Tag Archives: Mark Carney

Roundup: Past the gushing, the premiers are up to their old tricks

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If you only listened to the effusive praise from the premiers after their meeting over the past three days in Muskoka, you might miss the strong scent of absolute bullshit wafting from them. Yes, there was plenty more gushing about prime minister Mark Carney, and his meeting with them on Tuesday about the current trade negotiations with the Americans, and his engaging with China about the current trade spat with them (where apparently a number of premiers think we should capitulate to China as well), but my gods, the rest of their statements? More of the same from our premiers.

Take bail reform. Doug Ford insisted that they would be “holding him accountable” on his promise to institute more bail reforms in the fall, but problem with bail is not the Criminal Code. The problem with bail is that the provinces have been under-resourcing their justice systems for decades. There aren’t enough court houses or staff for them, the provincial remand facilities are overflowing, and they don’t hire enough provincial court judges or Crown attorneys, nor are some provinces properly training their justices of the peace, who usually make bail determinations. That is all the provinces’ faults, but they continue to falsely blame the federal government because it’s easier than the premiers doing their jobs.

Or healthcare. Ford whinged that the Trudeau government “shortchanged them” and they want more “flexibility.” The same Doug Ford that took $4 billion in pandemic supports from the federal government and just applied it to his bottom line to reduce the provincial deficit. And you can bet that the premiers are sore that Trudeau made the last round of transfers conditional on provinces submitting “action plans” so that they can be judged to see whether the funds are actually going to healthcare spending in those priority areas rather than just being spent elsewhere, as so many billions of past healthcare dollars have been. So of course, they want Carney to try and reverse that. They’re not happy that they have been subjected to strings on those transfers.

"Ford said the previous federal government shortchanged the provinces, and that Ontario needs more money to train and hire doctors and nurses."DOUG FORD PUT $4 BILLION OF PANDEMIC FUNDS ON THE PROVINCE'S BOTTOM LINE TO REDUCE THE DEFICIT.FOR FUCK SAKES!

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-07-24T03:27:14.634Z

Even more alarming is the fact that Ford, on the advice of Danielle Smith, wants to go around the federal government and issue their own work permits to asylum seekers in the province because the federal government takes too long. That’s a pretty significant overreach, which is a very bad sign. And you can bet that none of the premiers will be held to account for any of this, because that’s how we roll in this country.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-07-23T13:25:09.670Z

Ukraine Dispatch

In spite of “peace talks” in Istanbul, there were more drone strikes traded from both sides—Russians hit residential and historic sites in Odesa, while Ukraine hit an oil storage depot near the Black Sea. More Ukrainian POWs were also returned yesterday. Facing protests for the changes to the anti-corruption agencies, president Zelenskyy now says he’ll introduce new legislation to safeguard their independence (but it remains to be seen what that legislation will actually say). European security reports show China covertly shipped drone parts to Russia using mislabelled containers to avoid sanctions.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_ua/status/1947597862574952514

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Roundup: Lowering expectations even further

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Prime minister Mark Carney spent the morning with the premiers in Muskoka as part of their meeting, and proceeded to lower expectations even further than they already are. The message of the day was that he’s only going to take the “best deal” in negotiations with the US, and that matters more than the August 1st deadline, which is already beyond the “deadline” that was agreed to in Kananaskis, and so long as talks are ongoing, retaliation measures continue to also be pushed back so that American bullying can continue unabated. But the kind of deal he wants isn’t going to be available, because this is Trump, and we’re just not going to get a deal that “preserves, reinforces and stabilises” the trade relationship, because Trump does not want that, nor do we want to keep tying ourselves to a failing autocratic regime whose economy is increasingly defined by the chaos of its leader.

We also learned that he stayed at Doug Ford’s cottage the night before, and that they stayed up talking past midnight, and Ford just gushed like a schoolgirl about Carney’s business background, and said that he would hand the keys of a business over to the prime minister (and said “business” about fifty more times), all of which was a little bit unseemly. We know that Ford continues to fancy himself a “businessman” because he inherited part of his father’s label business, but this constant fawning over anyone with a business background is a little bit unbecoming, particularly if you pay any bit of attention to what happens.

Meanwhile, Ford also signed an MOU with Danielle Smith and Scott Moe about building pipelines to Ontario and James Bay (which is never going to happen because it’s too shallow for tanker traffic), amidst the usual nonsense about federal environmental laws that they are trying to be rid of. There are no proponents for these pipelines, because there is no economic case for them. And if Carney is true to his word and says there’s no PONIs without Indigenous buy-in or consent, well, the pipeline Smith wants to the northwest coast of BC won’t happen because the First Nations in the area do not want one. Nevertheless, I think Andrew Leach is right in that they’re stacking up a wish list they’ll never meet in order to keep blaming the federal government, because that’s what they do best.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine lost one of their French Mirage fighters due to equipment failure, but the pilot was able to safely eject. There were protests in Kyiv because president Zelenskyy signed a law that rolled back the independence of two anti-corruption bodies and placed them under executive control, which was seen largely as his first major unforced error, and give ammunition to Putin supporters.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1947576960110014850

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Roundup: Clueless American senators pay a visit

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A group of US senators were in Ottawa for a second time in as many months, to meet with prime minister Mark Carney about the trade talks with the US, which is…a pretty useless gesture because they have pretty much no influence in the current American political environment, and they’ve been spectacularly ineffective in doing the slightest bit to rein in his abuse of powers. And speaking of useless gestures, they were all wearing Canada-U.S. friendship bracelets provided by the US Embassy, because apparently treating this like a Taylor Swift concert is how they’re “building bridges.” Honestly…

And it just doesn’t stop. One of the Democratic senators was lecturing Carney about fully repealing the Digital Services Tax, which…is doing what Trump wants, and just letting the authoritarian tech bros dictate our sovereign tax policies. Like really? That’s what you came to tell us? The sole Republican in the group, who is a sometimes Trump critic, said that his annexation rhetoric was “not constructive.” Gee, you think? That’s your contribution to this conversation? One of the other Democrats said that we’re they’re “best friends” but that the relationship was going through some “great strain.” Gosh, really? This is what you’ve come up here to say? One of them wanted to talk about stopping the flow of precursor chemicals for fentanyl. How about guns? Why don’t you do something about stopping them from coming over our border? I just can’t with any of these guys.

Meanwhile, the US ambassador says that Trump thinks we’re “nasty” for boycotting travel and American booze, as he has openly made threats of annexation and trying to destroy our economy to make it happen. Like, seriously, what did you think we were going to do?

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-07-21T22:08:21.155Z

Ukraine Dispatch

It was another heavy barrage of 426 drones and a dozen missiles fired at Ukraine overnight Sunday and into Monday, killing two and wounding at least fifteen people. Later in the day were attacks on the Sumy region, injuring another fourteen people. President Zelenskyy has named new ambassadors to several countries, including Canada (which is a shame because Yulia Kovaliv was great). Meanwhile, Russian TV showed teenagers working in their drone factories.

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Roundup: Spending vs inflation

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Last week, the CD Howe Institute put out a report on the recent bout of inflation, and tried to pin it either on government spending or the Bank of Canada, and in the process ignored a whole lot of things that happened during the pandemic that were material to those price increases. Or the fact that early in the pandemic, we had deflation, and that the Bank of Canada needed to act fast to ensure that it did not continue lest it turn into a spiral that would lead to a depression, because that’s what deflation does.

Naturally, however, the moment Pierre Poilievre saw that they were pinning blame on government spending, he had to jump on that because it’s his entire central thesis for inflation, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. I report on economic data on a regular basis, and that includes the Consumer Price Index (or inflation) data every month, and the Bank of Canada’s Monetary Policy Report every quarter. I can tell you what prices increased and where, because that’s in the data every month. None of the causes had anything to do with government spending.

I also have to take some exception to the notion that government supports like CERB were driving demand. CERB was not extra spending money. It was survival money for low-income people who were out of work because of the pandemic. It staved off a wave of bankruptcies and even more demand on provincial social services or food banks (and the lack of provincial social services is the main driver behind increased food bank use, per their own reports). The “excess demand” was coming from higher-income households who had plenty of money to spend when they couldn’t go out to restaurants or go on vacations. They were not the recipients of government support, and trying to conflate the two is disingenuous, and frankly smacks of a great deal of ideological bias.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-07-19T21:10:16.169Z

Ukraine Dispatch

There has been another barrage of drones and missiles that have killed at least one person in Kyiv overnight. Here is another look at how the people in Kyiv are coping with the increased attacks.

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Roundup: Longest Ballot nuisances reach a new record

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The Longest Ballot Committee crybabies have reached a high—or low—by organising some hundred candidates to be on the ballot for the Battle River—Crowfoot byelection, and they want to reach 200 when the nominations close on the 28th. It’s ridiculous and abusive, and they’re now full-on masturbating in the media insisting this is about the purity of democracy and that it’s not even about protest when this is about trying to force the government to hold a citizen’s assembly for electoral reform, because they don’t think politicians should write their own rules. Erm, except that’s what self-government means. Politicians write their own rules so that the King doesn’t. Revolutions were fought for this ability.

As for citizen’s assemblies, they are demonstrably bullshit—they’re tools used to launder accountability because there is no way to hold them accountable because you can’t vote them out for the decisions they make, and most of the time, they are easily manipulable to deliver the kinds of answers you want them to give, usually by gaming the “experts” who guide them. It’s another form of manufacturing consent, much like how referendums are easily manipulable by the government who organizes them, by shaping the questions and the conditions of those referendums to deliver results they want, at which point they manipulate the responses they get. In this case, they want this citizen’s assembly to deliver proportional representation for them (which system of PR? Who can say? But yes, that matters), because they’re crybabies who seem to think that if the person/party you vote for doesn’t automatically win, then your vote is “wasted.” There’s a technical term for that—it’s “sore loserism.” And Parliament really needs to get their shit together to close the loopholes in the rules so that the Longest Ballot organisers are stopped.

Meanwhile, the push to lower the voting age has been given a new push because the voting age is being lowered to sixteen in the UK, amidst complaints that Labour are trying to put their thumbs on the scale of the next election because their popularity is plummeting. I’m not a big fan of lowering the voting age to sixteen—teenagers make a lot of dumb choices, and just yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed that youth frequently don’t have the moral blameworthiness to know the severity of consequences in criminal activity, but they would for voting? I can guarantee you that it would mean that voter turnout percentages would plummet even further, just like they did when the voting age was lowered to 18, and we’d be in for a whole new round of handwringing about that. If teenagers want to be politically active, they should join political parties and learn how to organise, and participate in nominations and leadership contests (which is another reason why we need to reinvigorate grassroots party democracy). I’m just not convinced that lowering the voting age to 16 is going to solve any problems.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-07-18T22:56:07.793Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A mass Russian drone attack overnight has killed at least one person when they struck apartment buildings. Russian forces claim to have taken control of three villages along different parts of the front lines. Ukraine’s top commander says that their forces are holding firm outside of the key city of Pokrovsk.

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Roundup: A shambolic summit with First Nations

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Prime minister Mark Carney had his “summit” with First Nations leaders yesterday at the Canadian Museum of History, and it was a shambolic affair. Itineraries changed constantly, and the media were kicked out after Carney’s initial speech, before the AFN national chief could give her own speech, which she made a point of referencing. Leaders were promised time to engage with Carney and his ministers, and were instead simply told to talk amongst themselves. Carney did promise that this was “just the beginning,” and that there would be more focused regional consultations in the near future, but the whole thing didn’t really reassure a lot of those assembled chiefs (who were all Indian Act chiefs and not the hereditary chiefs who are in some cases the title holders). There was indeed a sense of frustration, and some chiefs walked out because of it.

Some of those chiefs from Alberta held a separate press conference with the assistance of Senator Prosper, and they noted that there was no proper consultation process on the meeting itself, that the attendees were hand-picked, and that this was largely political theatre to manufacture consent. Much of their comments focused on the fact that the treaties are not just box-ticking exercises, that they did not cede or surrender their lands, and that they have rights that must be respected—and more to the point, that in failing to live up to these obligations, the government is doing damage to the Honour of the Crown.

Afterward, Indigenous Services minister Mandy Gull-Masty tried to assure everyone that “national interest” included Indigenous people, and that projects can’t go ahead without Indigenous buy-in, but at the same time said that they can’t really discuss any specifics because they have to wait for the Major Projects Office to be stood-up, which they are hoping to do by Labour Day, and only then, when there are actual potential projects in the window could they properly engage with the rights-holders. But we are getting back into the “just trust us” territory, which traditionally has not gone very well for Indigenous people in this country.

Ukraine Dispatch

Here’s a look at how drone warfare is changing the front lines of the conflict. Russia and Ukraine exchanged more bodies of war dead.

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Roundup: The reality of enduring tariffs

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On his way into the Cabinet meeting yesterday, Mark Carney made remarks to the press that it looks like there is little chance that we’ll get any kind of trade deal that doesn’t include some kind of tariffs, and that the commercial landscape has changed globally, so his focus would continue to be on what he can control, which is building a strong Canadian economy. It’s a lot in three sentences, but it does look like he’s coming around to a more honest assessment of where we’re at. Well, at least slightly so—they’re still pursing some form of “trade and security” agreement, which is continues to be a waste of everyone’s time because there is no agreement to be had, as Trump is not a rational actor and won’t live up to any agreement he does sign, if that ever happens. But at least Carney is no longer signalling that the old status quo is just around the corner, so that’s progress.

Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, is calling this a “unilateral concession,” and seems to be under the impression that he (or anyone else) could somehow secure a better deal with Trump, even though there is no deal to be had. Trump loves tariffs, and won’t be dissuaded, and we have to learn to live with that (because it’s going to be a long while before it sinks in that they are driving up costs for Americans, because a whole lot of them refuse to believe the truth). We need to be wide-eyed about this, and Carney needs to be more upfront as well. There is no deal to be had. They can go through the motions of negotiating but it won’t get us anywhere, and sure, we need to focus on what we can do…but that has to mean more than just putting all of our eggs in the resource extraction basket, which can’t be our only option.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-07-15T21:22:14.842Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones and missiles struck Kharkiv, Kryvyi Rih, and Kyiv, but there was no damage at the latter. It looks like under the latest missive from Trump, NATO members will buy US equipment for Ukraine from the US, but the US won’t spend any of their own money to send weapons to Ukraine even though it’s in their own interests to do so. (Well, it was until the US became an autocratic state).

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Roundup: The rules Poilievre defended are no longer good enough

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Pierre Poilievre decided he needed some more media attention yesterday, so he called a press conference in Ottawa, and declared that following the public disclosure of prime minister Mark Carney’s ethics filings, that none of this was good enough, that Carney needed to cash out all of his investments instead of putting them into a blind trust, and that nothing was good enough because he’ll be constantly managing conflicts (even though the point of the ethics screen is that he isn’t managing conflicts, his chief of staff and the Clerk of the Privy Council manage the conflict so that he’s not involved). Perish the thought that this special set of rules for Carney will only serve to keep other accomplished individuals away from political life.

Of course, the whole episode is rife with hypocrisy. These are the conflict-of-interest laws that the Harper government put into place, of which Poilievre was not only a part of, but defended them, particularly when questions arose around Nigel Wright and his assets when he was Harper’s chief of staff, and Poilievre personally swore up and down at committee that these rules were amazing and that the blind trust was blind, and so on. Of course, now that it’s convenient, his tune has changed, but that didn’t stop the CBC from pulling out the footage from the archives.

Meanwhile, Poilievre also told reporters that the country needs “more people leaving than coming,” which is not even a dog-whistle at this point but a bullhorn. If this is pandering to the far-right elements of the riding he’s trying to win, well, it is likely to backfire on his attempts to continue wooing other newcomer communities, particularly the Sikh and Punjabi communities he spent so much time wooing in the leadup to the last election. Immigration numbers have already flatlined, and it’s going to cause problems down the road, sooner than later. For Poilievre to say this as the mass deportations south of the border pick up speed shows he’s not only incapable of thinking through the implications of the things he says, but he’s fine with mouthing the words of fascists, and that’s a real problem.

(Incidentally, Poilievre once again said he opposes Alberta separation but says that they have “legitimate grievances,” and repeated his same bullshit line about the Ottawa telling Alberta to “pay up and shut up.” They pay the same income tax as the rest of us, and have the same representation in Parliament).

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones killed two people in the Kherson region. President Zelenskyy is proposing a major government reshuffle that includes a new prime minister, while the current one is to be shuffled to defence. Trump’s “ultimatum” to Putin to reach a ceasefire in 50 days is just license for him to keep firing drones and missiles at Ukraine for another 50 days, and probably longer.

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Roundup: Money for not living up to your end of the bargain

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One of the stories that has been floating around the past few days is that Toronto stands to lose up to $30 million in federal funding from the Housing Accelerator Fund because council did not approve city-wide zoning for sixplexes, which was a condition that they signed up for when they negotiated their deal for this money. And of course, this also comes with voices who claim that the federal government would be “using money as punishment” if they don’t give them all the money anyway, even though they have quite deliberately thumbed their noses at the very thing that they agreed to in order to get that money.

The established media narrative is that municipalities are *always* the victims who have no tools at their disposal.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-07-13T17:58:54.360Z

Unfortunately, we have a history of the federal government backing down when it comes to either giving money anyway when deals are broken, or by not recovering costs when they should. For example, the federal government was clawing back health transfers from New Brunswick for not funding abortion access at a clinic that was in an underserved part of the province, but when COVID hit, they released all of the clawed back money so that they didn’t look like the bad guys in ensuring that the province was living up to its obligations (or, for that matter, proving that they were sticking to their feminist principles, and using that money as leverage for the province to back down and fund the clinic). Another example is that provinces have deliberately underfunded their emergency management systems because they have been conditioned to know that the federal government will provide assistance from the Canadian Forces, and that provinces will get that assistance for free. The federal government has the authority to recover those costs from the provinces, but they never do because it would look like they’re somehow being mean to those provinces, when the provinces deliberately underfunded their own capacity.

If we want to reform things and start enforcing a system of accountability, that starts with making sure that provinces and municipalities live up to their agreements, or they don’t get transfer payments. But that requires a backbone and a willingness to actually hold them to account for those failures, and not being so timid that they refuse to actually say in clear terms that those provinces or municipalities didn’t live up to their agreements, so they would lose the funding/didn’t fund their own services because they thought they could get federal services for free, but they can’t, because there’s one taxpayer and they think they’re being clever. Nothing will change if someone doesn’t take a stand, and it’s time we start doing so.

Ukraine Dispatch

Trump says that America will resume sending Patriot missiles to Ukraine, so we’ll see how long it lasts this time.

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Roundup: Pushing back retaliation, again

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The latest Trump eruption has prime minister Mark Carney backpedalling some more, and he has said that his deadline for retaliatory tariffs, which was July 21st, is now going to be August 1st, since this is when he’s extended the negotiation deadline to, again letting Trump continue to string him along. Nevertheless, he has also called a Cabinet meeting next week, and will be meeting with the premiers on the 22nd in Huntsville, Ontario. The Conservatives immediately jumped on this and tried to insinuate that this was rich snob Carney being too good to have meetings in Ottawa…except that Doug Ford had already called the Council of the Federation to meet there, and Carney will now be joining in to make it a First Ministers’ meeting.

There is further clarity that New NAFTA-compliant goods will continue to be exempt from these new tariffs (for now, anyway), and energy and potash tariffs will continue to be ten percent instead of the new threat of 35 percent, but it’s entirely incoherent, other than the usual threats about Supply Management (with no reciprocal offer to reduce any American agricultural subsidies). Of course, Trump said a lot of wrong things about Supply Management, so that’s not helping matters any either.

The latest from @clareblackwood.bsky.social on the constantly shifting tariffs.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-07-11T18:11:42.200Z

In the meantime, the Conservatives want to recall the trade committee to hear from trade-exposed businesses. Of course, this is really just about getting clips for social media, since they’re not getting them from Question Period, and much like the transport committee and the ferries to be built in China, this will likely be members of all parties shaking their heads and expressing their dismay at Trump and his tariffs, but not too much dismay because that’s what they do—performative displays of dismay (again, to feed their social media channels). I expect nothing to come out of these meetings (other than a fresh supply of clips), but performers gotta perform, and that’s pretty much all MPs are these days (and yes, that is a Very Big Problem).

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack on Kharkiv on Friday damaged a maternity hospital. Ukrainian drones, in contrast, hit a Russian fighter aircraft plant and a missile production facility. It’s almost like there’s a very different way in which the war is being conducted on either side.

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