part of the blame on legacy media outlets who simply treat all of the lying as background noise, as they have few fact-checkers on staff, and they are overwhelmed by the volume of it. In this, Dale correctly surmises, the Steve Bannon tactic of “flooding the zone with shit” has proven affective, because there is so much that it goes unchallenged, so the lies fester, particularly among adherents who treat it like gospel. What he doesn’t do, however, is point out that the continued insistence by legacy media to both-sides everything led to this situation. Conservatives in the US and Canada have long-since figured out that they can lie with impunity because the most that will happen is that it will be both-sidesed, and thus not actually challenged.

In amidst these recollections, I wanted to note that this problem is not confined to the US, but it’s present here on a smaller scale, particularly with Pierre Poilievre and his constant stream of out-of-context, cherry-picked statistics, or his outright bald-faced assertions that are not only incorrect, but hysterical lies that virtual nobody (David Cochrane excepted) has any appetite to challenge. This is especially true for any economic data, which Poilievre spouts unchallenged even though it’s almost all wrong. But because it goes unchallenged, you have a lot of people who think that he knows what he’s talking about so they believe that he’s some kinds of economic genius. He’s not—he learned what he knows from crypto bros on YouTube, and if you actually have an inkling of what the actual data is, then you would see that he is hilariously wrong, but nobody will call him on it, least of all the government.

The other point that Dale made in his post was that the other side-effect of Trump’s constant lies is that because he “authentically speaks his mind” when he lies constantly, it has the effect of making him seem more “honest” than his opponents, which is utterly baffling, and yet populist and wannabe populist leaders, including Poilievre and his would-be challengers, have taken this lesson to heart. There are just so many compounding failures, and yet legacy media in this country refuses to learn any lessons, and most outlets have been even more timid when it comes to challenging any of this, and that’s a very worrying prospect.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-09-27T23:08:01.337Z

My Latest:

My (belated) weekend column points to areas of arrogant presumption on the government’s part with their latest omnibus legislation and why it may yet backfire.

New episodes released early for C$7+ subscribers. This week I look at the study that says that 20 percent of MPs' speeches were assisted with digital asbestos, and why we need a major change in Parliament now more than ever. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-09-27T22:34:15.933Z

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