Tag Archives: NSICOP

Roundup: A call to ignore Pathways

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In a sit-down interview with The Canadian Press, prime minister Mark Carney says that an oil pipeline out of Alberta is “more likely than not,” and this doesn’t mean the revived Keystone XL (aka “Bridger Pipeline”). But he’s also not saying anything about Pathways, which is a bit suspicious because he tied the approval to Pathways getting underway, and industry has made it very clear they’re not interested in paying for it.

To that end, who showed up in the op-ed pages of the Globe and Mail but Martha Hall Findlay, former Liberal MP and now head of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, who put on a big show to say that she found it hard to write, but lo, she must recommend that the government “pause” Pathways, because it’s useless on a global scale, and “the world changed.” And then there was more hand-wringing and rationalization that Canada is such a small contributor to global emissions that it doesn’t matter.

The world didn’t change. Facts didn’t change. Climate change didn’t stop with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, so quite frankly, this is bullshit and special pleading. The notion that we don’t contribute enough to global emissions is such a poor argument because it’s a common action problem. We have some of the highest emissions on a per capita basis, and yes, that matters. Hall Findlay was going on about how this is all about ego, and we just want to look like we’re leaders, but guess what—every action matters. And if you think that it’s too expensive to reduce emissions now, well, it’s going to be even more expensive the longer we push it down the road, when the effects are even more entrenched globally. We’re already spending billions of dollars in insurance payouts every year that are directly related to climate. The vast majority of food price inflation is climate-related, even if people don’t want to admit it. Frankly, these arguments of hers are tired and baseless and not worth listening to, no matter how much she insists she still believes in climate action…eventually.

My favourite moment in any oil price shock cycle is when the Very Serious Energy People explain why this — again! — is not the time to give a shit about the climate crisis

— Chris Turner (@theturner.bsky.social) 2026-05-01T15:21:29.234Z

If Canada can make that argument at 1.4% then presumably so can Saudi Arabia (1.5), Iran (1.9) and Japan (2.0).Then I imagine both Indonesia (2.3) and Brazil (2.5) would say, "hey, us too." And at that point, you've ruled out 204 countries accounting for roughly 46% of all national emissions.

— Aaron Wherry (@aaronwherry.bsky.social) 2026-05-01T15:02:42.580Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-05-01T19:08:02.330Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched yet another attack on port infrastructure in Odesa early Friday, and then launched more than 400 drones in a daytime attack that injured ten people in Ternopil in the west. Ukraine is planning an overhaul of its military rotations, particularly after an outcry over images of emaciated soldiers emerged.

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Roundup: NSICOP vs lawful access

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Yesterday, the CBC’s national security reporter filed a story about the NSICOP report into lawful access, which was frankly a poor piece of journalism. The story merely quoted from the report without any outside comment, but more than that, the focus and entire framing of the story was more on the frustrations of police and CSIS that they don’t have lawful access tools—and by lawful access, we mean the ability of police or intelligence services to access your digital online history and movements, usually without a judicial warrant. This is very bad. In fact, it’s so bad that the Supreme Court of Canada has twice ruled that it’s unconstitutional, and that police can’t even get your ISP information without a warrant because it offers too much access to the “digital breadcrumbs” of your online life that it can and will violate your privacy.

This is not mentioned in the CBC story. The report talks extensively about the Supreme Court’s definition of privacy and why it’s important, and why it’s important to try and find pathways for information that still require a judicial warrant, and so on. But how was this reported in the story? A single sentence: “It dives into one of the most controversial issues in national security: balancing the individual right to privacy while safeguarding public safety.” If that’s not soft-pedalling one of the major problems underpinning this whole report, I’m not sure what is. And then the story goes back to enumerating the complaints about how hard it is to access that data.

I do think that the NSICOP report’s findings are a problematic in places because it essentially wants Parliament to thread that needle in a way that makes it sound easy.

In the Committee’s view, the primary way the government could facilitate and enable national security investigations while at the same time protecting Canadians’ right to privacy would be to modernize lawful access legislation, based on clearly articulated principles that reaffirm the requirement for a legitimate need for exceptional, targeted and judicially authorized access emphasize privacy and cybersecurity protections, and define transparency and oversight mechanisms. In light of the complexity of the lawful access challenge, the Committee suggests that the government implement an incremental approach to allow for meaningful engagement with stakeholders and a diversity of input.

I also question the wisdom of encouraging a comprehensive data-sharing agreement with the US, given that they are no longer a functional democracy and it’s probably a very bad thing if their authorities have easy access to Canadians’ data for their own purposes. And these are real problems that Parliament needs to confront, in both the (terrible) omnibus border bill C-2, which has lawful access provisions in it, or how it and the cyber-security bill, C-8, can try and force companies to put in backdoors to their encryption (which at least the NSICOP report says is a bad idea). This is a very problematic area of law, but that CBC story did absolute injustice to it, and most especially about the absolute importance of privacy rights, and why we shouldn’t make it easy for police to access our data whenever they claim it’s necessary (especially because CSIS has a history of not being candid with the courts about why they need information or warrants).

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine has hit Russian oil infrastructure in both the Bryansk and Samara regions, which is widening the fuel crisis in that country. Under the theory that Trump repeats whatever the last person he was speaking to says, he was saying that Ukraine can win the war and reclaim their territory with NATO help.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith’s Notwithstanding hypocrisy

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Danielle Smith is planning to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to protect her anti-trans legislation before the courts can weigh in, much as what happened in Saskatchewan. If you’ve been following that case, at the first court injunction, Scott Moe hurriedly not only invoked the Notwithstanding Clause, but also enacted legislation to shield his government from lawsuits for any harm that may come to these youths as a result of his policy—because if that’s not telling on himself, I’m not sure what else is.

But it gets better. Danielle Smith is also self-righteously opposing the federal government’s factum to the Supreme Court of Canada on the upcoming challenge to Quebec’s Law 21, saying that provinces have a right to use this clause, but then says she disagrees with Quebec’s use of it, but they should have the right. So, she disagrees with using it to attack religious minorities, but she’s totally justified in using it to attack trans or gender-diverse youth? The absolute hypocritical audacity. She’s also built an entire false discourse that the federal factum is going to cause a national unity or constitutional crisis, which mischaracterises what the federal factums says. The federal government position is that the courts can weigh in on whether the law the Clause is protecting violates rights or not. A declaration of no force or effect. But she doesn’t want them to do that, because they would expose her for attacking the rights of vulnerable youth, and that makes her look bad. The poor dear.

Meanwhile, the meltdowns over the federal factum continue, with the Bloc insisting that this is an attack on Quebec’s ability to legislate for itself (it’s not), and conservatives all over insisting that this is going to tear the country apart, and that the Supreme Court needs to be removed if they impose limits, and so on. Not one of them has read the factum, of course, but they’re treating this like political Armageddon, because that’s never backfired before. I’m not sure the minister is helping by soft-pedalling the message of the federal position, especially since pretty much every media outlet is getting the very basics of this factum wrong. But of course, he would be explaining, and “when you’re explaining, you’re losing,” so they never explain, and things continue to slide downhill at an alarming rate.

Ukraine Dispatch

Fragments of a drone attack over Kyiv have damaged the city’s trolley bus network. President Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces are pushing Russians back in a counteroffensive along the eastern front. Ukrainian drones have hit Russia’s Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil processing and petrochemical complex, one of the largest in the country. Russia has turned over the bodies of over 1000 Ukrainian soldiers. Ukrainian forces are training their Polish counterparts on more effective ways to counter Russian drones following the incursion.

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Roundup: Foreign interference commission final report released

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Justice Marie-Josée Hogue released the final report of the Foreign Interference public inquiry yesterday, and there really weren’t too many surprises involved. While there have been attempts at foreign interference, it hasn’t affected the outcomes of any elections, and that our institutions have held up rather well—though not perfectly. Government has been too slow to respond in many cases, and we don’t have enough transparency around national security issues, nor is there a culture of national security in government to make these issues a priority. There has been progress, but we’re not there yet. In many respects, this report proves that David Johnston’s report was right, and we’ve spent a year-and-a-half duplicating efforts because opposition party leaders decided it was more fun to smear Johnston than take him seriously.

One of the most significant aspects was a repudiation of the NSICOP report that claimed there were parliamentarians that were somehow compromised, and Hogue went through how the intelligence didn’t actually say that, and how NSICOP’s characterisation torqued what had been alleged—and frankly, much of the news reporting torqued further because they didn’t bother to read the context in that report. Hogue also noted that much of the reporting that drove this moral panic and the subsequent inquiry was wrong, though she didn’t necessarily blame the journalists because they only had so much to go on. (Nevertheless, this should be a warning about just how absolutely credulous some of those reporters have been on this file since the beginning, and why they failed to adequately question the motives of those doing the leaking).

Two cents: The Chair of NSICOP should have been far more willing to explain what message the committee's report was meant to convey last summer.NSICOP reports have exaggerated things in the past. Hopefully, the next chair takes a more measured approach.

— Philippe Lagassé (@plagasse.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T17:55:57.033Z

Hogue's call for greater transparency in the national security space is key, too. That should be a key priority for whichever party is in government after the next election.

— Philippe Lagassé (@plagasse.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T18:02:26.554Z

Probably a good thing that the pressure to 'name names' wasn't followed through on, eh? We could have outright destroyed innocent people with potentially empty innuendo.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2025-01-28T17:38:06.873Z

A couple of other notables—Hogue noted that transnational repression is probably a bigger threat, but her mandate didn’t give her the latitude to explore that, so that remains a big flag for this or the next government to address. Even more to the point, she flagged disinformation as the most existential threat to our democracy, and called for a dedicated federal watchdog to monitor and intercept foreign meddling that uses social media platforms and “AI” tools like deep-fakes. She also recommended developing digital and media literacy among Canadians, which feels a bit like a “perfect world” wish, or at least something that we may be able to impart onto the next generation but I worry that the current one may be lost in that regard.

For more, here’s a thread from Stephanie Carvin who went through the report:

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, here is the summary

— Stephanie Carvin (@stephaniecarvin.bsky.social) 2025-01-29T00:25:45.506Z

In the wake of this, Pierre Poilievre has let it be known that he’s not going to take that CSIS threat reduction briefing after all, because he can’t talk about what it says, so he is once again relying on the false notion that this, or any other security clearance, is somehow going to “gag” him. It won’t, but it would mean he has to be responsible with his commentary, which he does not want to do. He wants to be bombastic, and to lie at every opportunity, and so he will keep refusing a clearance or briefings, because he only cares about “owning the Libs,” not national security or the good of the country.

Because he's a self-interested venomous partisan who wants maximum freedom to be act like a weasel. I'm not sure why some Liberal partisans decided there was anything more nefarious than that at play.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2025-01-28T19:12:35.197Z

exactly so.Phil and I found in our work that the average MP would rather speak ignorantly than know more and then have to be somewhat responsible.PP is the extreme version of this–rather be a bomb thrower than have any responsibility.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman.bsky.social) 2025-01-28T19:23:04.269Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Overnight Russian air attacks wounded eight and damaged residential buildings around Ukraine on Monday night. Ukrainian drones are targeting power and oil facilities in the west and northwestern regions of Russia.

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Roundup: The PBO’s update won’t stop the disinformation

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s revised report on the distributional impacts of the carbon levy was released yesterday, and lo, it reconfirmed that indeed most households are better off with the rebates than what they pay—most especially the bottom 40 percent of households by income. It also showed a much, much smaller impact on the overall economic impact when broken out per household, which is a significant change from his initial report, and what the Conservatives in particular weaponized. They still are—Question Period was full of those same figures being mendaciously framed as costing individual households when it’s talking about the impacts on GDP when broken out into the abstract figure of per-household costs, which is not how the economy works, and yes, any climate action is going to have an impact on GDP, but inaction is also going to have an even larger impact. But lying liars are going to lie about what these numbers mean, because nobody will actually explain the difference to them.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1844402178200670530

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1844402188518605295

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1844402192742269299

With that in mind, take a look at the varied headlines, and guess the outlets:

As you can gather, at least one of those headlines is incredibly misleading, and unsurprisingly, some were framing this in explicitly the same terms the Conservatives are.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1844551195257446581

As well, Yves Giroux went back on Power & Politics to talk about his updated report, and thankfully David Cochrane gave him the gears for it, because he continues to refuse to take responsibility for the state of confusion and disinformation that his previous report has left the country and the political discourse in. I was also struck by the fact that he kept saying that these are the government’s own numbers—so what exactly is his office doing if they’re not independently coming up with their own figures as is the whole gods damned point of why the office was created? It just keeps reiterated how Giroux is completely unsuited for this job, and needs to resign because he’s clearly making the case for why this office needs to be abolished.

Programming note: I am taking the full long weekend off, so have a good Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.

Ukraine Dispatch

Overnight attacks by Russia and those into Thursday hit civilian and critical infrastructure in cities like Mykolaiv and Kherson. There is also fierce fighting in the strategic city of Toretsk as Russians increase pressure on the eastern front. Ukrainian forces hit an ammunition depot in a Russian airfield in the Adygeya region, about 450 km from the front line.

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Roundup: Inappropriate behaviour but no traitors

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

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

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

#cdnpoli, all day every day.

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

Ukraine Dispatch

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

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Roundup: An own-goal that makes it worse for everyone

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It was an own-goal for the media today as CTV was found to have spliced a Poilievre quote in a news story and was forced to apologise for it. Of course, this had every single Conservative salivating and insisting that this was “proof” of “fake news” and that media were trying to be unfair to Poilievre, and that this was in service of their government funding (which television outlets like CTV don’t get), and other ridiculous accusations of bias. Because that’s where we are now.

While I don’t personally know what happened, what is likely to have happened was you had someone trying to fit the story into their both-sides narrative frame and needed a short quote, and took the long paragraph from Poilievre and extracted words to come up with what they were looking for to fit the piece. It’s bad practice, but it’s almost certainly not done with malevolent intention, but because they’re overworked, under-resourced, and lacking proper editorial supervision, as with nearly every outlet these days. Because that’s where every media outlet is at, and it’s not sustainable, and things are going to continue to deteriorate if we try to keep doing what we’re doing.

This being said, the Conservatives’ war against the media is only going to get worse, and this incident, plus others, shows that they have a vested interest in catching out every single mistake from media, or to invent problems where they didn’t actually exist. For example, Poilievre likes to go on about the three corrections that The Canadian Press made to a story about his remarks, but the “corrections” were because the writer had spelled out what Poilievre was only referring to obliquely (quite deliberately) and Poilievre complained that he didn’t say what the story says he did, even though he actually did if you thought about it for more than five seconds. But this is the kind of petty, bad-faith bullshit that they’re going to engage in, and most of our media outlets are unprepared to deal with it. Legacy media is in serious trouble in this country, and it’s only going to get worse as this campaign against them from Poilievre intensifies.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian forces made a new series of strikes on Zaporizhzhia, killing one. At the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, Ukraine is accusing Russia of trying to illegally seize control of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait. President Zelenskyy is in the US, not only to attend the UN, but to discuss his “victory plan” with the American government.

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Roundup: First day back, and privilege is being abused

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As you may have read in the QP recap, the first day back was full of general name-calling and childish behaviour. Before QP even got started, Karina Gould called Pierre Poilievre a “fraudster” for his whole “economic nuclear winter” bullshit, while Elizabeth May referred to the NDP as “No Discernible Principles,” and added “It’s fine for Jagmeet Singh to say that he doesn’t listen to Pierre Poilievre, but Pierre Poilievre’s words come out of Jagmeet Singh’s mouth.” Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet said the situation was akin to playing chicken with four cars, and suspected that an election may wind up happening sooner than later. That said, the Bloc said they won’t vote for any confidence motion that calls for the destruction of the carbon levy, so that’s something.

The bigger issue that has been revived, however, is the demand that the opposition parties voted for regarding documents related to Sustainable Development Technologies Canada (SDTC), which the Conservatives deride as the “green slush fund” (when it was their government that set it up). The demand for these documents is an absolute abuse of parliamentary privilege, and the Auditor General doesn’t want to respond because infringes upon her independence, and the RCMP said they don’t want the documents, which was the point of why the Conservatives moved the motion to demand them in the first place. And political shenanigans from the Conservatives aside, the fact that the Bloc and the NDP couldn’t see where this was going and why this was a Very Bad Idea speaks very poorly to their own understanding of parliament, and why these kinds of privileges shouldn’t be abused (especially the fact that they have been abusing the Law Clerk and his office to do this kind of work when it’s not his job). Most concerning is the fact that using Parliament to get the RCMP to investigate where there is no evidence of criminal activity is a big flashing warning sign of authoritarian tactics of rule by law, instead of rule of law, and we absolutely do not want to go down that path in this country, and the fact that none of the opposition parties could see that this is a problem is really worrying.

Me, regarding the state of #cdnpoli:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-09-16T21:10:06.144Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims that they re-took two villages in western Kursk district.

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Roundup: Back to the constituencies

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At long last, the children—and by “children,” I mean MPs—have gone home for the summer. Finally. Not before there wasn’t another last-ditch effort by Conservatives to try and demand more committee hearings over the summer, because they need clips for their socials, after all. I also find it particularly strange that the Conservatives have been phrasing their condemnations that the other parties want to go back to their ridings to “vacation” for the summer, because normally MPs are extremely precious about the fact that this is not a break because they have sO mUcH wOrK tO dO in their constituencies and that if they had their druthers they’d do even more work in their constituencies and less in Ottawa, so this feels like the Conservatives making a tacit admission that they don’t do work in their constituencies. (I know they’re not, but this is what happens when you make dumb arguments to score points).

This being said, MPs are absolutely behaving like children over all of this, and they all need a gods damned time out, not that I expect things to get much better in the fall because the incentives for this kind of behaviour remain—it’s all about getting clicks and engagement on their socials, and acting like children gets them that, apparently. It’s too bad the incentives aren’t there for them to act like adults, but the world has gone stupid.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians resumed air attacks on Ukrainian power facilities. (Timeline of such attacks here). The fire at the oil terminal in southern Rostov burned for a second day after Ukraine’s drone strike. Here’s a look at how Russian glide bombs have accelerated the time it takes for them to destroy front-line settlements in Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1803342727267885346

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QP: Last chance to get clips before the summer

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It’s a sweltering, muggy Wednesday, and everyone hopes the final day before the House rises for the summer. The prime minister was present, while his deputy was not, and the other leaders al deigned to attend for on last go-around to gather some clips for the summer break. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he lamented that the country is broken, and took a swipe at the Bloc, and demanded an election right now. Justin Trudeau said that if the leader opposite was really concerned about affordability, he would help pass their measures to help people rather than play petty partisan games. Poilievre worried that the government is threatening to “shut down” the Quebec forestry sector (not true), and Trudeau responded that unlike the Conservatives, Quebeckers know they need to protect the environment and the economy at the same time. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his assertion that everything  is broken and demanded an election, and Trudeau repeated his same assertion that the Conservatives should support their programmes. Poilievre expounded on just how much the country is a living hell thanks to his “whackonomics,” and Trudeau shot back that the Conservatives are only concerned with protecting the wealthiest, particularly over the capital gains changes. Poilievre claimed the Middle Class™ doesn’t exist anymore, and Trudeau reiterated that Poilievre only cares about himself. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and complained about anglophone mail carriers in Quebec, and Trudeau praised the government’s support for French, including in Quebec, and promised to follow up on it. Blanchet accused the government’s programmes of harming French, and Trudeau dismissed this as “identitarian” squabbling.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he accused the government of coddling CEOs, to which Trudeau patted himself on the back for raising taxes on the wealthiest, and took a shot at the Conservatives in the process. Singh tried again in French, and Trudeau listed the programmes they have delivered.

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