Tag Archives: Public Service

Roundup: Clueless American senators pay a visit

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A group of US senators were in Ottawa for a second time in as many months, to meet with prime minister Mark Carney about the trade talks with the US, which is…a pretty useless gesture because they have pretty much no influence in the current American political environment, and they’ve been spectacularly ineffective in doing the slightest bit to rein in his abuse of powers. And speaking of useless gestures, they were all wearing Canada-U.S. friendship bracelets provided by the US Embassy, because apparently treating this like a Taylor Swift concert is how they’re “building bridges.” Honestly…

And it just doesn’t stop. One of the Democratic senators was lecturing Carney about fully repealing the Digital Services Tax, which…is doing what Trump wants, and just letting the authoritarian tech bros dictate our sovereign tax policies. Like really? That’s what you came to tell us? The sole Republican in the group, who is a sometimes Trump critic, said that his annexation rhetoric was “not constructive.” Gee, you think? That’s your contribution to this conversation? One of the other Democrats said that we’re they’re “best friends” but that the relationship was going through some “great strain.” Gosh, really? This is what you’ve come up here to say? One of them wanted to talk about stopping the flow of precursor chemicals for fentanyl. How about guns? Why don’t you do something about stopping them from coming over our border? I just can’t with any of these guys.

Meanwhile, the US ambassador says that Trump thinks we’re “nasty” for boycotting travel and American booze, as he has openly made threats of annexation and trying to destroy our economy to make it happen. Like, seriously, what did you think we were going to do?

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-07-21T22:08:21.155Z

Ukraine Dispatch

It was another heavy barrage of 426 drones and a dozen missiles fired at Ukraine overnight Sunday and into Monday, killing two and wounding at least fifteen people. Later in the day were attacks on the Sumy region, injuring another fourteen people. President Zelenskyy has named new ambassadors to several countries, including Canada (which is a shame because Yulia Kovaliv was great). Meanwhile, Russian TV showed teenagers working in their drone factories.

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Roundup: A major agreement with the EU

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At the Canada-EU summit in Brussels yesterday, Mark Carney signed a new security and defence partnership, and the joint communiqué was very, very long. A lot of stuff that might have been part of a G7 communiqué, but that wasn’t going to happen given how much time and energy was spent managing Trump and the Americans, and that included a lot of talk about upholding the rules-based international order, or combatting climate change, and that kind of thing, that would have caused Trump to throw another one of his public tantrums. But that’s the world we live in now.

This means that Canada is now on the road to participating in programmes like ReArm Europe, which seeks to drive down the cost of joint military procurement projects by increasing the scale of the buys, and helps to keep those industries in Europe rather than relying on the American defence-industrial complex, but the hope is that this agreement will open the Canadian market to those procurements as well (though I am curious to know how many Canadian firms are actually Canadian and not just American branch-plants).

Today will be the big NATO summit where increasing the expected defence spending target is the major focus, though there will likely be some sidebars around de-escalation with Israel and Iran. Ukraine will also be a focus, though president Zelenskyy is not expected to attend (though he was in the UK yesterday to sign new agreements on military production there, and to have lunch with the King at Windsor Castle). Nevertheless, that five percent target—to ostensibly be divided up as 3.5% operational spending and 1.5% in related spending that has some kind of a defence-adjacent component—is going to be incredibly difficult for the majority of countries to achieve, but especially to sustain. You already have some countries who met their two percent target by front-loading a bunch of procurement, but they have no idea how they’ll manage to stay at two percent, let alone 3.5%-plus going forward. (It’s also a dumb metric because it doesn’t deal with contributions to operations, and the disparity between the denominators among member countries is pretty vast, to say nothing about the fact that it’s easier to hit your targets if you crash your economy to drag your denominator down). One hopes there will be some cooler heads around the table, but it looks like the 5 percent is a done deal, which will create problems down the road.

https://bsky.app/profile/plagasse.bsky.social/post/3lsbzgrlhpk2u

Ukraine Dispatch

The attack on Kyiv early Monday wound up killing at least ten, including a child, as an apartment block was struck. Ukraine says that it attacked and set ablaze an oil depot in Russia’s Rostov region.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1937171580552966364?s=61

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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 the G7 summit

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It’s the run-up to the G7 summit on Monday and Tuesday, and it will start with dinner with UK prime minister Keir Starmer tonight, before everyone starts heading to Calgary, where Danielle Smith will be greeting delegates as they arrive for the G7, starting on Sunday, and will host an event with them. We already know that there will be some different features in this summit in that they will forgo the usual joint communiqué, but instead, Carney will put out a chair’s statement (because there is unlikely to be any kind of consensus to be had with Trump in the room).

Another question is about what some of the discussions will wind up being about, given the chaotic nature of what is happening right now, such as Israel and Iran attacking one another, while there are wildfires burning in Alberta, and the conflict in Ukraine has intensified after Ukraine destroyed a significant portion of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. The number of other non-G7 members invited to attend will also help shape the discussions, which includes Indian prime minister Narendra Modi (whose activities we are apparently overlooking for the sake of the conference), though it should also be noted that “bone saws” Mohammed bin Salman won’t be attending after all, despite being invited. Here is a rundown of the additional invitees to the summit.

Meanwhile, Canada and India have reached an agreement to share information about cross-border crimes, such as transnational crimes, syndicates, terrorism, and extremist activities. That makes the obvious question to be whether the Indian government will disclose its transnational repression and contracting of syndicates to carryout transnational crimes (like extrajudicial killings)? Or do they simply expect Canada to turn over information about the legal activities of Khalistani advocates in this country? Because if we’re not getting any of the former, I’m not sure what value this agreement really has as a “reset” of the relationship.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine and Russia had another swap of bodies of fallen soldiers yesterday.

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Roundup: Carney making his choice with Modi

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Spokespersons for the Sikh Federation Canada and the World Sikh Organisation of Canada were on the Hill yesterday to call on prime minister Mark Carney to rescind his invitation to Narendra Modi to attend the G7 summit, and are not ruling out actions such as barring Liberal MPs from visiting Sikh temples as a protest. They warned that more than a dozen Canadian Sikhs are under active threat from India,  and we also learned in the media yesterday that a suspected Indian government agent had Jagmeet Singh under surveillance, which prompted close RCMP protection eighteen months ago.

Oh, but Carney says, we got assurances about cooperating on a law enforcement dialogue, and yes, RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme does say that Indian officials are now being cooperative on the investigation into the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar where they weren’t before, but again, how much longer is this going to continue until it’s no longer convenient and they start making up a bunch of bullshit for their newspapers again like they did with the supposed cocaine found on Trudeau’s plane (which right-wing newspapers in this Canada breathlessly repeated while the journalists who were actually on the plane repeatedly said that this never happened and that this was a bullshit information operation).

Yes, India is an important economy at a time when we can no longer rely on the Americans, but can we rely on India either given Modi’s increasing authoritarian tendencies, and his violation of human rights for minorities? Those Sikh spokespersons made the salient point about how Carney is sending the message that some lives are worth more than others, and that if there’s economic benefit, then we can turn a blind eye to human rights abuses and the fact that they almost certainly contracted an extrajudicial killing on Canadian soil. That should matter, and we should send a message that it does matter. But we’re not getting that from Carney, and even more to the point, the Liberals have had some very effective Sikh organisers in the party (which is why certain MPs were in Trudeau’s Cabinet when they were poor performers) and it would seem odd to waste that goodwill when you want to try and win a majority in the next election. I’m just not seeing a lot of principle or smart politics here.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces are slowly pushing back the Russian incursion in Sumy region. Ukrainian military officials say that the number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded in the conflict is now over one million, as the war is now in its third year. There was another exchange of sick and wounded prisoners yesterday. President Zelenskyy will be attending the G7 in Kananaskis next week.

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1933028255767941303

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Roundup: Delay to delivery?

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The new natural resource minister, Tim Hodgson, gave a speech in Calgary yesterday and everyone in the energy sector was all hot and bothered because he insisted that they were moving to a culture of delivery instead of delay. And you’ll have to forgive my cynicism, but that seems to completely ignore what the actual issues of delay have been, and if you say “Liberal regulation!” you’re going to get a smack. The premise of saying they need “one project, one review” ignores that that’s been the case for ages now—there are no duplicative reviews, because federal and provincial reviews look at different things, and on projects where they had shared jurisdiction, they set up a joint review panel so that it was *gasp!* one review. Anyone who says they were mired in duplication is frankly not being that honest.

The real issue has been proper consultation, which is what leads projects to wind up in litigation, particularly from Indigenous groups. Harper’s attempt to reform assessments to “streamline” them meant that most of those projects wound up in litigation because, well, they ignored their obligations. In some cases, like Northern Gateway, the Conservatives ignored the process that they put into place for meaningful consultation, and well, the project died on the vine as a result. And with BC and Ontario both pushing legislation to “streamline” projects which basically means bulldozing over environmental and Indigenous obligations, well, that’s all going to wind up in litigation too. This was the whole point of the Impact Assessment Act that Jason Kenney in particularly successfully villainized—it was to ensure proper consultation up-front, at the design phase of a project, so that the rest of the process would go faster because you did the hard work at the beginning. But it became the subject of lies and disinformation, and yes, the federal government’s attempt to exert jurisdiction over certain projects because the polluting effects cross borders didn’t convince the Supreme Court of Canada, but that didn’t render the entire statute or the issues of up-front consultation obsolete or moot, and nobody seems to want to explain that part.

One more thing about Hodgson’s speech was the he singled out Pathways Alliance as a project he wants to see move forward. I’m really hoping that this means he’s telling them to put up or shut up, because we know that they basically went dark because their claims about building a massive carbon capture and storage hub were overblown and they were about to face legal consequences for greenwashing thanks to new powers for the Competition Bureau. And frankly, the whole point of the emissions cap was to tell the energy sector to put up or shut up—that they have been boasting about how they’re going to reduce their emissions, so when the government basically told them to prove it, suddenly they started crying about how this as a “production cap” and it was unfair to them. Girl, please. You insisted you could do this, so prove it.

Meanwhile, we’ve had our first glimpse into Mark Carney’s PMO, and while he’s insistent on punctuality, business attire, and UK spellings (hooray!), and decision paralysis is not setting in (so far), he’s also starting to micromanage all kinds of things that he shouldn’t be, which sounds an awful lot like a Harper trait. Part of the problem so far is a lack of a proper chief of staff, and that ministers haven’t staffed up yet either, and yet he wants to operate at a breakneck pace. But there are other warning signs—because he doesn’t understand politics, he really hasn’t given thought to how to navigate a minority House of Commons, to say nothing of the Senate (ahem), and not knowing how to deal with Parliament could lead to a situation where the Conservatives can team up with the Bloc and the NDP yet again to start frustrating anything passing once again—and for all of their talk about working together and getting things done, don’t think for a second that they’re actually not more interested in scoring points and embarrassing the Liberals. Trudeau lost the ability to manage these things, in part because of disinterest, and we’ll see if Carney doesn’t make the same mistake.

Ukraine Dispatch

There was a massive missile and drone attack against Kyiv overnight, which has injured at least eight people (Photos). Ukraine and Russia exchanged 390 prisoners each on Friday, marking one of the largest swaps since the war began.

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Roundup: Two platforms released

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Day twenty-eight, and two of the parties had platform releases, while one of them played silly games with media (and I’ll let you guess which is which). We also heard from Elections Canada that a record two million people voted in the advance polls on Friday, (but nobody knows what it means). It also looks like nobody will be downing tools for the holiday today, so there’s that.

Mark Carney was in Whitby, Ontario, where he unveiled his “costed” platform, which did talk a lot about the scale of the challenge facing us with decoupling from the US, but remained vague on a lot of details. (Costing details here). One of my biggest issues, upon first reading, is the assumption made throughout that it’ll be easy to work with provinces on things like credentials recognition when we have been trying this for decades with little progress. Yes, the moment is different, but these things have been slow to change for a reason, so essentially promising to get this done in a few months is dubious at best. I am also incredibly dubious with the reliance on AI as the way to “increase efficiency” in the civil service, as though AI has ever shown itself to be reliable. (Write-ups from The Logic, the Star, CTV, CBC). There are also the start of some threads below that are worth clicking through. Afterward, Carney stopped in Newcastle and Peterborough. Carney will be in his home riding of Nepean today.

Here's the costing on the Liberal housing promises. Thoughts:1. Limiting the GST cut to first-time homebuyers really does render it near-useless. Very few $s.2. Reintroducing MURB really is a big deal.3. No way municipalities agree to halve DCs in exchange for 1.5B.

— Dr. Mike P. Moffatt (@mikepmoffatt.bsky.social) 2025-04-19T16:37:19.000Z

Finally got a chance to read the Liberal platform. On Defence, some of this stuff was already in process such as reforming recruitment, but more can be done. So, quickening clearances is a good thing. More pay, better housing/health care/childcare all easier ways to spend more 1/

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman.bsky.social) 2025-04-19T20:30:14.086Z

A few comments on the @mark-carney.bsky.social platform released today. You can find it here: liberal.ca/cstrong/.I provided some 'sounding board' advice here and there to those working on the platform. As always: I disclose, but you can decide what weight to put on that.Thread below…

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-04-19T18:04:43.522Z

tl;dr for this thread.1. The LPC platform would re-orient Canada in the face of epoch-defining US aggression. 2. Strength is focus on investment while aiming at fiscal sustainability.3. Weakest parts are i) reliance on spending restraint to make numbers work ii) blowing $22B on a PIT tax cut.

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-04-19T19:32:20.492Z

$25 million won't do much if provinces continue to dismantle their universities.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-04-19T17:03:06.508Z

 

Pierre Poilievre was in Richmond, BC, where he promised mandatory drug treatment for people with addictions, which is both against the Charter, and is hard to square with a party who thought that vaccine mandates were too much of an imposition on their personal liberties. They also refused to take questions from national media and took questions from local media who looked to have had planted questions, because of course they did. Poilievre will be in Surrey, BC, today.

Jagmeet Singh was in Burnaby, BC, to release their, well, not platform but “commitments,” including their costing, since they’re not going to form government. But of course, so many of those commitments are also in provincial jurisdiction, so it’s not like they would be able to achieve any of them anyway, so this is mostly just fairytale maths. (Write-ups from the Star, CTV, CBC) Singh will be in Victoria and Nanaimo today.

Here's the NDP housing plan costing. 7B a year. Not much to say on this one. Unclear to me how the Homes Transfer and Community Fund are meaningfully different from the government's Housing Accelerator and Housing Infrastructure Fund.

— Dr. Mike P. Moffatt (@mikepmoffatt.bsky.social) 2025-04-20T00:40:37.000Z

In other campaign news, the Star has pre-election profiles of Carney, Poilievre, Singh, and the Elizabeth May-Jonathan Pedneault team-up. Here is a look into Poilievre’s promise to fight “wokeness” in universities (just like Trump).

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claimed they would have an “Easter ceasefire,” but kept up their attacks, particularly on the front lines, because of course they did.

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Roundup: Trump and Lutnick mock Ford’s capitulation

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The reverberations from Doug Ford’s capitulation on the electricity “surcharge” was mostly met by mocking—Howard Lutnick mocking him on Fox, and Trump mocking him after his indignant “electricity affects people’s lives,” as if the tariffs don’t. Along the way, CNN fact-checked Trump’s claims that Canada is one of the highest-tariffing countries, when in fact we’re one of the lowest (Supply Management excepted).

Closer to home, the Dominic LeBlanc announced the retaliatory tariffs to the steel and aluminium tariffs, but also clarified that the meeting with Lutnick today is about tariffs and not renegotiating NAFTA as Ford claimed. (When asked later, Ford insisted that tariffs are NAFTA, which is obvious bullshit after he got caught in a self-aggrandizing lie). Meanwhile, Danielle Smith and Ford appear to be butting heads as Smith continues to demand a diplomatic approach (as though Trump responds to diplomacy), while Scott Moe took to the microphones to demand capitulation to China on EV tariffs. Because of course he did.

So Ford lied again. (Look surprised, everyone!)

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-12T14:24:05.559Z

As for Mark Carney, he had breakfast with Ford before heading to a steel plant in Hamilton (where he avoided media questions), and Ford later praised Carney for his command of numbers and business skills. Carney later remarked that he’ll meet with Trump “when there’s respect for Canadian sovereignty.” So, never?

PBO Report

The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a new report yesterday on the effects of the emissions cap, and it was trash, because it once again compared a scenario that doesn’t exist. This is a pattern with this PBO, and because he’s an independent Officer of Parliament, he gets no accountability except from maybe the media, and rest assured, they won’t hold him to any.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched three missiles and 133 drones in an overnight attack Tuesday night, and a missile attack on Kryvyi Rih killed one woman. Ukraine also contends that attacks on the port in Odesa are an attack on global food security. Putin visited the Kursk region for the first time since Ukraine occupied it, while Ukraine’s top army commander says the will fight in that region as long as needed. It doesn’t look like Putin will accept the US’ ceasefire proposal, at least not without a bunch of demands of his own. (Try and look surprised).

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Roundup: Begun, the trade war has

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The inevitable has happened—Trump’s tariffs are now in effect, after Trump told reporters in his daily ramblings that there was nothing Canada or Mexico could do to forestall them. It was obvious they were going to happen—Trump and his economic advisors have decided that they love tariffs, and that it’s going to solve their revenue problems for the big tax cuts they plan to give billionaires. It won’t—tariffs are paid by the importers, who pass it along to consumers, but Trump refuses to believe that, so it’s the American people who are coming in for a world of hurt, especially as the stock market started to plunge once the markets started to realise that Trump was being serious.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T06:17:07.867Z

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T06:18:16.623Z

Here at home, Justin Trudeau announced that the first tranche of retaliatory measures would start immediately, with more to come after consultation. Of course, the last line in his statement should have been the first—that it’s the Americans who have broken the agreement that Trump himself signed, which speaks volumes about the Americans can no longer be trusted to uphold their own agreements. Oh, and Trump is still planning on increasing duties on lumber coming from Canada, so keep an eye out for that as well. As the trade war ramps up, here is a look at what to expect, and how provinces are also expected to respond with their own measures.

Trudeau's statement on the coming tariffs and counter-tariffs. #cdnpoli

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T01:59:14.433Z

Here is the plan, from Feb 2nd:www.canada.ca/en/departmen…Tariffs on $30B of goods now; another $125B in a few weeks.Here's the detailed list of products covered by the initial action tomorrow:www.canada.ca/en/departmen…

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T02:10:25.520Z

I'm ok with some countertariffs; we need to use all tools. But tariffs on peanut butter and OJ aren't enough.We need to see aggressive non-tariff actions.No one in America seems to want to take the fight to Trump. But we can and we should and we will. Elbows up!

— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T03:16:59.941Z

True to form, Pierre Poilievre decided that blaming the government for the imposition of tariffs was the way to go, with a bunch of mendacious fabrications about what they have and have not been doing, with the have-not mostly being to implement his plans with alacrity, as though he’s a super genius who has it all figured out, when, well, we know that’s not exactly true.

Of course, we were also treated to a Doug Ford performance, as he got all theatrically angry on American television and threatened to cut off electricity across the border, and that he would do it with a smile. Of course, Ford (who is claiming he got a “stronger mandate” in last week’s election in spite of losing seats) is all talk. His bluff is going to be called, and no electricity will actually be cut off, because it’s not going to be that easy to do in spite of what he thinks, and you can bet he’ll come up with some kind of excuse about why he was all bluster.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone attack injured four and damaged energy infrastructure in Odesa. Ukraine is also investigating negligence surrounding a Russian missile strike on a military graining ground over the weekend. As expected, the Americans have “paused” their aid to Ukraine, as last week’s ambush was a set-up in order to give a justification for their plans to do so.

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Roundup: Implicating the King, and trying to cause a crisis

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Following the sickening ambush at the White House on Friday, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew to London for a conference on security in Europe now that it’s clear that the United States is no longer an ally, and prime minister Justin Trudeau also flew to London to attend. In advance of the conference, Zelenskyy met with King Charles at his Sandringham residence (which touched off some grousing online in Canada—more on that in a minute). At the conference,  UK prime minister Keir Starmer seemed to try to play up that the US was still a “reliable ally,” but I’m not sure anyone else in Europe (except maybe Hungary) actually believes that, nor should they. Following the conference, Trudeau was adamant about supporting Zelenskyy, and also had a one-on-one with Starmer, where no doubt the topic of Starmer throwing Canada under the bus came up for discussion, even though the readout of the conversation was very, very diplomatic in the choice of words.

President Zelenskyy has begun his meeting with King Charles III. The meeting is taking place at Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, following the London summit. The topics of their discussion have not been publicly disclosed.

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) 2025-03-02T18:06:16.102Z

Some pretty diplomatic language in this readout of Trudeau's meeting with Starmer.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-02T22:56:46.924Z

Meanwhile, back in Canada, CTV seemed to be doing their absolute utmost to create a constitutional crisis because they contacted Buckingham Palace to see if the King would say something about the “51st State” threats, and surprising nobody who has a clue about constitutional monarchy, they would not comment. BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY CAN’T WITHOUT THE ADVICE OF THE GOVERNMENT. But that didn’t stop absolutely everyone from deciding that they were suddenly an expert on constitutional monarchy and what is and is not permissible for a monarch to say without the advice of the government, and the absolute worst part was that CTV took the opportunity to start both-sidesing those reactions, because who needs fact-based journalism when you’re trying to stir up controversy in order to get clicks for the attention economy?

Could a single Canadian journalist learn how constitutional monarchy fucking works?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-01T21:35:05.483Z

By "those days are over," do you mean having an apolitical head of state, or do you mean a monarchy that accedes to the will of Parliament as they have since 1688?

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-02T04:05:14.317Z

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3ljekymxfv22f

Before he became King, everyone was worried that Charles would be spouting opinions all the time. There was no shortage of plays, novels and TV series whose plots revolved around him acceding to the throne and needing to abdicate for being too opinionated.Honest to Zeus, people…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-02T04:25:39.959Z

This should be basic civics—something people learn about in grade five, and then again in grade seven or eight, and again in high school. But nobody has a clue how this is supposed to work, most especially the people who should know, including former ministers of the Crown. This in turns leads to a whole lot of people insisting that an apolitical monarchy isn’t good for anything, and people who were already small-r republicans are using this as an excuse to agitate for an end to the monarchy, and good fucking luck to them, considering it would require a) a coherent plan to replace it, and b) the unanimous consent of the Commons, the Senate, and all ten provinces in order to rewrite the entire constitution, because that’s not something you can just search-and-replace.

Trudeau is having a meeting with the King this morning before he leaves London, and it’s possible that he will advise the King to make some kind of statement, particularly now that sentiment has been stirred up because people who should now better have implicated the King when it was Starmer who threw us under the bus in his own moral cowardice, but it never should have come to this.

Ukraine Dispatch

Late Sunday, a Russian drone hit an apartment building in Kharkiv, injuring at least eight. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy says he can salvage his relationship with Trump, though I’m not sure Trump actually wants that because he’s not a good-faith actor in this, and he is looking for any excuse to abandon Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1896321455606173969

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