Tag Archives: Pierre Poilievre

Roundup: The rules Poilievre defended are no longer good enough

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Pierre Poilievre decided he needed some more media attention yesterday, so he called a press conference in Ottawa, and declared that following the public disclosure of prime minister Mark Carney’s ethics filings, that none of this was good enough, that Carney needed to cash out all of his investments instead of putting them into a blind trust, and that nothing was good enough because he’ll be constantly managing conflicts (even though the point of the ethics screen is that he isn’t managing conflicts, his chief of staff and the Clerk of the Privy Council manage the conflict so that he’s not involved). Perish the thought that this special set of rules for Carney will only serve to keep other accomplished individuals away from political life.

Of course, the whole episode is rife with hypocrisy. These are the conflict-of-interest laws that the Harper government put into place, of which Poilievre was not only a part of, but defended them, particularly when questions arose around Nigel Wright and his assets when he was Harper’s chief of staff, and Poilievre personally swore up and down at committee that these rules were amazing and that the blind trust was blind, and so on. Of course, now that it’s convenient, his tune has changed, but that didn’t stop the CBC from pulling out the footage from the archives.

Meanwhile, Poilievre also told reporters that the country needs “more people leaving than coming,” which is not even a dog-whistle at this point but a bullhorn. If this is pandering to the far-right elements of the riding he’s trying to win, well, it is likely to backfire on his attempts to continue wooing other newcomer communities, particularly the Sikh and Punjabi communities he spent so much time wooing in the leadup to the last election. Immigration numbers have already flatlined, and it’s going to cause problems down the road, sooner than later. For Poilievre to say this as the mass deportations south of the border pick up speed shows he’s not only incapable of thinking through the implications of the things he says, but he’s fine with mouthing the words of fascists, and that’s a real problem.

(Incidentally, Poilievre once again said he opposes Alberta separation but says that they have “legitimate grievances,” and repeated his same bullshit line about the Ottawa telling Alberta to “pay up and shut up.” They pay the same income tax as the rest of us, and have the same representation in Parliament).

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones killed two people in the Kherson region. President Zelenskyy is proposing a major government reshuffle that includes a new prime minister, while the current one is to be shuffled to defence. Trump’s “ultimatum” to Putin to reach a ceasefire in 50 days is just license for him to keep firing drones and missiles at Ukraine for another 50 days, and probably longer.

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Roundup: Money for not living up to your end of the bargain

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One of the stories that has been floating around the past few days is that Toronto stands to lose up to $30 million in federal funding from the Housing Accelerator Fund because council did not approve city-wide zoning for sixplexes, which was a condition that they signed up for when they negotiated their deal for this money. And of course, this also comes with voices who claim that the federal government would be “using money as punishment” if they don’t give them all the money anyway, even though they have quite deliberately thumbed their noses at the very thing that they agreed to in order to get that money.

The established media narrative is that municipalities are *always* the victims who have no tools at their disposal.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-07-13T17:58:54.360Z

Unfortunately, we have a history of the federal government backing down when it comes to either giving money anyway when deals are broken, or by not recovering costs when they should. For example, the federal government was clawing back health transfers from New Brunswick for not funding abortion access at a clinic that was in an underserved part of the province, but when COVID hit, they released all of the clawed back money so that they didn’t look like the bad guys in ensuring that the province was living up to its obligations (or, for that matter, proving that they were sticking to their feminist principles, and using that money as leverage for the province to back down and fund the clinic). Another example is that provinces have deliberately underfunded their emergency management systems because they have been conditioned to know that the federal government will provide assistance from the Canadian Forces, and that provinces will get that assistance for free. The federal government has the authority to recover those costs from the provinces, but they never do because it would look like they’re somehow being mean to those provinces, when the provinces deliberately underfunded their own capacity.

If we want to reform things and start enforcing a system of accountability, that starts with making sure that provinces and municipalities live up to their agreements, or they don’t get transfer payments. But that requires a backbone and a willingness to actually hold them to account for those failures, and not being so timid that they refuse to actually say in clear terms that those provinces or municipalities didn’t live up to their agreements, so they would lose the funding/didn’t fund their own services because they thought they could get federal services for free, but they can’t, because there’s one taxpayer and they think they’re being clever. Nothing will change if someone doesn’t take a stand, and it’s time we start doing so.

Ukraine Dispatch

Trump says that America will resume sending Patriot missiles to Ukraine, so we’ll see how long it lasts this time.

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Roundup: Pushing back retaliation, again

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The latest Trump eruption has prime minister Mark Carney backpedalling some more, and he has said that his deadline for retaliatory tariffs, which was July 21st, is now going to be August 1st, since this is when he’s extended the negotiation deadline to, again letting Trump continue to string him along. Nevertheless, he has also called a Cabinet meeting next week, and will be meeting with the premiers on the 22nd in Huntsville, Ontario. The Conservatives immediately jumped on this and tried to insinuate that this was rich snob Carney being too good to have meetings in Ottawa…except that Doug Ford had already called the Council of the Federation to meet there, and Carney will now be joining in to make it a First Ministers’ meeting.

There is further clarity that New NAFTA-compliant goods will continue to be exempt from these new tariffs (for now, anyway), and energy and potash tariffs will continue to be ten percent instead of the new threat of 35 percent, but it’s entirely incoherent, other than the usual threats about Supply Management (with no reciprocal offer to reduce any American agricultural subsidies). Of course, Trump said a lot of wrong things about Supply Management, so that’s not helping matters any either.

The latest from @clareblackwood.bsky.social on the constantly shifting tariffs.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-07-11T18:11:42.200Z

In the meantime, the Conservatives want to recall the trade committee to hear from trade-exposed businesses. Of course, this is really just about getting clips for social media, since they’re not getting them from Question Period, and much like the transport committee and the ferries to be built in China, this will likely be members of all parties shaking their heads and expressing their dismay at Trump and his tariffs, but not too much dismay because that’s what they do—performative displays of dismay (again, to feed their social media channels). I expect nothing to come out of these meetings (other than a fresh supply of clips), but performers gotta perform, and that’s pretty much all MPs are these days (and yes, that is a Very Big Problem).

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack on Kharkiv on Friday damaged a maternity hospital. Ukrainian drones, in contrast, hit a Russian fighter aircraft plant and a missile production facility. It’s almost like there’s a very different way in which the war is being conducted on either side.

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Roundup: Everyone wants a PONI

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Tim Hodgson, Cabinet’s absolute worst QP performer, was in Calgary yesterday to announce funding for some carbon capture projects (which we should be dubious about), where he was asked about that absolutely morally bankrupt letter from the Alberta and Ontario environment ministers, demanding the essential dismantling of the federal environmental protection regime. Hodgson responded by praising Bill C-5 and its giant Henry VIII clause to deal with existing environmental legislation, and obliquely hinted that said environmental legislation would be dealt with over time, which is not exactly encouraging when Mark Carney says that he still cares about the environment.

Hodgson also made comments about the discussions being had about what projects they plan to designate as Projects of National Importance (PONIs), but again, it’s vague, and invites distrust because nobody knows what is supposed to qualify, or what they should be bringing forward, and it all looks like a gong show in waiting that will put way too much power in the hands of a single minister with nowhere near enough guard rails. That’s not a good thing, guys!

Meanwhile, Erin O’Toole showed up in The Walrus of all places to wax nostalgic about back when Canada used to build things, like during the First World War, when there were ships being built along the shores of Lake Ontario at an incredible rate. And that’s great. But also remember that the lakefront back then was an industrial wasteland with no environmental regard (that was incredibly costly to clean up afterward), and you can pretty much bet that occupational health and safety were not exactly being minded then either. I cannot stress enough that maybe you should think about just what the circumstances were back “when Canada used to build,” and why that might not be a good thing to return to. Honestly…

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s attack overnight Thursday and into Friday was the largest of the war so far, with 550 missiles and drones, largely at Kyiv and another four regions. (Video clips here). Two Dutch intelligence services say that Russia has been increasing use of outlawed chemical weapons in Ukraine.

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Roundup: “Forcing” nothing but a press release

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As the parliamentary cycle starts to wind down now that MPs have gone home for the summer (minus the couple who will take part in the royal assent ceremony that usually ends the Senate sitting in June), I did want to take a moment to appreciate David Reevely’s particular annoyance at the way MPs constantly use the term “forced” when describing using ordinary parliamentary procedure to get their own way.

In this particular example, where the Speaker agreed to split the vote on Bill C-5 (and no, he did not split the bill, as some have suggested—and mea culpa that I was not sufficiently clear on that in my last post), the most that the NDP accomplished here was symbolism. Yes, they could show that they voted to support one part of the bill and not the other, but the bill in its entirely goes through regardless. But again, they didn’t really “force” anything. The Speaker granted their request without a vote. This language is endemic, and the Conservatives like to use it, particularly in committee, when they would team up with the Bloc and NDP to send the committee off on some chase for new clips to harvest, but even there, simple math in a minority parliament is hardly “forcing,” because that’s pretty much a function of a hung parliament. The opposition gets to gang up on the government as a matter of course.

I get that they like to use the language to flex their political muscles, and the NDP in particular right now are desperate to show that they’re still relevant now that they have lost official party status, but maybe have some self-respect? If all you’re accomplishing is providing yourselves with new opportunities to create content for your social media rather than doing something tangible and substantive, then maybe that’s a problem that you should be looking into, especially if it’s in the process of trying to prove that you’re still relevant to the political landscape. (And also, maybe why you lost official party status). And I get that their claims that they “forced” the government to do a bunch of things during COVID earned them the praise of their existing fan-base, but they didn’t force anything then either—they pushed on an open door, and patted themselves on the back for it. (Seriously, the Liberals weren’t going to wind down those pandemic supports early, and if the NDP thinks they were the deciding factor, they have spent too long drinking their own bathwater). But no, you didn’t force anything, and stop pretending that’s what you did.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians attacked Kyiv overnight, killing at least five and damaged the entrance to a metro station used as a bomb shelter. Russians claim to have captured the village of Zaporizhzhya in the Donetsk region. Ukrainian forces say that they are fighting 10,000 Russian soldiers inside of Russia’s Kursk region, which is preventing Russia from sending more forces into the Donetsk region. President Zelenskyy says that during the recent POW and body swaps with Russia, that Russia turned over at least twenty bodies of their own citizens (complete with passports) because they are so disorganised.

Good reads:

  • Mark Carney arrived in Brussels for both an EU and a NATO summit back-to-back. He also called for calm and diplomacy in the situation with Iran.
  • Ambassador Kirsten Hillman says that there is progress on trade talks with the US, and she sees a path forward.
  • A recent report shows that CSE inappropriately shared information on Canadians to international partners without a ministerial authorization.
  • Those promised pay raises for the military may not be an across-the-board increase, but a combination of different bonuses (because of course).
  • Here is a look at the retention crisis within the Canadian Forces.
  • Some Indigenous youth are preparing for a summer of protest over the different federal and provincial fast-track legislation.
  • The Eagle Mine in Yukon, which suffered a catastrophic contaminant release, is going up for sale.
  • Former Cabinet minister John McCallum passed away at age 75.
  • David Eby says he’s not opposed to a pipeline in northern BC, but he is opposed to one being publicly funded, especially as TMX still has plenty of capacity.
  • Kevin Carmichael reminds us that climate change is an existential economic threat and that it needs to be tackled, as MAGA politics has spooked efforts to combat it.
  • Anne Applebaum reflects on Trump’s complete lack of strategy, whether it’s with Iran, the Middle East, or anywhere.
  • Susan Delacourt and Matt Gurney debate what Poilievre has been up to since he dropped out of the spotlight, and the security of his future as leader.
  • My weekend column points out that the solution to parties hijacking their own nominations is not to demand that Elections Canada take the process over.

Odds and ends:

*laughs, cries*

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-06-22T21:23:58.539Z

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Roundup: Quietly objecting to the Henry VIII clause

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The Liberals’ “One Canada Economy” bill continues to be railroaded through Parliament without proper scrutiny, and with the worst possible excuses from ministers and parliamentary secretaries possible. “We won the election promising this” or “This is in response to a crisis”? Get lost with that nonsense. While there are Liberals who are quietly objecting to the process—particularly the speed through which the second half of the bill (i.e. the giant Henry VIII clause) are going through without actual Indigenous consultation on the legislation itself, they are absolutely correct in saying that this is going to damage the trust that they have spent a decade carefully building.

Here’s the thing. While ministers are going to committees and the Senate swearing up and down that these projects of national importance are going to respect environmental regulations and Indigenous consultation, the very text of the bill betrays that notion. The open-ended list of legislation affected by the Henry VIII clause shows that they can bypass environmental laws or even the Indian Act through regulation shows that clearly they don’t have to respect either environmental laws, or that the consultation doesn’t need to be meaningful, or engage in free, prior and informed consent. If they did want to respect those things, they wouldn’t need a giant Henry VIII clause to bypass them. And frankly the fact that the Conservatives are supporting this bill should be yet another red flag, because the Conservatives very much want to use this Henry VIII clause if they form government next before this law sunsets, and they can blame the Liberals for implementing it. It’s so stupid and they refuse to see what’s right in front of them.

And let’s not forget that you still have Danielle Smith and Scott Moe demanding that environmental legislation be repealed, as the planet is about to blow through its carbon budget to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5ºC. And when it comes to Indigenous consultation, Doug Ford rammed through a bill to make these development projects law-free zones, while falsely claiming that First Nations are coming “cap in hand” while refusing to develop resources (in a clearly racist rant), ignoring that their objections are often to do with the fact that they have repeatedly been screwed over by proponents and wind up being worse off, which is why they want revenue-sharing agreements that companies don’t want to provide. When this is the “partnership with provinces” that Carney touts, it’s really, really not building a whole lot of trust.

If Ford listened to the First Nations near the Ring of Fire, they are largely concerned that proponents haven't lived up to past promises, and are not convinced the will live up to future promises either, unless they have a revenue-sharing agreement.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-06-18T21:12:01.246Z

Meanwhile, 300 civil society groups are calling on the government to scrap the border bill because it has so many potential rights violations within it. The department offered some clarifications on the immigration and refugee portions, but that’s not sufficient for those groups. Citizen Lab also did an analysis of the lawful access provisions within the bill as they interface with American data-sharing laws, and they can be pretty alarming for the kinds of information that the Americans can demand that the border bill would provide them with.

The more I think about it, the more troubling #BillC2 is. The warrantless demand for "subscriber information" can include a demand to a women's shelter, abortion clinic or psychiatrist. All provide services to the public and info about services rendered really goes to the biographical core.

— David TS Fraser (@privacylawyer.ca) 2025-06-16T23:24:04.585Z

Ukraine Dispatch

More bodies were discovered after the early morning Tuesday attack on Kyiv, meaning the death toll is now at least 28. Russians hit Ukrainian troops in the Sumy region with Iskander missiles.

Good reads:

  • In the wake of the G7 Summit, here’s a bit of a stock-taking on Carney’s government so far, and there are some friction points bubbling up, especially in caucus.
  • A Treasury Board report shows that women and minorities still face pay inequities within the federal civil service.
  • StatsCan data shows that there was almost no population growth in the first quarter of the year, which is a precipitous decline (and not good in the long run).
  • You might be relieved to hear that there were no wildlife incidents during the G7 summit in Kananaskis.
  • Protesters marking the second anniversary of the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar are concerned  and frustrated about the moves to normalise diplomatic ties with India.
  • The Federal Court has denied a case by Afghan-Canadians to apply the Ukraine temporary resident rules to allow them to bring family members over.
  • The Senate has passed the Bloc’s Supply Management bill, which would seem to be at odds with trying to diversify our trade relationships.
  • Now-former Conservative MP Damien Kurek says that he wasn’t asked to step aside for Poilievre, but offered as his way to “serve.”
  • Saskatchewan is going to extend the life of their coal-fired electricity plants, because of course they are.
  • Philippe Lagassé has some more thoughts on the NATO spending goals and Canada shifting away from American procurement by degrees.
  • Paul Wells features a former PMO comms staffer talking about his experiences in dealing with reporters on the Hill, and how he approached the job.

Odds and ends:

For National Magazine, I wrote about former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Gérard La Forest, who passed away last week at age 99.

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Roundup: Countdown to a trade deal?

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Even before the G7 summit officially got underway, prime minister Mark Carney had his bilateral meeting with Trump, and it was this somewhat awkward situation where Trump defended having a “tariff concept” and said that Carney had a “more complicated” plan (how could “free trade” be more complicated?”) but there was word that talks were “accelerating,” and later in the day, we got a readout from that conversation that said that they were aiming to get a trade deal within 30 days, so no pressure there (not that you could really accept such a deal for the paper it’s written on because this is Trump and he doesn’t honour his agreements). Trump also claimed to have signed a trade deal with the UK (which he called the EU at the time), and held up a blank page with his signature on it. So that…happened.

Holy crap. The US-UK trade deal is a blank sheet of paper and only Trump signed it. (Genuine screen grab).

— Justin Wolfers (@justinwolfers.bsky.social) 2025-06-17T00:13:56.113Z

The rest of the summit took place, and then suddenly Trump decided he needed to leave early, right after the Heads of Government dinner, citing important business in Washington, with allusions to the Israel-Iran conflict, but he did wind up signing a joint communiqué that calls for de-escalation in said conflict, so we’ll see how that holds up. Trump leaving early does mean that he won’t be around the arrival of either Volodymyr Zelenskyy or Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, who had hoped to have bilateral meetings with Trump on the sidelines of the summit, so that does blow a hole in what they expected to come for, particularly for Sheinbaum who rarely travels.

Meanwhile, here are some of the highlights of the day. Tsuut’ina Nation council member Steven Crowchild spoke about his meeting with Trump during his arrival in Calgary. EU officials confirmed that Carney is likely to sign a defence procurement agreement with them during his visit to Brussels in two weeks.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-06-16T22:08:16.537Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone and missile attack struck Kyiv in the early morning hours, wounding at least twenty. Ukraine received another 1,245 bodies, ending this repatriation agreement, bringing the total to over 6000 war dead.

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Roundup: The Auditor General on F-35s and ArriveCan

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Yesterday saw the release of the Auditor General and Environment Commissioner’s reports, and lo, these ones actually got a tonne of media attention and took centre stage in Question Period, which is a far cry from most of their recent reports. The reason, of course, is that the topics were sexy—F-35 fighter jets and the ArriveCan app gong show in particular, the latter of which the Conservatives have been salivating over for three years now, which made the day pretty much insufferable as a result. But there was more than just those.

  • The F-35 procurement costs have ballooned because of delays, pilot shortages, infrastructure, and inflation but acknowledged the Canadian government has little control over most of these factors.
  • CBSA failed to follow procurement and security rules when it used GC Strategies to contract out work on ArriveCan, and didn’t follow-up to ensure work had been done before more contracts were awarded.
  • Public Services and Procurement has been slow to modernise and downsize office space, and turn over surplus buildings for housing.
  • Indigenous Services has failed to process Indian Act status applications within the required six-month timeline, with a backlog having grown to over 12,000 applications.
  • The climate adaptation plan is falling short, with only one of its three pillars in place and little connection between spending and results.

I’m not sure that the F-35 news is all that surprising, but it does actually work to either justify a potential move away from the platform, or to reflect increases in defence spending calculations. The GC Strategies findings are also not unexpected, but one thing the Conservatives have been failing to mention is that CBSA is an arms’-length agency, so ministers had no real say over any of its contracting practices (as the Conservatives try to insist that any minister who had carriage on the file should be fired). Meanwhile, their narrative that this was somehow about “Liberal friends” was never mentioned in the report, nor was there any mention about partisan considerations, or indication that the firm had any connection to the government, so these are just rage-bait accusations used solely for the performance art, which is how most things go with these guys.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-06-10T21:22:14.366Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Tuesday’s attack from Russia was one of its largest strikes on Kyiv, which also hit civilian targets in Odesa, and Kharkiv was subjected to a nine-minute-long drone attack that killed at least two and injured 54. Another prisoner swap took place yesterday, this time for an undisclosed number of sick and wounded soldiers.

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Roundup: A big defence commitment?

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Yesterday, at Fort York in Toronto, prime minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would meet its NATO commitment of two percent of GDP by the end of next fiscal year instead of by 2030, in part through use of greater pay, more funds for sustainment, support for the defence industry, and some good ol’ creative accounting. Carney prefaced this by making a very real point about the changing nature of America’s place in the world: “The United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony, charging for access to its markets and reducing its relative contribution to our collective security.”

One of the big question marks has to do with the status of the Coast Guard, and how it gets folded into the calculation around defence spending—there were mixed messages on whether it stays under Department of Fisheries and Oceans, of if it will be moved into Department of National Defence (though there is also an argument for it to go to Public Safety), and the question of whether or not to arm those ships is a fraught one because of the training requirements for armaments. It sounds like there will be things like CSE’s cyber-capability being counted as part of this calculation as well, which again, seems to be more fudging numbers that we typically accused other nations of doing while we were more “pure” in terms of what we counted toward our spending commitments, and that seems to be going away.

I would add that while we get a bunch of competing narratives around the target, whether it’s the Conservatives’ memory-holing the fact that they cut defence spending to below one percent of GDP (in order to achieve a false balance on the books in time for the 2015 election), or the notion that we are nothing more than freeloaders in NATO, we should keep reminding people that even with lower per-capita defence spending, we have been punching above our weight taking on the tough missions in NATO (Kandahar, leading a multi-country brigade in Latvia) where as other allies who have met their two percent targets don’t contribute (looking at you, Greece). A poor metric of spending is not a good indicator of contribution, but it has created a whole false narrative that we should be correcting, but that’s too much work for the pundit class, who are more interested in hand-wringing and calling Justin Trudeau names than they are in looking at our actual contributions. (Here’s a timeline of the spending target melodrama).

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia made another massive overnight attack against Ukraine, launching 479 drones and twenty missiles of various types, targeting the western and central parts of the county. Another prisoner swap did go ahead yesterday.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1932086386145841186

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Roundup: The kids are back

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Parliament is back today, after nearly six months away, and first order of business is to elect a new Speaker, and there are eight MPs on the list. Fergus is not going to get it, because he proved to be an unsuitable choice, and I doubt that either the Liberals or any of the other opposition parties will want d’Entremont in as an opposition Speaker, because frankly it won’t be worth it. (The rare occasion where the opposition still held the Speaker was when it was Liberal Peter Milliken during the early Harper years, because Milliken was so well-liked, and nobody has managed to live up to his legacy). If you ask me, it should go to Alexandra Mendès, who has the most experience in the Chair, and who has proven herself to be completely no-nonsense when she’s in it, but MPs have time and again decided that they weren’t looking for experience or being no-nonsense. It was the Conservatives who wanted Anthony Rota in the chair last Parliament because he was a genial idiot and was more concerned with being everyone’s friend than in really enforcing decorum and they knew he would go easy on them, while Fergus was a novel choice instead of experienced. It was only after Fergus had one too many oopses that the Bloc decided that maybe it was time for a woman in the Chair again, and were ready to back Mendès if they managed to oust Fergus. Can they get enough votes this time? Stay tuned to find out.

Meanwhile, the Liberals held their first caucus meeting, which meant the inevitable question on the (garbage) Reform Act, and wouldn’t you know it, the Liberals voted against it, which made every pundit in this country cry out about how cowardly they were, while you had journalists writing up garbage copy with things like “they won’t be able to vote out” the leader without this, which is not only wrong, but dangerously wrong. (The CBC story with that particular line did edit it out on the next pass, but yes, I was absolutely livid).

"Liberal MPs decided against adopting the Reform Act during their caucus meeting Sunday, which means they won't be able to vote out the newly-elected leader if they sour on him down the line."No. That is absolutely wrong. Could a single fucking journalist in this country learn some basic civics?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-05-25T21:21:03.151Z

MPs have always had the ability to vote out a leader. A simple non-confidence vote in caucus is all it takes. You don’t need the stupid Act and its rules because it actually makes it harder by erecting a bunch of thresholds that are absolutely unnecessary. The problem, however, is for decade we had a pundit class who kept insisting that MPs were “powerless,” and we enforced a learned helplessness among them, and then Michel Chong came in with his ridiculous Act in order to look like the democratic hero when he actually just made things worse, and now it’s an intractable frame that everyone insists on using even though it’s false, creates wrong expectations, and is now self-reinforcing because when they vote against it, they’re being explicitly told that they are giving away powers that they might otherwise have, which is bullshit. “But if MPs have the power, then why didn’t they vote out Trudeau?” Because those MPs couldn’t organise a tea party for themselves if their lives depended on it. They had woken up to the problem and were trying to do something, but they were being meek and modest, and trying to convince Trudeau to do the right thing rather than vote him out and embarrass him. Obviously, it didn’t work, and Freeland was the one who needed to make the dramatic move, which goes even more to prove that the Act is useless. The state of civics in this country is intolerably bad, and our pundit class and journalists keep making it worse.

Ukraine Dispatch

The assaults on Kyiv continued over the weekend, with dozens of drones and missiles attacking overnight Saturday, injuring 15, while Sunday saw one of the largest attacks since the start of the war, with 367 drones and missiles fired (which included areas other than Kyiv), killing at least 12 people. Russia also claims to have captured two more settlements in Donetsk and one in Sumy. Another 307 prisoners were swapped by each side on Saturday, in spite of the massive Russian attacks, and another 303 each on Sunday, bringing it to a total of 1000 each side.

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