Tag Archives: Pharmacare

Roundup: Reiterating promises in battleground ridings

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Day thirty, and so much of the campaign was drowned out by the news that Pope Francis passed away after meeting with JD Vance (because clearly, after meeting with Vance he lost his will to live). Both Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre are Catholics, and both responded do his passing. Much of the discussion of Francis’ legacy in Canada was around his apology for the Church’s role in residential schools.

Mark Carney was in Charlottetown, PEI, to reiterate his promises around working with provinces on healthcare (note that distinction), and also promised reduced tolls on the Confederation Bridge. He then headed to Truro, Nova Scotia, and Fredericton, New Brunswick. Carney will be in Quebec City this morning, followed by stops in Shefford, Saint-Bruno, and Laval.

Here are Debt/GDP ratios for three scenarios:1–PBO baseline.2–LPC platform (costed by themselves)3–CPC platform (costed by LPC)I'll happily update with CPC platform numbers if CPC releases them. But until then it doesn't seem fair that they escape scrutiny. So, I'll go with what I have.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-04-21T20:02:12.728Z

Here is the LPC's costing of CPC platform.liberal.ca/pierre-poili…Why is CPC projected debt/GDP so high?-> promised to uphold big social programs-> promised $140B or so of new spending and tax cuts-> Haven't mentioned any new revenue sources.I await with interest to see their own numbers.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-04-21T20:06:30.676Z

Pierre Poilievre was in Scarborough, Ontario, where he reiterated the party’s promises around building housing, and says the platform will be released today. Poilievre will be in Woodbridge, Ontario, followed by Vaughan.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1914421261041840549

Why do both the Liberals and Conservatives keep promising to build 500,000 homes a year? It's a bad promise because:1. It's not feasible, particularly given the current market.2. We don't actually need *that* many homes.

— Dr. Mike P. Moffatt (@mikepmoffatt.bsky.social) 2025-04-21T13:46:00.000Z

We absolutely have a housing shortage that we need to fill. But can someone explain to me why as an aging country with a 350,000 person immigration target, that both the Liberals and Conservatives believe we need 500,000 new homes every year? That math doesn't math.

— Dr. Mike P. Moffatt (@mikepmoffatt.bsky.social) 2025-04-21T22:12:26.000Z

"Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is claiming the Liberals will impose a tax on Canadians' home equity if they're re-elected as the federal election campaign enters its final week."So they're trotting out this bullshit yet again, even though it's never happened (and never will)?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-04-22T02:35:04.593Z

Jagmeet Singh was in Nanaimo, BC, where he lambasted the Liberals for not promising to further expand pharmacare, and promised that more NDP MPs could force him to do so. (Erm…) He also urged “strategic voting” to keep incumbents in their seats. He then headed to Comox and Port Moody. Singh will be in Vancouver, followed by his home riding of Burnaby today, and then head over to Edmonton.

In other campaign news, Conservative incumbent Larry Brock is apologising for circulating a clearly faked document and claiming the Liberals were using it to try to sway prisoners to vote for them. An election worker in King—Vaughan was reassigned to administrative duties after trying to sway people to vote for the Conservative candidate. Reproductive rights groups are concerned by the lack of details in the Liberals’ pledges on the matter. The Canadian Press has their own profiles of Carney and Poilievre.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a mass overnight drone attack on residential areas of Odesa.

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Roundup: The still-ten-percent “pause”

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Day eighteen, and the parties were trying to get their messages out while we were treated to yet another day of market turmoil as Trump “paused” his global tariffs, but actually kept them at ten percent across the board, except for China, for whom he raised them to 125 percent, and then applied the ten percent to Canada and Mexico, but then didn’t, and the other tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum still apply, and it was a headache the whole gods damned day.

Mark Carney was in Calgary, and he proclaimed his desire to make Canada an energy superpower (stop me if you’ve heard this before), but wait—he wants it to be with both clean and conventional energy. Some of the details were mighty similar to what the Conservatives proposed, but I will grant that there was more of an emphasis on working with provinces and First Nations around Projects of National Interest, but again, I suspect their timelines are incredibly optimistic. Carney then headed to Saskatoon for a rally. He’ll start the day in Brampton, and head to Hamilton from there.

NEW: At a campaign rally in Calgary today Liberal leader Mark Carney spoke publically about queer and trans issues for the first time in this campaign, saying that these rights are “fundamental.” #cdnpoli

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2025-04-09T17:52:15.459Z

Pierre Poilievre was in Sault Ste. Marie, and vowed to crack down on repeat crime with a “three-strikes” law which is a) unconstitutional, and b) failed spectacularly in the States, where it actually increased the murder rate. They also put out a press release stating that they would end “Carney’s crime wave,” which is so stupid that we all lost IQ points reading that. During the same stop, Poilievre also claimed that the industrial carbon price will drive steel production to the US, which simply isn’t true. Poilievre will start the day in Milton, Ontario, and then head to Woolwich, Ontario.

Jagmeet Singh was in Vancouver, where he promised to finish the job of universal pharmacare within four years, and good luck to him on that with both getting provinces to sign on, and to negotiate a national formulary in that timeframe. I suspect this is another job for that Green Lantern Ring that Singh thinks is hiding in the PMO. Singh then headed to Saskatoon in the evening. Singh remains in Saskatoon for the day.

In other campaign news, here is a look at how Poilievre is shifting his attacks against Carney. Here’s a look at how climate change has been taken off the agenda as a front-of-mind issue.

Abso-fucking-lutely

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-04-10T00:47:25.276Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones attacked Kyiv in the early morning, and one person was trapped in a collapsed house. Ukraine’s military chief says that Russia has launched a new offensive in the country’s northeast. Ukraine’s state railway suffered a major cyber-attack and has only restored about half of its IT services. President Zelenskyy says that their intelligence shows some 155 Chinese citizens fighting for the Russian military.

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Roundup: Pre-approved invitations to litigation

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Pierre Poilievre was in Jonquière, Quebec, yesterday, promising that if elected, he would create “pre-approved, shovel-ready zones” across the country for all kinds of major projects that would only need a checklist to be approved. Just like that! Why, nothing could possibly go wrong with such a proposal, right?

In no way has this been thought through, and as Leach points out, this is the kind of approach that lost the Harper government the Northern Gateway approval. Just like there hasn’t been any thought about his Churchill proposal. And look, he’s making stuff up wholesale about Ring of Fire mines, blaming the Trudeau government for decisions taken in the Harper era. Because of course he is.

Meanwhile, Mark Carney had a meeting with Danielle Smith today, and she comically presented him with a list of “demands” with the threat of a national unity crisis if he didn’t kowtow to her. Because that’s “cooperative federalism”! But seriously, it was a separatist manifesto, divorced from reality, because this is Smith we’re talking about, and she depends on her imaginary grievances to maintain power, more within her own party than the province as a whole.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones hit civilian targets in Odesa, as well as in Kropyvnytskyi, where ten people were injured including children. Ukraine’s drone strike on Russia’s strategic bomber airfield in Engels caused a massive explosion as ammunition was ignited. Russia says Ukraine has violated the “ceasefire” with a hit on an oil depot. Zelenskyy is calling for European help in buying more artillery shells. And US intelligence confirms that Ukrainian forces in Kursk are not encircled, proving that Trump is taking his cues from Russian propaganda.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1902834475806990623

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Roundup: Moving onto the dairy front

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The trade war seemed slightly more stable yesterday as the reprieve on most goods seemed to be holding, but it took no time at all for Trump to start musing about new, invented grievances and irritants. The latest is the dairy sector, for which there are limits as to how much the US can export to Canada tariff-free, but again, Trump has blown this out of proportion in his own mind. And as a result, he threatened 250 percent tariffs on Canadian dairy…but we don’t really export to them, certainly not liquid milk in large part because of the Supply Management system, so that would have very little impact on our industry.

The thing that did have people worried was fresh news out of the New York Times that Trump’s annexation talk has moved into threats about tearing up boundary treaties, particularly around things like the Great Lakes and cross-border river systems, and moving into things like shared military operations and NORAD, and after the floated threats about the Five Eyes a couple of weeks ago, it’s hard to ignore any of these threats, and why there needs to be a very concerted effort by the government to make plans for how we’re going to deal with this once it happens, because we know that nothing is off the table with Trump any longer.

I’m generally not into White House drama, but following it becomes more necessary than I’d like to admit these days. To that end, here is a look at an explosive meeting in the Cabinet room where several cabinet secretaries unloaded on Elon Musk, which wound up reining him in (somewhat, for now). But oh, man, the absolute stupidity of what is happening in that administration is boggling. As well, here’s a look at how framing the Trump presidency through the lens of reality television helps to make some of the chaos make a little more sense.

https://twitter.com/josheakle/status/1898212255604568305

Ukraine Dispatch

After the US cut off military aid, including access to satellite imagery for Ukraine, Russia launched a major missile attack, which targeted energy infrastructure, killed four in the eastern town of Dobropillia, while another five died in attacks in the Donetsk region. The Ukrainian forces within Kursk region appear to be nearly surrounded by Russians, though there have been counteroffensives in the past few days. Ukrainian drones did attack the Kirishi refinery.

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Roundup: Another month of reprieve—maybe

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Less than a week into the trade war, and the Americans have somewhat recanted? But only somewhat. Yesterday they decided to suspend the tariffs on New NAFTA “compliant” exports from Canada until April 2nd, but no one is quite sure what that means. Nevertheless, the Canadian government is still maintaining its first tranche of retaliatory tariffs, and will not remove them until the threat is gone, but they are holding back the second tranche of retaliatory actions until April 2nd, or until Trump abandons his tariff nonsense (which could be never).

We also got word about the call that Trudeau had will Trump earlier in the week, and how heated it got, particularly on the question of dairy imports to Canada, where Trump got profane. More telling was the fentanyl question, where Trudeau pointed out the low seizures (and remember that 43 pounds seized last year was not actually all coming across the border, but apprehended within a certain radius of said border), to which Trump is apparently using a secret metric regarding progress on stopping it—proving yet again that this isn’t actually about fentanyl, and that it remains a legal fiction for Trump to abuse his authority. Also, when asked about Mélanie Joly terming the current state of affairs a “psychodrama,” Trudeau responded that he calls it “Thursday.” So, there’s that. And Trump is now posting on his socials that Trudeau is trying to use the tariffs to stay in power, which is again just him pulling it out of his ass, and MAGA-types in this country are already saying “See! That’s what I’m afraid of!” *sighs, pinches bridge of nose*

Reporter: "Your Foreign Affairs Minister [Melanie Joly] yesterday called all of this a psychodrama. How do you how do you characterize it?"Trudeau: "Thursday."#cdnpoli

— davidakin (@davidakin.bsky.social) 2025-03-06T15:21:57.509Z

Meanwhile, Doug Ford declared that he’s going to impose a 25 percent tariff on electricity exports to three American states as of Monday—but I’m not sure that he can actually do that, because trade and commerce powers are federal jurisdiction. Imposing tariffs is federal. Electricity exports are federally regulated by the Canadian Energy Regulator. But people are also insisting that Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator, which is a government-created entity, can apply a surcharge, which again raises questions about how this doesn’t run afoul of federal trade and commerce powers. And this is Ford we’re talking about, who always talks a big game and very rarely does he actually back it up with anything. I would remain incredibly skeptical of the whole thing.

He does, in fact, have that power: the IESO (which manages electricity sales to other jurisdictions) is wholly-owned by the Ontario government and answers to cabinet directives, in this case including a 25% surcharge to the two US grids in question.

— John Michael McGrath (@jm-mcgrath.bsky.social) 2025-03-06T20:03:28.613Z

I mean, who starts a trade war?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-07T01:35:08.662Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched another mass drone attack on Odesa, damaging energy infrastructure. Russia claims to have captured another village in eastern Ukraine, Andriivka, but there is no confirmation. While Trump’s lackies are holding meetings with opposition politicians in Ukraine, opposition leader Petro Poroshenko says he’s opposed to a wartime election. Trump is also talking about revoking the temporary protected status for some 240,000 Ukrainians in the US, and could start deporting them.

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Roundup: Starmer sputters instead of speaking up

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UK prime minister Keir Starmer visited the White House yesterday, and a couple of bizarre scenes erupted. One was that he presented an invitation from King Charles for Trump to make a second state visit to the UK, which way too many people took as a personal invitation rather than one at the behest of the government—because the King does not act unilaterally, and does not make state visit invitations on his own. Later, when Starmer was asked about the annexation threats, Stamer didn’t stand up for Canada, but sputtered about there being no divisions before Trump cut him off with a sharp “That’s enough.” And worse, when Starmer was asked by a journalist if the King had anything to say about the annexation threats, Starmer said that he can’t say what the King’s opinions are and that he’ll let them be known in his own way.

*seethes*

On the one hand, Starmer is sucking up to Trump to avoid being tariffed, which probably won’t work, but I get his self-interest here, but it’s nevertheless a sign of the shifting global order and a sense of who our allies really are. (Thus far, only Germany has expressly said that they have Canada’s back). On the other hand, the fact that reporters are trying to drag the King into this is wildly inappropriate, and I’m not sure whether that’s because American journalists cannot grasp what a constitutional monarchy is (seriously, it makes their brains melt), but the fact that so many people in this country who should know how constitutional monarchy works because we are one, are rising to take the bait and are raging about how the King is supposedly “betraying” us is really disheartening because it’s a reflection of just how poor our civics education is, and how ignorant our own media are about how the very basic rules of our system of government operate.

The King does not freelance, he does not say things without advice, and his governments do not drag him into their fights because the first rule of constitutional monarchy is that you DO NOT involve the King. Starmer should have given a better answer in both cases, and Canadians following along shouldn’t take the bait.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians launched air attacks on energy sites in the Kharkiv region. Ukraine’s top army commander visited sites on the front lines in eastern Donetsk region.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1895048627690656241

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Roundup: Gould takes the French debate

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It was the French debate for the Liberal leadership last night, and it was a fairly smoothly run affair, with an aggressive moderator, and very few instances of candidates talking over one another. While you can read a recap here, and the Canadian Press liveblog, I watched it in French to get a sense of how well the candidates were actually performing. The biggest blunder of the evening was Mark Carney slipping up and saying that he agrees with Hamas, which the Conservatives pounced on in bad faith, and Freeland quickly caught his error and corrected him, but it certainly coloured the online reaction.

Meanwhile, my thoughts:

  • Karina Gould was the best performer of the night. Her French was the strongest, and she was articulate in her positions, she had something of substance to say in most of the responses, and in her closing remarks, made the very salient point that they won’t win by being Conservative Lite™.
  • Chrystia Freeland’s French was very deliberate and didactic in tone, but that’s not much different from her speaking style in English. She had a bit of a mixed bag in terms of policy discussions, and could identify things the government has done or is doing, because she was there for the discussions and implementation.
  • Mark Carney had the shakiest French, but as he has throughout his entire leadership campaign, he mostly stuck to platitudes and clichés, and gave very few answers or specifics, even when pressed to do so by the moderator. It was not a shining moment for him.
  • Frank Baylis’s French was fine, being as he’s from Montreal, but he pretty much made himself irrelevant the whole evening, by constantly reminding everyone that he’s a businessman, as though that gave him any special abilities or insights, particularly when dealing with Trump, and he had some absolutely bizarre ideas associated with fiscal discipline.

Baylis: Did I mention that I was a businessman?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T01:47:54.201Z

Baylis: Fiscal discipline will make the value of our dollar rise so things will cost less.What voodoo is this? The value of our dollar has very little to do with fiscal discipline, especially when we have the lowest debt and deficit in the G7.This is not a plan for cost of living.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T02:03:10.685Z

Carney keeps falling back on platitudes. The moderator is pushing him for specifics regarding immigration, but he refuses.Freeland's plan to tie immigration levels to housing is a recipe for no immigration, and is Poilievre's plan. Gould wants hard conversations with provinces.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T02:09:00.128Z

Apparently there is no problem in this country the AI won't help solve.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T02:21:07.216Z

Ah, the west-east pipeline question, should Quebec refuse.Carney doesn't really answer the question, and mischaracterizes what Energy East was.Freeland praises energy resilience, but doesn't answer.Gould says we need a conversation respecting provinces and Indigenous people.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T02:46:23.642Z

The English debate is tonight, so we’ll see how different the candidates are with the language they are more comfortable in.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s overnight air attacks injured one woman in the outskirts of Kyiv, and Poland scrambled their aircraft because the attacks were targeting western Ukraine, close to their borders. G7 foreign ministers, led by Canada, are still working on a joint statement about the anniversary of the war, because the American position has now shifted into Russia’s favour. At the United Nations, the US voted against Ukraine’s resolution to condemn Russia for their invasion, and joined the ranks of Russia, Belarus, and North Korea.

The Beaverton isn't playing around.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-24T15:48:52.301Z

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Roundup: Freeland’s smaller Cabinet promise

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Chrystia Freeland released another policy statement/promise yesterday which says that she will cut the size of Cabinet and the PMO in half—both to make Cabinet more efficient, and to give ministers more control over their files, rather than PMO dictating everything for them. While on the one hand, every incoming prime minister has promised to cut the size of Cabinet and then it starts to grow over time, I also suspect this is a bit of a screw you to Katie Telford, who runs Trudeau’s PMO, and who selects the chief of staff for all ministers with her own loyalists, and who has been a bottleneck for so much of this government’s business as it flows through her office. Caucus has been calling on Trudeau to get rid of Telford for a while now, correctly identifying her as the source of some of their problems (including the fact that she is in the caucus room taking notes, which was never the case under previous leaders), and Freeland appears to be heeding those concerns as endorsements pile up (mostly for Carney).

I do think it’s a fairly bold plan, and it reminds me of Trudeau’s initial attempt to have a “government by Cabinet” in the early days, but all ministers are not created equal, and gradually PMO started to exert more control for many of those ministers who were having trouble managing their files. It also looks like Freeland would be reverting to an older model of having the hard cap of twenty ministers, while additional responsibilities would be filled by ministers of state, which is also essentially how the UK operates, where there is a hard cap on Cabinet, but there are numerous junior ministers. Trudeau did away with this and made everyone a full minister as part of the gender parity promise, given that it would be likely that there would be an imbalance between how many women were in senior versus junior portfolios, and by making everyone a full minister, they also got a full minister’s salary. It seems clear in Freeland’s promise that she feels this was bloating Cabinet, particularly as Trudeau made it the practice that all appointments and Orders in Council needed to be presented to the full Cabinet, which took up a lot of time and focus. Does that mean that a lot will change if junior positions are restored? I guess it will depend on her leadership style if she’s successful, but it is an interesting signal nevertheless.

I will also note that Freeland has been consistently putting out these kinds of statements, unlike Carney. Meanwhile, Ruby Dhalla is turning out to be a clown show of braggadocious claims that the online right is amplifying.

Ukraine Dispatch

The Russians claim to have taken control of Novoielyzavetivka in the Donetsk region, near Pokrovsk. An overnight Ukrainian drone attack hit an oil pumping station and a missile storage facility, while a drone attack has hit Russia’s fourth-largest oil refinery in Kstovo. Ukraine’s corruption watchdog has opened an investigation into the defence minister over a procurement dispute.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1884525942229364847

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Roundup: First ministers meet about the Trump threats

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Justin Trudeau will be meeting with (most of) the premiers today, to talk about the border plans in advance of Trump’s inauguration. Some premiers will be virtual, however, such as PEI premier Dennis King, who is currently on a bus trip to the northeastern states with a number of officials from the province. And it has already been noted that there are separate media availabilities after the meeting is over—the federal government in one location, the premiers moving to a hotel to have theirs.

In advance of the meeting, we’re hearing more pledges for “border officers” from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec, and Doug Ford was once again chirping about the supposed absence of federal leadership until he had a meeting with Dominic LeBlanc yesterday at Queen’s Park, after which he suddenly changed his tune. At that point, he praised the federal plan as “phenomenal,” which pretty much goes to show that the federal government has been working on it, and that in not responding and lighting their hair on fire with every Trump utterance that they are keeping their powder dry.

I get why Trudeau and the government have been keeping their heads down, but they have also created a problem for themselves. They should probably have been sending stronger signals to the provinces that they are working on said plan and to shut up in public rather than undermine the country’s position, but it’s not like they’ll all listen—particularly those premiers who are keen to suck up to Trump. Nevertheless, if this PMO’s persistent problem is their inability to communicate, they appear to be making no effort to change that on their way out the door. Cripes.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian air defences shot down 58 out of 80 drones in an overnight attack on Tuesday, while Russian forces claim to have taken control of two more settlements in the Donetsk region. Ukraine launched a major missile and drone attack into Russian territory, destroying a storage facility holding guided bombs and struck a chemical plant making ammunition. Ukrainian soldiers are also being forced to deal with suicide attacks by North Korean troops.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1879180179613872494

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Roundup: Promising populist GST cuts

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In a speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh laid out a pre-election campaign pledge of removing the GST on certain “essential” items like ready-made food, diapers, home heating, and mobile phone and internet bills—all of which he would finance through an “excess profit tax” on large corporations. It is possibly the dumbest economic policy possible, but our politics are moving into an absolutely brainless phase of populism.

Removing the GST on these items will have a negligible impact, particularly for those in low-income brackets. If anything, most of those reductions will benefit higher-income households, such as the GST cut on home heating (because wealthier households have bigger houses that take more fuel), and it when it comes to apartment buildings, the cut has little impact, or for places with electric heat, how exactly do you disentangle how much of the hydro bill is heat versus other electricity usage? I know that the NDP have been pushing this policy for years now, long before Singh was leader, but has anyone thought about it for more than five seconds?

In addition, making more exceptions to the GST are hard to administer, and it will reduce the GST rebates that lower-income households rely on. And promising the “excess profits” tax is basically an arbitrary exercise in determining what they consider “excess,” and that will basically be how much they think they can soak out of these companies, who will inevitably engage in creative accounting to suddenly lower profit margins or incur paper losses to avoid paying said tax, and all of the things the NDP had hoped to spend that windfall on will blow away like ashes in the wind. This isn’t progressive policy, but the NDP are going to pursue it anyway because they think that they can get the populist win here, when it’s almost certainly going to fail.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2024-11-15T01:27:01.865Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A combined Russian strike hit a residential building and energy installations in Odesa, killing one on Thursday evening. As well, the Russian assault on Kupiansk in the northeast broke through the outskirts of the city, but were eventually repelled.

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