Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, let’s talk about the absolute bullshit framing of The Canadian Press’story about the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ report into the state of the early learning and childcare programme. The headline: “Ottawa set to miss 2026 deadline for establishing $10-a-day child care: report.” This is wrong. It is not “Ottawa” or the federal government who are going to miss the deadline. It is a number of provinces and territories who will, and yes, that matters.
The report makes it quite clear from the start who is responsible: “Provinces, territories and Indigenous governing bodies have the main responsibility for implementing CWELCC, with the federal government providing much of the funding and high-level policy considerations as it does with Medicare, housing, and other social programs under provincial or territorial jurisdiction.” Nowhere in the report does it assign blame or responsibility to the federal government for the goals not being met. It’s quite explicit about which provinces are meeting their targets and which are not, and if there is a particular issue levelled at the federal government, it’s that the goal of an “average of $10/day” is not the same as a $10/day cap, and that it’s an imprecise and problematic concept. But that’s not how the CP story frames the issue.
This goes back to one of the constant problems in Canadian media, where every problem is blamed on the federal government, and so long as they provide funding to the provinces for programmes that the provinces are responsible for carrying out, then somehow the federal government is assigned a disproportionate share of the blame. Indeed, who does CP reach out to for comment? The federal minister’s office, and not the provincial ministers in those lagging provinces, when it’s their gods damned responsibility, not the federal government’s. And this pattern keeps repeating itself over and over again, and we wonder why provincial governments are never held accountable for their failures. This is one prime example right here. And yes, this CP wire copy was distributed in pretty much every other outlet with the same misleading headline, and that same headline and framing were used in television interviews on CTV News Channel throughout the day. I wish I knew why it’s impossible for legacy media to have a basic grasp of civics, but they refuse to, and this is what we end up with. It’s unacceptable.
Russia’s attack on Ukraine early Wednesday was the largest yet, at 728 drones and 13 missiles. The attack early this morning has thus far reported two deaths and 13 injuries.
A new massive Russian attack on our cities. It was the highest number of aerial targets in a single day: 741 targets – 728 drones of various types, including over 300 shaheds, and 13 missiles – Kinzhals and Iskanders. Most of the targets were shot down. Our interceptor drones… pic.twitter.com/Lxa5TdYVXT
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 9, 2025
Last night, Russia launched a massive combined strike that lasted nearly 10 hours. 18 missiles, including ballistic ones, and around 400 attack drones were used — nearly 200 of them were "shaheds."
The main target of the attack was Kyiv and the region. Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava,… pic.twitter.com/jtBo0YYQ8d
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 10, 2025
The big news yesterday was that four people were arrested and charged in terrorism-related charges for plans to start an anti-government militia, and to violently seize land near Quebec City for their own purposes, and more to the point, that two of those charged are serving members of the Canadian Forces, and not reservists as we have seen in the past. They were also heavily armed and had a number of explosive devices prepared—and it was likely the largest number of weapons and devices seized in a terror-related event in Canadian history.
I can’t speak to the nature of the plot (too few details) but this is the largest amount of weapons and devices seized as part of a terrorism incident in Canada. Ever.
Details are still scarce, but former CSIS analyst Jessica Davis has some particular observations.
Not small time: "Searches conducted in January 2024 in the Québec City area led to the seizure of 16 explosive devices, 83 firearms and accessories, approximately 11,000 rounds of ammunition of various calibres, nearly 130 magazines, four pairs of night vision goggles and military equipment."
This is an ideologically motivated plot. In Canada, 77% of terrorist attacks have been carried out by ideologically-motivated actors: newsletter.insightthreatintel.com/p/rising-thr…
Over the last two decades, however, most terrorism charges have been laid against religiously-motivated terrorists. That has slowly been changing, with more ideologically-motivated individuals getting caught: newsletter.insightthreatintel.com/p/terror-on-…
They do point to the ideology — anti-government extremism. And there's a long history in Canada of breaking down our terrorism into different categories. (ideological, political, and religious). There's a lot to criticize the RCMP about, but this is not top of the list.
Another issue here has to do with the military not doing an adequate job of investigating the full extent of far-right extremism in their ranks, in part because they refuse to let outsiders do the investigating, as Leah West demonstrates in this thread. Some of this has to do with an insistence on cleaning up their own messes, but, well, their history on that score has not been great given the sexual misconduct problems and abuse of power scandals they have been dealing with over the past couple of decades. There is still work to do, and it doesn’t help when things happen, such as the commander of the Canadian Army saying he wasn’t notified about certain army members posting to an “abhorrent” Facebook group during the investigation into it.
There is much about this story that is staggering. But the inclusion of military members while deeply troubling is not surprising. A story:I was part of the RWE CAF research network funded by the Department of National Defence to study IMVE in the military for three years 2020-2023.
The only real Ukraine news today is that Trump is planning to resume weapons shipments to Ukraine, feeling hurt that Putin was bullshitting him, but more concerningly, says he doesn’t know who ordered the shipments to stop (because he’s clearly not running his own show).
⚡️ 9 killed, 81 injured in Russian attacks on Ukraine over past day.
Ukraine's Air Force said Russia launched 54 drones overnight, including Iranian-designed Shahed-type attack drones, and fired four S-300/400 guided missiles.https://t.co/01FzxszK14
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) July 8, 2025
It was Mark Carney’s in his first Calgary Stampede as prime minister over the weekend, and it started off on Saturday with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters pancake breakfast, where Carney struggled with flipping pancakes, and was subjected to taunts about how he was worse than Justin Trudeau at it, which he insisted he was better at other things than Trudeau was. He also quipped that he was better with Eggo Waffles, so at least he had a sense of humour about it. He ran into Danielle Smith at said event, but didn’t run into Pierre Poilievre because Poilievre stayed in his vehicle until Carney left.
From the pool report at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters pancake breakfast at the Calgary Stampede this morning:
Carney also gave some local interviews, and of course, the subject of a future pipeline came up, and Carney said he was “confident” that they would get those projects built, and that the private sector was going to do it. But there are no proponents looking to build a pipeline anytime soon, so this remains a fantasy in the eyes of a number of conservatives who insist that it’s still 2014. There was also more special pleading about the Pathways Alliance carbon sequestration project, which again misrepresents what the issue is, which is that they want the government to pay for it, because it’s not economically viable, particularly with the price of carbon as low as it is industrially (and now free for the consumer).
Pretending that the barrier to the Pathways project is federal approval is not helping anyone. The barrier is simple: if emissions reduction isn't existential, or if average GHG costs aren't well above today's levels, it won't happen unless gov't pays for almost all of it. pic.twitter.com/rjWpjzClNT
I also need to remind everyone that in all likelihood, the federal government’s plan to use their big Henry VIII clause to simply bypass existing legislation is just going to do the same thing that Harper’s 2012 environmental rewrite did—land projects in court, because it created more uncertainty, not less. And once again, I’m going to adopt a Mallory Archer voice to ask “Do you want litigation? Because that’s how you get litigation.”
While there was more trading of drone attacks over the weekend, it looks like Ukraine struck a Russian airfield and its glide bomb stores. Russia has started a new offensive in the Kharkiv region, while they claim to have taken control of two more settlements in the Donetsk region.
Eight stages of a major exchange. Since the beginning of June, hundreds of our people have returned home.
Our youth, the defenders of Mariupol, those who held the line in the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kyiv regions. The wounded, the severely… pic.twitter.com/A3Lw2WA3YU
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 6, 2025
Explosions near Russia's Vladivostok damaged a gas pipeline and destroyed a water pipeline that supplied military facilities in the area, an unnamed intelligence source told the Kyiv Independent on July 5.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) July 5, 2025
There was an interesting piece from The Logic yesterday where they asked the proponents of three projects to describe what their barriers are, and they’re…not all that coherent? One of them was complaining that they don’t really know where to apply for things and that it’s a black box once they do. And I find that curious, because there is a city full of consultants, lobbyists and government relations professionals out there whose job it is to help you navigate these kinds of processes. These people exist. It’s their jobs. Other proponents are complaining about federalism—some things trigger federal rules, some provincial, and they just want a one-stop shop. Which, sure, I get, but there are joint review processes available for certain projects that have both federal and provincial assessment components, but also that’s the nature of a federal state. Neither jurisdiction is going to abdicate their sovereignty, and I think that there are legitimate concerns if you expect one level of government to give up their process to “avoid duplication,” because it’s not actually duplication—they each look at different things, and I would not trust certain provincial governments to adequately address the concerns of federal legislation in their own processes.
The other complaint that these proponents have has to do with negotiating with provincial electricity suppliers for their projects, and the process of trying to negotiate adequate electricity for the project so that they can advance their proposals, which again, is not a barrier the federal government can do anything about. And sometimes hard things are hard, but I didn’t see any particular barriers in these descriptions that seemed insurmountable—it was a lot of “we don’t know what we’re doing,” and “I don’t want to have to do it,” particularly where there are environmental concerns. Which is one of the reasons why I’m particularly concerned about Bill C-5 federally, which can essentially ignore rules with the wave of a pen, and Ontario’s Bill 5, which literally can declare certain zones in the province to be lawless. These are not good approaches, but they seem to be what our leader have settle on, particularly because Mark Carney seems to operate on an ethos of seeking forgiveness rather than permission, which is not a good look for a government.
Meanwhile, here is Andrew Leach with a couple of added observations about these projects:
Might be worth mentioning that none of these projects has even filed the first step of a federal application, so far as I can tell. They don't appear in tbe IAAC registry. I can't find any First Phosphate records at the BAPE in Quebec. Kivalliq costs have trippled too.
And, while this is for one of First Phosphate's other properties at Lac Orignal, their consultant writes about minimal federal role *as long as the project avoids impacts on fish* in 2022. pic.twitter.com/dUssniv9sP
Russia has launched an all-night attack on Kyiv that has injured at least fourteen. There were also strikes against port infrastructure in Odesa that have killed two people, and shelling of Pokrovsk has killed five people. There was also an airstrike against Poltava that his a military recruitment office that killed two people. Meanwhile, the EU was discussing how to adapt to Trump’s decision to withhold needed arms to Ukraine, as some cannot be sourced elsewhere.
President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on Ukraine's withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained that Russia's invasion had put Ukraine in an “unequal situation” because Russia had not signed the… pic.twitter.com/jik17H4lnk
⚡️'Nothing but terror and murder' — Russia pounds Kyiv with ballistic missiles in massive overnight attack.
Fires broke out across the capital in the early hours of July 4 as Russian drones and missiles hit at least 13 different locations in the city. https://t.co/MPifoZsxZ7
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) July 4, 2025
We have just passed Canada Day, and did Mark Carney live up to all of the promises he made that were supposed to happen by then? Erm, not really. He set some pretty lofty goals for himself, and some of those promises he started to backpedal on the closer the time got, like on internal trade barriers. First it was eliminating them all by Canada Day. And then it was federal barriers. And even then, while the legislation has passed, it’s a bit of a mess. Why? Because the approaches to lifting those barriers is a patchwork of mutual recognition agreements between some provinces and not others, and that could in turn be new barriers in and of themselves, because there aren’t any consistent approaches.
Meanwhile, his bill to cut taxes didn’t pass, but it’ll still take effect on July 1st because of the Ways and Means motion that got passed. He got the ball rolling on the ReArm Europe programme, but it is not a done deal. He also said that he wanted all departments to undertake reviews to cut “red tape” within sixty days, but when exactly that kicks in was a bit ambiguous, not that I think 60 days is an adequate enough time to do a review of all of a department’s regulations to find inefficient rules. They’ve been doing that for years, so it’s not like there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit. I guess we’ll see what they turn up before the fall.
It is nice to see Prince Edward make an appearance, and say a few words, and to bring greetings from Their Majesties with a promise of a longer royal tour to come."I speak for all of my family when I say that we take immense pride in Canada and Canadians." #MapleCrown
My weekend column points out that Danielle Smith’s attack on immigrants in her “Alberta Next” panel telegraph how desperate she is to find new scapegoats.
My Loonie PoliticsQuick Take looks at that NATO “five percent” goal, which isn’t five percent, and the conversations we should be having instead.
My column shows how Bill C-5 is the latest in a series of ways in which our Parliament has been slowly hollowing itself out, becoming a Potemkin village.
Ukraine Dispatch
The US is delaying or halting shipments of promised weapons to Ukraine, just as Russia has been ramping up attacks, because this is who Trump is. Meanwhile, Russia appears to be ramping up its offensives in Donetsk and Sumy.
Warmest congratulations to @MarkJCarney and the entire Canadian people on Canada Day. This day celebrates a nation that has become a shining example of unity, democracy, and the defense of freedom.
Throughout its history, Canada has become home to many Ukrainians, who today form… pic.twitter.com/TmBxckVNwq
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 1, 2025
⚡️Update: Drones hit Russian weapons factory in Lipetsk Oblast, governor says.
Drones reportedly struck a factory in Russia's Lipetsk Oblast that produces parts for drones and missiles, Governor Igor Artamonov alleged early on July 3.https://t.co/NDIr32kYZo
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) July 3, 2025
Danielle Smith is at it again. Under the rubric of going on the offensive against Ottawa, she is going to chair a series of town hall meetings dubbed the “Alberta Next Panel” to get feedback on how the province should stand up to the federal government. And if you’ve heard this before, it was about five years ago that Jason Kenney did a similar thing dubbed the “Fair Deal” panel, but he didn’t chair it himself because he had enough self-awareness to know that would be nothing more than an absolute shit show, but Smith wants to be a woman of the people. Kenney’s panel was mostly a flop, but Smith is trying to resurrect some of those unpopular ideas, along with some absolute bullshit about working with other provinces to change the constitution. She has a couple of credible people on the panel, and a couple less-credible people, but the fact that she is chairing ensures that this will be nothing short of a fiasco.
And already, the signs are bad. Really, really bad. Like one of the topics is to “just ask questions” about denying social services to immigrants who don’t have status yet, which is supposed to somehow be pushing back if the federal government is somehow forcing “the number or kind of newcomers moving to our province,” blaming them for high housing costs, high unemployment and importing “divisions and disputes,” which is an outrageous provocation. Remember that it wasn’t that long ago that the Alberta government was falling all over itself to attract displaced Ukrainians, while denouncing any plans to “redistribute” asylum-seekers that had crossed into Quebec to other provinces in order to share the burden. And why might that be? Because Ukrainians are mostly white?
Unless there is a need to create work for litigators with expertise in s. 7 and s. 15 Charter issues, I’m not sure what policy problem this proposal would solve. https://t.co/Ox6fFgUUzP
This is straight-up MAGA bait, because Danielle Smith has to keep that base of her party placated at all times or they will eat her face like they did Jason Kenney. In a sense, this is Kenney’s fault, because he invited these fringe and far-right assholes into the party while he chased out the centrist normies, because he wanted a “pure” conservative party who would keep the NDP out of power forever, and well, they didn’t appreciate his appeal to common sense during the pandemic, and his fighting back against them now is tinged with bitter irony because the only reason they now hold as much power and influence in the province that they do is because he put them there, rather than allowing them to fester on the sidelines. And so, Smith is going to keep this pander to them, as ugly and fascistic as it is, because they made a deal with their devils as a shortcut to getting back into power and staying there in perpetuity. And Smith is going to keep feeding the separatists in the province through this kind of inflammatory rhetoric, because she thinks they suit her purposes in trying to threaten the rest of the country as leverage for her selfish demands. It’s a grotesque situation, and she is determined to gerrymander the next election to keep it going.
I wonder what happens when you invite the worst possible fringe elements into your party because you’re mad someone else got a turn.
A Russian ballistic missile struck Dnipro around mid-day Tuesday, killing seventeen and injuring more than 200 others; other attacks made for a total of twenty-six civilian deaths over the course of the day.
Right now, in the Dnipro region, assistance is being provided to everyone affected by the Russian ballistic missile strike. As of now, over 160 people have been reported injured. Tragically, 11 people have been killed. The rubble is still being cleared, so unfortunately, the… pic.twitter.com/Rs5bbTbXWb
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 24, 2025
The aftermath of a missile strike near the Odesa–Zaporizhzhia train. Fortunately, no passengers or railway employees were killed, Ukrzaliznytsia reports. All the injured received medical treatment.
At the Canada-EU summit in Brussels yesterday, Mark Carney signed a new security and defence partnership, and the joint communiqué was very, very long. A lot of stuff that might have been part of a G7 communiqué, but that wasn’t going to happen given how much time and energy was spent managing Trump and the Americans, and that included a lot of talk about upholding the rules-based international order, or combatting climate change, and that kind of thing, that would have caused Trump to throw another one of his public tantrums. But that’s the world we live in now.
This means that Canada is now on the road to participating in programmes like ReArm Europe, which seeks to drive down the cost of joint military procurement projects by increasing the scale of the buys, and helps to keep those industries in Europe rather than relying on the American defence-industrial complex, but the hope is that this agreement will open the Canadian market to those procurements as well (though I am curious to know how many Canadian firms are actually Canadian and not just American branch-plants).
Today will be the big NATO summit where increasing the expected defence spending target is the major focus, though there will likely be some sidebars around de-escalation with Israel and Iran. Ukraine will also be a focus, though president Zelenskyy is not expected to attend (though he was in the UK yesterday to sign new agreements on military production there, and to have lunch with the King at Windsor Castle). Nevertheless, that five percent target—to ostensibly be divided up as 3.5% operational spending and 1.5% in related spending that has some kind of a defence-adjacent component—is going to be incredibly difficult for the majority of countries to achieve, but especially to sustain. You already have some countries who met their two percent target by front-loading a bunch of procurement, but they have no idea how they’ll manage to stay at two percent, let alone 3.5%-plus going forward. (It’s also a dumb metric because it doesn’t deal with contributions to operations, and the disparity between the denominators among member countries is pretty vast, to say nothing about the fact that it’s easier to hit your targets if you crash your economy to drag your denominator down). One hopes there will be some cooler heads around the table, but it looks like the 5 percent is a done deal, which will create problems down the road.
The attack on Kyiv early Monday wound up killing at least ten, including a child, as an apartment block was struck. Ukraine says that it attacked and set ablaze an oil depot in Russia’s Rostov region.
#Russia launched a ballistic missile attack on the city of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi.#Russian forces destroyed a local educational institution. So far, it is known that two people have been killed and 20 injured. Three of the wounded are in critical condition. The others, including… pic.twitter.com/BJmQrQWZoP
As the parliamentary cycle starts to wind down now that MPs have gone home for the summer (minus the couple who will take part in the royal assent ceremony that usually ends the Senate sitting in June), I did want to take a moment to appreciate David Reevely’s particular annoyance at the way MPs constantly use the term “forced” when describing using ordinary parliamentary procedure to get their own way.
If you text your spouse saying, "Could you pick up some milk?" and they say they will, you didn't force them to pick up milk. They didn't force a store to supply it to them, or force the clerk to give them change from a $10. This is just normal activity.
In this particular example, where the Speaker agreed to split the vote on Bill C-5 (and no, he did not split the bill, as some have suggested—and mea culpa that I was not sufficiently clear on that in my last post), the most that the NDP accomplished here was symbolism. Yes, they could show that they voted to support one part of the bill and not the other, but the bill in its entirely goes through regardless. But again, they didn’t really “force” anything. The Speaker granted their request without a vote. This language is endemic, and the Conservatives like to use it, particularly in committee, when they would team up with the Bloc and NDP to send the committee off on some chase for new clips to harvest, but even there, simple math in a minority parliament is hardly “forcing,” because that’s pretty much a function of a hung parliament. The opposition gets to gang up on the government as a matter of course.
I get that they like to use the language to flex their political muscles, and the NDP in particular right now are desperate to show that they’re still relevant now that they have lost official party status, but maybe have some self-respect? If all you’re accomplishing is providing yourselves with new opportunities to create content for your social media rather than doing something tangible and substantive, then maybe that’s a problem that you should be looking into, especially if it’s in the process of trying to prove that you’re still relevant to the political landscape. (And also, maybe why you lost official party status). And I get that their claims that they “forced” the government to do a bunch of things during COVID earned them the praise of their existing fan-base, but they didn’t force anything then either—they pushed on an open door, and patted themselves on the back for it. (Seriously, the Liberals weren’t going to wind down those pandemic supports early, and if the NDP thinks they were the deciding factor, they have spent too long drinking their own bathwater). But no, you didn’t force anything, and stop pretending that’s what you did.
Ukraine Dispatch
Russians attacked Kyiv overnight, killing at least five and damaged the entrance to a metro station used as a bomb shelter. Russians claim to have captured the village of Zaporizhzhya in the Donetsk region. Ukrainian forces say that they are fighting 10,000 Russian soldiers inside of Russia’s Kursk region, which is preventing Russia from sending more forces into the Donetsk region. President Zelenskyy says that during the recent POW and body swaps with Russia, that Russia turned over at least twenty bodies of their own citizens (complete with passports) because they are so disorganised.
⚡️ Russian attacks kill 4, injure 23 in Ukraine over past day.
Russia launched two Iskander-M or KN-23 ballistic missiles, an S-300 anti-aircraft missile, and 47 Shahed-type attack drones and decoy drones against Ukraine overnight, the Air Force said.https://t.co/imw1bmFAL2
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) June 22, 2025
⚡️Update: Russia's mass missile, drone attack on Kyiv kills 5, injures 13.
The casualty count in an overnight attack on Kyiv has grown, with officials reporting five people killed and 13 injured in the capital and surrounding region amid the attackhttps://t.co/4nrVZE6qh9
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) June 23, 2025
⚡️ Russia seeks to advance along almost entire front in Ukraine's east, Syrskyi says.
As of mid-June, Ukrainian defenders are fighting close to 695,000 Russian troops in Ukraine across a 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) front, Oleksandr Syrskyi said.https://t.co/wttbnd3nbA
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) June 22, 2025
Good reads:
Mark Carney arrived in Brussels for both an EU and a NATO summit back-to-back. He also called for calm and diplomacy in the situation with Iran.
Ambassador Kirsten Hillman says that there is progress on trade talks with the US, and she sees a path forward.
A recent report shows that CSE inappropriately shared information on Canadians to international partners without a ministerial authorization.
Those promised pay raises for the military may not be an across-the-board increase, but a combination of different bonuses (because of course).
Here is a look at the retention crisis within the Canadian Forces.
Some Indigenous youth are preparing for a summer of protest over the different federal and provincial fast-track legislation.
The Eagle Mine in Yukon, which suffered a catastrophic contaminant release, is going up for sale.
Former Cabinet minister John McCallum passed away at age 75.
David Eby says he’s not opposed to a pipeline in northern BC, but he is opposed to one being publicly funded, especially as TMX still has plenty of capacity.
Kevin Carmichael reminds us that climate change is an existential economic threat and that it needs to be tackled, as MAGA politics has spooked efforts to combat it.
Anne Applebaum reflects on Trump’s complete lack of strategy, whether it’s with Iran, the Middle East, or anywhere.
Susan Delacourt and Matt Gurney debate what Poilievre has been up to since he dropped out of the spotlight, and the security of his future as leader.
My weekend column points out that the solution to parties hijacking their own nominations is not to demand that Elections Canada take the process over.
With hours left on the clock before the House of Commons would vote on Bill C-5, per the terms of the Closure motion passed earlier in the week, the Speaker agreed with an NDP motion that yes, the bill was indeed abusive omnibus legislation and agreed to split it into two parts to separate it for the final vote. It was a bit late to do so, because there was no ability to only advance one half and not the other, and it wasn’t going to matter much either considering that the Conservatives were going to vote in favour of it (because they absolutely want this Henry VIII clause on the books if they should form government in the next five years). And so, the first half of the bill, on the federal trade barriers, got near-unanimous support with only Elizabeht May voting against it, and the second half on major projects—and that Henry VIII clause—had the Bloc, the NDP, Elizabeth May and Liberal Nathaniel Erskine-Smith vote against it, not that those numbers made any kind of difference.
After the bill passed, Carney called a press conference in the Foyer, and had every Indigenous MP in the caucus as his backdrop (with a few others dropping in), and he insisted that it simply wasn’t communicated effectively how much Indigenous participation would be required for these projects, and that they would respect UNDRIP, and yes they would hold consultations with rights-holders over the summer to ensure that implementation of this legislation would be done “the right way.” Oh, and he totally swears that he’s not going to put a Henry VIII clause in any other bills—really! But all of those assurances left a sour taste.
It very much seems that Carney has taken the route of asking for forgiveness rather than permission, which is a really strange way to go about building trust with those rights-holders, especially when your MPs refused to let them speak at committee or have any participation in the legislative process. And you will forgive me if I don’t believe that they won’t ever use that Henry VIII clause to bulldoze over UNDRIP obligations on a project, because they gave themselves those powers for a reason. And if they think that they got away with asking for forgiveness rather than permission worked this time, who’s to say they won’t try that again when they do use those powers? Let’s not kid ourselves.
Drone attacks from Russia in the early hours of Thursday hit apartment buildings in Kharkiv and Odesa. There was another POW swap, and again, numbers were not disclosed. President Zelenskyy says that Ukraine is developing interceptor drones to deal with the Russian drones, whose numbers have increased in the past weeks.
Last night, the Russians launched massive attacks on Odesa, Kharkiv, and their outskirts using more than twenty strike drones. Around 20 people were injured, including 2 children – girls aged 12 and 17 – and 3 State Emergency Service workers who had arrived at the scene of the… pic.twitter.com/XlH1lU1Uhf
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 20, 2025
Ukrainian air defenses reportedly shot down 34 drones, while 36 disappeared from radars or were intercepted by electronic warfare.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) June 20, 2025
The Liberals’ “One Canada Economy” bill continues to be railroaded through Parliament without proper scrutiny, and with the worst possible excuses from ministers and parliamentary secretaries possible. “We won the election promising this” or “This is in response to a crisis”? Get lost with that nonsense. While there are Liberals who are quietly objecting to the process—particularly the speed through which the second half of the bill (i.e. the giant Henry VIII clause) are going through without actual Indigenous consultation on the legislation itself, they are absolutely correct in saying that this is going to damage the trust that they have spent a decade carefully building.
Here’s the thing. While ministers are going to committees and the Senate swearing up and down that these projects of national importance are going to respect environmental regulations and Indigenous consultation, the very text of the bill betrays that notion. The open-ended list of legislation affected by the Henry VIII clause shows that they can bypass environmental laws or even the Indian Act through regulation shows that clearly they don’t have to respect either environmental laws, or that the consultation doesn’t need to be meaningful, or engage in free, prior and informed consent. If they did want to respect those things, they wouldn’t need a giant Henry VIII clause to bypass them. And frankly the fact that the Conservatives are supporting this bill should be yet another red flag, because the Conservatives very much want to use this Henry VIII clause if they form government next before this law sunsets, and they can blame the Liberals for implementing it. It’s so stupid and they refuse to see what’s right in front of them.
And let’s not forget that you still have Danielle Smith and Scott Moe demanding that environmental legislation be repealed, as the planet is about to blow through its carbon budget to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5ºC. And when it comes to Indigenous consultation, Doug Ford rammed through a bill to make these development projects law-free zones, while falsely claiming that First Nations are coming “cap in hand” while refusing to develop resources (in a clearly racist rant), ignoring that their objections are often to do with the fact that they have repeatedly been screwed over by proponents and wind up being worse off, which is why they want revenue-sharing agreements that companies don’t want to provide. When this is the “partnership with provinces” that Carney touts, it’s really, really not building a whole lot of trust.
If Ford listened to the First Nations near the Ring of Fire, they are largely concerned that proponents haven't lived up to past promises, and are not convinced the will live up to future promises either, unless they have a revenue-sharing agreement.
Meanwhile, 300 civil society groups are calling on the government to scrap the border bill because it has so many potential rights violations within it. The department offered some clarifications on the immigration and refugee portions, but that’s not sufficient for those groups. Citizen Lab also did an analysis of the lawful access provisions within the bill as they interface with American data-sharing laws, and they can be pretty alarming for the kinds of information that the Americans can demand that the border bill would provide them with.
The more I think about it, the more troubling #BillC2 is. The warrantless demand for "subscriber information" can include a demand to a women's shelter, abortion clinic or psychiatrist. All provide services to the public and info about services rendered really goes to the biographical core.
More bodies were discovered after the early morning Tuesday attack on Kyiv, meaning the death toll is now at least 28. Russians hit Ukrainian troops in the Sumy region with Iskander missiles.
During a Russian overnight attack, an Intercity+ train was damaged at its base – the same train carrying a powerful artwork by famed American artist Barbara Kruger.
Her piece, Untitled (Another Again), honours Ukrainians who move forward, no matter the obstacle.
In the wake of the G7 Summit, here’s a bit of a stock-taking on Carney’s government so far, and there are some friction points bubbling up, especially in caucus.
A Treasury Board report shows that women and minorities still face pay inequities within the federal civil service.
StatsCan data shows that there was almost no population growth in the first quarter of the year, which is a precipitous decline (and not good in the long run).
You might be relieved to hear that there were no wildlife incidents during the G7 summit in Kananaskis.
Protesters marking the second anniversary of the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar are concerned and frustrated about the moves to normalise diplomatic ties with India.
The Federal Court has denied a case by Afghan-Canadians to apply the Ukraine temporary resident rules to allow them to bring family members over.
The Senate has passed the Bloc’s Supply Management bill, which would seem to be at odds with trying to diversify our trade relationships.
Now-former Conservative MP Damien Kurek says that he wasn’t asked to step aside for Poilievre, but offered as his way to “serve.”
Saskatchewan is going to extend the life of their coal-fired electricity plants, because of course they are.
Philippe Lagassé has some more thoughts on the NATO spending goals and Canada shifting away from American procurement by degrees.
Paul Wells features a former PMO comms staffer talking about his experiences in dealing with reporters on the Hill, and how he approached the job.
Odds and ends:
For National Magazine, I wrote about former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Gérard La Forest, who passed away last week at age 99.
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