Tag Archives: Terrorism

Roundup: Alberta’s censorship plan goes ahead

Posted on by

The Alberta government released their policy on “explicit materials” in school libraries yesterday, and it went badly, in part because it was confusing about what they considered acceptable “non-explicit sexual materials,” and pretty much every media outlet got it wrong, while my Xtra colleague Mel Woods was out there correcting everyone for several hours until they could update their stories. The government even had to put out a clarification.

Alberta's new school library standards are here, and include a total ban on "explicit sexual content" from school libraries in the province Notably, "religious texts" are excluded — and when asked during the briefing today to give examples, only the Bible was brought up as an obvious exception.

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2025-07-10T18:35:11.927Z

I understand that the confusion is between "non-explicit sexual content" and what the government is defining as "not considered sexual" — they are two separate things

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2025-07-10T20:01:59.483Z

All of the media outlets reporting that books with puberty/kissing/hugging are banned in Alberta for Grade 9 and under … that's not true!!

— Mel Woods (@melwoods.me) 2025-07-10T20:33:27.209Z

All of this being said, what got me was that they got a token trans person to insist that this particular censorship (and let’s be clear that it’s what this is) has nothing to do with LGBTQ+ people but is just about sexually explicit materials, and they even said something to the effect of “At that age, we need guidance and not sexual materials.” And I immediately started swearing at the TV, because this is where it always starts. This is a page directly out of the playbook of autocrats like Viktor Orbán, who use LGBTQ+ scapegoating to further their ends. Hell, we have a history in this country where wannabe censors at Canada Customs (as it was then known) for seizing innocuous queer materials bound for the Little Sisters bookstore in Vancouver and claiming it was “obscene” (and there’s a Supreme Court decision on this).

For them to say "This is not about LGBTQ+ material, it's about sexually explicit material" as if Little Sisters didn't happen in this country or Viktor Orbán's anti-LGBTQ+ laws that target innocuous books aren't happening RIGHT NOW is absolutely enraging.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-07-10T18:46:28.143Z

Of course, this is about LGBTQ+ people and materials. Three of the four books that started this moral panic on the part of the Alberta government were queer or trans. They were weaponised by Christian nationalists to achieve this very result. And they will keep complaining that any queer materials are “sexually explicit” by their very nature until the government capitulates. It’s also why the proposed age verification legislation that is making yet another attempt federally is 100 percent guaranteed to be used to attack queer and trans materials. Pretending otherwise means you are either mendacious or an idiot, or possibly both.

Ukraine Dispatch

Here is a look at how the residents of Kyiv are dealing with the increasing waves of attacks in recent weeks. A rebuilding conference took place in Italy, committing over ten billion Euros to the effort. Meanwhile, the UK signed a deal to supply air defence missiles to Ukraine, while the UK and France also agreed that Paris would be the headquarters of the “coalition of the willing” for Ukraine.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Absolving the provinces, child care edition

Posted on by

Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, let’s talk about the absolute bullshit framing of The Canadian Press’story about the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ report into the state of the early learning and childcare programme. The headline: “Ottawa set to miss 2026 deadline for establishing $10-a-day child care: report.” This is wrong. It is not “Ottawa” or the federal government who are going to miss the deadline. It is a number of provinces and territories who will, and yes, that matters.

The report makes it quite clear from the start who is responsible: “Provinces, territories and Indigenous governing bodies have the main responsibility for implementing CWELCC, with the federal government providing much of the funding and high-level policy considerations as it does with Medicare, housing, and other social programs under provincial or territorial jurisdiction.” Nowhere in the report does it assign blame or responsibility to the federal government for the goals not being met. It’s quite explicit about which provinces are meeting their targets and which are not, and if there is a particular issue levelled at the federal government, it’s that the goal of an “average of $10/day” is not the same as a $10/day cap, and that it’s an imprecise and problematic concept. But that’s not how the CP story frames the issue.

This goes back to one of the constant problems in Canadian media, where every problem is blamed on the federal government, and so long as they provide funding to the provinces for programmes that the provinces are responsible for carrying out, then somehow the federal government is assigned a disproportionate share of the blame. Indeed, who does CP reach out to for comment? The federal minister’s office, and not the provincial ministers in those lagging provinces, when it’s their gods damned responsibility, not the federal government’s. And this pattern keeps repeating itself over and over again, and we wonder why provincial governments are never held accountable for their failures. This is one prime example right here. And yes, this CP wire copy was distributed in pretty much every other outlet with the same misleading headline, and that same headline and framing were used in television interviews on CTV News Channel throughout the day. I wish I knew why it’s impossible for legacy media to have a basic grasp of civics, but they refuse to, and this is what we end up with. It’s unacceptable.

Today or any day, really.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-07-09T15:31:50.296Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s attack on Ukraine early Wednesday was the largest yet, at 728 drones and 13 missiles. The attack early this morning has thus far reported two deaths and 13 injuries.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A major far-right terror arrest

Posted on by

The big news yesterday was that four people were arrested and charged in terrorism-related charges for plans to start an anti-government militia, and to violently seize land near Quebec City for their own purposes, and more to the point, that two of those charged are serving members of the Canadian Forces, and not reservists as we have seen in the past. They were also heavily armed and had a number of explosive devices prepared—and it was likely the largest number of weapons and devices seized in a terror-related event in Canadian history.

I can’t speak to the nature of the plot (too few details) but this is the largest amount of weapons and devices seized as part of a terrorism incident in Canada. Ever.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T14:20:46.149Z

Details are still scarce, but former CSIS analyst Jessica Davis has some particular observations.

Not small time: "Searches conducted in January 2024 in the Québec City area led to the seizure of 16 explosive devices, 83 firearms and accessories, approximately 11,000 rounds of ammunition of various calibres, nearly 130 magazines, four pairs of night vision goggles and military equipment."

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T13:19:41.537Z

This is an ideologically motivated plot. In Canada, 77% of terrorist attacks have been carried out by ideologically-motivated actors: newsletter.insightthreatintel.com/p/rising-thr…

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T13:29:30.504Z

Over the last two decades, however, most terrorism charges have been laid against religiously-motivated terrorists. That has slowly been changing, with more ideologically-motivated individuals getting caught: newsletter.insightthreatintel.com/p/terror-on-…

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T13:29:30.505Z

They do point to the ideology — anti-government extremism. And there's a long history in Canada of breaking down our terrorism into different categories. (ideological, political, and religious). There's a lot to criticize the RCMP about, but this is not top of the list.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T20:09:49.002Z

Another issue here has to do with the military not doing an adequate job of investigating the full extent of far-right extremism in their ranks, in part because they refuse to let outsiders do the investigating, as Leah West demonstrates in this thread. Some of this has to do with an insistence on cleaning up their own messes, but, well, their history on that score has not been great given the sexual misconduct problems and abuse of power scandals they have been dealing with over the past couple of decades. There is still work to do, and it doesn’t help when things happen, such as the commander of the Canadian Army saying he wasn’t notified about certain army members posting to an “abhorrent” Facebook group during the investigation into it.

There is much about this story that is staggering. But the inclusion of military members while deeply troubling is not surprising. A story:I was part of the RWE CAF research network funded by the Department of National Defence to study IMVE in the military for three years 2020-2023.

— Leah West (@leahwest-nsl.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T22:30:36.625Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The only real Ukraine news today is that Trump is planning to resume weapons shipments to Ukraine, feeling hurt that Putin was bullshitting him, but more concerningly, says he doesn’t know who ordered the shipments to stop (because he’s clearly not running his own show).

https://bsky.app/profile/united24media.com/post/3ltixwozuor2a

Continue reading →

Senate QP: The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?

Posted on by

Things got underway early for a marathon day of debate on Bill C-5, but before that could start, Routine Proceedings and Senate Question Period had to take place, which promises to be the last sitting day of the spring, and also Senator Marc Gold’s last sitting day as Government Leader in the Senate. Some of the statements made were farewells to Senators whose terms are expiring in the coming months, another statement was about the two people who lost their lives in the recent landslide near Banff.

Back in the Senate for #SenQP, early today ahead of marathon hearings on Bill C-5.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-06-26T13:07:16.620Z

Senators Housakos led off, asking about the opioid crisis, calling the government’s response flawed and reactive and wondered why there wasn’t a national strategy to deal with it. Senator Gold noted the tragedy of these deaths, and that the government is setting up a plan to tighten the border, and noted recent statistics that use has fallen. Housakos decried the failure of the government, and wanted a more effective response that would achieve results. Gold noted that the government is working with provinces to protect people.

Continue reading →

Senate QP: Questions about NATO math

Posted on by

I haven’t been able to attend Senate Question Period in years as the move to a separate building, and a shift of their usual timing to coincide with Commons QP have kept me away, as has the fact that they pretty much always rise at the same time as the Commons, which never used to be the practice, and for which I write a peevish column at the start of every summer. This year, however, they are sitting later to pass Bill C-5, so I am actually able to take it in. It’s been a long time since I’ve been here.

Taking in #SenQP for the first time in *years*.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-06-25T18:04:29.258Z

After statements and routine proceedings, things got underway in earnest as  Senator Housakos led off, and he raised the PBO saying that he has received little information on the NATO two percent announcement, and that they have now agreed to the five percent goal at this week’s summit, And wondered how they could take this credibly. Senator Gold lamented that there was underfunding over decades, and that this was because of a changing world, but also noted that only 3.5 percent of that was over a decade, while the other 1.5 percent was for other things. Housakos again questioned the credibility of the numbers, and Gold returned to the boilerplate assurances they are doing what they can, but also noted that DND hasn’t been able to spend their current allocations.

Continue reading →

Roundup: The Speaker imposes the last of the Supply Days

Posted on by

Yesterday began with the government’s attempt to let the opposition parties have their remaining Supply Days (aka “opposition days”) that remain in the supply cycle before the Estimates votes next week, and even though the Conservatives had indicated they were going to move a confidence motion that would force Jagmeet Singh to eat his words about the Liberals, being one giant dare. But when the Government House Leader Karina Gould moved the motion that would let this happen, that would give them a chance to move this confidence motion, the Conservatives decided against it in order to continue the privilege filibuster.

Later in the day, Speaker Greg Fergus decided to step in, given that the ability for the parties to work this out for themselves had clearly failed. To that end, he has imposed that the Supply Days will run Thursday, Monday and Tuesday for the Conservatives, with the Friday for the NDP, and that because Tuesday is the last day of the Supply Cycle, the Estimates votes will happen then. This ensures that the parties get their allotted days (the Bloc already had theirs before the privilege filibuster began), and the Conservatives will have their chances to try and embarrass the other opposition parties into voting non-confidence, the NDP won’t oblige them, and the NDP’s motion will likely be something related to abortion in their own attempt to embarrass the Conservatives, because nobody can be mature about any of this.

I will say that I’m a little surprised that Fergus made this move, because he very well could have used this as something of a “learning opportunity” for the parties—that because they refused to come to a deal about these days that they would lose them because they didn’t use them. But that actually would have been the bigger surprise, because Fergus isn’t exactly a very strong-willed Speaker. As for the Conservatives, one suspects that they turned down the motion in order to push the envelope, so that they could cry foul and try and challenge Fergus if they did lose those days, and send out more fundraising emails that he’s being partisan (which is against the rules), and to try and play the victim. Andrew Scheer was already trying to denounce these moves, but nothing he says has any semblance of truth, so that’s no surprise. Nevertheless, there won’t be a crisis of Supply, government departments won’t shut down, and Canadian journalists won’t get the opportunity to excitedly write about a “U.S.-style government shutdown.”

Ukraine Dispatch

Another Russian drone attack on Trenopil has left it without electricity. And while president Zelenskyy is hoping for quick NATO membership as an avenue to ending the war, NATO members are unlikely to take him up on it.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1863186805463437571

Continue reading →

Roundup: A $7 million ad buy to tell on themselves

Posted on by

Over the past several days, the Alberta government has been on a very strange campaign where they are in essence, telling on themselves by lying about the forthcoming federal emissions cap. How so, you ask? They keep insisting that this is a production cap on the energy sector, which is not what it is intended to be, particularly because the sector has been saying that they fully plan to be net-zero by 2050, and that these kinds of rules, while disliked by economists, would essentially force these companies to put their money where their mouths are. And, well, they have certainly been admitting that all of those promises to meet those targets through things like carbon capture have been pretty much all talk.

When Danielle Smith and her ministers tried to justify their ad campaign, well, things got even worse for them.

Meanwhile, the Alberta government bought the front pages of newspapers across the Postmedia chain at a cost of $7 million in order to decry this same policy, and in another telling lie, claim that it would increase grocery prices, because that’s the anxiety that they want to hit on in order to really stick it to the federal Liberals. But again, the problem here is that the driver of those higher grocery prices is climate change, and in particular, recurring droughts in food-producing regions, including in Canada, with a few flash floods or hurricanes along the way that also damage crops or livestock.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack on the southern city of Mykolaiv has killed one and injured at least sixteen. A drone attack was also launched against Kyiv. The town of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, and three surrounding settlements, were ordered evacuated. Russians claim to have taken the village of Levadne in the Zaporizhzhia region over the weekend.

Continue reading →

Roundup: A double standard on barring speeches

Posted on by

There was a story in the Star yesterday that I hadn’t actually noticed happening, which is that Liberal MP Yvan Baker has been barred from speaking in the House of Commons until he apologises for saying that the “Putin wing” had taken over the Conservative Party on March 20th. Baker says he has no intention of apologising for what he considers to be the truth, and the Speaker, as usual, makes little tut-tut noises about what Baker said, never mind that there is a giant double-standard at play.

If Fergus is concerned about MPs alleging that their colleagues “stand four-square behind dictators,” it’s funny that the consequences only seem to apply to Baker. After all, Conservatives on a frequent basis have said that Trudeau is in the pocket of dictators, and that he allowed foreign interference on their behalf because it benefitted his party. (There is absolutely no public evidence of this). And most egregious was that Conservative MP Rachael Thomas has said on the floor of the Commons that Justin Trudeau is a “dictator,” and she faced absolutely no censure for saying it, which makes it really hard to see why Baker is being singled out for being hyperbolic—the point was about which elements of the party’s base that Poilievre is pandering to as opposed to saying that Poilievre is under Putin’s sway—when nobody else is. (I will note that Conservative MP Mark Strahl was barred from speaking for several weeks because he refused to withdraw the remarks that someone was lying, which is a big no-no under the rules of Parliament—rules which are now being absolutely abused—but he did eventually do so).

What is perhaps the most galling in all of his was the statement that Andrew Scheer gave to the Star, in which he says “Liberals should not whine and complain because they were caught spreading disinformation and lies to divide Canadians and cover for their own total failures on Ukraine.” Erm, serial liar and promoter of conspiracy theories Andrew Scheer is lecturing Liberals on the subject, when he faces zero consequences for lying in the House of Commons on a daily basis. We already knew he had absolutely no sense of shame, but it definitely extends to a complete lack of self-awareness as well. Just utterly ridiculous.

Ukraine Dispatch

It was another bloody weekend in Ukraine which saw waves of drone attacks targeting Kyiv last night, the pounding of Zaporizhzhia with guided bombs earlier, the death of a top judge after an attack on Kharkiv, and an attack on a hospital in Sumy that killed ten. President Zelenskyy says that the front lines are “very, very difficult” as autumn descends on the conflict.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Ministers don’t control committees

Posted on by

In a bid to try and extend the Status of Women committee imbroglio story for another day, The Canadian Press tried to draw the Minister for Gender Equality and Youth, Marci Ien, into the fray to comment on what happened. Ien, who isn’t an idiot, refused, which was the right thing to do. Why? Because as a minister, she has no authority over committees, nor should she, because that’s how Parliament works.

Parliament exists to hold the government, meaning Cabinet, to account. Committees are tasked with holding ministers to account over specific subject matter areas, which is one of the reasons why ministers must come before their respective committees as part of the Estimates cycle (because one of the primary means by which Parliament holds the government to account is by controlling the public purse). Hence, the Status of Women committee is tasked with holding Ien to account for her department, and in fact, they should be doing a whole lot more of that accountability work because frankly, this government’s record on doing gender-based-analysis-plus (GBA+) is actually terrible, and most of the time consists of them just saying “GBA+” and not actually doing the work. A functioning committee would be addressing this, and even though Anita Vandenbeld wrote in her op-ed this week that the committee was functional and worked by consensus, this is a major issue that they have not been tackling like they should, not that this is a surprise. It is absolutely not Ien’s place to comment on what happened at that committee, and it would in fact be a major breach of decorum if she did.

It shouldn’t surprise me that a reporter couldn’t make this distinction for herself before writing the story, but honestly, this is basic parliamentarianism. It should be embarrassing for them to even make this basic error and not understanding the roles between ministers and committees, but this is also the state of political journalism, where actual knowledge of the system has become a rarity among those who are supposed to cover it.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided bomb killed two when it hit a schoolyard in the Sumy region. Ukrainian forces have confirmed that they have breached Russia’s Kursk region, sending Russians into disarray and panic, and have launched a massive drone attack further into Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls this proof of Ukraine’s ability to surprise on the battlefield.

https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1821336708916347359

Continue reading →

Roundup: Sanctions theatre, Hamas edition

Posted on by

Yesterday, foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly announced that Canada would be sanctioning senior leaders of Hamas…which is already a listed terrorist organization. The whole exercise appears to be little more than sanctions theatre, according to Jessica Davis, who does this for a living. Nothing Joly announced is likely to make any difference compared to what is already on the books, meaning this is likely just a hollow gesture to make it looks like the government is doing something without actually doing anything. Of course, if they really wanted to do something, they could properly resource the RCMP’s sanctions enforcement regime and their counter terrorism financing abilities (or better yet, disband the RCMP and start up a dedicated federal policing force that can specialise in this kind of work).

Ukraine Dispatch:

A Russian attack overnight on a village in the Kharkiv region killed a two-month old baby. The Donetsk region’s governor says that his province is pounded by 2500 Russian strikes daily, while Avdiivka, a short distance away, has been the focus of Russian attention for months now. Ukrainian special forces say they blew up a drilling platform in the Black Sea that Russians were using to support their drone operations. As the shake-up of the Ukrainian military approaches, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants a dedicated branch devoted to drones.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1754881455702897018

Continue reading →