Tag Archives: Official Languages

QP: NATO back-patting and “radical environmentalism”

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The PM was off in Halifax for his military announcement, while Pierre Poilievre was also absent, and attendance was down because this is essentially a Friday as the House is not sitting tomorrow. That left it up to Andrew Scheer to lead off, and he complained that the dollar was not rising with oil prices, and blamed the government’s “radical environmental agenda.” Mysteriously, Jill McKnight rose for the government,  to to answer the question, but to pat herself on the back for the government’s announcement that we have met the former NATO two percent spending target. Scheer said nothing about this, and kept on with his script about affordability, and blamed the industrial carbon price for declining productivity. (Seriously?!) this time, Sherry Romanado got up, and no, she didn’t answer the question either, but delivered the NATO back-patting en français. Rob Moore took over, and continued with the same script about the “radical environmental agenda” driving up the cost of living, to which Tim Hodgson got up to note that he received praise from members of the American cabinet earlier in the week for Canada’s record oil and gas production helping to keep prices down. Moore recited the lines about the industrial carbon price, to which François-Philippe Champagne got up to proclaim the “good news” of the NATO target, as well as their new bill boost home construction. Luc Berthold took over in French to decry the rising food and gasoline prices, and Champagne repeated his same response en français. Berthold then ranted about how everything was the same old Liberals, and this time Mélanie Joly pointed to inflation being stable while wages are rising at a faster rate.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she denounced Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau, and claimed the government only helps anglophones in Quebec. Marc Miller reminded her that they have invested $4 billion in French across the country, and that the are disappointed by the CEO of Air Canada. Normandin took a swipe at the Anglo speech writers in the PMO and that they are just encouraging more Michael Rousseaus. Miller reminded her that the Liberals have a historic number of Quebec MPs, and the PM has done a lot of work to improve his French. Mario Beaulieu took over and made his own swipe at Rousseau, and Miller reminded him that anglophones do have rights in Quebec.

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Roundup: Hallucinating an immigration application

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There were a couple of immigration stories of note yesterday, the first of which was the revelation that a post-doc researcher at McMaster University—who has a PhD from the Sorbonne—had her permanent residency application rejected because it looks like the immigration department used generative digital asbestos to process the claim and it hallucinated a bunch of things about her job. Worse, while there was a disclaimer about the use of said digital asbestos, it said that a human verified it, which someone clearly did not. This is outrageous, and exactly the kind of thing that some of us were warning about when Mark Carney and Evan Solomon crowed about how great this digital asbestos was going to be for the productivity and efficiency of the civil service. Clearly that’s not the case, and now they not only need to redo her application, but it demonstrates what most of us knew was going to happen—that the humans were going to start cutting corners and not verifying the work because there is a belief in the infallibility of these programmes. This is scandalous and worthy of a resignation if we actually believed in that anymore.

The other story was that justice minister Sean Fraser says that when he was immigration minister, he would have handled things differently with the student visas, but there is one thing that is buried in the piece that everyone is going to overlook:

However, he also said the federal government was negotiating as part of “a good-faith relationship with the provinces who were requesting additional access to immigration programs at the time.”

He said those negotiations failed, leading to the federal government placing a cap in January 2024.

The provinces are very much to blame, but they keep avoiding responsibility. They were screaming for more immigrants and temporary foreign workers. They allowed these strip mall colleges to run rampant—Ontario most especially. Not one of them did anything at all about building more housing, or not keeping their healthcare system from collapsing, and not one of them stopped from the blame pile-on with the federal government. I keep making this point because nobody wants to listen—we have a problem with the provinces, and nobody wants to acknowledge it so that we can start holding the premiers accountable.

Could Carney possibly stop using Nigel Farage's framing? Why is it so hard to learn the lesson of not giving the far-right any ammunition? FFS.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-03-26T03:14:49.967Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian attacks on Kharkiv killed two, and damaged Danube port infrastructure in Izamil. It has been calculated that Russia has lost some 40 percent of its oil export capacity thanks to Ukrainian attacks.

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Roundup: More demands to interfere with judicial nominations

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Three more premiers have now joined Danielle Smith in her demand for more say in judicial appointments, both at the provincial superior court level as well as when it comes to Supreme Court of Canada nominees, and it would be the usual suspects—Scott Moe, Doug Ford, and François Legault. Quite immediately, federal justice minister Sean Fraser essentially told them to go pound sand, which is the correct answer, but that doesn’t mean they won’t cause a fuss about this, and try and invent a new grievance out of this.

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3mht45l24ec2w

Clearly these premiers, each of whom are constitutional vandals who have invoked the Notwithstanding Clause, are looking to politicise the appointments to their own ends, often with nonsense around judges being too “soft on crime.” Never mind that the vast majority of criminal cases are heard by provincially-appointed judges, whose appointments they already control (and Doug Ford has taken steps to make the process more partisan in Ontario), they are looking to exert more influence over appointments because they believe they can find candidates who will be more favourable to their positions, particularly when their constitutionality is challenged. Danielle Smith likes to refer to federally-appointed judges as “agents of Ottawa,” even though they are from the province they are appointed in, on the advice of local judicial advisory committees, which provincial governments already play a role in, both in terms of advising and vetting potential nominees to ensure that they don’t see problems with them.

I would add that the other thing about these judges being federally-appointed is that they are paid for by the federal government, and considering how much provinces already underfund their justice systems, I would not want to see them in control of even more appointments, whom they will underfund and undermine at every turn.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-03-24T21:22:01.960Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched nearly 1000 drones at Ukraine, 550 of which were during the daytime and hit as far as Lviv. Here is a look at Ukraine’s strikes on Russian energy facilities.

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Roundup: “Breaking ranks” to represent his constituents

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Every news outlet in the country is framing Liberal MP Bruce Fanjoy as “breaking ranks” because he wrote a letter to the government in opposition to the latest return-to-office mandate for civil servants. Why is this language suspect? Because he’s not a member of Cabinet, so the expectation that he must be a compliant sheep and not step out of line is frankly wrong and non-existent. Backbenchers are there to hold the government to account, even if they’re in the same party. In fact, especially if they’re in the same party, because they are no good to anyone if they are nothing more than mindless clapping seals whose only purpose is to stand up and vote for the government and its programme at every opportunity.

https://twitter.com/brucefanjoy/status/2020920966893928589

The thing about Fanjoy is that he worked that riding in order to oust Pierre Poilievre, and part of that was the message that Poilievre took them for granted, and that he was going to actually represent them, and that’s what he’s doing, because there are a lot of civil servants in that riding. After all of the work in his winning the riding, can you imagine the message it would send for him to say absolutely nothing as the government moves ahead with its very ill-thought-out plan for return-to-office? It’s likely he wouldn’t win it again if that were the case. So yeah, he’s going to “break ranks” to deliver this very gentle message to the government.

This being said, I am once again going to absolutely rage at the expectation that this kind of framing devices places on MPs. It’s an old media dichotomy—we insist we want MPs to act more independently, but the moment they do, they have “broken ranks,” or the leader is “losing control,” or any other means by which We The Media police MPs into being good little drones and just following the (presidentialised) leader when that’s not what they should be doing. It’s beyond frustrating that we are worse whips than the actual party whips, which is saying something in this country with our parliament. It’s just ridiculous that this keeps happening, even when the party has room for disagreement (see: Nate Erskine-Smith).

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched 149 drones and 11 missiles early Monday, killing four people. Russian forces are also trying to push ahead at Pokrovsk, in spite of previously claiming they had already captured it. Ukraine is opening up sales of its domestically-produced weapons to help finance the war effort.

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Roundup: The annual Standing Orders debate

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Either out or morbid curiosity or as a cry for help, I watched yesterday’s House of Commons’ debate on proposing changes to the Standing Orders, and…I didn’t hate it? There were actually some good ideas in there, and there were calls to undo a couple of changes that were made during the height of the pandemic to accommodate “hybrid parliament,” which I hadn’t realised had been changed. While this was kicked off by Liberal MP Corey Hogan’s suggestions for reforming Question Period, which I wrote about in my weekend column, there were a number of other reasonable suggestions. One common theme by several MPs across party lines was to end the vestiges of hybrid sittings, which I wholeheartedly agree with, and some of that included the remote voting app (which again, is an affront to Parliamentary democracy and should be abolished), but that will be a tougher sell. A number of MPs also had gripes about the ability of the Senate to stall or kill private members’ bills through delay, but that has nothing to do with the Standing Orders, as the House does not write the rules of the Senate.

  • Michael Chong wants to restore the Speaker’s right of recognition and do away with speaking lists, and adopt the UK practice of allocating time among the number of MPs who want to speak to a specific bill or motion. (Agreed!) He also wants to ensure that the Speaker and a committee of MPs appoint the Clerks and Sergeant-at-Arms, and wants committee spots and chairs determined by secret preferential ballots, and for the Board of Internal Economy to only be comprised of backbenchers. All of these are reasonable.
  • Yves Perron wants the prayer replaced with a moment of reflection, and to have a designated time on Fridays for a more free-flowing question-and-answer session with ministers akin to the special committee of the whole sessions during COVID. He also wants limits on the size of panels at committees to ensure that they are more manageable He also wants unanimous consent motions to be held on Wednesdays and to be tabled in advance (which I’m very dubious about).
  • Jenny Kwan and Pat Kelly both want the return of voice votes/standing five to trigger recorded votes, which was one of those hybrid rule changes that needs to be undone. Kwan wants new rules on dissenting committee reports being presented, and no Supply Days on Wednesdays of Fridays (but they are already limited as to the number they can have, and that would take up all Tuesdays and Thursdays).
  • Kelly wants to invert the times for speeches and questions and answers, so you have shorter speeches and longer question/comment segments (which I’m not opposed to).
  • John-Paul Danko is concerned about parliamentary privilege being weaponized to allow slander to be clipped and shared over socials.
  • Scott Reid had some very specific concerns about ethics complaints being weaponized (but I’m not sure that’s in the Standing Orders).
  • Kevin Lamoureux wants concurrence debates to be held after government orders, as they are used as dilatory motions. He also wants a segment where MPs can speak to any bill of their choosing for five or ten minutes on a Friday.
  • Garnett Genuis wants guardrails on unanimous consent motions used to pass bills at all stages, and wants to do away with the parties asking suck-up questions during question/comment segments after speeches.

In all, there are actually a few good ideas in there, but we’ll see how much the Procedure and House Affairs committee takes up any of them (and I am not hopeful on most). Nevertheless, it was nice to see a reasonable debate on some (mostly) reasonable ideas on how to make the House of Commons work better.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-02-06T23:56:01.289Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Canada is sending AIM missiles for Ukraine’s air defence. President Zelenskyy is calling for faster action on air defence and repairing the power grids.

https://twitter.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/2019728147579871319

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QP: Swipes at Marc Miller

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The PM was present today, as were the other leaders, and it remained to be seen what Carney would be grilled on. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, where he immediately took aim at Marc Miller being appointed to cabinet, blamed him for “ruining” the immigration system and increasing the cost of living (huh?) and then took aim at comments he’d made about being tired of the decline of the French language, while Poilievre claimed he wanted to defend it. (That would be news to much of Poilievre’s base). Mark Carney stood up to declare that the government has immigration “under control,” and that the number of asylum seekers have dropped by one third, and that they will defend the French language with the greatest investments in the cultural sector. Poilievre needled on Miller’s statement about being tired of the debate over the decline of French, and he wondered why Miller got appointed. Carney said that he was for his new minister and against Poilievre being against their investments in language and culture. Poilievre then switched to English to raise the lack of consultations with First Nations about the “promised” pipeline to the Pacific, and that the Assembly of First Nations condemned his plan, and demanded that Carney make it clear to them that they will build the pipeline and do the “consultations to make it happen” (without actually apparently getting their consent). Carney said that Hansard showed Poilievre wanted to ram a pipeline through while the government would consult to get free, prior and informed consent with First Nations, and work with the province of BC, because they know how to consult and respect. Poilievre took another swipe at Miller, and quoted Miller taking a few shots about the lack of consultations, and wondered why Carney didn’t start consultations eight months ago. Carney said that there needs to be a project and a proponent, and in order to do that, they needed to create the conditions to do so, which they have now done. Poilievre switched to the PBO’s report on housing, declaring it a “broken promise” go get housing built, and that it showed they would only get one percent of their promised houses built. Carney responded with a swipe that as a life-long MP, he’d never built anything, and then pointed out that Poilievre didn’t actually read the report, and listed the housing numbers contained therein. Poilievre hit back that Carney created the housing crisis in the UK after being governor of Bank of England (huh?), and insisted that he wouldn’t fulfil the promised housing, and pointed to the modular partial house that was used for a photo op and then dismantled. Carney pointed out that house was sent to Nunavut, and that it’s a place where people live and not just fly there for a photo op without meeting with the premier.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and worried about BC’s rights around the possible pipeline. Carney insisted that they will work with the province and that everything will be done in cooperation. Blanchet argued that provinces need to be respected, and decried this particular “contract.” Carney insisted that this wasn’t a contract, but a memorandum of understanding that lays out a pathway in conjunction with the province and First Nations. Blanchet insisted that it was a contract, and worried about the tanker ban, and that all parties should sign it with free, prior and informed consent. Carney again insisted that it was an MOU that obligates Alberta to make environmental investments.

Carney then got up and left, to much Conservative consternation and chanting, and the Speaker had to deliver another warning.

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Roundup: Assuaging Carney’s BC caucus

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The lead-up to this Memorandum of Understanding with Alberta is becoming politically fraught for prime minister Mark Carney as a whole bunch of his caucus, not the least of which is the party’s BC caucus, are getting pretty angry about the whole thing. And so, natural resources minister Tim Hodgson is supposed to go to BC caucus this morning to explain things and calm them down, but that seems like something that should have been done ages ago when this was first being discussed, so that they could both hear their concerns and alleviate any anxieties earlier in the process. And it doesn’t help that the message keeps changing from “BC has to agree,” to “We’re not giving them a veto,” and back to “BC has to agree, and so do the coastal First Nations.” But again, this is sloppy.

There was a pretty good explanation for this yesterday, on Power & Politics, when columnist Emilie Nicolas said that Carney needs to learn how to “be a leader and not a boss,” which is exactly it. Carney is still operating in CEO mode, and that’s just not how politics works. And this mentality keeps exposing Carney’s many blind spots, not the least of which has been his ignoring human rights violations and atrocities when he thinks he can get a trade deal with some dollars attached, or the debacle with the end of the “feminist foreign policy.” And yes, it’s been over six months now that he’s been in charge, and there are a number of lessons he’s still learning, but how much he’s internalising these lessons is up for debate.

Meanwhile, we are back to the discussion of what this MOU is supposed to accomplish, particularly considering that Alberta didn’t live up to the last “grand bargain” that they agreed to in 2017 with the Trans Mountain pipeline, so I’m not sure why Carney thinks they will this time. There have been suggestions that this is a way to try and defuse the situation by looking like Danielle Smith is being given a win even though the conditions for this fictional pipeline proposal are never going to be met, but the danger there is that a future government will start waiving these conditions (and let the litigation commence). Again, I’m not sure that Carney understands the political game here, but we’ll see.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-11-25T22:22:02.600Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones have attacked Zaporizhzhia, starting fires and injuring at least twelve people. Ukrainian drones hit a Russian oil refinery in Krasnodar, and an oil terminal in the port of Novorossiysk. President Zelenskyy says he’s willing to work with Trump on that “peace plan,” while Trump is now saying there is no firm deadline to reach an agreement.

https://twitter.com/Denys_Shmyhal/status/1993350012848197980

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QP: Blaming so-called “inflationary deficits” for food prices

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The PM was again in town but otherwise absent from QP, and the same dynamics were at play in the Chamber. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he raised today’s Statistics Canada inflation numbers, blaming government spending any taxes (even though taxes are anti-inflationary). François-Philippe Champagne praised the upcoming budget and the IMF suggestion that Canada and Germany had room to make generational investments. Poilievre then turned to the Auditor General’s report on the CRA and its call centres. Champagne responded with the “good news” that they are already partway through a one-hundred day action plan. Poilievre switched to English to repeat his first question on inflation, and Champagne repeated his same response from the IMF Director General. Poilievre repeated his same question on the Auditor General’s report on the CRA, and got a “take no lessons” from Champagne, who listed the things that Poilievre voted against. Poilievre dismissed “costly slogans” from the other side and got shouted down, and once things calmed, he raised the 1200 jobs at the GM plant in Ingersoll, and accused the government of betraying workers. Mélanie Joly assured him that Carney would fight for their jobs, and that she had a conversation with the CEO of GM this morning. Poilievre dismissed her efforts as all talk with no action (as though he could do anything differently if he were in power), and he repeated the accusation of betrayal. Joly said that they would hold these companies to account, before reading the new jobs at other plants.

Yves-François Blanchet rose for the Bloc, and he raised a “hate preacher” for a second day, and demanded the government close the religious exemption for hate speech. Steven Guilbeault agreed that hate speech has no place in Canada, and implored him support Bill C-9. Blanchet said that the bill doesn’t get to the issue of religious exemptions, and Guilbeault repeated his same answer. Blanchet insisted it would be easy to solve the problem, and said that they would be moving amendments they hoped the government would support. Guilbeault said that they are willing to hear amendments at committee.

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Roundup: Cold water on that fantasy pipeline

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Ever since Alberta premier Danielle Smith started her latest scheme of trying to get the ball rolling on a bitumen pipeline to the northwest coast of BC, everyone has been trying to get some kind of answer as to whether this project—which has no actual proponents, no route, and no hint of buyer contracts—is going to get some kind of fast-track approval. Of course, that’s the kind of thing that the government’s Major Projects Office push has engendered by its very existence, because Smith and the Conservatives federally have been ratcheting up their rhetoric to stake the future of the country on this imaginary project.

At a committee appearance, Major Projects Office CEO Dawn Farrell didn’t answer MPs questions as to whether her powers include being able to violate the BC tanker ban, which would be essential for such a project to happen. But of course, this response was because there is no project, no route, nothing to judge any hypotheticals on, so the safest course is not to answer, because hypotheticals have a way of spinning out of control. And such a question may not wind up mattering at all, because natural resources minister Tim Hodgson came out to say that any pipeline through BC needs approval of the provincial government and affected First Nations. So good luck with that.

So now we will start seeing the fallout from this, with more threats from Danielle Smith, and howling denunciations from the Conservatives. Apparently, the country can’t work so long as we have things like environmental laws, and who cares that oil production increased while emissions as a whole declined (though not necessarily within the sector), so it’s not like those laws were exactly detrimental to the sector. “Oh, but we could have been making even more money!” Really? Would pumping more supply into the market not have possibly depressed prices? There is no guarantee that just trashing our environmental laws would increase investment and make us more prosperous, because things are complex, and climate change has costs. We need to start talking about that fact.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-09T14:05:25.084Z

Programming Note: I’m going to take the full long weekend off, so have a great Thanksgiving everyone.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack on Kyiv hit an apartment building and targeted energy sites. Here is a look at the use of saboteurs in the war, both in Russia recruiting them in Ukraine, and Ukraine employing them within Russia. President Zelenskyy is taking credit of the gas shortages in Russia, thanks to new missile and drone strikes against Russian energy facilities. That could be one reason why the Russian war economy has stalled, forcing producers to furlough staff.

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QP: Trillion dollar fallacies, redux

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With so many developing stories happening, it was probably a good thing that the PM was in attendance for a second day in a row, though it remained to be seen just how many of these issues would merit attention. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and immediately jumped into the complete falsehood about what the $1 trillion figure around investment in the American market, and said that if it’s supposed to be private money, if the government would “force” them to invest in the US or to just invest in Canada—which makes no sense whatsoever. Mark Carney responded in English that it was a momentous day and that they should recognise the Middle East peace plan, which he offered his support of. Poilievre, still in French, said that while they congratulate Trump on negotiating peace, but he asked a question in French about jobs and that the prime minister owed respect to answer the question, again about the falsehoods about the trillion dollar figure. Carney responded with his canned bullet points about having the best trade deal, and that they are still negotiating a better deal, and finally that as a result of the agreement, there would be more investment in Canada. Poilievre switched to English to repeat the same bad faith question on “forcing” investment in the U.S. Carney reminded him that he was there, before repeating his same bullet points that did not correct the disinformation or the bad faith reading. Poilievre insisted that we have he fastest-shrinking economy in the G7 (untrue), and again tried to insist that Carney was somehow going to force Canadian private money to invest money in the U.S., or just send them fleeing with high taxes. Carney reminded him that they cut income taxes, the capital gains tax, and the carbon levy, and then touted the forthcoming “generational investment budget.” Poilievre read Carney’s words on the trillion dollar investment, and framed it misleadingly, and wondered if there was an agreement that Trump would send the same north. Carney reminded him that there are no tariffs on auto parts or finished goods, and that they are working toward an agreement that will increase investment in Canada—which again, did not actually answer the question. Poilievre switched topics to energy, and the support for the a Keystone XL pipeline which can’t be filled so long as the emissions cap is in place (which is patently false). Carney said that the motion he voted against was about something that does not exist—being the supposed taxes on groceries. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried about the ongoing softwood lumber tariffs. Carney said that Canada currently has the best deal with the U.S. in the world, and that they are working to bring the steel and aluminium tariffs, and that the tariffs an autos and trucks are the lowest in the world. Blanchet then concern trolled that a new pipeline to the U.S. was not diversifying out economy. Carney patted himself on the back for the recent agreement with Indonesia and that more deals are coming for South America. Blanchet then pointed out that money for support programmes for steel and aluminium have not flowed yet, and Carney responded that they will have an opportunity to vote for that support in the budget.

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