Tag Archives: Ukraine

Roundup: Giving credence to Poilievre’s trolling

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In spite of it being an exhaustingly packed news week, The Canadian Press took time out to get some reaction to Pierre Poilievre’s trolling tweets about prime minister Mark Carney’s many international trips of late. Yes, it’s summit season right now and there is a lot more travel coming up, but he has made a number of trips since he was appointed PM, and we have to ensure that it’s not “excessive” or something. Never mind that we’re in a moment of global crisis as the United States has turned into an authoritarian regime that is upending the post-war international order and tacitly siding with other authoritarian regimes, and this requires a global realignment of liberal democracies, but is he travelling too much? Guys.

The one thing that irked me the most in the story was the point about Carney having only attended three Question Periods since Parliament resumed last week, and only nine in the four-week spring session. There was no context to this, which is that it means once or twice per week, which is perfectly normal for any sitting prime minister. Once or twice a week was all Stephen Harper could deign to attend. Justin Trudeau started out with three a week, but then fell back to two on most weeks, but sometimes was just once. The difference of course was that Trudeau made it his practice to answer every question on Wednesdays, which no previous PM had done, and which Carney has not kept up (possibly because he may not have stamina enough to pat himself on the back for a full forty-five minute). In other words, Carney’s QP attendance is fully within the norm, and you would think that the national wire service could point this out, but that might mean that they would have to have someone with enough institutional knowledge and memory to know this, but pretty much every bureau on the Hill no longer has either. (As a reminder, I am the only journalist who goes to QP every day, because someone has to).

This being said, I think we need to once again have a discussion about the kind of insular nativism that Poilievre is stoking by making it sound like foreign travel by the prime minister is somehow illegitimate, or that every trip must come with some kind of signed agreement (even though we may already have signed agreements with countries like Mexico, and forging stronger ties is important beyond just a signed piece of paper). Trying to create this false expectation that the PM can’t go anywhere so long as there is “crime and chaos” at home is juvenile and frankly troubling, because it means that they have absolutely no idea how the real world works, and are playing with fire, especially if they ever want to form government one day.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-26T13:24:02.797Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The front line in the conflict has grown to nearly 1250 km in length, as Russian forces have shifted tactics to try and make breakthroughs. That said, both president Zelenskyy and his top military commander say that Russia’s 2025 offensive has failed to meet their goals, and suffered heavy losses in the process. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s assessment of the drone incursions into NATO airspace is that Russia is trying to stoke fatigue in Ukraine’s allies in the hopes of drawing down military support.

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Roundup: The weird fixation on east coast LNG

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There was another report about Europeans looking for Canadian LNG, this time in The Logic in a conversation with the German ambassador. What it did not really mention was the actual business case—only that the “long timelines” involved was a reason why former prime minister Justin Trudeau said that there wasn’t a business case for it. The thrust of the piece is that demand maybe longer than just short-term because even rapid electrification will still require some gas, however there is a boatload of context about this that journalists who have this weird fetish for LNG never actually touch on.

First of all, this discussion is only about east coast LNG, not west coast, where the conditions are different, and where there a whole bunch of potential projects that are fully permitted, and have all of their approvals in place, but aren’t moving ahead because the market isn’t showing demand (and by demand, we mean signing long-term contracts to buy the product). While this was also the case on the east coast, it’s complicated by the lack of ready supply of natural gas to liquify. Neither Quebec nor New Brunswick are about to start fracking for the sake of domestic supply, and the costs to bring a pipeline from western Canada to New Brunswick for export purposes is a lot to consider when we think about what is “long term.” That means supply is likely to becoming from the US, and that in turn will drive up local prices because they’re competing with the theoretical export terminal. To add to that, the “long term” we need to keep in mind is that these kinds of plants need to be operating for a good forty years or so to get their money’s worth. Is anyone in Europe thinking about the infrastructure necessary on that kind of time scale? Unlikely, and unlikely at that time scale for the kinds of prices that Canada would be offering, which are higher than they could get elsewhere.

What do they mean by "long-term"? Because these kinds of projects need a 40-year lifespan or so to actually get their money's worth, by which time we'll be well past net-zero goals.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-25T13:37:04.762Z

This is why these stories never actually make sense, because those journalists never actually talk to an energy economist about it, or if they do, it goes right out the other ear while they maintain this weird fixation on LNG. I’m not quite sure what it’s in service of—have they simply absorbed the propaganda of the oil and gas industry, who say dumb and wrong things like how our fossil fuels are the “cleanest” (they absolutely are not), or worse, that it will displace coal (the final emissions profile is not that much lower than coal, and as David Cochrane is the only journalist to push back on this talking point, there is no guarantee that they wouldn’t just use Canadian LNG in addition to coal rather than displacing it)? Or is this some kind of sad attempt at playing gotcha with Trudeau and the business case line? Because certain journalists are relentless in badgering and hectoring European leaders about this, and it’s just weird, and just completely ignorant of the facts on the ground.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian attack on Chernihiv meant power cuts for 70,000 people. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says that members can target Russian planes that enter their airspace as necessary. And president Zelenskyy says he is ready to leave office once the war is over.

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Roundup: A digital asbestos task force

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Everyone’s favourite bullshit Cabinet minister, Evan Solomon, is putting together a task force to determine the next steps in the government’s digital asbestos strategy. While we wait to see just who is going to be on this task force, because that will say volumes, it’s almost inevitable at this point that this is mostly going to wind up being more hype, because Solomon has guzzled it all down, while prime minister Mark Carney has also bought into it as the cure for Canada’s flagging productivity and other problems (rather than the obvious fact that corporate Canada is lazy). We’ve all heard everything Solomon has said so far. I’m not optimistic at all.

It's gonna be so much more hype. We are so boned.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-24T15:21:05.227Z

I’m also extremely sceptical about Solomon insisting that they’re going to take the lessons from the Privacy Commissioner’s investigation into TikTok and its privacy violations in order to shape the new digital asbestos laws, because that would be too much intervention for what Solomon has been preaching about “light touches.” Part of the problem with the TikTok violations are that this is their business model, and while they insist that they are trying to keep children off the platform, they put more effort into hoovering up private data for marketing purposes than they did in using those very same tools they developed to keep kids off the platform, as it was hoovering up their data at an alarming rate. So much of what makes up digital asbestos is similar business models about siphoning that personal data, as well as using techniques to keep users engaged on that platform, hallucinations and all, and not caring about it sending them on delusional spirals that craters their mental health. They don’t care because it’s the business model, and that’s why I can’t trust Solomon to actually regulate—because he has bought into the hype around that model, and if he regulates, the tech bros will cry and whine that they can’t operate in those rules, and he’ll kill the industry, and gods forbid, we couldn’t have that.

Evan fucking Solomon says they'll take the lessons from the TikTok privacy report in order to shape new digital asbestos laws. www.thestar.com/politics/fed…

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-25T03:13:46.890Z

Meanwhile at the UN, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is warning about the destructive arms race happening right now with digital asbestos and drones, and is calling for international rules about limiting its spread. But of course, I can just hear someone like Solomon insisting that we don’t want too many rules, because that will “stifle innovation,” and so on. Absolutely nobody is taking any of this seriously (and no, we’re not talking about Skynet), and we’re heading for some serious problems in the very near future as a result.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine has attacked the petrochemical complex in Salavat for the second time in a week, further reducing Russia’s refining capacity.

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Roundup: NSICOP vs lawful access

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Yesterday, the CBC’s national security reporter filed a story about the NSICOP report into lawful access, which was frankly a poor piece of journalism. The story merely quoted from the report without any outside comment, but more than that, the focus and entire framing of the story was more on the frustrations of police and CSIS that they don’t have lawful access tools—and by lawful access, we mean the ability of police or intelligence services to access your digital online history and movements, usually without a judicial warrant. This is very bad. In fact, it’s so bad that the Supreme Court of Canada has twice ruled that it’s unconstitutional, and that police can’t even get your ISP information without a warrant because it offers too much access to the “digital breadcrumbs” of your online life that it can and will violate your privacy.

This is not mentioned in the CBC story. The report talks extensively about the Supreme Court’s definition of privacy and why it’s important, and why it’s important to try and find pathways for information that still require a judicial warrant, and so on. But how was this reported in the story? A single sentence: “It dives into one of the most controversial issues in national security: balancing the individual right to privacy while safeguarding public safety.” If that’s not soft-pedalling one of the major problems underpinning this whole report, I’m not sure what is. And then the story goes back to enumerating the complaints about how hard it is to access that data.

I do think that the NSICOP report’s findings are a problematic in places because it essentially wants Parliament to thread that needle in a way that makes it sound easy.

In the Committee’s view, the primary way the government could facilitate and enable national security investigations while at the same time protecting Canadians’ right to privacy would be to modernize lawful access legislation, based on clearly articulated principles that reaffirm the requirement for a legitimate need for exceptional, targeted and judicially authorized access emphasize privacy and cybersecurity protections, and define transparency and oversight mechanisms. In light of the complexity of the lawful access challenge, the Committee suggests that the government implement an incremental approach to allow for meaningful engagement with stakeholders and a diversity of input.

I also question the wisdom of encouraging a comprehensive data-sharing agreement with the US, given that they are no longer a functional democracy and it’s probably a very bad thing if their authorities have easy access to Canadians’ data for their own purposes. And these are real problems that Parliament needs to confront, in both the (terrible) omnibus border bill C-2, which has lawful access provisions in it, or how it and the cyber-security bill, C-8, can try and force companies to put in backdoors to their encryption (which at least the NSICOP report says is a bad idea). This is a very problematic area of law, but that CBC story did absolute injustice to it, and most especially about the absolute importance of privacy rights, and why we shouldn’t make it easy for police to access our data whenever they claim it’s necessary (especially because CSIS has a history of not being candid with the courts about why they need information or warrants).

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine has hit Russian oil infrastructure in both the Bryansk and Samara regions, which is widening the fuel crisis in that country. Under the theory that Trump repeats whatever the last person he was speaking to says, he was saying that Ukraine can win the war and reclaim their territory with NATO help.

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Roundup: Ford casting blame for his own failures—bail edition

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While the federal Conservatives are tabling a litany of “tough on crime” bills in order to make themselves look like they’re offering solutions to what they term the “warzone” on Canadian streets, Ontario premier Doug Ford decided that he didn’t want to be left out. Ford tasked his attorney general with sending an open letter to the federal government to call for a bunch of performative nonsense like mandatory minimum sentences or “three strikes” laws, most of which are unconstitutional, and is making all kinds of noises about the problems with the bail system and demanding that the federal government fix them. The problem? The biggest problems with bail are Ford’s fault.

The administration of justice is a provincial issue, and the biggest problem with bail by far is resourcing in the court system. There aren’t enough functional courthouses (especially in Peel Region), there aren’t enough clerks and other staff at these court houses to run trials, there are not enough provincially-appointed judges who handle the bulk of criminal cases, there are issues with the appointment and training of justices of the peace, who deal with nearly all bail hearings. The province isn’t hiring enough Crown attorneys to prosecute cases, and they are burnt out and nearly went on strike fairly recently because of being underpaid. Oh, and provincial remand facilities are overcrowded and they can’t keep people in custody there, and those who are will wind up getting sentencing discounts if they are convicted, because the conditions are so terrible. All of these things are on Ford. But he would rather blame the federal government. Oh, and during this all, Ford is also going to war against photo radar, because of course he is—apparently, it’s all well and good to break traffic laws (which are provincial jurisdiction), but he’s big mad about other laws being broken. Just incoherent.

This being said, I am once again absolutely livid that the media outlets who did report on this letter couldn’t be arsed to get the basics right, such as the provincial responsibilities. It was straight-up stenography from both The Canadian Press and CBC, both of whom should know better. (Neither the Star nor the National Post ran this story). So once again, Ford gets his bullshit repeated uncritically, the federal government again gets blamed, and the very real problems that are his responsibility will again go unchallenged. Utterly infuriating.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-21T20:02:03.613Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s attack on Zaporizhzhia early Monday morning killed three and injured at least two others.

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Roundup: New hate crime legislation tabled

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The government tabled new hate crime legislation yesterday, and while I’m not going to delve too deeply into it here because I’m writing something more substantial about it for another outlet, I wanted to make a couple of observations, starting with the complaints of every reporter in the room during the press conference, which was that they didn’t have copies available at the time, nor did they have press releases available, so everyone was essentially flying blind. Part of this is a function of parliamentary privilege—no one can see the bill until it has been tabled in the House of Commons (or it violates the privileges of MPs), and upon first reading it can be ordered printed, which is why there is a delay on seeing the bill. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, and you would think that some of the more senior reporters would know this, but of course not. It was also the fact that they had the press release immediately after it was tabled, but that was in part a function of the clock (the minister had a flight to catch). But the inability to at least furnish press releases was a legitimate complaint, and the minister’s staff (or the department) should have known better.

This being said, much is being made about the fact that certain symbols are being criminalized if used in the context of promoting hate, and some of the reporters in the room just could not wrap their heads around that context. “But what if someone is wearing a t-shirt?” “What if they have Nazi memorabilia in their house?” The minister was not going to engage in hypotheticals, but the fact that there is context to these offences was a little too abstract.

Some of the reactions were expected, such as the concerns that this is going to impact legitimate protest even though the government has tried to make a clear delineation in the language of the bill that intention to intimidate because of hate is the target, and yes, there are specific legal tests about this. Of course, one of the biggest problems is that we already have laws for most of these offences, but police simply don’t enforce them, and that could be the case after this bill passes as well. Or it could wind up that this bill provides more clarity for police and prosecutors than the existing jurisprudence, but that remains to be seen.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims it has taken control over two more village in Donetsk region, while president Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces have inflicted heavy losses on Russians on the frontline counteroffensive near two cities in the same region. Russian jets violated Estonia’s airspace as part of their latest test of NATO resolve.

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Roundup: Danielle Smith’s Notwithstanding hypocrisy

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Danielle Smith is planning to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to protect her anti-trans legislation before the courts can weigh in, much as what happened in Saskatchewan. If you’ve been following that case, at the first court injunction, Scott Moe hurriedly not only invoked the Notwithstanding Clause, but also enacted legislation to shield his government from lawsuits for any harm that may come to these youths as a result of his policy—because if that’s not telling on himself, I’m not sure what else is.

But it gets better. Danielle Smith is also self-righteously opposing the federal government’s factum to the Supreme Court of Canada on the upcoming challenge to Quebec’s Law 21, saying that provinces have a right to use this clause, but then says she disagrees with Quebec’s use of it, but they should have the right. So, she disagrees with using it to attack religious minorities, but she’s totally justified in using it to attack trans or gender-diverse youth? The absolute hypocritical audacity. She’s also built an entire false discourse that the federal factum is going to cause a national unity or constitutional crisis, which mischaracterises what the federal factums says. The federal government position is that the courts can weigh in on whether the law the Clause is protecting violates rights or not. A declaration of no force or effect. But she doesn’t want them to do that, because they would expose her for attacking the rights of vulnerable youth, and that makes her look bad. The poor dear.

Meanwhile, the meltdowns over the federal factum continue, with the Bloc insisting that this is an attack on Quebec’s ability to legislate for itself (it’s not), and conservatives all over insisting that this is going to tear the country apart, and that the Supreme Court needs to be removed if they impose limits, and so on. Not one of them has read the factum, of course, but they’re treating this like political Armageddon, because that’s never backfired before. I’m not sure the minister is helping by soft-pedalling the message of the federal position, especially since pretty much every media outlet is getting the very basics of this factum wrong. But of course, he would be explaining, and “when you’re explaining, you’re losing,” so they never explain, and things continue to slide downhill at an alarming rate.

Ukraine Dispatch

Fragments of a drone attack over Kyiv have damaged the city’s trolley bus network. President Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces are pushing Russians back in a counteroffensive along the eastern front. Ukrainian drones have hit Russia’s Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil processing and petrochemical complex, one of the largest in the country. Russia has turned over the bodies of over 1000 Ukrainian soldiers. Ukrainian forces are training their Polish counterparts on more effective ways to counter Russian drones following the incursion.

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Roundup: Asking for declaratory powers, not limits

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There is a bunch of confusion and/or bad faith arguing going on around just what the federal government said in their factum to the upcoming Supreme Court of Canada hearing on the challenge of Quebec’s Law 21, which they claim is “state secularism” but is really just wholesale discrimination and racism. The reporting hasn’t been great—in fact, the National Post’s is downright misleading—because they keep describing this like it’s a reference question to the Court, which it isn’t, but rather, the argument that they’re putting forward during the existing challenge, and something that they feel the Court should address (which is how factums tend to work).

What their argument consists of is that the Court should be able to declare when a law that is protected by the Notwithstanding Clause is actually unconstitutional. They can’t strike it down, but they can weigh in and say “Yeah, this contravenes Charter rights.” They also want the Courts to be able to do this when something has been ongoing in its use of the Clause (which only lasts for five years before it needs to be renewed in legislation), and to rule on whether it may result in the “irreparable impairment” of rights, because they argue that repeated use of the Clause amounts to “indirectly amending the Constitution.” This is also not coming out of nowhere—the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal just recently ruled that they have this right when it comes to the challenge around the province’s attack on trans youth, saying that invoking the Clause should not be the last word.

Why is this important? Because the point of the five-year time-limit on the Clause is that it allows that government to be voted out before it can be renewed. Having the courts weigh in and say “Yeah, this is discrimination,” even if they can’t strike down the law, is powerful information for voters to have. And it’s absolutely democratic. But you have conservative thinkers who are trying to say that this will cause a “constitutional crisis,” or a national unity crisis if it offends Quebec or Alberta, is frankly absurd. It’s trying to give cover for attacks on minority rights and abuse of the Clause, and they should be honest about those intentions rather than trying to sow confusion and undermining the Court.

Ukraine Dispatch

An overnight Russian attack on the Kirovohrad region has partially cut power and disrupted railway operations. A top Russian commander claims they are advancing on all fronts, in contravention to Ukrainian reports. Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies say they need more resources to crack down on the “shadow economy.”

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Roundup: Freeland out—for good this time

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It was nine months to the day since Chrystia Freeland first resigned from Cabinet, previously under Justin Trudeau, when he told her that he planned to replace her as finance minister with Mark Carney, but would she mind first delivering the fall economic update that had a bigger-than-promised deficit number in it? Carney had not said yes to the position at the time, and things went downhill from there. This time, Freeland says she’s leaving to take up new opportunities—in this case, a position of special envoy related to the reconstruction of Ukraine. Her roles got split up, as the transport portfolio was given to Steve MacKinnon, and the internal trade to Dominic LeBlanc.

https://twitter.com/cafreeland/status/1967994021227401685

I do think that this move solidifies a few narratives that have been floating around, one of which is that Carney is consolidating loyalists. Freeland supporters were pretty much entirely frozen out of Cabinet and other senior roles, and Freeland herself was made a minister as a gesture of unity in the party, but six months later, she’s out. That’s fairly problematic on its face. As well, it’s one more woman out of a senior role, and one who had influence behind the scenes, which again consolidates the bro atmosphere in the PMO, which is not good, and will cause plenty of problems going forward as the blind spots start to grow. For the moment, Freeland is keeping her seat, but will eventually resign it once she has consulted with her riding association and so on. With rumours that Carney plans to offer diplomatic posts to at least two other former ministers, he could be looking to free up a handful of fairly safe seats that he can put more friends or loyalists into (like he did with Evan Solomon).

Alberta carbon price

Danielle Smith is making changes to her province’s industrial carbon price, exempting companies from paying it if they invest in their own emissions reduction projects. You know, which the carbon price incentivised them to do so that they didn’t have to pay as much, because that’s the whole gods damned point of carbon pricing. Absolutely unbelievable stupidity on display here.

About that ovation

There has been a lot of talk about how the House of Commons gave a standing ovation about Charlie Kirk on Monday. That’s not exactly true, and has been torqued by people who may or may not be acting in good faith. The ovation had more to do with standing against political violence rather than Kirk himself. That said, of course it was Rachael Thomas who got up to praise a fascist like Kirk, because this is who Thomas is. She has been marinating in the fever swamps of the American far-right discourse for years, and imports it into Canadian politics all the time, including the very careful creation of an alternate dystopian reality where Justin Trudeau is a “dictator,” and the Liberals are busy censoring tweets on the Internet and are generally being authoritarians, in all defiance of the logic and reality. Thomas absolutely deserves to be called out for venerating a fascist, but I think everyone needs to calm down about the applause that happened afterward because it’s pretty clear the context was about the broader message.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-16T21:22:02.480Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy is calling for a combined European air defence system given that Russia’s attacks are now extending beyond just Ukraine. Here is a look at the struggle for Ukrainian authorities to identify their war dead.

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Roundup: No First Ladies in Canada, so stop asking

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Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, I’m going to sigh and rub the bridge of my nose, and maybe massage my temples a few times of this particular doozy of a piece in The Walrus about Mark Carney’s wife, Diana Fox Carney. The subhed refers to her as the “unofficial First Lady,” but in the story itself, it just refers to her as a “First Lady” along with other spouses of heads of state or heads of government interchangeably, and I just can’t you guys.

Guys. Stop it.Canada's "First Lady" is Queen Camilla. Stop trying to import Americanisms, even if you try and couch them in "unofficial" status.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-15T11:44:05.416Z

First of all, it matters that we’re a constitutional monarchy and not a presidential republic. That means that our “First Lady,” if we were to have one, would be Queen Camilla. If you were discounting the Canadian monarch, the next candidate would be the spouse of the Governor General (who once upon a time was called the “Chatelaine/Chatelain of Rideau Hall” as an unofficial title). Yes, this matters, in particular because the difference between a head of state and a head of government matters a great deal, particularly when it comes to the kind of role they play within government, and just because the American system fuses the two together, that’s pretty much unique in the world, and is a far cry from how our Westminster system operates. And right at nearly the very bottom of the piece, she writes:

In this way, being a first lady in Canada is fundamentally different from being one in the US, where the position, while unofficial, comes with an office and staff. In Canada, the prime minister’s spouse has no formal role or institutional support, and technically isn’t even the partner of a head of state. As a result, the title “first lady” doesn’t really apply in the same way.

No kidding! In fact, it undermines the whole gods damned point of your story. You just tried to compare apples and hedgehogs, tried to mash two fundamentally different concepts together, and then was like “Oh well, maybe she’ll get more active at some point!” No! We don’t elect spouses, and they don’t have a role for a reason. If she wants to have a role, she should seek a seat. (This especially goes for Poilievre’s wife, by the way). But trying to jam the spouse of a prime minister into the “First Lady” box is both fundamentally wrong, and a sign of really lazy conceptualizing of how our system of government works. The Walrus should absolutely know better.

Speaking of terrible reporting, the Globe and Mail put out a story yesterday that had the headline that “Liberal staffers strategized over $1-billion loan for Chinese ferries while Freeland dismissed federal connection,” which sounds like they were maybe somehow involved in the loan or procurement while claiming otherwise. But no. The story was about how comms staffers in ministers’ offices were trying to spin the story. That’s it. I saw lots of reactions on social media from people who read the headline and assumed that something hinky was going on that should be looked into by parliamentarians, but no. It’s about comms staffers spinning. Can we just not? This was not a story, and it especially was not a story about some kind of cover-up.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-14T20:02:07.093Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched a massive attack against Zaporizhzhia, killing at least one and injuring at least seven so far. International monitors say that cluster munitions have resulted in over 1200 civilian casualties since the Russian invasion began in 2022.

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