Tag Archives: Sean Fraser

Roundup: The confidence vote that wasn’t

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Debate on the Address in Reply to the Speech From the Throne was due to wrap up, meaning a final vote. Media outlets insisted that this would be the first major confidence vote of the new Parliament, and that if the Liberals lost it, we could go back to an election, and there was all this building drama because of how they lost the vote on the Conservatives’ amendment (to “urge” the government to table a spring budget). And my headache started.

The vote on the Address in Reply is not automatically a confidence vote. It is if the opposition amendments explicitly state that they have no confidence in the government, and sometimes that happens because this is the first opportunity to test the confidence of the Chamber, especially in a minority parliament or legislature, but again, that was not the case here. But along the way, the NDP decided that they were going to play tough and declare that they would vote against it for specious reasons (and because Don Davies is an idiot, and has a long track record of being an idiot and a blowhard), while the Government House Leader, Steve MacKinnon, told reporters that this would be a confidence vote. So, if the government says it’s a confidence vote, it’s a confidence vote, and it was likely intended to be something of a bit a put-up-or-shut-up dare, which can be risky in a minority parliament, but sometimes you also need to play hardball with the opposition. This was likely going to mean that the Bloc would either vote in support or abstain (because they did say they would give the government a year before they started to seriously oppose anything, given the Trump situation), but the government was never in any serious danger of falling. If, by some fluke, they did lose a vote they declared to be confidence, they could simply hold another vote and basically say “Did you mean it?” and chances are they would win that vote, and all would go back to normal.

And in the end, there wasn’t even a vote. News of Marc Garneau’s death reached the Chamber just before the vote was to be taken, and it seems like the appetite for drama was gone, and it passed on division, meaning that they agreed to disagree, that they were going to let it pass, but not bother with a recorded vote. And thus, the least exciting outcome happened.

I must advise the beings of Bluesky that, in a truly only-in-this-particular-Canadian-parliament twist, the much-anticipated will-they-or-won't-they-trigger-an-election over it motion on the Throne speech as amended — has been adopted on division.

— Kady O'Malley (@kadyo.bsky.social) 2025-06-04T22:25:39.121Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-06-04T22:02:26.904Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones struck an apartment building in Kharkiv, injuring at least seventeen. Russian forces have also pushed further into Sumy region. Here’s a look at how Operation Spiderweb was carried out.

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Roundup: A single mandate letter for Cabinet

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Prime minister Mark Carney released his “mandate letter,” singular, yesterday following the “Cabinet planning forum,” which is how he’s re-branded a retreat—because nothing says Canada’s New Government™ like renaming everything. And the thing is, it’s not much of a mandate letter at all­, but rather a press release that lists seven priorities that essentially tasks ministers to figure out how their files fit into these priorities and do them, which are sufficiently broad that makes it hard to actually hold anyone to account, which was supposed to be the whole reason why Justin Trudeau made the mandate letters public in the first place (though his too were full of repetitive boilerplate language and values statements, but they did at least have some specific items for each minister).

Note: Apologies for this being late/incomplete, but I’ve been really sick the last couple of days, but I at least wanted to put something out before all of the links went stale.

In case you missed it:

  • My National Magazine profile of new justice minister Sean Fraser.
  • My weekend column that points to the big decisions that Mark Carney is going to have to make about the Senate.
  • My column demonstrates why we’re not really headed toward a two-party system in Canada, because it’s largely based on a false premise.
  • My Loonie Politics Quick Take on Carney’s creeping presidentialism with those “decision notes” he’s been signing for the cameras.

Ukraine Dispatch

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1925153620225310721

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Roundup: Security clearances back in the spotlight

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Day three of the campaign, and Mark Carney remained in Halifax, where he had an announcement at the Irving Shipyard about his plans to continue recapitalizing the Royal Canadian Navy, and pledged to fill all 14,500 vacancies in the Canadian Forces expeditiously (and good luck with that). He also promised to expand the mandate of the Canadian Coast Guard, and that’s a lot of expensive promises for someone who wants to balance the “operating budget” and still give a tax cut. Over the course of the day, Carney also mispronounced the name of one of his “star” candidates in Montreal, and misidentified the École Polytechnique as Concordia (where another shooting did happen), which she forgave him for, but these are more rookie mistakes creeping in. Up next on the tour will be Windsor, Ontario, then London and Kitchener.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1904280770199347527

Pierre Poilievre was in the GTA and promised to expand his proposed GST cut on new homes to now cover all new homes under $1.3 million—a pledge that has both upsides and downsides. There was also a bit of a gaffe with the sign on the lectern, where it looked like two separate verb-the-noun slogans of “Axe the Sales!” and “Tax on Homes.” That wasn’t the case, but someone should have caught that. He also insisted that people wouldn’t lose their federal dental or pharamacare coverage, but was unclear on just who would be covered under his government (and I have a hard time believing that given the scale of cuts that need to happen to fund his promises). He then headed to Hamilton in the evening for another rally.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1904565775353987257

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1904565818949538241

As for Jagmeet Singh, he was in Hamilton and mostly complained about Brookfield being capitalists as a way to talk down Mark Carney, and somehow that was supposed to tie into affordable housing, but I couldn’t see anything actually being announced. He did boast about union endorsements, but did admit that the party is facing challenges (as their poll numbers continue to plummet), but insist he’s still in the fight. Today he’s still in Hamilton for his announcement (trying to save the seats there, no doubt) before heading to London, Ontario.

The big story of the day, however, was the revelation in the Globe and Mail that CSIS did allege that India organised support for Poilievre’s leadership campaign (not that he really needed it), but also that they couldn’t brief him on this because he refuses to get his security clearance. Poilievre insisted this was a partisan smear, spun a conspiracy theory about a trip Carney took to Beijing after he was made the Liberal economic advisor, before returning to the falsehood that getting his clearance would be a “gag order,” and seemed wholly unaware that the bigger issue for him to be briefed on was who in his party may be compromised so that he, as party leader, can deal with the matters internally. This having been said, there are questions about the timing of this leak, but we can’t be sure that this was someone trying to put their thumb on the scales in the election when it’s very possible that the Globe sat on this for a while with the intention of dropping it during the campaign so that they can be seen to be setting the agenda, and not the parties. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a media outlet has done that.

Indeed. Looks like an attempt to influence the election. (First leaks make it seem like an attempt to get Trudeau booted.) I have very little time for this type of politicking from an intelligence insider. Anti-democratic. This is "thumb on the scale" bullshit.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-03-25T11:47:00.103Z

I am on TeamIgnorantCritic: that PP just does not want the responsibility of knowing stuff–he'd rather spew whatever bs he wants. I don't think he had the foresight to anticipate this foreign election interference stuff.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman.bsky.social) 2025-03-25T18:18:01.580Z

Comes with the territory when you cover #cdnpoli for a living.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-03-26T01:37:45.877Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched 139 drones and missiles at Ukrainian targets overnight Monday, with damage and injuries in the Poltava region. A partial truce on energy and sea attacks was reached with American help, though the Americans are looking to ease sanctions on Russian fertilizer (which only helps their war effort, guys). President Zelenskyy warns, however, that Russia is already trying to manipulate and distort those accords, not that this should be a surprise.

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Roundup: The shuffle and the kabuki responses

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The Cabinet shuffle happened, and four ministers had a change in portfolio, with eight new faces joining the ranks. Nothing is too much of a surprise here—David McGuinty did get public safety, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith got housing as was expected and that means he is going to run again. Anita Anand is now solely transport but also got “interprovincial trade,” which is interesting. There is no minister from Alberta, as George Chahal remains tainted (and has been vocal in calling for a secret ballot in caucus on Trudeau’s future), so Terry Duguid from Winnipeg is pretty much it for the prairie representative. In some respects, this may be a “caretaker” Cabinet as the leadership question remains in the air, or it could have a short shelf-life, as threats of non-confidence circle ever-closer. It doesn’t solve any problems, it doesn’t really put a fresh face on government, and the only thing that can do that is for Trudeau to make as graceful an exit as possible, because the number of MPs who are publicly against him continues to grow, and he could very well be pushed by the next caucus meeting.

Trudeau does keep saying he wants MPs to be the "voice of their ridings in Ottawa"…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-20T16:36:01.558Z

Amidst this, Jagmeet Singh decided to publish an open letter to say that he was ready to vote non-confidence in the government, but…blamed them for things that are completely within provincial jurisdiction, like healthcare and building housing. But more to the point, this is more performance art after he got called out by absolutely everyone for his “all options are on the table” equivocation, and this letter also didn’t specify that he would seek to vote them out at the first opportunity, so he has wiggle room. Trudeau may yet prorogue (but most likely if he does decide to step down), and if a new leader is chosen before Parliament comes back, Singh can always prevaricate and equivocate yet again about giving said new leader a chance, or something else like that. This is just more of the kabuki theatre that Canadian politics has descended into.

And Jagmeet Singh wants to rush us into the Poilievre era. Great.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2024-12-20T17:53:04.092Z

And then to top it all off (and possibly to try and call Singh’s bluff), Pierre Poilievre called a press conference to say that he wrote a letter to the Governor General so that she can “reconvene” parliament and demand a confidence vote. Erm, except we’re not prorogued, so Parliament is merely adjourned and not suspended, and it’s at the call of the Speaker to recall the House on a non-sitting week, not the Governor General. Never mind that the government just survived a series of confidence votes, this is deliberate obfuscation and confusion of our system, and no doubt he will attack the GG if she doesn’t accede to his request (which she can’t, because it’s not in her powers to do so). Poilievre is deliberately misleading people about how our system operates so that he can claim that constitutional safeguards are illegitimate if anyone tries to use them against him. Aspiring autocrats love to weaken the guardrails, and Poilievre is engaged in a very concerted effort to do that right now.

Programming Note: This is it for 2024, barring some major news happening. Loonie Politics content will continue on its usual schedule, but the blog is on holiday because the burnout is real. Thanks for sticking with me all year, and we’ll see you in 2025.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile struck Kyiv in the morning rush hour, killing at least one person and damaging a historic cathedral. Ukrainian forces needed to pull back from two locations in the eastern Donetsk region, lest they become encircled. Here is a look at some of the people staying in Pokrovsk, in spite of Russia’s advance.

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Roundup: Being precious about participating in the gong show

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Fewer things make me roll my eyes harder the NDP being precious about decorum or the dysfunction within the House of Commons, and it is no exception when Charlie Angus despairs about the gong show happening day-in and day-out. As much as they like to pretend that they are the “adults in the room”—and Peter Julian likes to go on television to say that whenever he’s invited on—but adults in the room don’t heckle constantly (and both Julian and Angus are amongst the very worst—remember the pledge that they were never going to heckle in 2011?), nor do they engage in constant petty insults in order to make themselves look tougher than they are, but that’s what the NDP does day-in and day-out.

The thrust of the piece linked above, however, remains the current filibustered state of the Commons (for which the writer does point out the problems with the motion without going as far as actually calling what it is—banana republic tactics that will have severe consequences in the future if a precedent is allowed to develop), and that if anything is going to get things back on track, it’s going to have to be the NDP who comes to some kind of agreement with the government in order to break the logjam so that important legislation can start moving again. What the piece doesn’t go into is how this has been an ongoing problem in the past two parliaments, since the Liberals lost their majority in 2019. That was when the Conservatives began a campaign of procedural warfare that the Bloc and NDP gleefully participated in because they would do anything to embarrass the government—right up until the end of the sitting, every December and June, and suddenly realize they had bills they wanted to pass, so they started to cooperate. The Supply-and-Confidence agreement mellowed this out a little, but only slightly, as committees continued to get worse, and the NDP were hit-and-miss on whether they wanted to make things work or not.

I am somewhat ruefully reminded of the litany of books and articles that used to constantly come out to praise minority parliaments, and how great they were because they would force parties to work together to get things done for Canadians. That hasn’t been the case for a long time now, and given that the NDP proved themselves to be bad faith actors in how they ended the supply-and-confidence agreement, it’s going to be a long time before they are awarded any trust again, at least not until they have a new leader who can earn it back. But if they do want to make the remainder of this parliament work, they have a lot to answer for, and it would be great if more people could call them on their bullshit.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukrainian forces say that Russians are using North Korean troops in significant numbers as they conduct assaults in the occupied regions of Kursk. Ukrainian drones conducted an overnight attack Friday and hit a crucial Russian oil facility in the Oryol region, and Ukrainian special forces destroyed a Russian train carrying 40 cars of fuel to Russian troops in the Zaporizhzhia region.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1868270966528201142

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Roundup: Economists endorse carbon pricing, not the Liberal plan

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Yesterday, a group of leading Canadian economists published an open letter about the facts about carbon pricing and the rebates, and debunked several claims that conservatives around the country have been making. It was a good and necessary corrective, but of course, legacy media headlined it as them defending the Liberal plan, which they weren’t doing, particularly because while the Liberal plan includes the carbon levy and rebates, it also is full of regulation and subsidies, which these economics are explicitly not in favour of. But legacy media loves to make this a partisan fight where they have to be on one side or the other. Liberal Party comms didn’t do themselves any favours either on this one.

To that end, here is energy economist Andrew Leach on carbon pricing, and throwing some shade at the PBO’s rather shite report once more.

Meanwhile, a number of premiers demanded to be heard at the House of Commons’ finance committee about the carbon levy, because they think that’ll do them any good, but instead, the Conservative chair of the Government Operations Committee invited them to testify today. The Government Operations Committee has fuck all to do with this file, but apparently, we no longer care about things like committee mandates anymore, so long as you can put on a dog and pony show, and gather clips for social media shitpost videos, that’s all that matters. This shouldn’t be allowed, but this is the state to which our Parliament has now debased itself. Ours is no longer a serious institution for doing serious work. It’s only about content creation, and I cannot stress enough about how absolutely terrifying this is for the future of democracy.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Ukrainian missile attack struck a Russian naval reconnaissance vessel as well as a large landing warship. Ukraine’s navy says that they have destroyed or disabled a third of the Russian Black Sea fleet over the past two years. Here’s a look at how Ukraine’s burgeoning domestic defence industry is ramping up to provide necessary ammunition for the war. Here’s a great explanation of Ukraine’s use of drone warfare with some excellent infographics.

https://twitter.com/defenceu/status/1772541600591147503

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Roundup: A new tone in communications? Maybe?

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After some two years of the Conservatives rolling out three-to-five-minute disinformation videos on the regular, the Liberals have finally responded in kind, with something that has reasonable production values, snappy pace, and delivers messages to counter the Conservatives’ message with a bit of a punch at the end. One has to wonder why it took them so long, but they didn’t spare any effort in getting every single one of their MPs and proxies to blast it over their socials over the weekend.

What I will add that was fairly notable was that they didn’t rely on slogans in the video, or on entirely happy-clappy pabulum as they normally do. I’m hoping that perhaps this will finally—finally!—mark a turning point in how they approach their communications, but I’m not going to get my hopes up there either. Until proven otherwise, I suspect this may be a one-off, or Sean Fraser in particular, rather than an overall trend in how this party communicates.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian missile struck Mykolaiv on Sunday, killing one and wounding at least eight. Ukrainian drones damaged another oil refinery in Russia, and disrupted electricity supplies in order areas.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1768642103968485561

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Roundup: A failed vote, a policy pretzel

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It was not unexpected that the Conservatives’ non-binding Supply Day motion on removing the carbon price from all forms of home heating failed, because the Bloc had no interest in supporting it, and lo, none of the Liberals broke ranks and voted for it either. (Liberal MP Ken McDonald, who had voted for such motions previously, “scratched his head” with two fingers as he voted, which the Conservatives took to be giving them the finger, and lo, cried victim about it). And once the vote was over, Conservatives took to social media to call out all of those Liberal MPs they had been targeting in advance of it, because this is the bullshit state of where Canadian politics have degenerated to.

In advance of the vote, Jagmeet Singh was in the Foyer, twisting himself into a pretzel to say that he didn’t really agree with the Conservative motion, but he was going to vote for it anyway to send a message to the Liberals that he disagrees with them, but he also wants to push his boneheaded “cut GST on all home heating” policy, which is as dumb as a bag of hammers. (No, seriously—it would be impossible to disentangle the heating portion of certain sources of heating, such as electric heating, or what natural gas goes to heating and what goes to hot water tanks, or natural gas barbecues; plus, the policy disproportionately benefits the wealthy, who have bigger houses). There is no policy coherence, because this is all about posturing and performance, and Canadians are ill-served as a result.

While this was going on, the premiers met in Halifax, ostensibly to talk healthcare but it would up being another gang-up session where they all demanded that the federal government remove the carbon price on all home heating out of “fairness” (never mind the problems of energy poverty, that heating oil is four times as expensive as natural gas, and that some of those premiers should have been doing more about this problem years ago). They also groused that the federal Housing Accelerator Fund was being negotiated directly with municipalities and not them, which, again, forgets that they have studiously ignored the housing problem in their own provinces for decades and now they’re getting put out that the federal government has had to step up after they refused to. But that’s the state of our federation, and it’s a

https://twitter.com/aballinga/status/1721622048345149688

https://twitter.com/aballinga/status/1721628581921509676

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian air strikes on Odessa late Sunday night struck the city’s principal art gallery and wounded eight. A criminal investigation has been launched into the decision to hold a troop-honouring ceremony in Zaporizhzhia which was easily detected by surveillance drones, allowing the Russians to target it; around the same time, the top aid to Ukraine’s commander-in-chief was killed when a grenade was hidden inside a birthday present.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1721649238642245908

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Roundup: The premiers think we’re all stupid

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It is now day one-hundred-and-forty of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces are claiming to have hit a Russian ammunition depot near the captured city of Nova Kakhovka in the south. At the same time, Russians continue their attacks on the cities of Sloviansk and Toetsk in the Donetsk province, killing at least nine civilians. Here is a look at efforts to train Ukrainian soldiers and civilians in combat first aid. Over in Russia, the government is poised to enact legislation that can force companies to supply the military, including making employees work overtime, as the country tries to replenish its supplies after depleting them in the invasion thus far.

Closer to home, the Council of the Federation meeting ended, and lo, the premiers were unanimous in demanding that the federal government come to the table with them to, well, accept their demands to give them more money with no strings attached. Only they had both a wounded tone, which quickly switched to sanctimony when they were challenged, particularly about the pandemic spending that couldn’t be tracked. Some premiers, Tim Houston most especially, seem to think that we all have amnesia about 2004 to 2014, when the bulk of those six percent health transfer escalators were spent on other things. Saying that they all want improved outcomes is one thing, but the federal government isn’t stupid—they are well aware that provinces would be just fine with status quo that the federal government paid more for, and that they spent less on. That’s why they want conditions—so that provinces don’t pull this kind of thing once again. Premiers were also pretending that they had no idea what kinds of outcomes the federal government is looking to achieve, because most of the is in last year’s election platform. It’s not hard to find. And frankly, federal health minister Jean-Yves Duclos is right when he says that these outcomes should be agreed to at the ministerial level before the first ministers sit down to talk dollars, because you want to have a plan in place before you attach dollars to it, rather than the opposite, which John Horgan seems to think is how government should function. (You can find my thread as I was live-tweeting the closing press conference here).

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1546912224148688897

On a related note, The Canadian Press devoted several hundred words of wire copy yesterday to the fact that the promised $2 billion to clear up surgical backlogs hasn’t flowed yet…because the budget only received royal assent a couple of weeks ago. And that premiers are complaining they haven’t received the money yet. I mean, premiers know how a budget cycle works. This is not a news story—it’s not even a real process story. It’s complaining for the sake of complaining. The only piece of interest in the story was that the government tabled a bill about the spending commitment, then abandoned it in order to wrap the spending in their budget bill a couple of weeks later. This isn’t the first time they’ve done so, and it’s a really annoying habit that they have, but again, not actually a news story.

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Roundup: Accountability for transfers is not micro-management

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We are now in day thirty-one of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and things are going badly enough for Russia that the Ukrainians are starting to counter-attack, not only pushing Russian forces further away from Kyiv, but also other areas, which has the possibility of making Russia pay a high enough price that they could be willing to accept some kind of negotiated settlement and withdraw. Maybe. We’ll see, but it’s a good sign nevertheless that Ukraine is able to take these measures. Elsewhere, it sounds like about 300 people were killed when the Russians bombed the theatre in Mariupol, and the city is digging mass graves, while some 100,000 people remain trapped there as the Russians turn the city to rubble.

Closer to home, the federal government announced a one-time special transfer of $2 billion to provinces to help them with their surgical backlogs as a result of COVID, but they want some conditions of a sort, and cited five areas of focus for upcoming healthcare talks: backlogs and recruitment and retention of health-care workers; access to primary care; long-term care and home care; mental health and addictions; and digital health and virtual care. And some provinces, predictably, are balking at this because they think this is federal “micromanagement” of healthcare when it’s nothing of the sort. They simply need assurances that provinces are going to spend this where they say they’re going to, because we just saw Doug Ford put some $5.5 billion in federal pandemic aid onto his bottom line, and giving out rebates for licences plate stickers in a blatant exercise in populist vote-buying rather than using that money where it was intended—the healthcare system.

https://twitter.com/journo_dale/status/1507478370300628996

More to the point, provinces are insisting that they are unanimous that hey want unconditional health transfers that will bring the federal share of health spending up to 35 percent, but that’s actually a trap. They are deliberately not mentioning that in 1977, provinces agreed to forego certain health transfers in exchange for tax points, which are more flexible, and that increasing to 35 percent will really be a stealth increase to something like 60 percent, because they’re deliberately pretending that they don’t have those tax points. On top of that, provinces were getting higher health transfers for over a decade—remember when the escalator was six percent per year, and what was health spending increasing at? Somewhere around 2.2 percent, meaning that they spent that money on other things. They should have used it to transform their healthcare systems, but they chose not to, and now they cry poor and want the federal government to bail them out from problems they created, and are blaming the federal government for. It’s a slick little game that doesn’t get called out because the vast majority of the media just credulously repeats their demands without pointing to the tax points, or the fact that they spent their higher transfers elsewhere, or that Doug Ford sat on that pandemic spending, as other provinces did to balance their budgets (Alberta and New Brunswick to name a couple). So no, they do not need these transfers to be unconditional, and the federal government would be foolish if they acceded to that kind of demand.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1507418761912983561

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