Tag Archives: National Security

The Alberta gerrymandering has begun

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The Alberta boundaries report has been tabled in the legislature, and as pretty much everyone expected, it’s a fairly textbook example of gerrymandering in the UCP’s favour. As expected, they are resurrecting a number or rurban/“hybrid” ridings which take a slice of urban electorate and then swamp them with outlying rural voters, in order to dilute more progressive urban votes. And they have monkeyed with the weighting, so that rural ridings have fewer voters and thus more electoral weight than urban ridings, again all in service of privileging the rural, conservative voters over urban, progressive voters in order to guarantee that the UCP will have a structural advantage moving forward.

Oh hey Alberta's latest (and highly controversial) electoral boundary report is out: www.assembly.ab.ca/docs/default…And it's got a bunch of "hybrid" ridings that blend urban and rural areas into one.For example, here's the proposed new "Calgary-North West-Bearspaw" riding:

— Robson Fletcher (@robsonfletcher.com) 2026-11-02T22:25:08.983Z

And here's "Calgary-Bow-Springbank":

— Robson Fletcher (@robsonfletcher.com) 2026-11-02T22:26:44.348Z

And here's "Calgary-West-Springbank":

— Robson Fletcher (@robsonfletcher.com) 2026-11-02T22:27:53.278Z

And here's Lethbridge, which is currently two ridings (Lethbridge East and Lethbridge West).The city is now proposed to be split into four ridings, three of which spread into surrounding areas:"Lethbridge""Lethbridge-Little Bow""Lethbridge-Taber-Warner""Lethbridge-Cardston"

— Robson Fletcher (@robsonfletcher.com) 2026-11-02T22:36:14.844Z

Alberta’s urban ridings will have average populations that are 5.8% above the provincial average. Alberta’s rural ridings will be 6.7% below the provincial average.This variance is even larger than the prior (rejected) commission report.

— Blake Shaffer 🇨🇦 (@blakeshaffer.bsky.social) 2026-11-02T23:24:23.552Z

Elections Alberta had already asked the government to push back their “fixed” election date because of this redistribution effort, and the Cabinet gave a pissy “How very dare you,” because of course they did. And we’ll see if this gets challenged in the courts, because this kind of gerrymandering is blatantly unconstitutional, but Danielle Smith is going to try, because her only interest is in holding onto power. 

Mickey Amery has responded to Elections Alberta's Friday letter that said it wouldn't be possible to pull off an election with new boundaries in the time allotted…By basically saying "You'll do what we want and you'll like it".#abpoli #ableg #cdnpoli

— The Breakdown AB (@thebreakdownab.bsky.social) 2026-11-01T23:06:26.858Z

Not remotely.

— Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2026-11-03T01:09:23.065Z

Meanwhile, there was a whole other sub-drama happening at the end of the week, where Smith announced that she had kicked separatist leader Jeff Rath out of the party. Recall that at the last party convention, he fired up the audience more than Smith did, and demonstrated that he had a hold on the membership base. This also happened after Rath leaked texts from Danielle Smith about her colluding with them about the petitions for the referendum questions. It’s a little suspicious for Smith to dump the allies who got her to where she is now that they’re no longer convenient for her, but again, everything that is happening here is in service of Smith holding onto power for as long as she possibly can.

WOW!Jeff Rath posted text messages that he alleges are from Danielle Smith!These texts seem to show her coordinating with the separatists to launch their original question, though Rath claims he took them as her coordinating with @lukaszukab.bsky.social !What do you think?

— The Breakdown AB (@thebreakdownab.bsky.social) 2026-10-27T20:57:50.057Z

WOW!The Rath texts are real. Smith colluded with the separatists.Confirmed by Dani in the legislature today. And while she tried to spin them as just answering questions, she also makes it clear the texts weren't meant for Lukaszuk.#abpoli #ableg #cdnpoli

— The Breakdown AB (@thebreakdownab.bsky.social) 2026-10-28T20:04:18.326Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-11-02T14:08:34.159Z

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For National Magazine, I delve into Friday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision on inattention and dangerous driving, and what signals the Court might be sending.

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Poor oversight and vague outlines

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It was Auditor General Day yesterday, and there were a bunch of reports released, including three from the Environment Commissioner, who is in her office. And so, this is what they found:

  • The CBSA’s new digital management software, CARM, is still glitchy two years later and they spend a lot of time on manual workarounds.
  • FINTRAC continues to be plagued by reporting backlogs that aren’t going to be cleared until next year at least.
  • National Defence didn’t manage their ammunition inventory effectively.
  • Ways to improve the dental care programme after it exceeded its budget.
  • The government still won’t outline their plan to meet their 2030 emissions targets.
  • The procurement process for new call centre technology has been a mess.
  • Health Canada isn’t following up on high-risk pesticides identified with monitoring.
  • PHAC has not effectively managed their emergency stockpiles.
  • The government stopped work on banning thermal coal exports without saying so.

There is a common theme about a lack of oversight in many of these reports, and while a lot of these issues are from the Trudeau era, I have observed that there was an issue with a lack of proper management of government departments, where the attitude seemed to be that these civil servants were left to manage their own affairs, which they didn’t necessarily do effectively. Whether that’s because ministers didn’t feel they were qualified to because they were constantly reporting to the Centre (meaning the chief of staff) was a possibility, or perhaps it was because they didn’t realise that it was their responsibility to do so. I wonder if it will get worse under Carney, however, as ministers are preoccupied with trying to use digital asbestos to “find efficiencies,” or because major projects and decisions are being shunted off to Crown corporations to manage them instead, which are more arm’s-length, and as a result get less scrutiny. We’ll have to see, but the trend is not encouraging.

The government also released their first National Security Strategy in twenty years, and it was a slim, high-level document that had very few details, but outlined five broad themes, including a focus on economic security. There is also concern outlined about “frontier” digital asbestos being a major threat. Philippe Lagassé considers the defence-related items, while Stephanie Carvin has her initial thoughts here.

Carney says we are "forging new partnerships with allies that are anchored in our common values."What are our "common values" with China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Türkiye, and Modi's India? If the common value is making money, then he should just come out and say so.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-10-30T00:54:22.514Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-10-29T19:08:01.843Z

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The culture war distraction

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In the wake of her referendum flame-out, and one of her MLAs abruptly quitting, Alberta premier Danielle Smith is not wasting any time in ramping up American culture war bullshit as the legislature returns in the province. First up was new rules for flags at schools which are a convoluted mess that are essentially an overly bureaucratic way of banning Pride flags without coming out to just call it a Pride flag ban. Now the first bill her government has tabled is an effective ban on “DEI hiring” in the government or other public institutions, which is any kind of affirmative action to ensure that there are diverse hiring practices in favour of “merit,” even though we know that so-called “merit-based” hiring practices are overwhelmingly discriminatory in practice. And we’re not stupid—this, along with her anti-immigrant referendum questions are all about catering to the white nationalists in her party base, and they’re being pretty open about it. The fact that they wrap it up in culture war language and rationalization doesn’t change the fact that this is about appeasing white nationalists, end of story.

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2115243800482505190

Meanwhile, in her attempt to look tough on the separatists in her ranks, Smith is also directing anyone planning on running for a board position within the UCP to sign a declaration that they’ll abide by the referendum result and not pursue independence. And all of the separatists are saying sure, I’ll sign it, but it doesn’t mean anything—particularly because they are still organising internally within the party to control the entire organisational mechanism so that they can oust Smith and put an avowed separatist in the leadership and take over the party from the inside (thanks again to Jason Kenney setting up the party so that it’s easy for them to do so). The fact that she thinks this would stop or solve anything is a weird move by Smith, but also just a first salvo in the party’s coming civil war as Smith tries to desperately hang onto power. Things could be getting messy from here.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-10-27T19:08:02.936Z

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QP: Resurrecting the economic record of Trudeau Senior

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The PM was away, having made a heat pump announcement in Sherbrooke, Quebec, while Pierre Poilievre was also absent, leaving it up to John Brassard to denounced that announcement as a conflict of interest with Brookfield. Steven MacKinnon took the opportunity to congratulate Ann Carson for her Nobel prize for literature. Brassard was snide about this, and again repeated the allegation of conflict. Nathalie Provost praised the announcement, and proclaimed how much it will save households and lower emissions. Jasraj Hallan recited talking  points about grocery prices and Thanksgiving, and François-Philippe Champagne took the opportunity to also praise the heat pump announcement while mumbling about stabilising prices. Hallan demanded that the government vote in favour of their supply day motion on there being an affordability crisis, and Champagne listed supports that they have offered Canadians. Dominique Vien also decried the cost of Thanksgiving dinner, but en français, and Provost again read the praise for the heat pump announcement. Vien also demanded support for their motion, and Provost noted how much was sent to Vien’s riding for the enhanced GST credit.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and trolled that a backbench Liberal had concerns about C-39, and wondered who else was going to wake up. MacKinnon trotted out self-congratulating talking points about becoming a clean and conventional energy superpower, and implored the Bloc to support the bill in order to speed up Churchill Falls’ approvals. Normandin noted that most Liberals ran against this kind of thing, and Champagne claimed that the Bloc used to be in favour of building in Quebec, and he again raised Churchill Falls. Gabriel Ste-Marie took over and he too worried about the “Big Beautiful Bill.” MacKinnon listed more projects that the bill would benefit.

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Walking away from a bad deal at the last minute

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The Canadian delegation walked away from the negotiation table late Friday after rumours came down that Howard Lutnick inserted himself into the talks because he felt that Canada was getting too good of a deal, and lo, talks have ended. New tariffs were applied to Canada, and we will counter with tariffs of our own after Labour Day. Never mind the fact that there could never actually be a deal—there is no negotiating with a party that will not and will never honour any deal it makes, so it never made sense for Carney to go through the pretence, and from the sounds of it, was willing to make some very serious concessions, including our digital sovereignty, to get pretty much nothing in return (and no, accepting lower permanent tariffs on things that used to be traded freely is not something).

The Robot Chicken version:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-08-22T16:00:16.149Z

On Saturday, Carney noted in his speech that at the last minute, the US tried to attack French and other elements of our sovereignty, including limiting our other trading relationships, which cannot stand. Even worse was the text circulating that would prohibit us from any retaliatory measures anytime they decided to his us with new tariffs for any reason, which is just vassal state bullshit. But again, it raises the question of how Carney thought he was ever negotiating in good faith with an explicitly bad faith administration? And how can he not see that we are not in a trade war, but we are fighting against gangsterism, and that is very different.

https://bsky.app/profile/stephaniecarvin.bsky.social/post/3mtomikpack27

How the trade negotiations between Canada and the USA went sour. Note the last paragraph on slide 2, specifically. The Americans were never working for a trade deal. They were demanding the right to abuse Canada whenever Trump is in a mood. #cdnpoli

— Kikki Planet (@kikkiplanet.bsky.social) 2026-08-22T14:06:54.528Z

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3mtovnjbzhc2v

….and to be clear, the attack on Canada is not simply a "trade war". The US ripped up the Gordie Howe Bridge deal and expropriated the revenue stream.That's not a trade war; that's simply gangsterism. And that repeats on many other non-trade fronts.So, stop analyzing this as a "trade war".

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-08-22T16:27:21.608Z

In reaction, Jennifer Robson makes the observation that many of the American demands were aimed at positioning us vis-à-vis China, and looks for hints about the latest round of demands based on past grievance reports. Kevin Carmichael ponders Carney’s history as a risk manager and how he might be applying that to the current situation. Justin Ling is confident we’ll win this war with the Americans, like we’ve won against their repeated attempts to invade us. Matt Gurney calls on the government to release details and names for why the deal failed, as this is also an info war, and we need to get more allies on-side. Stephanie Carnvin points out that even if Trump loses the next election, there is no “normal” to go back to, which is why Canadian business leaders need to stop pining and get with the times.

The Canadian Government Is Dumping Donald Trumpyoutu.be/2wj7DI2NMPk

— Clare Blackwood (@clareblackwood.bsky.social) 2026-08-22T17:32:23.386Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-08-23T23:08:01.038Z

My Latest:

  • My column wonders if Danielle Smith isn’t trying to set up a showdown in advance of her referendums on her dual practice healthcare legislation.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take notes that our national security laws are overdue for legislative review, and that this should be something committees take up right away.
  • My weekend column looks at the recent study on the rise in instances of Canadian conservatives claiming elections were fraudulent when they lose.

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Cherry-picking the incel manifesto

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There were more details released yesterday about the shooting in Montreal—the name of the officer and the civilian who were killed, and a few details are emerging about the shooter, who is believed to have been a university student from Lethbridge, Alberta. His purported manifesto, however, is what is burning up the social media channels, with everyone searching for what they want to read in it—“anti-police/anti-government,” antisemitic/anti-Zionist, “communist,” among others, but at its heart it was an incel manifesto.

The Post's white nationalist apologist has cherry-picked the purported manifesto to discover it says what she hopes it will say. Imagine that!

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-06-24T02:42:49.682Z

Here is Carleton University professor Stephanie Carvin, whose latest book was on the far-right in Canada, and she has read the purported manifesto, and has some interview clips here to put it into context. (For some unknown reason, CBC didn’t post either this interview or the one she did with Power & Politics to YouTube, so this will have to do for the moment.

Stephanie Carvin on Montreal shooter's manifesto: There is the incel philosophy here as well as a lot of anti-government extremism … the shooter is basically holding police responsible for upholding a system that is seen as inherently corrupt and degrading certain classes of men in society.

— Scott Robertson (@sarobertson.bsky.social) 2026-06-23T13:37:16.747Z

Stephanie Carvin on RCMP issuing warning to police agencies across the country: There's an explicit call for what the shooter calls "revolutionary acts of terrorism" in this manifesto.

— Scott Robertson (@sarobertson.bsky.social) 2026-06-23T13:39:50.999Z

Carvin: The radicalization story here is going to be very important for understanding what happened, why this person seems to — it's been reported that he drove from Alberta to Montreal. Why did he choose Montreal? There's a lot we can speculate on there.

— Scott Robertson (@sarobertson.bsky.social) 2026-06-23T13:43:11.177Z

Carvin: If this is the manifesto, it is what I would describe as an incel critique of capitalism. And he's really coming at a variety of different topics in here. You do have ideas, I would say, from the extreme left and the extreme right. But the continuing thread throughout is a hatred of women.

— Scott Robertson (@sarobertson.bsky.social) 2026-06-23T13:43:25.847Z

I do have to wonder about what more the federal government should be doing, and in particular, the Conservatives who keep insisting that they are trying to do something for disaffected young (white) men. That’s what Jamil Jivani’s big campus tour is all about, insisting that these young men need special dispensation in life because they’re just soooo disaffected. Poilievre’s solution to everything is to just cut taxes and hope that doubling down on trickle-down economics will do the trick, but somehow, I doubt that’s going to do much in this situation—particularly given that he’s tried to engage the “manosphere” to try and attract those voters to his cause. None of this is good, and I worry about where this goes the more that they try to appeal to a toxic internet culture and keep ignoring people in the real world.

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Digital Asbestos For All!

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The prime minister and his minister of digital asbestos, Evan Solomon, released their “Digital Asbestos for All” strategy in Toronto yesterday, which involves giving half a billion dollars to firms to scale up their adoption of said digital asbestos, and doing a lot of back-patting about sovereign capability—or at least laying the foundations for it—and there were some utterly fantastic estimations of just how many jobs this will create. And by fantastic, I mean it looks an awful lot like fantasy. But it’s also a lot about trying to get people hooked, through giving access to ‘trusted [digital asbestos] agents” to all post-secondary students, which is not what professors want and is going to make their lives more difficult as they already have a hard enough time preventing cheating using these tools. They are also promising a “National [digital asbestos] Literacy Initiative” that involves training and tool-kits available to educators, which feels a lot like giving pot to high school students and telling them it’s good for them.

"Provide access to trusted AI agents for every post-secondary student – from the arts and commerce to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and medicine."I'm pretty sure that nobody who teaches in a post-secondary institution asked for this, and this makes their jobs even harder.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-06-04T15:46:27.206Z

If this wasn’t bad enough, there was a whole lot of handwaving from Solomon about “building trust” and “safety” without actually saying how they’re going to ensure that these platforms can be trusted, or what kinds of safety measures they’ll put into place. On Power & Politics, David Cochrane was giving Solomon the gears about how he can possibly make these kinds of promises when the tech bros controlling these companies have more money than many economies at their disposal so fines won’t be of any use, and they have the weight of the Trump administration behind them, so trying to force them to build any kinds of safety features that they don’t want to build are extremely unlikely to happen. And Solomon wouldn’t answer, but just kept repeating his lines. “Trust” is a whole lot of “just trust me,” and I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough. But that’s all that this government is going to offer, because Mark Carney and Solomon have guzzled all of the tech bro hype, and they’re going to pour all kinds of money into this just as the bubble is about to burst. We’re going to lose so much money, while this government is already cutting spending to programmes that need it, and we’re all going to pay the price because they couldn’t stop guzzling the hype.

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Roundup: Trying to politicize the Order of Canada

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Because everything needs to be stupid all of the time, Conservative MP and obnoxious windbag Andrew Lawton started circulating a petition in support of his nomination of Don Cherry to the Order of Canada. The Order of Canada advisory board does not respond to petitions. It is an arm’s-length body chaired by the Chief Justice in order to apolitically weigh the nominations for the Order. I make this point because the honours system in Canada is held by the Crown in order to keep it apolitical (which is one reason why constitutional monarchy is superior). Lawton circulating this petition, which is being signed and championed by members of his caucus, including his leader, is the very definition of politicising these honours for the sake of culture war bullshit—after all, Cherry eventually lost his lucrative CBC gig because of racist commentary.

But because Lawton was so keen to gin up the culture war grift, he inadvertently pissed off members of his own caucus—specifically, most of the Quebec members, who are not fans of Cherry because Cherry also spent his career insulting Quebec and European players, and they are not looking to forgive and forget. And now this is spiralling because culture war grifting is by its very definition stupid and self-defeating. But when your political fundraising is tied to this same grifting complex, is it any wonder that this kind of self-own happens? And will they learn any lessons from this? Of course not.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-03-13T13:24:01.664Z

Carney-versary

It’s the one-year anniversary of Mark Carney being sworn-in as prime minister, so there are a few retrospectives. The National Post takes stock of what we know and don’t know about him, and the fact that there are still a few mysteries. JDM Stewart enumerates the expectations placed on Carney that he will need to deliver on. Althia Raj talks to 33 sources about that first year in office, and it’s a pretty honest assessment of the trends both good and bad he has demonstrated.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian shelling killed one and wounded six in Dnipropetrovsk region, and an attack in Zaporizhzhia region injured four. President Zelenskyy warned that pausing Russian oil sanctions will only prolong the war.

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Roundup: Ending a filibuster and starting the Iran debate

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Two big things are up today in the House of Commons. First is a programming motion that would end the filibuster on Bill C-9, which is the hate crime bill that the Conservatives have been stalling on because the government agreed with the Bloc to remove the religious exemption to hate crimes. This has caused all sorts of howls, particularly from certain members of the Conservative backbench who are experienced propagandists, who claim that this is going to criminalise religious worship and that prosecutors will be combing the Bible to come after Christians, as though police have the time and resources to do that (as police are the ones responsible for laying hate crime charges—and are frequently the ones who don’t, even when merited). It’s stupid, it’s misleading, it’s dishonest, and the government has had enough, so they’re going to put their foot down and they will have the votes to pass this motion.

Yes, C-9 is a bill that is mostly just empty symbolism, and while civil liberties groups have their concerns that it could be used to criminalise legitimate protests, I would say that the bigger issue—the hate crimes that this is supposed to address—remain in the same position of waiting on police action or inaction. You can pass all the hate crime legislation you want, but if police don’t bother to investigate or lay charges (because most police do have a certain ideological bias), then it’s all for naught.

The other thing that will be coming up today will be a debate on the conflict in Iran, which will take place during the evening. The Government House Leader signalled this before needing to wait on the opposition parties to move anything in the Chamber, for all the good this is going to do. I’m sure the world is waiting with baited breath for MPs to read twenty-minute speeches into the records about how this violates international law (NDP, Bloc), that it’s great that the Supreme Leader was killed and how the Iran regime needs to be destroyed—completely ignoring that the Americans have no plan and will only make things worse (Conservatives), or just praising Mark Carney’s “leadership” and “pragmatism” (Liberals).

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile struck an apartment building in Kharkiv early Saturday, killing ten people. President Zelenskyy says that Ukraine is discussing joint arms production with the Netherlands for interceptor drones.

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Roundup: A last-minute trip sans journalists

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Prime minister Mark Carney took a last-minute trip to Egypt over the weekend to attend the Middle East peace summit, where he did things like praise the release of hostages, and commend the “leadership” of Trump in reaching this moment (which ignores a whole lot of what has happened up until this point). But a lot of things about this trip were unusual. For one, he ended up chartering a private plan because no military aircraft were available on short notice, which is odd in and of itself (and I can’t wait for the pearl-clutching when the Access to Information request is released about the costs of said charter). For another, he did not alert the media to the trip until he was taking off, and no accredited journalists accompanied him on the trip.

Statement from the president of the Parliamentary Press Gallery:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-10-14T23:14:12.452Z

This is a very big warning sign about how Carney is treating the office, and his obligations to transparency. Perhaps more egregiously was the fact that the PMO comms team spent the long weekend emailing journalists and pointing them to links to his posts on Twitter, as though that was some kind of substitute. It’s not. Social media posts are carefully curated and present a very stage-managed view of the world, which is not a substitute for journalism. In fact, it’s usually a form of propaganda, because it delivers a carefully crafted message in a way that is intended to influence the voting public in a certain way.

To be clear, Carney is not the first prime minister who has tried to limit media access in favour of his in-house photographers and media team, and these photographers and videographers are given privileged access to both document history, and set up carefully curated narratives. And yes, the press is going to complain about it because it’s our job to present a wider view than what the PMO wants us to see, and the public expects more transparency, which has been in retreat under Carney’s leadership because he still thinks that this is like being a CEO where you don’t say much because it might affect your stock price. That’s not how you behave in the top political office of the country, and he needs to get that message.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian glide bombs hit a hospital in Kharkiv in the early morning hours of Tuesday, while attacks on the energy grid continued. A UN humanitarian convoy in southern Ukraine was also hit by Russian drones. Ukrainian authorities have ordered the evacuation of dozens of villages near the city of Kupiansk given the deteriorating security situation, while Russia claims they took control of another village in Donetsk region. President Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian troops have advanced in their counter-offensive in the Zaporizhzhia region.

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