Tag Archives: Trade

Roundup: Poor widdle baby oil companies

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

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

May the 4th

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

Ukraine Dispatch

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

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QP: On what date remains a terrible question

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The PM was wrapping up his meetings in Armenia and preparing to head home, while Pierre Poilievre was also away. That left it up to Melissa Lantsman to lead off, with the usual lines about “credit card” spending, and costs. Wayne Long stood up to praise the government’s efforts. Lantsman repeated the script with added disdain, and Evan Solomon took this one, to raise the trade war, and wondered what the Conservatives would cut. Tim Uppal took over and demanded to know when a pipeline would start construction. Mélanie Joly also pointed that there was a trade war going on. Uppal tried again, and Tim Hodgson suggested they spend time talking to proponents instead of just getting social media clips. Luc Berthold took over and read the “credit card” lines in French, and Joly repeated that we are in a trade war. Berthold ranted some absolute nonsense about “printing debt,” and Joly suggested he take a math lesson and recited the talking points about our position in the G7.

Oral questions. Questions orales. #QP

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T18:19:17.092Z

Lantsman blames high gas prices on government spending. #QP

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T18:20:58.026Z

Joly: We are in a trade war. #QP

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T18:24:39.790Z

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she called the government’s tariff support announcement this morning to be insufficient, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses. Joly praised the terms they are offering for the loans to help those firms. Normandin said that while the Bloc will cooperate with this measures, they government needs to do more, especially with a wage subsidy. Joly said that they will do more, because the government stands with the industry. Gabriel Ste-Marie gave his own question on the increased tariffs, and demanded more immediate support. Dominic LeBlanc said that he was touch with industry stakeholders. 

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Roundup: A call to ignore Pathways

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In a sit-down interview with The Canadian Press, prime minister Mark Carney says that an oil pipeline out of Alberta is “more likely than not,” and this doesn’t mean the revived Keystone XL (aka “Bridger Pipeline”). But he’s also not saying anything about Pathways, which is a bit suspicious because he tied the approval to Pathways getting underway, and industry has made it very clear they’re not interested in paying for it.

To that end, who showed up in the op-ed pages of the Globe and Mail but Martha Hall Findlay, former Liberal MP and now head of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, who put on a big show to say that she found it hard to write, but lo, she must recommend that the government “pause” Pathways, because it’s useless on a global scale, and “the world changed.” And then there was more hand-wringing and rationalization that Canada is such a small contributor to global emissions that it doesn’t matter.

The world didn’t change. Facts didn’t change. Climate change didn’t stop with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, so quite frankly, this is bullshit and special pleading. The notion that we don’t contribute enough to global emissions is such a poor argument because it’s a common action problem. We have some of the highest emissions on a per capita basis, and yes, that matters. Hall Findlay was going on about how this is all about ego, and we just want to look like we’re leaders, but guess what—every action matters. And if you think that it’s too expensive to reduce emissions now, well, it’s going to be even more expensive the longer we push it down the road, when the effects are even more entrenched globally. We’re already spending billions of dollars in insurance payouts every year that are directly related to climate. The vast majority of food price inflation is climate-related, even if people don’t want to admit it. Frankly, these arguments of hers are tired and baseless and not worth listening to, no matter how much she insists she still believes in climate action…eventually.

My favourite moment in any oil price shock cycle is when the Very Serious Energy People explain why this — again! — is not the time to give a shit about the climate crisis

— Chris Turner (@theturner.bsky.social) 2026-05-01T15:21:29.234Z

If Canada can make that argument at 1.4% then presumably so can Saudi Arabia (1.5), Iran (1.9) and Japan (2.0).Then I imagine both Indonesia (2.3) and Brazil (2.5) would say, "hey, us too." And at that point, you've ruled out 204 countries accounting for roughly 46% of all national emissions.

— Aaron Wherry (@aaronwherry.bsky.social) 2026-05-01T15:02:42.580Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-05-01T19:08:02.330Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched yet another attack on port infrastructure in Odesa early Friday, and then launched more than 400 drones in a daytime attack that injured ten people in Ternopil in the west. Ukraine is planning an overhaul of its military rotations, particularly after an outcry over images of emaciated soldiers emerged.

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Roundup: A stolen voter list

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

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

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

Ukraine Dispatch

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

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Roundup: Two committees move behind closed doors

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There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth happening by the Conservatives because debate in two committees was moved behind closed doors now that the Liberals are able to exert majority control of them. The cry is that they’re shutting down “public debate,” but I’m dubious. Members of the government won’t say why this was necessary, but I’m not ready to pull the fire alarm just yet.

Why? Because the two committees in question have been in the throes of attempted witch hunt studies that the Conservatives have been trying to orchestrate (with the gleeful assistance of the Bloc, who are happy to embarrass the government any day of the week). In the ethics committee, it’s been the wrangling over trying to insinuate that François-Philippe Champagne was in a conflict of interest because the Alto high speed rail project was included in the budget when he has since put up an ethics screen because his spouse is now an executive on the project. The thing is, the Ethics Commissioner already said that there is no conflict because Alto reports to a different line minister, but Champagne put up the screen out of an abundance of caution. He did agree to appear after a filibuster, but this may be the Liberals trying to get out of it, and not unsurprisingly. The Conservatives have been trying to engineer this meeting so that they can harvest a bunch of clips of them calling Champagne corrupt and him prevaricating or looking obstinate.

The other committee is health, where the Conservatives are trying to manufacture another “boondoggle” around the PrescribeIT project, which as I understand it, was created at the behest of the provinces, who then decided not to take it up once it was developed. Oh, but there was outsourcing! And? They haven’t been able to make any particular allegation other than it cost money, and this is somehow entirely the federal government’s fault for trying to accommodate provinces who, to this day, refuse to come together on common standards for electronic health records, which has been a persistent problem for two decades now. Suffice to say, I’m not convinced that moving procedural wrangling in camera is a sign that democracy is under threat, and there was a whole lot of this very same thing when the Conservatives had a majority on committees (and they turned those committees into branch plants of ministers’ offices). They may try to cast themselves as heroes for inventing scandals, but I remain unconvinced that this is a danger to parliamentary democracy just yet.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-29T13:08:02.607Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s attack on Odesa early Wednesday hit residential buildings and a hospital. Ukraine says its new long-range drones hit a Russian oil pumping station 1500 km away from the border. Here is a look at the interceptor drone programme to stop Russia’s Shahed drones, and how the interception rate is now up to 90 percent.

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QP: Credit card versus skilled trades

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In the wake of the fiscal update, the PM was present today as were the other leaders, because they all had a show to perform. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, where he deployed the same lines he has all week—credit card budget, just another Liberal, and that he doubled Trudeau’s deficit. Mark Carney praised the limitless possibilities that the update would provide. Poilievre mouthed his lines about food price inflation and blaming it on deficits, while Carney said that Poilievre was obsessing over Trudeau while he was focused on the future. Poilievre switched to English to say that he was being unfair to Trudeau because Carney had doubled his deficits, and wondered what he limit was on the “credit card.” Carney patted himself on the back for reducing the deficit by $11 billion in the face of a trade war and and actual war, before racing through some of his applause lines and slogans. Poilievre slowed down his cadence to look like he was talking down about the comparative sizes of the deficit, and Carney took a pause, said he wouldn’t go there, and then patted himself on the back for the focus on affordability. Carney said the Liberals were like the Bourbon dynasty, learning nothing and forgetting nothing, before he listed their supposed sins. Carney retorted that Canadians would not forget that Poilievre voted against benefits for them. Poilievre then claimed that Carney was wrong on every economic issue of the past decade, and Carney retorted that Poilievre was wrong on crypto and wrong on Brexit, but he could go on, while the government was building.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and worried about the new tariff calculations by the Americans, and Carney thanked him for his concern and that there would be an announcement on new measures in the coming days. Blanchet pointed out that there were no measures in the economic update, and Carney said it was always a good idea to believe what the prime minister says. Blanchet offered to set aside partisanship to focus on affected businesses, and Carney said that he and his ministers will take action to help those businesses. 

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Roundup: The 2026 Spring Economic Statement

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It was the Spring Economic Update yesterday, and this was less of a mini-budget than in previous years, but still had a few new elements. Overall, yes the deficit is lower than anticipated because growth was greater than projected, but in true Liberal fashion, Mark Carney and the government added new spending measures that took up some of that room, both with some previously announced measures like the “pause” on the excise fuel tax, and new measures like $6 billion in incentives for skilled trades workers.

Some highlights:

  • That $6 billion for skilled trade workers includes support during training and a completion bonus (as half of those who start apprenticeships don’t finish)
  • There is a shift toward attracting more foreign investment.
  • There will be a small break in CPP deductions for the next year.
  • Canada is making progress on diversifying to non-US export markets.
  • There is money for sports, the Financial Crimes Agency is finally getting its implementation legislation, and crypto ATMs are being banned.
  • The Defence Investment Agency is getting more structure and oversight, and there is also more funding for military trades.
  • They plan to resurrect the ability for Canada Post to search and seize mail.
  • There are new tax credits for enhanced oil recovery (because Carney has full-on decided he no longer cares about the environment.)
  • There are promises for $4.3 billion in First Nations education, Inuit food security, and Indigenous child welfare.
  • More odds and ends here.

In pundit reaction, David Reevely considers this to be Carney buying time until his big projects can start to pay off. Lindsay Tedds delves into the issues surrounding the so-called “Sovereign Wealth Fund.” Kevin Carmichael gives some thought to the deficit position, as well as the choices that Carney is making with what they are putting additional resources into. Susan Delacourt ponders the juggling act of the government both trying to build long-term, while still looking for tangible effects in the here-and-now. Paul Wells looks at the context of some of the numbers presented, and the government’s “fiscal prudence” back-patting.

Housing items in today's federal economic statement. Delighted to see they're planning to move on reforms to make it easier to build multiplexes! This is aligned with one of our recommendations from our January report.

— Dr. Mike P. Moffatt (@mikepmoffatt.bsky.social) 2026-04-28T21:46:33.000Z

Well, this isn't even remotely true (as @lindsaytedds.bsky.social and I discussed in my latest episode).

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-29T02:20:59.692Z

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-28T19:08:02.092Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine says that it shot down over 33,000 Russian drones last month, which is a new monthly record. Ukrainian drones have been causing fires at Russia’s Tuapse roil refinery. Ukraine is now trading diplomatic blows with Israel over ships carrying stolen grain docking in Israeli ports.

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Roundup: Thirteen cherry-picked charts

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Ahead of the spring economic update, the National Post ran a story that contained thirteen charts that they claim were proof that Justin Trudeau delivered a “lost decade” to the Canadian economy. To absolutely no one’s surprise, the charts were awfully selective in how they presented the data, because everybody has decided that they have a vested interest in creating an image of how much Trudeau “doomed” the country. And to be perfectly fair, Mark Carney himself has engaged in these kinds of rhetorical games, which his insistence on using the “new government” moniker has been nothing more than an effort to disassociate himself with his predecessor.

To wit: yes, we fell behind the US on GDP per capita because we rapidly increased our population while the US didn’t, and that increase staved off an economic downturn post-pandemic, until everyone decided to start scapegoating those same immigrants for provinces under-investing in housing and healthcare capacity. The rise in business insolvencies? Mostly a post-pandemic correction when a lot of businesses that would not have survived did only because of those pandemic supports, and the levels are returning close to the pre-pandemic baseline. The number of self-employed freefalling? Again, this was because of the pandemic because a whole lot of those self-employed got stiffed by the companies they invoiced and they didn’t get paid, so they took salaried jobs. I can’t speak was much to the number of high-value start-ups fleeing Canada other than the fact that many of them specifically set themselves up to sell to American companies because that’s where the money was. Total investment per worker declining? My dudes, corporate Canada decided they don’t care about productivity because they only want to be rent-seekers, so that’s what they do. Climbing cost of living? The chart is without context to demonstrate how we compare internationally given the inflation spike late in the pandemic, where Canada did far better than most of our comparators. Home prices? The chart cuts off at 2015 so it doesn’t show that they also doubled under Harper, but this is mostly a provincial/municipal problem as the federal government has very few levers for the problems of charges and zoning. Public sector rising faster than private sector? What does that include? Does it include provinces? Does it include nurses or teachers? How does it compare to under-investment and cuts in the Harper years? Again, context matters. Federal deficits? Have you seen the state of the world? Healthcare wait times? That’s provincial—how are you trying to pin that on Trudeau? He gave plenty of transfers to provinces that got put on their bottom lines to pay down deficits rather than hiring nurses or expanding capacity. The rise in the violent crime severity index? The piece scapegoats this on immigrants, again without any context for how those figures are way down from historical highs.

It’s shitty journalism, but this is the kind of thing that the we’ve come to expect from the Post, simply in service of a narrative.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-27T13:17:49.975Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The attack on Odesa early Monday wound up injuring fourteen, and hit residential buildings and a hotel. A worker at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, still under Russian control, was killed in a drone attack.

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QP: Complete rotting nonsense about a “national credit card”

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The PM was in the building, and had done the “walking in” introductions for the three newly-elected MPs this morning (unusually, as this is normally done just before QP), but he was not in Question Period for whatever reason. Pierre Poilievre was present, and led off in French, referencing a Journal de Montreal article about seniors who don’t feel they can retire, and he blamed this on “inflationary taxes and deficits” and wondered if the government would rein those in. François-Philippe Champagne took the opportunity to praise this morning’s announced sovereign wealth fund. Poilievre trotted out his new line about a “credit card budget” and demanded the government cap the size of the deficit. Champagne rattled off the growth rates in the G7 to note why Canada is expected to grow faster. Poilievre switched to English to decry the size of the deficit, and again repeated the “credit card” line along with the demand for a cap. Champagne repeated that they have good news about the sovereign wealth fund, and that they are building together to benefit together. Poilievre tried his “prime minister is in hiding” line and got cautioned for the Speaker, and then called the sovereign wealth fund a slush fund put on the country’s credit card. Champagne repeated his lines about the rate of economic growth in the G7. Poilievre trotted out his self-important claim that he had a better economic record than Carney, and again lamented the “credit card.” Steven MacKinnon got up to note that inflation is in the target range, and he wondered just what exactly counted as “inflationary spending.” Poilievre listed the high speed rail project, the gun buyback, consultants, bureaucracy, supposed “phoney refugees,” and so on. MacKinnon noted that it was funny to consider money that hasn’t been spent inflationary, and then wondered which other programmes counted.

Christine Normandin led for the Bloc, and she lamented that the new U.S. tariff calculations were disproportionately targeting Quebec, and demanded a wage subsidy for affected industries. Joly agreed that the tariffs were abusive and agreed they would help workers. Normandin demanded more actions to help Quebec’s industries, and Joly pledged to continue defending Quebec’s workers. Gabriel Ste-Marie noted a business in his riding that is closing because of tariffs, and Joly again repeated that they are there for Quebec’s workers.

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Roundup: Kinew’s very bad promise

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On Saturday night, Manitoba premier Wab Kinew promised to ban social media and chatbots for youth, which may sound like a good idea, but it’s very, very bad. Why? This is essentially just internet surveillance. You need to upload ID in some variety to access anything, which means that you are being tracked, either by government or by third parties who will either profit form that tracking, or who will leave your data vulnerable to being hacked. This is exactly the same issue with people who want age verification for internet porn—the same problems exist, and those problems are very, very bad.

Using what age verification tools, exactly?This is going to end so very badly. This is just more internet surveillance, and politicians cannot get that through their heads.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-26T03:54:14.098Z

I’ve written about this problem a lot over the past few years, and there is no good system of age verification. It simply doesn’t exist, but too many politicians treat it like a “nerd harder” problem, meaning that they are sure that the nerds will just figure it out rather than accept the fact that it’s really just surveillance of all of your online activities. And even worse, most kids will figure out workarounds, leaving all of that surveillance in place for everyone else, while you didn’t solve the problem you wanted to.

As I wrote in @xtramagazine.com, age verification is bad tech, and it is going to just harm so many people unnecessarily, most especially queer and trans people.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2026-04-26T03:58:36.941Z

I get why Kinew is doing this, which is because it’s a populist move. Yes, it’s well-intentioned, but again, there is no good way to implement this (and frankly, I’m not entirely sure which tools he has to enforce this at the provincial level). But boy howdy do a lot of people need to start speaking up about why these kinds of age verification tools will only do so much damage to the internet at large, while doing nothing about the problems of social media on minors, most especially because it also allows the platforms to get away with not doing their own due diligence of content moderation or online safety tools that would shield minors from the worst of the problems. So instead, politicians want to remove everyone’s internet privacy instead. It’s bad news all around.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2026-04-26T23:08:01.383Z

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian drone attack on Dnipro killed ten people and injured dozens of others early morning Saturday. And just this morning, a drone attack on Odesa wounded at least ten people. Ukraine marked the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster on Sunday.

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