Tag Archives: Privacy

Poilievre takes credit for pushing on an open door

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Not unexpectedly, the federal government extended their federal gas excise tax “holiday” for several more months as an “affordability measure,” and then sent out MPs and parliamentary secretaries to pat themselves on the back for it. And the rhetoric is just so braindead. “Image waking up on Tuesday and having to pay ten cents more per litre,” Ryan Turnbull said on Power & Politics by way of justification, and well, yes, that’s what happens when a tax holiday expires. Prices go back up. So unless you plan to keep extending said “holiday” to the point where it’s no longer a holiday but merely a removed excise tax in all but name, then the price will have to go up eventually, and of course you’re going to have to swallow the hit when it happens. And there has also been no mention about the lost revenues from this excise tax and how the particular envelopes of funding that it goes toward will not suffer, while the federal deficit continues to climb. Is Carney laying off civil servants and cutting programmes solely for people to get cheaper gasoline? If so, he should just say so.

Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre took to social media to take credit for this holiday extension, but of course, it’s not good enough because he is still calling for the destruction of the industrial carbon price (which is not relevant here), and for the clean fuel standard (which is not a tax, and any dollar figures associated with it were mere projections of what it might cost refineries to meet this standard). On the one hand, he’s trying to claim victory for pushing on an open door, which is sad in and of itself. On the other hand, he’s being an obsequious pick-me after his party’s abysmal performance in Monday’s by-elections, so much so that they only came in second in one of those ridings. Nevertheless, we can expect more of this “Conservatives won this round!” back-patting for the weeks to come, while he continues to make more demands to simply destroy all environmental legislation under the most ridiculous pretences possible.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-09-02T19:08:01.648Z

My Latest:

My column points to data showing average income declines in Alberta, and whether the Remain campaign can actually be honest about them or just play into separatist hands.

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Doing well on the the Rule of Law Index

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Because apparently we’re making it a theme this week, after yesterday’s post I was sent this ranking for Canada under the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, where we’re doing pretty well, in fact. Canada ranks 13th overall in the world, down one spot from last year, in part because we have been dropping on civil justice matters, which is perfectly fair. Breaking it down further, it shows that we are below average on the ability to access and afford civil justice, it being free of discrimination, and that it is not subject to unreasonable delay. This all rings true (unlike certain other ranking systems), in part because civil justice has wound up taking a back seat to criminal matters. Thanks to the Supreme Court of Canada’s Jordan decision, most court resources got shifted to criminal matters in order to avoid a stay of proceedings for unreasonable delay, which means fewer resources for civil matters. That means that those matters are now being delayed even more, and it can be years before you can get a trial date for a civil matter.

If you have paid attention, you would realise that this is almost 100 percent the fault of provincial premiers who don’t adequately resource their justice systems, though I will grant that there have been some resourcing issues at the Federal Court, which doesn’t deal with criminal matters, and those resources are the responsibility of the federal government, but this pales in comparison to the problem in provincially-run courts. Nevertheless, these are solvable problems with more resourcing, if provinces can be arsed to do so, and if the federal government can be bothered to actually apply pressure on them rather than just declare that they’re satisfied that the provinces understand their responsibilities. Clearly, they don’t care, because they know they can blame the federal government, and credulous legacy media needs to stop letting them get away with it.

My Latest:

For National Magazine, I delve into the government’s new digital privacy legislation, and why there is a great deal of debate over what is being proposed.

My column points out that Poilievre’s ideas for how to secure tariff-free access to the American market are fantastical because they stem from absurdly false notions.

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QP: Ministers not proving their ability to know their files

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The PM was still at the G7 in France, while Pierre Poilievre was also absent, and for some reason, Branden Leslie led off with a shouted recitation of the “recession” script, and François-Philippe Champagne suggested that the Conservatives were not happy but he bought good news about the highest level of foreign direct investment and the second-fastest growth in the G7. Leslie cited people turning to GoFundMe pages to afford to live, and Champagne assured him that Canadians don’t want another clip, they want action, and he listed measures the government has taken. Gabriel Hardy took forward in French, read a weeks-ago talking point about the prime minister talking about the level of affordability before reading today’s clip-bait about GoFundMe pages. Champagne accused the Conservatives of hypocrisy for their voting against programmes to help people. Hardy suggested that people want the government to stop what’s not working, and that government spending was driving the country into recession. Lightbound suggested the number of people in Hardy’s riding getting that GST credit would disagree. Shannon Stubbs picked up the metaphorical baton to angrily read the day’s script, including the GoFundMe mention, and this time Tim Hodgson listed programmes that are getting underway. Stubbs railed about the prime minister’s in-flight catering and meandered into the “inflationary spending” talking point. Steven MacKinnon got up to wonder what the Conservatives are for if they vote against all measures to help people.

Yves Perron led for the Bloc, and complained about the programming motion on Bill C-22 and time allocation on Bill C-30. MacKinnon took a swipe at the Bloc for opposing the high-speed rail project and all of good things it would bring. Perron kept up his complaints about these “gag orders” that prevent MPs from doing their jobs, and to keep civil society from realising the abuse in those laws. MacKinnon said they would not apologise for working on the priorities of Canadians, like high-speed rail. (Erm, lawful access is not this, guys). Claude DeBellefeuille took her own crack at complaining about the motion on Bill C-22, and Lightbound said he wouldn’t apologise for taking action on things like transit…which again, is not lawful access.

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A privacy bill that takes away from the Privacy Commissioner

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The federal government tabled long-overdue privacy reform legislation yesterday, which is intended to work in concert with their Digital Asbestos For All Strategy, and while there are some needed updates within it, there are also some concerning aspects. For example, there will be more powers to demand deletions from online searches (“right to be forgotten” powers), and while they are going to give the federal Privacy Commissioner more powers like he’s been begging for, they are going to restrict him to only public sector complaints and hive off private sector complaints to this new Digital Safety Commissioner. They’ve also decided to jump on the “surveillance pricing” hysteria, which both lets Avi Lewis claim a victory, but they have no details on how this will work, to say nothing of the fact that consumer protection is a provincial responsibility!

I have regularly butted heads with the Privacy Commissioners we've had over the past 20+ years, but sidelining an organization with decades of experience to empower an as yet unconstituted body is frankly shocking. #BillC34

— David TS Fraser (@privacylawyer.ca) 2026-06-15T21:41:45.003Z

It's worth noting that there's nothing new in #BillC36 that has anything to do with "surveillance pricing". The provision that the Minister pointed to in his presser has been in PIPEDA since 2001.

— David TS Fraser (@privacylawyer.ca) 2026-06-15T22:42:03.453Z

The fact that they are taking the new Digital Safety Commissioner that is being created as part of the Online Harms legislation, and loading him or her up with these enormous new powers is concerning, as is the fact that this commissioner will report to government and not to Parliament. I worry about creating a new regulator with so much scope of authority that it will need to build an enormous bureaucracy off the start, meaning it will be slow to start up, slow to react, and eventually start empire-building, particularly given how much online regulation it is being asked to do in addition to privacy work. We will have to see if the government bothers to offer a justification for this model (which they may not!) but I suspect we’ve got a long summer ahead of Evan Solomon exhorting the opposition to pass this while pretending it’s the solution to all of our problems.

A modernized privacy law should be something that gets broad support, but I think the creation of this new super-regulator that reports to the government and not parliament may be this bill's undoing. #BillC36

— David TS Fraser (@privacylawyer.ca) 2026-06-15T23:09:34.362Z

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My Latest:

  • For National Magazine, I delve into Friday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision on why all future Lieutenant Governors of New Brunswick needs to be bilingual.
  • My weekend column on how the Liberals have shamelessly reversed their policies so many times under Carney that they are virtually just Conservatives now.

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Roundup: Mixed messages about deeper integration

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Late last week, prime minister Mark Carney was at the Global Progress Action Summit in Toronto, and gave a speech that seems to be a bit of a Rorschach test about how you feel about him and the job he’s doing. While I believe he’s correct in saying that the loss of control people feel with affordability and the rise of digital asbestos leads to a “politics of grievance,” I am less convinced the same is true for immigration, and that it has proven a reliable scapegoat by everyone, Carney included, which is absolutely dangerous—especially when he uses phrases like “taking back control.” He also says that the current moment has been “seized by politicians who seek to destroy and dismantle and progressives must answer by building,” but he has been eroding and quietly dismantling the actual progressive programmes brought in by his predecessor. The fact that he is calling himself a “progressive” is stretching the definition to its breaking point.

Amidst this, there was another statement that raises even more eyebrows, which is that “Like Mexico, Canada remains open to deeper integration, including options for fortress North America in (certain) sectors. And to be clear, those offers are on the table.” Deeper integration? Fortress North America? So, after all of the talk about how being solely dependent on the US as a single trading partner has been a strategic weakness and that we need to diversify so that we have options and can’t be held hostage, we want to integrate even more closely in strategic sectors with the same country that has been trying to hold us hostage, threatening our sovereignty, and which has taken to bullying us because they think they can get away with it without consequence? I mean, I get that we cannot fully decouple from the US because of geography (and even Taiwan trades mostly with China, because of geography), but this message seems at odds with everything happening, and it’s really hard to see how he can promise this without some pretty heavy caveats up front, and I’m not exactly seeing anything that inspires me with confidence.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-05-10T23:08:01.480Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia violated the ceasefire by making drone strikes on the front lines, and Ukraine launched a few drones in response. Putin claims the war will be winding down soon, but said they will be victorious, but are even further away from their aims, so we’ll see. Here is a look into the dispute between Ukraine and Israel over shipments of stolen grain, and why Israel is uncomfortably close to Russia.

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Roundup: Preparing to gut environmental laws

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The federal government is openly musing about changes to the Impact Assessment Act and the Fisheries Act in order to speed up project approvals, which sounds like it could be a dubious proposition. Federal Sources™ still insist that they will need Indigenous consultations and “robust” environmental assessments for projects, but if they keep “streamlining” these processes, they’re not robust. And then you just get more litigation. They don’t seem to learn this lesson.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, continue to demand that all environmental laws be repealed as “anti-development,” and continue to propagate falsehoods about projects that didn’t move ahead for reasons that have nothing to do with the assessment regime. They seem to have no concept of the fact that there are other factors at play, whether it’s the crash in oil prices in 2014, or the fact that there were no customers willing to sign long-term contracts that would make these projects viable enough to pursue.

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2052386968798118276

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2052388610519994589

And then there are the oil companies themselves, who continue to try and flex their influence in order to scrap environmental laws. While whinging that any carbon pricing makes them uncompetitive (blatantly untrue given the credits in the system), Canadian Natural announced yesterday that they are moving ahead with two steam-driven oilsands projects, but still holding off on expanding one of their mines. Looks like they can still operate within the regulatory environment, even while grousing about it. These companies are not fragile babies who are one look askance away from insolvency, and government needs to stop treating them as though they were (while the Conservatives really need to stop credulously believing everything that these companies say).

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2052386215593439714

Ukraine Dispatch

Ahead of its ceasefire, Russia fired dozens of more drones into Ukraine, hitting a kindergarten in Sumy, claiming Ukraine violated their own ceasefire first. President Zelenskyy has warned that if Russia continues to violate the ceasefire, then Ukraine will carry on with its long-range strikes.

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Roundup: Taking what advice on appointments?

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Prime minister Mark Carney once again said on Wednesday that Senate appointments will be made “in due course,” which doesn’t help when nearly ten percent of the Chamber’s seats are vacant or will be before summer is out, but for the first time, he indicated that he would be preserving the independent appointment committees. Sort of. (Currently only the federal members of these committees remain in place, and those for Nova Scotia, but none of the other provinces). “I will take into account the advice of the independent advisory committee that was established by my predecessor,” was what Carney said.

The problem is that’s not actually saying anything. Taking advice into account? Either these committees will be providing short-lists for appointments that Carney will choose from, or they won’t be. That was the point—they took the applications (which was always a mistake—they should have been doing the searching for worthwhile nominees to tap on the shoulder), vetted them, and honed them down to the short-lists, which Trudeau would then choose from, because he remains constitutionally responsible for those appointments. But what “advice” are they supposed to be offering if not a short-list of candidates? Will he look at their list and then decide to choose one of his friends from another hedge fund or big bank? Will he give them a list to do due diligence on? Maybe. None of this is clear, and it looks like he either doesn’t understand this responsibility that is part of his office, or he doesn’t care, and I’m not sure which is worse at this point when he’s been in office for a year now.

Meanwhile, Carney also said that he’s waiting on the joint parliamentary committee report before coming to any decision on the MAiD expansion for irremediable mental health issues, but it cannot be understated that said committee has been an absolute sham process. The two co-chairs are hostile to MAiD and have stacked the witnesses to be overwhelmingly against it, and have sidelined groups like major national psychological and psychiatric organisations who might actually argue that they can provide adequate safeguards. This is just going to result in more Charter litigation, and so many people will continue to suffer needlessly because a bunch of MPs and senators were too squeamish to actually listen to evidence that they didn’t want to hear.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-05-06T19:08:02.023Z

Ukraine Dispatch

In spite of Ukraine giving Russia an early start to their Victory Day ceasefire, Russia attacked several cities in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 27 people. The new Hungarian government returned to Ukraine the confiscated $82 million USD in cash and gold that was seized while transiting the country.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/2051983745297617183

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Roundup: Poor widdle baby oil companies

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The oil and gas sector in Alberta has decided that with the situation in Iran going on, and the federal government’s stated desire to export more in order to be the so-called “energy superpower,” that they are going to flex their muscles more, and demand that carbon pricing or other regulatory measures need to go. It’s a load of bullshit, however there are a whole lot of people who will uncritically believe that the sector are just widdle babies who are so hard done by and that any carbon pricing is just too much for them to handle.

Energy economist Andrew Leach is calling bullshit, because if they are so fragile that they can’t withstand pennies on a barrel (because remember, they are also generating a tonne of credits under Alberta’s carbon pricing system) then it’s incredibly suspect. And these are the companies who also insisted that Pathways was their future, and that with that technology, they could increase production without emissions. Now they’re claiming it’s impossible to do without the federal government paying for the whole thing, which is pretty much just tearing off the fig leaf—either they were lying the whole time (which is why they panicked when greenwashing legislation came into effect), or they simply think they can get away with crying poor and that the federal government needs to pay for everything. Neither case looks good on them, but they figure they have the leverage, and they fully intend to use it.

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2051299335846178946

https://twitter.com/andrew_leach/status/2051304919945371814

May the 4th

In past years, a lot of government departments got in on the action. This year? Hardly any. StatsCan used the opportunity to launch the census, and CSIS of all departments put out a tweet, but that seemed to be it. Which is too bad. Departments used to really get into it, and you had some really good tweets, and some abysmal ones, and it was fun to rank them. (Also, valiant effort by CSIS, but they got the wrong photo. That’s not Cracken—this is. They got Blount. And yes, I am a Star Wars nerd).

https://twitter.com/Canada/status/2051312054875603265

https://twitter.com/StatCan_eng/status/2050983876684554321

Ukraine Dispatch

A mid-morning Russian missile attack hit the Kharkiv region, killing two and wounding over thirty. Russia also hit five energy facilities in the past day. Data shows Russia has targeted port facilities ten times more than the past year. Russia claims they will observe a ceasefire for their Victory Day festivities, and Ukraine says they will abide by it.

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Roundup: A stolen voter list

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There is a wild story happening in Alberta right now, where a separatist group got their hands on a copy of a voters list and made it public and searchable, which is a) illegal; and b) dangerous, particularly to people who are being threatened, stalked, or in hiding from abusive ex-partners, or so on. A judge ordered it taken down, Elections Alberta and the police are involved, but this is so, so messy. It appears that the list came from the already dubious “Republican Party of Alberta,” which was stood up in the interests of getting certain separatist personalities elected into the legislature, and the thing about voter lists is that they are salted with fake names in order to be traceable.

And then comes this twist—a month ago, journalist Jen Gerson warned Elections Alberta about this after receiving a tip from a source, and Elections Alberta said it was credible, but then did nothing because the list could have come from public sources, even though it would have been easy enough to check for the salted names. But they didn’t. And then a month later, this injunction comes down with the investigation, after all of this personal information has been on the internet and accessed by who knows how many people, putting some lives in real jeopardy as a result.

The thing is, we’ve been dealing with issues related to voters lists and privacy legislation federally, when the government tacked on these provisions to Bill C-4 (ostensibly about the GST cut on new homes and ending the consumer carbon levy), and it was basically a move to bigfoot provincial privacy commissioners over how parties protect this data, and simply insist that parties have a policy—nothing about minimum safeguards or any of that. Just a policy. These provisions got zero study in the Commons, because of course they didn’t, and it took a group of senators to try and force changes, and the only amendment they could pass was a sunset clause to push parties to get actual privacy protections in place, and then MPs rejected that amendment (and senators did not insist on it). Now, the government is revisiting these provisions somewhat in Bill C-25, but this whole debacle just underscores how important it is for parties to have proper safeguards, and to have serious teeth when it comes to enforcing them, because as stated above, lives are at stake when this information gets into the wrong hands.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones attacked Odesa again early Thursday, wounding at least 18 people. Ukrainian drones struck Russian oil infrastructure in Tuapse (again), Perm, and Orenburg.

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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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