Tag Archives: Pierre Poilievre

Roundup: Unilateral Arctic plans and foreign aid churlishness

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Pierre Poilievre called a press conference from Iqaluit, yesterday, where he announced his Arctic policy ideas, which include finally building an air force base in the region, doubling the number of Canadian Rangers, and building two more heavy icebreakers, but for the Royal Canadian Navy and not the Coast Guard. Oh, and that he was going to pay for it all by gutting foreign aid. Set aside the fact that the plans for an Arctic base have long been in the works with slow progress, but does the Navy even want icebreaker capability? They didn’t want the slushbreakers—sorry, Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships that the Harper government decided they needed, and here is another Conservative who wants to impose capabilities that they have not asked for, because reasons. Nevertheless, this whole thing set off the premier of Nunavut, who noted there was zero consultation on these policies, and pointed to actual sovereignty-affirming things that governments should be doing for the north that aren’t this kind of performative flexing.

As for Poilievre’s disdain for foreign aid, it’s one-part monkey-see-monkey-do with MAGA and Elon Musk dismantling USAID, but it’s juvenile, provincial, and ignores that foreign aid is soft power that also does thinks like not let Russia and China swoop in and start winning hearts and minds in those countries, which is what Trump opened the door to, and which Poilievre seems keen to follow, justified by a number of lies about the recipients of that aid based on the fact that UNRWA may have had a handful of compromised employees. He doesn’t care about the realities of this aid spending and the projection of soft power, because those recipients can’t vote for him, and he’s playing into tired populist tropes about “taking care of people at home,” even though they actually don’t care about vulnerable people at home, and just want a tax cut instead of actually helping anyone. And again, Poilievre doesn’t care.

If anything, Canada should actually be living up to its previous pledges about increased funding for foreign assistance, particularly because the dismantling of USAID is going to affect programmes that Canada was partnering with them on, and they provided much of the “thought leadership” in the space. Children are going to die of malnutrition, and preventable illness, HIV infections are going to skyrocket, and again, Poilievre doesn’t care because those people can’t vote for him. What a bleak, cursèd timeline we live in right now.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Ukrainian drone attack damaged an industrial facility—possibly an oil refinery—in Russia’s Saratov region. The US’ “freeze” of aid money means that organisations helping investigate Russian war crimes can’t pay staff or continue their work—Trump and Musk just doing Putin’s bidding.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1888916130254725208

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Roundup: Baylis brings back boneheaded ideas

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Yesterday, no-hope Liberal leadership candidate Frank Baylis offered his ideas about how to make politics better, and…*sighs, pinches bridge of nose* It’s so bad, you guys. Back when he was an MP, Baylis had proposed a motion to change the Standing Orders to do a bunch of dumb things that he felt would improve things for MPs, but then didn’t show up for the debate on his own motion, so it died on the Order Paper, fortunately. But I see that he’s back at it again.

I cannot stress enough how stupid of an idea term limits are in a system like ours, because you actually need to have institutional memory in politics, and you can’t build that up in ten-year increments. You just can’t. That’s one of the reasons why the Senate tends to be more valuable in that capacity (which has been curtailed thanks to Trudeau kicking Liberal senators from his own caucus and only appointing independents), but you need experienced MPs in your caucus. Term limits make that impossible, especially for ten years. Canada already has a problem with a higher-than-normal rate of turnover for MPs as compared to other similar democracies, and making the churn worse doesn’t help. Baylis kept justifying this by saying “I’m a professional engineer” when questioned about this on Power & Politics, which doesn’t actually give him any special insight.

His idea of letting the Speaker choose who gets to speak and not party leaders is partially sound, but only in particular circumstances. I get that he wants to eliminate speaking lists, which I do agree with, particularly for Question Period, but it’s not as much of a problem as the rules around speaking times, and how we structure debates. Of course, he then screws up that decent idea with the boneheaded notion of petitions to trigger debates. Parliament is not supposed to be about empty take-note debates. Debates should have a purpose—speaking to motions or legislation that actually do something, rather than speaking for speaking’s sake. That’s all that this idea does.

Finally, Baylis wants a second chamber like they have in Westminster and Canberra, but again, this is ill-thought-out. We already don’t have enough MPs to fully staff all committees (particularly without having parliamentary secretaries as voting members), and to keep debate going in the Chamber, and now you want to add a second chamber? He says this would “speed up decision-making and end legislative gridlock,” but it absolutely wouldn’t because that’s not what those chambers do in the UK or Australia. They are largely used for non-votable debates, and giving speeches or statements. That kind of thing may be of more use in the UK where there are 650 MPs who can’t make members’ statements with much frequency, but it doesn’t affect the pace of legislation at all. It’s so stupid that he didn’t even bother to read up on his own gods damned proposals, but hey, he’s a “businessman” and an “engineer,” so why bother to actually learn how politics works? Honestly.

Meanwhile, speaking of his other no-hope candidate…

Ukraine Dispatch

Russians claim to have repelled an offensive in the Kursk region. Ukraine received some more F-16 fighters from the Netherlands, and Mirage jets from France. Eight Ukrainian children who had been seized from their families were returned home.

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Roundup: Cautious optimism on trade barriers

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Anita Anand told reporters yesterday that she is making progress with provinces when it comes to eliminating interprovincial trade barriers, which sounds great. In fact, she claims that some of those barriers could be “wiped away” in the next thirty days. It would be great news if that’s true, but I have my doubts because these barriers are incredibly difficult to harmonise around the country, and they’re mostly differing regulations, which are perfectly valid exercise of provincial powers. They’re extremely difficult to harmonize because sometimes they differ for a reason. Kevin Milligan explains in this thread if you click through. (He also throws cold water on the notion that we could or should join the EU).

Glad we got through the tariff emergency (at least the first wave of it….). Also glad that people are bringing creativity, energy, and determination to figuring out a medium and long-run response.But I want to throw cold water on three ideas I've seen floated. I'll explain…

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-02-04T20:24:14.385Z

I have to say that I am very curious regarding the method by which Anand is securing these changes, because I have heard no chatter about provinces being willing to surrender some of their provincial sovereignty in order to eliminate some of these barriers. I have also heard nothing about any kind of common regulatory body that could make determinations and that the provinces would adhere to, because they’ve all eschewed a common securities regulator, which should be low-hanging fruit for regulatory harmonisation, and yet… That would seem to imply that they have been establishing some sort of framework around mutual recognition of standards or credentials, but as of yet we have no real details.

As one example from that story: size and weight regulations for transport trucks.There is a very good reason that BC has detailed rules about snow chains for trucks and other provs may not. We have snowy mountains; some provs do not….www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/…

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-02-05T20:36:21.924Z

…so this doesn't mean we can't have a Canada-wide standard for truck size/weight. It means you really have to work hard to ensure the standard makes sense for each prov.If you get this wrong, people die. Regs that are too loose result in trucking accidents. So it takes work to get it right.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-02-05T20:40:05.709Z

The other note of caution I would make is that even if these barriers were reduced or eliminated, it would take time to reorient supply chains east-to-west rather than north-to-south, so there would be no immediate cushioning effect from any Trump tariffs. People will need to have realistic expectations about what this will achieve, particularly in the short-to-medium term.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine is blaming an explosion at a draft office in Khmelnytskyi region that killed one person and wounded several others as a series of Russian spies orchestrating attacks. 150 Ukrainian POWs were returned in a prisoner swap with Russia. Here are some of the details about how Ukrainians captured two North Korean soldiers fighting in Kursk region. Ukrainians are also noting a marked improvement in the accuracy of North Korean missiles fired at Ukraine.

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Roundup: Sad skits to demand Parliament’s summoning

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With the “reprieve” now granted, the Conservatives are back to demanding that Parliament be summoned, for…reasons. They have not actually spelled out what they need to legislate, because there are no actual proposals on the table, and you don’t need legislation for retaliatory tariffs (which are currently on hold). There may be a need to give new powers to CBSA around export controls, but we’re not there yet. Nevertheless, pretty much every Conservative MP put out some kind of tweet demanding Parliament be summoned, because it’s all about social media. MP Michael Barrett went up to the West Block to shoot a shitpost video where he tried to open the main doors to the House of Commons, but they were locked, so that he could perform for the camera, but the pièce de résistance here is that those doors are normally open when the House isn’t sitting, and closed when they are, which means that he had to get security to close the doors for him so that he could perform his little skit for the cameras. Just ridiculous.

The thing that nobody is really denying is that their only plan is to have Parliament summoned so that they can immediately call for a non-confidence vote, and the poll numbers are moving away from their previous landslide position because Trudeau is on his way out, and most of his likely successors are also moving away from the carbon levy (which is stupid and self-defeating, but I’m not a strategic genius). Poilievre is hoping to still capitalise on the anger against Trudeau while he can, because the longer it goes, the less the election is going to be about Trudeau or the carbon levy, and it will be more about who can deal with Trump, and Poilievre is far less favourable in many eyes on that front, hence his desperation to go now.

That leaves it up to Jagmeet Singh to determine if any proposals to counter Trump threats would pass, or if the country goes straight to an election and be even less ability to respond to any of Trump’s threats, and he continues to play performatively tough, insisting he’ll pass any measures introduced before the beginning of March, but he’s still voting non-confidence at the end, which…makes no sense, other than he’s still playacting like a tough guy. I would ask why everything needs to be so stupid, but we’re in a cursèd timeline.

The past two weeks, absolutely. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-04T15:15:33.437Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile strike killed five and wounded over 55 in the town of Izium in the Kharkiv region. As well, drone strikes hit a railway depot in Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukrainian drones sparked another fire at an oil refinery, this time in The Krasnodar region. Frozen US aid means that funds to support people evacuated from front-line settlements may be in serious jeopardy.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1886757333042098399

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Roundup: A thirty-day reprieve—maybe

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In the wake of the weekend of anger and betrayal, one of Trump’s economic advisors went on television to insist that we mistakenly believed this to be a trade war when it’s a drug war. You know, except for all of the talk from Trump about trade deficits, and using economic warfare to force annexation, and the fact that he pardoned the guy who founded a big drug trafficking site on the dark web. Trump himself was talking about “51st state” as this very line was being delivered, along with the new whinge that American banks can’t operate in Canada (which they can in various capacities and some of them already are, but they need to adhere to Canadian banking regulations). Yeah, totally about the drug war. And yes, a number of Vichy Canadians also swallowed this bullshit line of reasoning.

Ah, I see, we've reached the stage of gaslighting with a smile. Cool. Coolcoolcool.

— Shannon Proudfoot (@sproudfoot.bsky.social) 2025-02-03T17:32:32.248Z

Also applies to Vichy Canadians.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-03T18:27:30.038Z

While Scott Moe called for de-escalation, we got word that Mexico had reached a reprieve in exchange for ten thousand troops along their border (when they already have fifteen thousand), so while we waited for Trump to have his call with Justin Trudeau, what did Pierre Poilievre demand, as he stated that while the tariffs were unjustified, that Trump was nevertheless right about the border? Troops along our border, along with adoption of his handwavey slogan-plan (of which I will have more in a full column later). Because militarizing our border for the first time since before Confederation is really the solution here. (Scott Moe also suggested putting CBSA under the military, because the man is a gods damned idiot). Never mind that Poilievre has consistently lied about the border, claiming that Trudeau “weakened” it, and that it took Trump to get us to take it seriously, all of which is false. He nevertheless is giving Trump all the more ammunition he needs, and giving succour to the Vichy Canadians who desperately want to believe Trump.

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3lhccxlwz3c2j

Moreover, what role would the military play? Would we be searching people before they exit Canada at a border crossing? Or would we just be trying to stop people from crossing away from border crossings? Would the military be given powers to arrest, etc., similar to peace officers?

— Timothy Huyer (@tim4hire.bsky.social) 2025-02-03T20:17:48.186Z

https://bsky.app/profile/plagasse.bsky.social/post/3lhc5z2pvlk27

Finally, Trudeau had his call with Trump, and we also got our thirty-day reprieve on the promise of what we were already doing, plus another couple hundred thousand dollars for dealing with organised crime (which yes, is needed), and appointing a “fentanyl czar,” which can get into the sea. We don’t have “czars” in our system of government. Yes, this is empty theatre, and whatever minister or deputy minister is given this title won’t make that much difference, but nevertheless, the precedent becomes set, and future governments are going to start appointing more “czars” to ape Americanisms, which is the very last thing we need.

This isn’t even security theatre, it’s a security puppet show.

— Tabatha Southey (@tabathasouthey.bsky.social) 2025-02-03T22:47:31.062Z

While plenty of Americans mocked that Trump just got played by Canada and Mexico, I’m not really convinced. None of this was done in good faith, and Trump has given so many different reasons for why we deserved to be punished that no one reason can ever be sufficient. The tariff threat hasn’t gone away, and the “reprieve” will be threatened continually every time he thinks of some new shakedown, and it won’t stop. This was only the opening salvo, and while it exposed the positions of some of the players, we’re a long way even seeing the finish line. Buckle up.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian troops in Pokrovsk are losing ground as Russians have begun switching up tactics as they try to take the strategic city, while Ukraine’s logistics are in peril. Ukrainian drone strikes have triggered more fires at oil refineries in Russia. Trump says he wants Ukraine to supply the US with rare earth elements as “equalization” for future aid, because everything is a shakedown. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission reports an alarming rise in Russians executing captured Ukrainian soldiers.

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Roundup: Touching off a trade war

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On Saturday afternoon, it happened—under false pretenses, Donald Trump signed the executive order to put tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China (25 percent on all imports except oil and gas, which is at ten percent) coming into effect on Tuesday, with the likelihood it will rise later, and threatening that it will go up further if we retaliate. Because how dare we exercise our sovereignty.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-01T19:37:55.910Z

By late evening, prime minister Justin Trudeau gave a speech, spent part of it “speaking directly to Americans” (which was not covered live on any US news stations, but did get play on Sunday), and outlined the first tranche of retaliatory tariffs, with further non-tariff measures to come into place in about twenty-one days. (The Logic has a roundup of Canadian reaction here).

Some Americans seemed confused by the response, including the New York Times, which pretty much brings us back to that Onion headline.

Hey, @nytimes.com. Go fuck yourselves.

— Alex Usher (@alexusherhesa.bsky.social) 2025-02-02T17:20:07.562Z

Reading the posts from US political junkies on here like

— Chris Turner (@theturner.bsky.social) 2025-02-02T04:11:19.060Z

More troubling were the Vichy Canadians, who continue to blame Justin Trudeau for this state of affairs, including tech bros in this country, such as Canada’s Specialest Tech Bro, Tobi Lütke, who not only blamed Canada for fighting back, but bought all of Trump’s bullshit excuses. It was never about the border, or fentanyl, or NATO spending, or even trade deficits. This is about Trump wanting to use tariffs to give more billionaire tax cuts (which the tech bros in the US are all salivating over), and to assert his dominance, no matter how much it costs him internationally.

And then there was Pierre Poilievre, and while he was not explicitly being a Vichy Canadian, it didn’t help that he was still incapable of articulating an actual response other than yet another slogan (“Canada First!”), demanding things that won’t actually help (a tax cut will only help the rich, and the killing the carbon levy early will do absolutely nothing about the shocks from the tariffs, and the capital gains stopping changes only allow the wealthy to continue to engage in tax arbitrage), that require magic (internal trade barriers cannot be brought down with the snap of a finger—they’re differing regulatory standards that can’t be harmonized with the stroke of a pen), and he’s continuing to give credence to Trump’s lie that the border is a problem, because he’s been trying to claim that Trudeau “weakened” them, which has always been a lie. And while he and Conservatives cry that Parliament needs to be summoned immediately, the only reason to do so is for performance art (gotta get those clips for their socials), and for him to bring down the government at his first opportunity, because he refuses to say he will actually let any package the government brings forward, whenever that happens, pass.

https://twitter.com/acoyne/status/1886158003272925684

https://twitter.com/mikepmoffatt/status/1886172330394636539

And then, of course, a gods damned CBC journalist made it all the worse in Poilievre’s press conference by phrasing “supporting government measures” as “stepping aside,” and Poilievre and company used that to play victim, and demand the CBC be defunded, yet again. What an absolutely stupid own-goal, and so many journalists keep making them with Poilievre.

Can confirm.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-02-03T03:15:14.066Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drone and missile attacks on Saturday killed fifteen, mostly in Poltava. Ukrainian drone attacks targeted more Russian energy facilities, and sparked fires at an oil refinery in Volgograd. And Ukrainian officials are unimpressed with the American “negotiation” position of ensuring that elections are held in Ukraine after a ceasefire, given that it does nothing to deter Putin.

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Roundup: Carney’s boneheaded “green incentives”

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Liberal leadership hopeful Mark Carney revealed his plan to replace the consumer carbon levy yesterday, and it’s a handwavey bunch of “green incentives” for things like improving your home insulation, furnace, appliances, or buying an electric vehicle. This would be offset by maintaining or increasing the industrial carbon pricing system, along with carbon border adjustments. Carney claimed that the current system isn’t working, which is false, because emissions have been driven down, and then shrugs and says it’s “too divisive,” which is the Liberals’ own gods damned faults for being such incompetent communicators about how the levy works, the rebates (remember when they thought that calling them “climate action incentives” was a genius idea?), and how reducing one’s own carbon footprint maximises those rebates. The government was absolutely incapable of communicating any of it, and Pierre Poilievre swooped in and filled the space with lies and disinformation.

This is so unbelievably stupid. "Green incentives?" I live in an apartment. I can't change the insulation or heating system. Instead, with the rebate from the carbon levy, I get cash, which is a pretty nice incentive given that I don't have a car or do much that I need to pay the carbon levy for.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T15:13:28.930Z

This is just about as moronic as Erin O'Toole's "airmiles for carbon" plan, where you would get more rewards the more you pollute, and those of us who are already living low-carbon lifestyles get nothing. The carbon levy was fine if the Liberals could actually properly defend it.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T15:13:28.931Z

I find Carney’s plan absolutely infuriating for a number of reasons. One of them is that this imparts a false narrative that carbon emissions reductions can happen for free for consumers. Even if there is no consumer-facing price, industrial emitters will pass along costs, and people won’t get a rebate for those higher costs, which hurts lower-income households harder. Everyone fawning over Carney’s economic credentials should be smacking themselves upside the head because of this fiction he is trying to perpetrate and just how economically illiterate it actually is.

Meanwhile, how much of an “incentive” can it really be for one-time purchases? You can only really re-insulate your house once, or buy a new furnace once every twenty years. There is no price disincentive to increased carbon use, and there is no ongoing reward for a low-carbon lifestyle, which the rebates provide. Again, very few people actually understand this because the government steadfastly refused to actually communicate how the levy and rebates actually work, how to maximise them, and how it rewards ongoing low-carbon behaviour. They hoped that legacy media and would communicate that (they absolutely will not), and it was basically up to five economists on Twitter, which is useless to ninety-five percent of the population. So now the people who have done the work to reduce their carbon footprint will now be punished, and people will take advantage of those one-time purchases for what? The pat on the back that they can give themselves? Everyone involved here needs to take a long, hard look at some of their life choices, but then again, if they had any modicum of self-reflection, they likely wouldn’t be in politics. What an absolute disaster.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones injured four in Odessa, damaging a hospital and grain warehouse, while a missile attack seriously damaged a historic centre in the same city. Russian forces are also tightening their approach to Pokrovsk, which is a key logistics hub in the region. Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian command post in the Kursk region, and are also reporting that they haven’t seen any North Korean troops in the area for three weeks. Ukrainian drones also damaged an oil refinery in Russia’s Volgograd region.

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Roundup: Foreign interference commission final report released

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ukraine Dispatch

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

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Roundup: Piercing Lantsman’s kayfabe

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Because everything is so stupid, Conservative Twitter got itself all hot and bothered over the weekend because Nathaniel Erskine-Smith had the temerity to break the kayfabe when the Melissa Lantsman was engaging in performative outrage.

Context: This was an event Erskine-Smith held in his riding for Mark Carney, and Lantsman stood outside to say ludicrously stupid things, and Erskine-Smith, who was standing right there, made a good-natured objection, and did so in a way where Lantsman broke—her performative outrage cracked, she smiled and basically admitted it was all bullshit, and then tried to carry on to finish the performance, got her talking points backwards, but she finished the scene. Conservatives, however, were incensed that the fakery was exposed, so they edited the clip, invented the charge that Erskine-Smith was a creep because he touched her shoulder and shook her hand—the most regular things in politics—and *gasp!* suggested they get a drink like a good-natured colleague would. This would not stand.

What’s particularly hilarious about this is that this is just more Conservative cry-bullying (which I have been on the receiving end of), where they pretend to be the wronged party in order to have someone “cancelled,” while they bemoan and wail about so-called “cancel culture” (which has never actually cancelled anyone, especially in a country where the National Post gives them column inches the very next day). Meanwhile, if they think that women like Lantsman are that fragile, perhaps they should start insisting that women not be accompanied outdoors without a male relative escorting them, or that they should start wearing burkas so as not to attract unwanted attention—you know, like the Taliban would say.

It’s all so fake, and this is what they want our political discourse to be.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine downed 50 out of 72 Russian drones launched overnight Saturday. President Zelenskyy replaced the commander of the eastern forces for the third time in a year, as Russia continues to encroach on strategic settlements.

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Roundup: Day one depravity

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Yesterday was inauguration day in the US, and it was pretty much as horrible as you can imagine, with the pardoning of insurrectionists, and the executive order that made a full-on assault on the rights of trans people (which is always the first target of authoritarian regimes, followed by the rest of the queer communities). Oh, and Elon Musk threw a Nazi salute. So yeah, it was pretty much everything you thought it would be.

I think the pardons are the worst thing thus far because they signal that political violence on behalf of Trump is to be rewarded.But the anti-trans stuff might be worse because it is directly targeting a vulnerable minority.So many choices for the worst. It will be a daily thing.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman.bsky.social) 2025-01-21T01:25:06.197Z

What didn’t happen on day one was the tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Instead, word came out early in the morning that Trump wouldn’t sign them on day one, and he would instead order an investigation into trade imbalances, and so on. So that was a reprieve, or a stay of execution, right? Danielle Smith certainly thought so, and started taking credit for it. Her followers and media apologists quickly amplified that self-praise. And then, after a few hours, Trump said that yes, the tariffs would be coming as of February 1st. Oops.

How did these age?

— Greg MacEachern (@gregmaceachern.bsky.social) 2025-01-21T01:25:33.384Z

That was day one, and we can only imagine what worse predations are to come. There will be a number of demands for retaliation, but the government is keeping their powder dry for the moment, as is probably best. This may yet come to nothing, because Trump believes he’s an ace negotiator and these are his usual tactics to extract some kind of “win” from us, because that’s who he is. It may yet come to naught, but it could still be a kneecapping of our economy. It’s still too early to say, but nobody should be doing victory laps right now—especially those who tried to obey in advance.

https://bsky.app/profile/jrobson.bsky.social/post/3lg7y2jnygs2t

Yes. Yes it is.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-01-20T18:35:12.136Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s state investigation bureau has detained two generals and a colonel accused of negligence in failing to adequately defend the Kharkiv region last year.

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