Tag Archives: Steven Guilbeault

Roundup: Miller back in Cabinet

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Mark Carney had a small Cabinet shuffle yesterday afternoon, counter-programming the latter part of Question Period, where he appointed Marc Miller to Cabinet to replace Steven Guilbeault after his resignation last week in protest over the MOU with Alberta. Miller becomes the new minister of Canadian Heritage, now dubbed “Canadian identity and culture and official languages,” because it sounds a little more like it’s holding the line against the onslaught of Americanisms. But there were a couple of other adjustments made to Carney’s front bench—environment minister Julie Dabrusin took over the responsibilities for Parks Canada, which were under Heritage for some strange reason (much of which involves the fact that they are responsible for things like historical designations, but which created all kinds of problems around things like marine protected areas), while Joël Lightbound was named the new Quebec lieutenant, though I’m mystified why that required a swearing-in as opposed to it simply being a ceremonial title, like deputy prime minister (which Carney does not have). It also bears noting that no one was put in as new transport minister, and that Steve MacKinnon continues to do double-duty.

Miller is an interesting choice—he was a good minister, and I’m glad he’s back in Cabinet, because he was one of the best communicators, hands down, in the Trudeau government, and that kind of frankness and candour is desperately needed in the current front bench where the rule of “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” means that most of what comes out of every minister’s mouth is back-patting, if they say anything at all. But it’s also a choice that is going to ruffle feathers in Quebec because he’s not Québécois (though he is a Montrealer and speaks French, Swedish and Mohawk). There is so much anxiety around Quebec language and culture in the province that the Canadian Heritage portfolio might as well be a Quebec-focused one, and certainly there have been jokes floating around Ottawa for years about how if you got a meeting with the minister of heritage, he or she would tell you to come back when you were French.

Nevertheless, Miller is going to be responsible for some big files coming up with new online harms legislation, as well as a potential mandate review/transformation of the CBC, which didn’t take off under the previous government following the release of a discussion paper on the subject, and then Carney having his own ideas about what to do with CBC during the leadership contest, none of which has actually happened in the six months he’s been in power. I do think Miller will be suited to the task—he’s handled big, tough files before, and going up against web giants is something I think he can be pretty good at.

Ukraine Dispatch

Four people were killed and more than 40 injured in a Russian missile attack on Dnipro. Putin has again claimed that Pokrovsk has been taken over by Russian forces, along with Vovchansk, but Ukraine has not confirmed.

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Roundup: Dabrusin does damage control

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There is some damage control happening, as environment minister Julie Dabrusin is making the rounds on the weekend political talk shows to insist that the MOU with Alberta is not abandoning climate action, and that the clean electricity regulations, for example, are not being carved out, but given more flexibility for each province to come up with equivalency plans. That might be more believable if Danielle Smith wasn’t doing a victory lap claiming that it was being scrapped (after she lied about what it entailed for the past several years).

Meanwhile, I have to question the editor who let this particular CBC headline run over the weekend: “Do activists have a role in government? Steven Guilbeault’s resignation raises questions.” Seriously? Activism is the lifeblood of politics, and that includes roles within government (meaning Cabinet). We don’t live in a technocratic state where bureaucrats are governing and making policy decisions. Activism is what gets people involved, precisely because they have issues that they care about and want to make change. That’s part and parcel of the system.

What this winds up doing is trying to paint Guilbeault as some kind of zealot unable to make compromises, which is again, something that is not borne out by the facts. Guilbeault ran for the Liberals federally after the Trans Mountain decision. He was very much seen as a pragmatist within the environmental movement. The piece mentions that he was first given the heritage portfolio and wasn’t immediately slotted into environment, but that was also something Trudeau started doing more broadly, to give someone somewhere to get their training wheels on and learn how to deal with how government works before giving them the portfolio from their previous career, because it didn’t always go well from his first Cabinet when he tried to simply slot subject-matter expertise into Cabinet roles where they may wind up being captured, or simply not suited in spite of all appearances (*cough*Jody Wilson-Raybould*cough*). The whole piece is just poorly conceived and written, and someone should have exercised more editorial oversight.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched nearly 600 drones and 36 missiles at Ukraine overnight Saturday, killing six and wounding dozens, while knocking out electricity to much of Kyiv. Ukrainian naval drones struck two Russian tankers as part of their “shadow fleet” used to evade sanctions. Reuters tracked a cohort of 18-24-year-olds fighting in Ukraine; none of them are fighting any longer.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1995035870307483725

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Roundup: The details behind Guilbeault’s exit

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If there’s a story you need to read this weekend, it’s Althia Raj’s look behind the scenes on how Steven Guilbeault’s resignation went down. It’s a tale of deception, freezing Guilbeault out during the process, undermining all of the work on climate action that had been done on this point, creating special carve-outs for Alberta that will piss off every other province, and breaking the word that had been given to Elizabeth May in order to secure her support. And then, they wanted Guilbeault to say some bullshit thing like he was “putting them on notice” until April or something like that, and it was untenable for him to stay, so he resigned. It was complete amateur hour. And Carney undermining his word is a very big problem, particularly because when he was a central banker, his word needed to be believed in order for it to have power. That’s why central bankers need to be ruthlessly apolitical, so that they don’t have the appearance of making calls for partisan benefit. Carney has undermined his credibility entirely because he has shown that his word now means nothing.

This point is disturbing: Guilbeault "was also deeply troubled by the ease with which the PMO was casting aside its moral obligation to May. What was the Liberals’ word worth?"Mark Carney seems to have forgotten the first rule of central banking: Your word, your credibility, is all.

— Blayne Haggart (@bhaggart.bsky.social) 2025-11-29T02:23:29.613Z

There are some particular threads in here that should be unpacked, which is that the motivation for this whole exercise seems to have been that they felt it “necessary for Canadian unity and to combat separatism in Alberta.” This doesn’t achieve that at all. It weakens unity because it gives Alberta special treatment that includes a lower carbon price and an exemption from other emission regulations that no other province gets, which makes it look an awful lot like they got it because the whined the loudest (and they’re not wrong). And it will do nothing about separatism because it fundamentally misunderstands it. It’s not about “unfair treatment,” because that was never the case—it was about a culture of grievance.

Albertans have been force-fed grievance porn for decades, like a goose being fattened for fois gras.You'll never guess what happens next…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-11-28T22:43:39.019Z

To that end, Danielle Smith is at the UCP annual general meeting this weekend, and when she crowed to the crowd about all the things she secured from Carney—she got him to bend the knee, give her everything she wants, and she has to give up pretty much nothing in exchange—they booed her. Nothing any government will do will actually satisfy them, because they don’t know how to process success. They have been force-fed grievances by successive premiers as a way of distracting from their failures and the fact that they have tied themselves to the external forces of world oil prices, and it’s not giving them unlimited wealth anymore. They don’t have the same future they hoped for because world oil prices never recovered after 2014, and the industry is increasing productivity, laying off workers while increasing production. They’re angry about that, and they’ve been conditioned to blame Ottawa, ever since the 1980s when they blamed the National Energy Programme for a global collapse in oil prices, and they’ve been blaming Ottawa and anyone named Trudeau ever since. Jason Kenney in particular threw gasoline on that fire, and then pretended like he wanted to put it out by pouring a glass of water on that fire and patted himself on the back for it, and then Danielle Smith came in with a brand-new box of matches. There is no satisfying them, and Carney was a fool for thinking he could swoop in and be the hero. Now he’s alienating voters in BC and Quebec where he can’t afford to lose seats, for no gain in Alberta of Saskatchewan. He didn’t outplay Danielle Smith—he capitulated, and got nothing in return, just like every time he has capitulated to Trump.

Danielle Smith gets booed at UCP convention after mentioning working with Canada

— Scott Robertson (@sarobertson.bsky.social) 2025-11-28T22:17:35.805Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian drones and missiles attacked Kyiv overnight, killing at least one and injuring at least eleven. Ukrainian forces are still fighting in Kupiansk, in spite of Russian claims that they control the settlement. President Zelenskyy says that his chief of staff has resigned over the ongoing corruption investigations.

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Roundup: The MOU and a resignation

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Prime Minister Mark Carney and Danielle Smith signed that MOU which will set up the conditions for Alberta to set up a process to build a bitumen pipeline to the coast where the tanker ban would be eviscerated, while also giving them a bunch of exemptions to other emissions reductions regulations, and the promise on Alberta’s part is to reduce emission intensity—meaning as they produce more, emissions are still increasing, just by a smaller amount in theory, though I certainly believe that intensity reductions in the oilsands flatlined a while ago. It also means that this relies even more on Pathways, which is expensive and is going to keep demanding money, and I have no confidence that Carney’s government will resist the calls to subsidise it directly. David Eby went on to refer to this future pipeline as an “energy vampire,” while coastal First Nations continue to insist it’ll never happen. And then Steven Guilbeault resigned from Cabinet, because this goes against everything he has been fighting for his entire life, and his time in office, while other MPs in his caucus are increasingly angry about how they are being treated over this issue.

https://bsky.app/profile/supriya.bsky.social/post/3m6ngogmhqs2x

In the midst of this, Andrew Leach has been reminding us about the real history of Northern Gateway, not the sanitized and revisionist version that the Conservatives have been promoting, and the fact that their constant demands that the government “get out of the way” didn’t seem to apply to the entirety of the Harper government, as the project started under the Martin government, and ultimately failed at the end of Harper’s tenure, when his government couldn’t even be arsed to follow their own process for Indigenous consultation.

In pundit reaction, Jason Markusoff notes that this agreement will do little to mollify the separatists in Danielle Smith’s base when her leadership review comes up. Andrew Coyne sees this as a shift in Canadian politics back toward building things, and capturing the political centre. Stephen Maher wonders just how politically canny Carney really is, considering the traps for himself that this agreement sets.

No it fucking won't. They've been gorging themselves on grievance porn for decades now. Nothing any government does is going to calm them.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-11-28T03:30:10.597Z

Danielle Smith Celebrates Her Glorious Pipeline Victoryyoutu.be/GVk54cla9zw

— Clare Blackwood (@clareblackwood.bsky.social) 2025-11-27T21:13:16.340Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Putin claims that Russian forces have surrounded Pokrovsk, while Ukraine contends that the fighting continues in the city centre, and that they are pushing back hard. He also says it’s no use signing an agreement with “illegitimate” Ukrainian leadership (because he really wants peace, you guys).

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1994013852753702989

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Roundup: Low expectations for the Alberta MOU

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Today’s the big day where prime minister Mark Carney will be in Calgary to sign that Memorandum of Understanding with Alberta premier Danielle Smith regarding the province’s plans for their energy future. Everyone is focused on the potential for a pipeline to the BC coast as part of it, though it is apparently about more, such as maybe giving Albertan an out from other environmental regulations if they can complete certain other measures (which still leaves them off the hook considering that they are one of the largest emitters in the country).

But again, there is no actual pipeline deal as part of this. It lays out conditions that are probably going to be impossible to meet (particularly given that the Coastal First Nations, who are the rights and title holders in the area, have repeatedly said there is never going to be a pipeline that is acceptable). And while industry wants the tanker ban lifted, even as a “symbolic measure,” again that ban was the social licence for a number of other projects in the area to move ahead. And industry observers will still point out that even if they get everything they want, it’s still unlikely to find a proponent because the existing pipeline network can absorb the planned production capacity—and it’s no longer the world it was before 2014 and the oil market has changed significantly. That’s one reason by BC’s energy minister says this is little more than a $14 million “communications exercise.”

Meanwhile, Carney’s caucus problem is not going away, and while government thinks that they did a great job having Tim Hodgson explain things to BC caucus, members of said caucus were not exactly thrilled as Hodgson used words like “naïve” and “ideological” when responding to their concerns (thus cementing his status as the most overrated members of Carney’s front bench). And it also sounds like they’ve needed to calm Steven Guilbeault down from resigning in protest, though the current line is that he’s staying to do more good on the inside, but that’s not exactly offering much in the way of reassurance. So much of this goes back to what we were saying yesterday, that Carney is still operating like a boss and not a leader, and who thinks that he can dictate to caucus rather than live in fear that they can oust him if he oversteps (because they absolutely can, even if they don’t think they have that ability).

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-11-26T23:01:36.461Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The toll from the attack on Zaporizhzhia late Tuesday has risen to 19 injuries. The background of that “peace plan” has been leaked and proven to be Russian in origin, but Russia claims the leaks amount to “hybrid warfare.”

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Senate QP: Guilbault explains the coming cuts

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The Senate, under its new leadership, has returned to the recent practice of holding a special Question Period in order to question a minister, and today it was Steven Guilbeault, while we are told this will happen every couple of weeks—and hey, because they held it at 3:30 and not competing with Commons QP, I could be here. As things were about to get started, it was the Speaker pro tempore in the Big Chair today, and he offered a reminder that questions are limited to one minute, and answers to a minute-and-a-half, which is a far sight better than the thirty-five second clock in the Commons. It was also a much longer QP than usual, being about sixty-five minutes, which I didn’t realise going into it. (I also didn’t have access to an earpiece for the first couple of rounds so I had difficult following, so please forgive any particular lapses).

At the Senate for a special #SenQP with minister Guilbeault.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-25T19:31:34.022Z

Senator Housakos led things off by asking about the appointment of a new official languages commissioner, and accused the government of holding out for a Liberal friend. Guilbeault disputed this, and noted the support the government has given to official languages over the past few years. Housakos again pressed that they have not take this appointment seriously, and Guilbeault again pointed to the resources they are devoting to official languages.

Housakos switched to English to ask about policies that allowed a Canada Post employee to be bullied a at work for displaying a Canadian Flag at his desk. Guilbeault noted that Canada Post is not under his remit, but he suggested he could raise it with his colleague. Housakos again worried about the harassment this employee suffered for being patriotic, and Guilbeault again deferred any response. (I have to wonder if there was more to this story than Housakos claimed).

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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: Signing decision notes as performance art

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It was Mark Carney’s first Cabinet meeting yesterday after the election and the shuffle, and hoo boy, is there a lot to talk about, starting with the fact that Carney once again called the media into the Cabinet room so that they could film him signing a “decision note” about implementing his planned tax cut. This is pure theatre—essentially this note is to instruct the civil service to prepare the legislation that will make this happen, but having the media witnessing him signing a document is both very Trumpy, and also a continuation of Trudeau-era politics by comms exercise. It’s not how things work in our system, and this is a very bad sign about how they’re doing things “differently” from Trudeau.

I have to say, I'm really not a fan of this new performance art of calling the media into the Cabinet room so that Carney can sign a mysterious document in front of them, Trump-style.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-05-14T17:29:26.165Z

Oh, look, it's another "Decision Note." Glad that this is now a vehicle for policy performance.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-05-14T17:40:41.329Z

And then there was the gauntlet of ministers saying things unfiltered to the press, with no message discipline. On the one hand, it’s pretty glorious to finally have ministers unleashed. On the other hand, the kinds of trouble that they are inviting is exactly why iron-fisted message discipline has been implemented for the past two decades. First up was François-Philippe Champagne saying that there won’t be a budget tabled in the short spring sitting, but that there will be a “comprehensive” fall economic update. He could have articulated that there simply isn’t time for the civil service to put one together in those four weeks or to talk about how the private sector forecasts are pretty much unusable in the current trade war uncertainty, but he went on about the Speech from the Throne, because reasons.

New Secretary of State Wayne Long says that it sounds like government is going to be run “like a corporation,” and I cannot even. This kind of thinking never, ever works out in government because it doesn’t have a bottom line to deliver to shareholders—it has to do the things that companies won’t, and government is set up to be held to account, whereas corporations are explicitly set up in a way to limit accountability and liability.

There was Gregor Robertson who stumbled on his very first outing, saying that housing prices don’t need to come down and that more supply will make housing affordable—except the math on that one is that it would take 20 to 40 years to do so. This is a tightrope to walk because of the number of people who have their nest eggs in their home equity, but he’s going to have to do better than what he answered.

The Housing Minister suggested that home prices don't need to go down to restore affordability. We examined this, and it's technically true. They don't. However, in large parts of the country, it would take 20-40 years to reach affordability.Read here: www.missingmiddleini…

— Dr. Mike P. Moffatt (@mikepmoffatt.bsky.social) 2025-05-14T15:50:37.000Z

And Steven Guilbeault. Oh, boy. Guilbeault was asked about Carney’s comments around building more pipelines, and Guilbeault—whose new job is “Canadian identity” (and good luck to him on that Pandora’s box)—said that we should actually use our existing capacity for building more. And he’s right—but he got the current TMX values wrong. He also pointed out that both the Canadian Energy Regulator and the International Energy Agency have said that peak demand is going to happen is around 2028-29 (so it may not make sense to build a bunch of assets to be stranded), but man, did this go over like a lead balloon. And of course, Danielle Smith pounced on it, while every TV pundit declared that Guilbeault should have just shut up since it’s not his portfolio anymore. But he has a point—there are no pipeline projects waiting to go ahead, and there is no demonstrable market demand for more, so everyone is getting hot and bothered over a fantasy or a dead letter (such as Energy East), which absolutely nobody is asking for. We’re twisting ourselves into absolute knots over imaginary projects.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1922731670043517191

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1922722025291858017

Feds bought & built TMX. Complain about the cost but it’s operating. They delivered. This was supposed to be a bargain. Tidewater in exchange for meaningful reductions in GHGs.Has the oil industry delivered there? That’s the starting point for discussions about further pipelines. #ableg #cdnpoli

— Martin Z. Olszynski (@molszyns.bsky.social) 2025-05-15T00:21:34.144Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile killed three people in Sumy. President Zelenskyy looks to still be headed for Istanbul to continue to call Putin’s bluff on “peace talks”, and it looks like Trump won’t be there either.

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Roundup: A new Chief of Defence Staff

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The change of command ceremony went ahead yesterday, and General Jennie Carignan became not only the first female four-maple leaf general in Canadian history, but the first female Chief of Defence Staff—also the first in the G7 and G20, but not NATO (where Slovenia beat us to the punch on that). And yes, she has served in combat as a combat engineer (because women were allowed to serve in combat positions in Canada long before the Americans allowed women to serve in combat roles in their military), which is important to note for someone who has reached her position.

In her speech, Carignan pointed to the fact that she is proof that anything is possible, that culture change remains at the heart of what everything the Forces are doing (at a time when the Conservatives are pushing to return to some nonsense “warrior culture”), and that she believes there is a five-year window for us to prepare for emerging threats like Russia and China. It has also been pointed out that she is in the enviable position to be the head of a military with money to spend rather than dealing with cuts (but that could change if Poilievre gets in power), though as a woman, we all know that she’s going to be in for some absolutely rank misogyny, particularly from the right and far-right who will insist that she’s a “diversity hire” or some other such bullshit.

Meanwhile, the Star has an exit interview with General Wayne Eyre, who was essentially Chief of Defence Staff entirely by accident after his two predecessors were both removed for abuse of office and an investigation for sexual misconduct (and when acquitted, claimed he was “exonerated” when he wasn’t, and wrote to every member of the military brass to demand his old job back, demonstrating his unfitness for the job).

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine shot down sixteen drones and three missiles from Russia, but attacks on the Donetsk region have killed five. The Ukrainian army has been forced to pull out of the village of Urozhaine in the Donestk region after their defensive positions were all destroyed as the village was reduced to rubble. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in the UK for European political community meetings.

https://twitter.com/RoyalFamily/status/1813977906089173311

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Roundup: The wrong people taking credit for disinflation

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Statistics Canada released the January Consumer Price Index data yesterday, and lo, it shows that inflation is dipping back into the control range at 2.9% annualized, which was lower than anticipated, and fairly broad-based including food prices decelerating to just above the headline number, meaning prices are stabilising finally, and yet somehow, with carbon prices still in place, and the grocery oligopolies not having been subjected to punitive windfall taxes. Imagine that!

In all seriousness, because there were month-over-month price drops in fuel prices in Manitoba thanks to Wab Kinew’s decision to pause gas taxes, and Saskatchewan not collecting the carbon levy, we got a bunch of people who should know better saying stupid things about carbon prices and inflation. Kinew, who has economics training, should especially know better.

Inflation is a year-over-year measure. Carbon prices have a negligible impact on it because it rises at the same level every year, so it’s not inflationary. A one-time drop in prices is also not deflationary or disinflationary because it’s a one-time drop, not sustained or pervasive. If you need a further explainer, economist Stephen Gordon has resurrected this thread to walk you through it.

On the subject of things that are unfathomably dumb, it looks like the CRA has decided to buy Saskatchewan’s transparent legal fiction that the provincial government is the natural gas distributor for the province, in spite of it being against the clear letter of the federal and provincial law, which means that consequences for the province not remitting the carbon levy on heating will be borne by Cabinet and not the board of SaskEnergy. What the hell?

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian attacks on the northern part of Ukraine killed seven on Tuesday, while Ukraine’s forces say they destroyed 13 out of 19 drones launched by Russia on Wednesday. Ukrainian officials are investigating the Russians shooting three soldiers captured on Sunday. Here is a look at the shattered ruins of Avdiivka. Ukraine’s state arms producer has signed an agreement with a German arms manufacturer to help produce more air defences domestically.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1759942168989360468

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