Tag Archives: Pierre Poilievre

Roundup: Reading into the Spring Update

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There was a bit of a dust-up, if we can call it that, online over the weekend, following Althia Raj’s weekend column, in which she calls out the fact that while Carney claims he’s protecting social programmes, he is in fact cutting them along with transfers to provinces. And she’s not wrong in the fact that there is a lot of sunsetting funding with no indication that it’s being renewed again, which makes it hard for provinces or organisations to plan on what their future funding will be. Enter Tyler Meredith, who was an economic advisor to Justin Trudeau (but who is now out of government), and he took issue with Raj’s assertions in this thread:

And I take his point that no decisions have been made on any of this funding that is due to sunset, but I also think he’s being a bit overly generous with the government on some things, such as the creation of a personal support workers’ tax credit as “proof” that the government is being too bro-focused. One tax credit does not a care economy/women’s state make, particularly one that is that low. And to that end, Raj gave her own response in this thread:

And she brings the receipts when it comes to what’s in the documents, particularly around how Carney’s rhetoric around things like pharmacare not matching the reality on the ground, where there is a half-assed programme in a few provinces, which has not been extended to all others in the past year, and which seems to be no closer to negotiating toward the creation of an actual national programme, beyond the things the NDP insisted on in the dumbest way possible. Which brings me to this point that Mike Moffatt made about the two exchanges:

The Carney government doesn’t like to give a lot of details, and relies an awful lot on saying “just trust me” to a whole lot of things, which it really shouldn’t do. And then for everyone to get upset because they we can’t read minds or scry into the future is a problem in trying to communicate to the public. We’re not getting good information out of this government, and that needs to change, and these exchanges are a perfect encapsulation of that.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone hit a bus in Kherson, killing two and injuring seven others. Ukraine struck the port of Primorsk, the largest oil export port on the Baltic Sea.

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Roundup: The 2026 Spring Economic Statement

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It was the Spring Economic Update yesterday, and this was less of a mini-budget than in previous years, but still had a few new elements. Overall, yes the deficit is lower than anticipated because growth was greater than projected, but in true Liberal fashion, Mark Carney and the government added new spending measures that took up some of that room, both with some previously announced measures like the “pause” on the excise fuel tax, and new measures like $6 billion in incentives for skilled trades workers.

Some highlights:

  • That $6 billion for skilled trade workers includes support during training and a completion bonus (as half of those who start apprenticeships don’t finish)
  • There is a shift toward attracting more foreign investment.
  • There will be a small break in CPP deductions for the next year.
  • Canada is making progress on diversifying to non-US export markets.
  • There is money for sports, the Financial Crimes Agency is finally getting its implementation legislation, and crypto ATMs are being banned.
  • The Defence Investment Agency is getting more structure and oversight, and there is also more funding for military trades.
  • They plan to resurrect the ability for Canada Post to search and seize mail.
  • There are new tax credits for enhanced oil recovery (because Carney has full-on decided he no longer cares about the environment.)
  • There are promises for $4.3 billion in First Nations education, Inuit food security, and Indigenous child welfare.
  • More odds and ends here.

In pundit reaction, David Reevely considers this to be Carney buying time until his big projects can start to pay off. Lindsay Tedds delves into the issues surrounding the so-called “Sovereign Wealth Fund.” Kevin Carmichael gives some thought to the deficit position, as well as the choices that Carney is making with what they are putting additional resources into. Susan Delacourt ponders the juggling act of the government both trying to build long-term, while still looking for tangible effects in the here-and-now. Paul Wells looks at the context of some of the numbers presented, and the government’s “fiscal prudence” back-patting.

Housing items in today's federal economic statement. Delighted to see they're planning to move on reforms to make it easier to build multiplexes! This is aligned with one of our recommendations from our January report.

— Dr. Mike P. Moffatt (@mikepmoffatt.bsky.social) 2026-04-28T21:46:33.000Z

Well, this isn't even remotely true (as @lindsaytedds.bsky.social and I discussed in my latest episode).

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-29T02:20:59.692Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-28T19:08:02.092Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine says that it shot down over 33,000 Russian drones last month, which is a new monthly record. Ukrainian drones have been causing fires at Russia’s Tuapse roil refinery. Ukraine is now trading diplomatic blows with Israel over ships carrying stolen grain docking in Israeli ports.

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Roundup: Thirteen cherry-picked charts

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Ahead of the spring economic update, the National Post ran a story that contained thirteen charts that they claim were proof that Justin Trudeau delivered a “lost decade” to the Canadian economy. To absolutely no one’s surprise, the charts were awfully selective in how they presented the data, because everybody has decided that they have a vested interest in creating an image of how much Trudeau “doomed” the country. And to be perfectly fair, Mark Carney himself has engaged in these kinds of rhetorical games, which his insistence on using the “new government” moniker has been nothing more than an effort to disassociate himself with his predecessor.

To wit: yes, we fell behind the US on GDP per capita because we rapidly increased our population while the US didn’t, and that increase staved off an economic downturn post-pandemic, until everyone decided to start scapegoating those same immigrants for provinces under-investing in housing and healthcare capacity. The rise in business insolvencies? Mostly a post-pandemic correction when a lot of businesses that would not have survived did only because of those pandemic supports, and the levels are returning close to the pre-pandemic baseline. The number of self-employed freefalling? Again, this was because of the pandemic because a whole lot of those self-employed got stiffed by the companies they invoiced and they didn’t get paid, so they took salaried jobs. I can’t speak was much to the number of high-value start-ups fleeing Canada other than the fact that many of them specifically set themselves up to sell to American companies because that’s where the money was. Total investment per worker declining? My dudes, corporate Canada decided they don’t care about productivity because they only want to be rent-seekers, so that’s what they do. Climbing cost of living? The chart is without context to demonstrate how we compare internationally given the inflation spike late in the pandemic, where Canada did far better than most of our comparators. Home prices? The chart cuts off at 2015 so it doesn’t show that they also doubled under Harper, but this is mostly a provincial/municipal problem as the federal government has very few levers for the problems of charges and zoning. Public sector rising faster than private sector? What does that include? Does it include provinces? Does it include nurses or teachers? How does it compare to under-investment and cuts in the Harper years? Again, context matters. Federal deficits? Have you seen the state of the world? Healthcare wait times? That’s provincial—how are you trying to pin that on Trudeau? He gave plenty of transfers to provinces that got put on their bottom lines to pay down deficits rather than hiring nurses or expanding capacity. The rise in the violent crime severity index? The piece scapegoats this on immigrants, again without any context for how those figures are way down from historical highs.

It’s shitty journalism, but this is the kind of thing that the we’ve come to expect from the Post, simply in service of a narrative.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-27T13:17:49.975Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The attack on Odesa early Monday wound up injuring fourteen, and hit residential buildings and a hotel. A worker at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, still under Russian control, was killed in a drone attack.

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Roundup: Kinew’s very bad promise

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On Saturday night, Manitoba premier Wab Kinew promised to ban social media and chatbots for youth, which may sound like a good idea, but it’s very, very bad. Why? This is essentially just internet surveillance. You need to upload ID in some variety to access anything, which means that you are being tracked, either by government or by third parties who will either profit form that tracking, or who will leave your data vulnerable to being hacked. This is exactly the same issue with people who want age verification for internet porn—the same problems exist, and those problems are very, very bad.

Using what age verification tools, exactly?This is going to end so very badly. This is just more internet surveillance, and politicians cannot get that through their heads.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-26T03:54:14.098Z

I’ve written about this problem a lot over the past few years, and there is no good system of age verification. It simply doesn’t exist, but too many politicians treat it like a “nerd harder” problem, meaning that they are sure that the nerds will just figure it out rather than accept the fact that it’s really just surveillance of all of your online activities. And even worse, most kids will figure out workarounds, leaving all of that surveillance in place for everyone else, while you didn’t solve the problem you wanted to.

As I wrote in @xtramagazine.com, age verification is bad tech, and it is going to just harm so many people unnecessarily, most especially queer and trans people.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-26T03:58:36.941Z

I get why Kinew is doing this, which is because it’s a populist move. Yes, it’s well-intentioned, but again, there is no good way to implement this (and frankly, I’m not entirely sure which tools he has to enforce this at the provincial level). But boy howdy do a lot of people need to start speaking up about why these kinds of age verification tools will only do so much damage to the internet at large, while doing nothing about the problems of social media on minors, most especially because it also allows the platforms to get away with not doing their own due diligence of content moderation or online safety tools that would shield minors from the worst of the problems. So instead, politicians want to remove everyone’s internet privacy instead. It’s bad news all around.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-26T23:08:01.383Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone attack on Dnipro killed ten people and injured dozens of others early morning Saturday. And just this morning, a drone attack on Odesa wounded at least ten people. Ukraine marked the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster on Sunday.

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Roundup: Overplaying the ethics committee report

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The Commons committee on access to information, privacy and ethics released their latest report yesterday, reviewing the Conflict of Interest Act, and it was, well, a doozy. This is one of those kinds of reports that was always going to be a problem because it’s so highly partisan, and the fact that the committee reflects a minority parliament made this even more so. Reading through it, it was quickly obvious that this was mostly an exercise in the Conservatives (and Bloc) looking to score points based on Mark Carney’s past, and trying to suggest a whole bunch of new rules that would essentially target him personally, which goes against pretty much every principle of good governance. Remember that bad facts make bad case law, and well, this is terrible all around.

It was also quite striking just who the majority on the committee was listening to, which was mostly “Democracy Watch’s” Duff Conacher, whose only credibility is that he branded himself a one-man watchdog who answers media requests, so he gets phoned all the time and provides quotes on too many stories. He’s also lost pretty much every court battle he’s ever waged, and thinks that he should be the only arbiter of parliamentary ethics in this country. They also listed to disgraced “journalist” Sam Cooper (who is so credulous he once believed that a clip from a Hong Kong film was secretly obtained proof of a Canadian official being compromised by Chinese agents), who pretty much was only there to back up Conacher. Experts who warned the majority that they were creating more problems than they were trying to solve were largely ignored, because they didn’t fit the narrative. Unsurprisingly, the Liberals had a nine-page dissent at the end of the report that called these kinds of things out, for all the good it will do.

Why? Because looking at the reporting of the report’s contents and recommendations, it was framed in such a way that the committee agreed to these points when in fact it was only the Conservative and Bloc members of the committee and not the Liberals, which then distorts the report because it makes it sound like it was more unanimous than it was. Mention of the Liberal dissent was waaaaaaay down in the copy, and doesn’t really spell out that this was the Conservatives and Bloc trying to use the committee to attack Carney and the Liberals, which is pretty relevant information when you’ve got a report of this nature. And while I don’t want to give the reporter on this piece a hard time, you can’t really consider what the main body of the report says as what the committee believed—only what the opposition members believed.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-23T19:08:02.093Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The Russian strike on Dnipro early Thursday killed three people and injured another ten. Ukraine is boasting that their new interceptor drones can be controlled over thousands of kilometres.

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QP: Demanding Carney debate him

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The PM was present today, as were all of the other leaders. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he took issue with a statement that Carney made in March about affordability being the best it’s been in ages. Carney said that what he said was about costs and wages, and that wages are now rising at double the rate of inflation. Poilievre disputed this and listed things that he claims Carney was wrong about, to which Carney noted that they measure affordability using rates and wages, and wages are increasing Faster, while things like rents are decreasing. Poilievre switched to English to lament the high food price inflation, and returned to the comment about affordability being the best its been in years. Carney stated that the record is that since he’s been prime minister, wages have risen faster than inflation, before he plugged the enhanced GST credit. Poilievre again disputed that this was wrong, and Carney again noted that asking rents have been declining, and that wages are increasing. Poilievre again took issue with affordability and demanded Carney acknowledge that, and Carney defended the measures and wage levels. Poilievre continued to insist that Carney was wrong, and Carney again touted the entranced GST credit and their cuts to fuel and income taxes.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he took a swipe at the new Canada–U.S. trade advisory committee before lamenting the issue of tariffs. Carney praised the members of the committee, naming Quebec members. Blanchet demanded temporary measures for companies affected by the latest round of tariffs, and Carney pointed out that these tariffs were global and yes, they are considering temporary measures. Blanchet again worried about the affected sectors, and Carney gave more reassurances. 

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Roundup: Carney’s Forward Guidance

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On Sunday morning, prime minister Mark Carney released a ten-minute piece on his YouTube channel called “Forward Guidance,” because he’s still doing his central banker shtick, and it was a direct-to-camera (with three other cameras intercutting) discussion about the place we find ourselves in. Most of this was not new, repeating the same lines from past speeches including the one at Davos, while promising to never sugarcoat things—but he kind of did. I also have to question why this had to be over YouTube and not a speech in the House of Commons, which is why there is allotted time every day for ministers to make statements if they so choose. This could have been done there.

Carney pointed to a “statue” of Isaac Brock that Mike Myers gave him, but by statue he meant two-inch figurine, and that led him to launch into a whole War of 1812 narrative about the people who built this country, which, okay, sure, but you’re not doing much to show you’re not just the second coming of Stephen Harper. When he talked about the building of big things in the post-war period, this is again where things got a bit sugar-coated because there was still complexity to these old projects, and usually practices that would be unacceptable today for good reason. (I also noted that he mentioned universities being built in this period, without mention of the fact that provincial governments are in the process of dismantling our university systems). He also spoke about protecting social programmes (except for letting the funding of a bunch of groups who deliver services lapse), and he mentions pharmacare like it’s not limited to two types of drugs in a handful of provinces. And further sugar-coating was essentially by omission—the fact that so many Canadian businesses have become apathetic to growth or increasing productivity because they have taken the lesson that all they need to do is become rent-seekers.

Predictably, Pierre Poilievre decided he was going to have something to say about this, and that it was all just an illusion because nothing has actually been built yet (because you can build things overnight). He railed about Carney just enriching “well-connected elites,” but Poilievre’s whole scheme is to double down on trickle-down economics, which by definition enriches a small group of elites because the money does not, in fact, trickle down. Melissa Lantsman put out her own rebuttal that included the incredulous and false claim that the Liberals have cost the economy a trillion dollars in the past decade, which is completely fiscally illiterate, but that’s how the Conservatives roll.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-19T23:08:01.392Z

Ukraine Dispatch

There was a massive overnight attack Saturday on Chernihiv which killed a sixteen-year-old boy, and wounded others. Ukraine is continuing its own drone strikes on Russian oil facilities in Samara, occupied Crimea, and the Baltic Sea.

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Roundup: The 44th Charter anniversary

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Yesterday was the 44th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and it comes at a time when the Charter is increasingly under attack by provincial governments who have realised that the prohibition against using the Notwithstanding Clause has worn off, and that the public no longer cares about it—at least not enough to actually punish a government that does it, mostly because it’s right-wing governments using the Clause to punish minorities, and there isn’t enough political will to care about trans and gender diverse youth, or the rights of visible minorities in Quebec.

While everyone waits for the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in the Law 21 case out of Quebec, there is some using about ways that the federal government could try and introduce some kinds of guardrails against its use federally, but that immediately had the Bloc Québécois howling, and the brand new Quebec premier striking a combative tone, until she got reassurances from Carney and a text message apology from the federal justice minister, which strikes me as far too much appeasement. And then you have people calling for the constitutional power of disallowance if a province invokes the Clause, but that’s extremely dangerous. Disallowance is a constitutional dead letter—it existed mostly as a way of ensuring provinces would stay within their constitutional lanes, and that function has been taken up by the Supreme Court of Canada’s reference function. Disallowance would essentially be a declaration of war, which is a very bad thing for any federal government.

So, what can we do about provinces who abuse the power? The same way you effect any political change—you organize, and you protest, and you get out the vote. But that’s hard, and people don’t want to do that, even though that’s the way politics works. There is no easy way to curb the abuse of these powers other than the public letting it be known that it’s unacceptable, and that’s hard work. But it’s the only way to ensure that you not only get change, but that said change is actually durable. Make premiers afraid of you. It’s the only way we’re going to fix what’s wrong with this country.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-17T13:13:12.555Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones hit the Danube port of Izmail once again, and at least one drone strayed into Romanian territory as a result. Ukrainian drones made hits at oil facilities in the Black Sea port of Tuapse and Krasnodar.

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Roundup: Another lunchtime speech praising trickle-down economics

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Pierre Poilievre was back at the Canadian Club in Toronto for another lunchtime speech on how he is going to fix the economy to make life more affordable, and—stop me if you’ve heard this one before—it involves doubling down on trickle-down economics. In fact, while the speech made all of his greatest hits (destroy environmental legislation, cut taxes, cut bureaucracy in the most hand-wavey way possible), along with his latest genius plan of building a stockpile of oil and critical minerals that will supposedly give us “leverage” with future negotiations. Again, this is stupid because you’re not going to convince Trump, with his love of tariffs, to abandon that with a “strategic reserve.” Get real.

Actual quote from Poilievre's speech today:"If you asked a neutral and objective AI bot to go into all of the policies on the books of the government of Canada, what would you find has actually changed in the last year?"There is no such thing as a "neutral and objective" bot. Absolute clown show.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-16T20:24:29.511Z

And because this is Poilievre, he is continuing to double-down on his peevish insistence that he is somehow a better economist than Carney because he watched a bunch of crypto bros on YouTube. In fact, he dismissed Carney as having the “illusion of knowledge,” and claimed that all of Carney’s economic ideas have been wrong for years, which is a ridiculous thing to say. This while he keeps going on and on about “money-printing,” which nobody is engaging in, but again, this is one of the key things that crypto bros will say drives inflation (hence why Poilievre parroted their lines about Bitcoin being a way to opt out of inflation), and nobody will call this out. (Okay, David Cochrane has tried to call it out, and Poilievre and Andrew Scheer just obfuscate and prevaricate, but absolutely nobody else challenges this absolutely bullshit claim, including the government). It’s amazing how much we let him get away with saying that is completely untrue—and he knows it.

Meanwhile, Conservatives back in Ottawa were complaining to the press that François-Philippe Champagne won’t appear at the ethics committee to answer about his recusing himself on the Alto high-speed rail project because his spouse is a vice-president there, even though the Ethics Commissioner said that there is no actual conflict because Alto reports to a different line minister. This is just theatre, because the Conservatives want clips of themselves calling Champagne corrupt in committee, and surprise, surprise, the Liberals have no interest in exposing him to this. So, the Conservatives are now crying foul in advance of committees being rejigged to reflect the majority, and saying that this is proof the Liberals are going to avoid accountability. But witch-hunts and media stunts are not accountability, and this is just so stupid.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-16T19:08:03.789Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia spent all Thursday hammering Ukraine with 700 drones and dozens of missiles, which killed sixteen people and wounded more than a hundred others. One of those strikes was on the Black Sea port of Tuapse, which it an oil tanker.

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Roundup: The thing about windfall taxes

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In the discussion over “pausing” the excise tax on gasoline and diesel, and the Conservatives’ demands that all other fuel charges be scrapped (including the clean fuel standard which is not a charge or a tax), versus the NDP’s call for a price cap and windfall tax, there hasn’t been a lot of discussion about what those will mean.

Enter economist Kevin Milligan, who has a good thread explaining the problem with windfall taxes, and why those advocating for them have a lot more explaining to do when it comes to just how they see them being implemented.

Adam asks a fair question here that has been bandied about. Let me offer two arguments against a windfall tax that I would wager FIN officials would make when advising cabinet on what to do. I'll also offer my own assessment of the two arguments.1/

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:15:37.601Z

Why would FIN argue against an oil/gas windfall tax?FIN Arg #1: Ideally we set taxes in advance and then let firms and people make their choices based on those taxes. Changing taxes <i>ex post</i> risks upsetting investors who would view this as a mark of an unstable unserious country.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:17:39.157Z

My response: Yes, ideally we set taxes ex ante and let firms/people decide what to do. Changing that ex post is like reneging. All true. But I do think FIN overindexes on this argument. Every time we change taxes we literally 'renege' on the status quo./3

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:19:52.099Z

If you took the 'no tax changes ex post' argument completely as sacrosanct, it essentially argues for no tax changes ever. That's silly.I also note the "no ex post changes because we're not a banana republic" argument only gets hauled out when it's a tax *increase*. Why not symmetric? Hmmm…/4

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:21:48.449Z

Why would FIN argue against an oil/gas windfall tax?FIN Arg #2: How do you define a "windfall"? What is this year's profit? What is last year's profit? You realize these are accounting numbers, subject to lots of choice variables for shifting between tax years, right? /5

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:24:09.737Z

Fin Arg #2 cont'd: The concern is that you'd end up with a lot of accounting gaming and not as much revenue as you'd think. A lot of time/effort/dollars spent on creating the tax law to minimize gaming. A lot of time/effort/dollars spent by firms avoiding a windfall tax law./6

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:25:51.216Z

My take on accounting and windfall taxes:I recall reading historical precedents around WW2 (?) that outlined how much effort it was relative to the revenue. I recall that being persuasive. (Don't have the source at my fingertips….)But I take the windfall tax accounting issue seriously./7

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:28:08.463Z

So, my advice to those who advocate for a windfall tax? The thing you could do to overcome government resistance is to look seriously at the accounting issues involved.Chanting slogans is one thing. Overcoming implementation barriers is maybe less fun, but necessary to gettin stuff done./end

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:31:43.152Z

It only boils down to 'let the rich have their way' if you assume that windfall tax advocates aren't capable of getting their accounting shit together. Why be so defeatist?I outlined a path for advocates. If the response is 'gee that sounds hard' that's not my prob.bsky.app/profile/open…

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:40:14.904Z

I'm not here to blow sunshine and tell you that hard things are easy. Hard things are hard. If you're determined you can do them. But if you don't want to do the work then I'm not going to take the proposal seriously.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:42:31.333Z

It’s clear that Avi Lewis hasn’t actually thought any of this through. He was on Power & Politics last night and kept trying to handwave away the questions about this plan, and it just kept boiling down to “oil companies bad.” I do think it’s a problem that we’re not seizing on this opportunity to make long-term investments to get off of our dependence on fossil fuels like the French did with their transition to nuclear in the seventies and eighties (because so much European power relied on Middle Eastern fossil fuels up until the oil embargo in the seventies), but nobody seems to want to have that conversation, and Carney has been pretty adamant that he thinks there is a future in the fossil fuel sector. It’s too bad we have no grown-ups who can have a serious conversation about this.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia fired missiles into Kyiv early this morning, killing thirteen so far including twelve-year-old child and wounding several others. This was after more missile and drone attacks were made through the day, which included hitting an apartment building in Odesa. Ukraine’s army has been introducing new drone infantry capabilities, which has resulted in retaking more territory from Russian occupation.

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