Tag Archives: Ukraine

Roundup: Pipeline necromancy in the discussions

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With the prime minister back in Canada, a couple of additional things were made known about the meeting with Trump, and one of them was the fact that the “energy” portion of their conversation involved Mark Carney floating the possibility of reviving the Keystone XL pipeline. For those of you unaware, this is entirely an American decision—all of the infrastructure on the Canadian side of the border is pretty much in place, and this project was never in contention. The Trudeau government supported it, but the resistance was on the American side of the border, not only from environmental concerns, but also because there were conspiracy theories developing in places like Nebraska that this was a secret ploy to drain their aquifers. No, seriously. Nevertheless, this is something that the proponent abandoned after Biden rescinded the permits (even though part of the network was built and renamed), so it would need someone to pick it up again.

Meanwhile, US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick spoke virtually at a Eurasia Group event in Toronto, and said that there will be no tariff-free auto deal with Canada, that the most we can hope for is a relationship around auto parts, and that Canada needs to get used to coming in second place to the US. Lutnick also expressed a desire to replace the New NAFTA with bilateral deals rather than a trilateral agreement with Mexico. When Carney later addressed the same event virtually, he said that the government will come to some bilateral agreements with the US, and spoke of “granular discussions” around steel and aluminium tariffs, but didn’t address these comments, just as he didn’t address the reports of Lutnick’s remarks during QP.

It’s hard to know what to make of any of this. After insisting that there was a “rupture” in our trade relationship, this is yet one more proposal to deepen integration and reliance on the American market…but it’s also probably the most viable pipeline for Alberta (though there are proposals to optimise the capacity of the Trans Mountain Expansion that would increase its maximum capacity for west coast exports—not that it’s anywhere near capacity at the moment). On the other hand, if they want to pay for our oil, and also pay their own tariffs to do so, then why not take their money? None of this is going to stop Danielle Smith or the Conservatives from demanding that Carney rip up all of the government’s environmental legislation so that they can crank up production with no consequences (even though there are absolutely environmental consequences that are getting more and more expensive each year), and this isn’t going to create that many jobs in the sector, even if production is increased, given that they are increasingly relying on automation and have been since the last price crash in 2014. But everything is stupid all the time, so this is no exception.

effinbirds.com/post/7804636…

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-08T13:25:07.008Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy says that Ukrainian forces are inflicting heavy losses on the Russians in a counter-offensive in the Donetsk region.

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Roundup: Empty-handed at the White House

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After all of the build-up, the managed expectations, and all of the blustery accusations in Ottawa that prime minister Mark Carney is an inept negotiator, he came away from his “working lunch” at the White House with pretty much nothing. Carney gave Trump his usual quasi-flattering/quasi-shady “transformational president” line (because once Carney has a line he likes, he sticks with it), and he laughed off another annexation “joke” from Trump, and Trump rambled some nonsense about competing in the same ecosystem for cars, but that was about it.

Carney later on had dinner with couch-fucker vice president JD Vance, while Dominic LeBlanc was sent out to deal with the press, and said pretty much nothing other than the fact that they’re going to negotiate further and hoping for some “quick deals” on a few specific issues, which we’ve heard so many times now, and capitulated on so many particular issues that it just feels all the more meaningless. And it is meaningless, because everyone knows that there is no deal to be had because Trump will not live up to any “agreement” he signs. So naturally, the auto sector is concerned that they’re going to be thrown under the bus because Trump refuses to give up the notion that Canada stole auto production from the US, in spite of facts and evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, we’re in for another round of QP where the Conservatives denounce Carney as the incompetent negotiator when Trump is not a rational actor who can be negotiated with, because why unite against a common enemy when you could be scoring Internet points?

There wasn’t much in the way of pundit reaction so far, but Shannon Proudfoot points out that Keir Starmer figured out the key to flattering Trump before everyone else did, and how it reflected in Carney’s meeting. Althia Raj correctly calls this a cringe-worthy performance on both sides, which accomplished nothing.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-07T14:08:04.476Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Putin claims that Russia has seized 5000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory this year, and that they retain the strategic initiative; Ukraine says they have failed to seize any major settlements and that their initiative is stalled.

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Roundup: Managing the expectations from Washington

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Monday was a weird day of expectations management as prime minister Mark Carney headed to Washington for a “working lunch” with Trump to happen today. There were murmurs from Senior Government Sources™ that there could be some kind of relief for some—but not all—of the steel and aluminium tariffs, but those were heavily caveated and is not going to be any kind of comprehensive tariff deal, because Trump loves his tariffs. (And there is no deal to be had). Oh, and while all of this expectations management was going on, Trump declared new 25 percent tariffs on medium and heavy-duty trucks. Because of course.

Amidst this, Pierre Poilievre released a peevish open-letter to Carney that demanded “no more losing” when it comes to dealing with Trump, and a list of things he wants “wins” on, whether it’s tariffs or softwood lumber, or what have you. Because remember, under this framing, Trump is the rational actor and Carney is the one who is the inept negotiator who simply can’t get anything done. Reality of course, is entirely the opposite, that you can’t really negotiate with Trump because he has no logical basis or consistency for his “deals,” and anything he agrees to isn’t worth the paper its written on (if it’s even written down, as some “deals” were nothing more than blank pages with a signature on it).

To that end, Andrew Scheer went on Power & Politics looking to pick a fight with David Cochrane about this, and when Cochrane pointed out that yes indeed, Trump’s tariffs are both affecting our economy and we still do have the best deal of anyone with Trump, that Scheer twisted this into “agreeing” that Carney’s ineptitude has cratered the economy and soured any deal with Trump, because Scheer is a liar and a braying doofus. But this is what everyone has to deal with when it comes to the level of rhetoric and sheer sophistry coming from the Conservatives these days, which is not exactly conducive to informed debate.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-06T22:08:02.378Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine’s forces say that Russian sabotage groups are active in the city of Pokrovsk, which Russians have been trying to capture for months. Ukraine’s long-range drones have struck a Russian ammunition plant, a key oil terminal, and an important weapons depot.

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Roundup: Telling on themselves about bail

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After Question Period today, there will be a vote on the Conservatives’ latest Supply Day motion, which is for the House of Commons to pass their blatantly unconstitutional “jail not bail” bill at all stages. This is going to be an increasingly common tactic as they have loaded up the Order Paper with a number of these kinds of private members’ bills, and they are using the rhetoric that the government is somehow “obstructing” their legislation, even though most of those bills would ordinarily never see the light of day because there is a lottery system for private members’ legislation to come up for debate, with no guarantee of passage in either chamber (because the Senate can and will sit on private members’ bills long enough for them to die on the Order Paper if they’re particularly egregious). But most people don’t understand the legislative process, or that opposition MPs can’t just bring stuff up for debate at any point in time, so this is just more rage-baiting over through use of scary crime stories to make the point about how the Liberals are “soft on crime,” and so on. It would be great if legacy media could call out this bullshit, but they won’t.

At the same time, the Conservatives calling it “Liberal bail” is telling on themselves. The law of bail stems from the pre-Charter right to the presumption of innocence, which is a cornerstone of our entire legal system. The specific law of bail has been honed through decades of Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence, and the last time the Liberal government made any major bail reform legislation, it was to codify that Supreme Court jurisprudence, and to actually increase the onus for cases of domestic violence. None of this made things easier for bail, but the Conservatives haven’t stopped demanding that legislation be repealed (and only once in a while will a Liberal minister or parliamentary secretary actually call that out). This is about undermining important Charter rights, but do the Conservatives care? Of course not. They want to look tough and decisive, no matter who gets hurt in the process.

Meanwhile, much to my surprise, Poilievre says he won’t support the (really bad) omnibus border bill, C-2, so long as it contains privacy-violating sections like enhanced lawful access, which is a surprise, because the Conservatives have been champions of it for years (much as the Liberals used to be opposed to it). So, the world really is upside down now. Unless this is some kind of tactic or ploy, which I also would not be surprised by, but at the moment it looks like they’re on a “the Liberals are the real threats to your freedom” kick, which to be fair, this legislation is not helping the Liberals’ case.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia launched their largest aerial assault against Lviv and surrounding regions early Sunday, killing at least five. Earlier in the weekend, Russia attacked a passenger train at a station in Sumy, killing one and injuring approximately thirty others.

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Roundup: An eight-day sitting?

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I don’t follow provincial legislatures too much, but this headline caught my eye—that the Nova Scotia legislature had just wrapped up an eight-day sitting, which absolutely rankles me as someone who cares (perhaps a little too) deeply about parliamentary democracy. While on the one hand, it’s not uncommon for provincial legislatures to have shorter sessions that we see in Ottawa, and for them not to have the same kind of fixed schedule that we do, eight days is frankly insulting.

What is perhaps even worse from this story is the fact that the Houston government rammed through a bunch of omnibus legislation, when clearly, they had the time and the ability to actually debate legislation on their own. Even more problematic is the fact that these omnibus bills included poison pills to try and trap the opposition parties into supporting disparate things. The one example was protections for renters, which the NDP supported, being in the same bill that imposed heavy fines or jail time on protesters on Crown land, effectively criminalising certain kinds of dissent, which they could not support (especially as these protests involve protests on logging roads). I’m sure Tim Houston thought that this was clever, when it’s just abusive. This is not how the parliamentary process is supposed to work. This is certainly a problem in most Westminster legislatures, and there are now mechanisms in the federal Parliament that can break apart omnibus bills in certain circumstances, and perhaps the province needs to adopt some of these measures on their own because that should be out of bounds.

Part of what irritates me about this is that Houston is doing this while he’s trying to sell himself to Canadians as this reasonable, progressive conservative who’s not tied to the federal party, and that he’s this kind of anti-Poilievre figure. I’ve certainly heard from people who used to sit in that legislature that he has a reputation for bullying, but even beyond that, these kinds of tactics demonstrate a kind of contempt for elected office, and for elected officials to be doing their jobs, which includes scrutinizing legislation properly, and holding government to account. A rushed eight-day sitting where you ram through omnibus bills is clearly not how a legislature is supposed to operate, and the people in the province should be raising a bigger racket about this—especially in Nova Scotia, which was where Responsible Government was first achieved in the colonies.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia targeted Ukraine’s natural gas facilities in an early morning attack on Friday, with much of the targets to being facilities in Kharkiv. A Russian drone also killed a French photojournalist on the front lines in Eastern Ukraine.

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Roundup: Streamlining defence procurement?

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The government announced the creation of a new agency yesterday morning—the Defence Investment Agency, which has a dual purpose of streamlining defence procurement contracts by putting them into a single office to avoid duplicating approvals, but to also encourage domestic defence industrial capacity in order to ensure there is more domestic production rather than just being able to buy new kit faster. Part of this will involve working more closely with allies in the UK, Australia and France, among others, in order to shift more procurement dollars away from the Americans.

Some of this may be easier said than done, because they are folding in the same risk-averse bureaucrats into this agency, which means that they will still need to encourage culture change around these processes, and that could be a problem because many of those existing bureaucrats will have scars from botched procurements in the past, where things went awry because of haste, sole-sourcing, or other political machinations that were intended to maximise Canadian industrial benefits and turned into boondoggles. The general instinct in Canadian bureaucracy is that after every scandal, they put in all kinds of new rules and reporting structures to prevent it from happening again, but those new rules and structures keep piling on without any proper rationalization, and soon you have your civil servants spending all of their time doing compliance checks rather than their jobs, but funnily enough, this never seems to get the attention it deserves when we talk about reforming the civil service or when finding places where cuts can be made. And I fully expect that there is going to be an early scandal or two in this procurement body that will shape the future of how it operates.

Meanwhile, Carney hand-picked its CEO, and wouldn’t you know it, he slotted in a banker friend from Goldman Sachs and RBC to head it up. I’m sure that there will be plenty of justification about how this is supposed to get past the culture of risk-aversion or something, but I find there is a whiff of cronyism that is likely to get worse the closer we get to the eventual byelections for all of those soon-to-be retiring former Cabinet ministers that Carney is finding new diplomatic posts for. Things are getting awfully clubby in Carney’s bro-culture PMO, and this looks like a signal that there’s more of this to come.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-10-02T14:05:15.840Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine has brought home 185 service personnel and twenty civilians in the latest prisoner swap. President Zelenskyy is currently in Copenhagen to meet with European leaders.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1973658861148979359

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Roundup: Forcing a pipeline project

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Believing herself clever, Alberta premier Danielle Smith is trying to lay a trap for prime minister Mark Carney, but it’s a really obvious trap and Admiral Ackbar can see it from a mile off. Because she is apparently now a socialist, Smith has decided that the provincial government will take the lead on proposing a pipeline to the northern coast of BC, with the “advice” of three pipeline companies, but none of them will actually be the proponent as this goes to the Major Projects Office. Smith claims that she is trying to get around the “chicken and egg” problem of not having any interested proponents in such a pipeline, and hopes that she can get it off the ground so that a private company will take it over, but remember that it’s not 2014, and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of market demand. (Oh, and she wants to use digital asbestos to help map the route, which is even more hilariously sad).

This is very much a dare to everyone to oppose her. BC premier David Eby has called this out as a stunt because it’s not a real project, with no real proponent, and no buyers lining up for any of the product. The Indigenous rights and title-holders in the area are not interested in the project, and are opposed to a bitumen pipeline going through their territory and off their coast, because this would also require lifting the tanker ban because Smith wants to ship bitumen through it, which is a “persistent” product unlike LNG. Carney has previously said that if the province and First Nations are opposed to the project, it won’t go ahead, but he has also given himself the power to override pretty much any objection, or the tanker ban, or any of it, if he really wants to. But a refusal is largely what Smith is counting on, so that she can once again play the victim, and blame the federal government for a lack of market interest.

In a sense, the province wasting millions of dollars on this for the sake of grievance theatre is not new. Jason Kenney sunk $1.3 billion into the dead Keystone XL project in an attempt to revive American interest in it, even going so far as to proposed to fund its construction if the proponent wouldn’t to try and challenge the Biden veto. This feels like more of the same, where she is sinking money she doesn’t have into a losing prospect in an empty gesture in order to secure her political future by playacting as the great defender of Alberta and its ossifying industry. But there are going to be epic tantrums, and she’s going to try and use the threat of separatism to try and get her way (because she thinks it worked for Quebec and doesn’t understand how much it devastated the economy in that province), and we’ll see if Carney is actually prepared to handle it, because so far, he’s telling a lot of people what they want to hear, and those messages are starting to collide.

Ukraine Dispatch

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is now going the longest it’s been without external power for cooling reactors, increasing concern. This after Russia also attacked the area near Chornobyl, which also briefly cut its external power supply.

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Roundup: Lost jobs and falsely attributed blame

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The news out of Calgary yesterday was that Imperial Oil plans to reduce their workforce by about 20 percent—some 900 jobs, mostly out of Calgary—by the end of 2027, in order to realise “substantial efficiency and effectiveness benefits.” The kicker, however, is that they’re not planning to cut production, or reduce their footprint, or anything like that­—they are, in fact, making themselves more productive, and that means cutting staff.

Anyone who has paid the slightest attention to the oil and gas sector knows that they have been automating and cutting their workforce for years, which is why I have always thought it foolish to count on them to create jobs.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-30T15:30:28.106Z

Of course, people like Danielle Smith have managed to blame the federal Liberals for those losses than the industry, which doesn't help those angry Albertans whose promise of giant paycheques in oil jobs forever won't be realized, but boy have they stoked federal tensions.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-30T15:30:28.107Z

Right on cue:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-30T15:41:47.811Z

The thing to remember here, however, is that it doesn’t matter what is actually happening, or that this has been happening in the industry since the price crash in 2014, but that everyone is going to blame the federal Liberals for these job losses. And you can bet that that blame was happening over social media, entirely falsely, because if they had planned to cut production or their footprint, then maybe you could blame it on the emissions cap, or whatnot. But that’s not what’s happening. The problem becomes what to do about the hopes and dreams of all of those straight white guys with high school diplomas who were counting on being able to make a large six-figure salary doing minimal work in the oil sands, but that dream is fast escaping because the industry has changed. But because they are angry that said dream is slipping away, they are looking for someone to blame, and they don’t want to blame the industry for increasing its productivity, so they will try and pin this on the Liberals. Because of course they will.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1961437440595693741

The thing about oilsands companies is that over the past decade they have focused on cutting as many jobs as possible in the name of efficiency while paying as little as possible for the pollution they cause.

— Catherine McKenna (@cathmckenna.bsky.social) 2025-09-30T23:53:16.532Z

Of course, the federal government is expressing their concern about this, because they decided to put a whole lot of eggs in this basket in spite of the fact that it’s not 2014, and it won’t be 2014 again, and that no matter how much they gut the country’s environmental regulations by stealth, it won’t make the oil and gas sector come back, or make it the economic driver that it used to be. But I’m not sure that most of them are capable of grasping this fact, and that’s a problem, because we do need an economic transformation and that shouldn’t mean doubling down on the fossil fuel industry.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided aerial bomb attack hit Kharkiv overnight, injuring at least six. This after a daytime attack on Dnipro that killed one and injured at least twenty, and a previous overnight attack on a village in Sumy region that killed four. Ukraine has sent a mission to Denmark to train European militaries on how to combat drones. Princess Anne made a secret visit to Ukraine in support of children affected by the war. (Still the best royal).

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Roundup: Another politicized terror listing

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The federal government has listed the Bishnoi gang, which largely operates out of India, as a terrorist entity, saying that they engage in “murder, shootings and arson, and generates terror through extortion and intimidation.” The Conservatives blame them for the rash of extortion crimes, primarily in the lower mainland in BC, and the BC premier has called for this designation. The problem? Not only are we conflating criminal organisations with terrorism, which gets messy on a number of fronts, but this is another example of process that should be apolitical and technocratic being politicised, and we are now getting into territory where groups are being listed after a vote in the House of Commons, which is Very Bad.

Here’s Jessica Davis on why this is a problem.

Back in the day, when I worked on listings, they were a largely technocratic process. I won't say there was a solid methodology for choosing which groups would get listed, but it was a bureaucratic one, with departments and agencies contributing.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.828Z

Increasingly, we've seen groups listed after votes in the House of Commons, or campaigns to have them listed, or at the behest of our (sometimes) allies like the US.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.829Z

The listings process itself isn't particularly rigorous. A single incident can result in a group getting listed. And there is no real mechanism for challenging listings. (Yes: processes exist. In practice, it would require getting a lawyer to argue the case of a terrorist entity, likely pro bono).

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.830Z

We are overdue for listings reform. We're trying to do far too much with it. Why not create a separate criminal listings regime? Having everything lumped together as terrorist dilutes the analytic power that comes from sensical categorization, and limits our ability to identify finance mechanisms.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.831Z

Increasingly, some of our listings are also not lawful. Look at the listing for the IRGC QF, and more recently the IRGC. There's a clear carve-out that should prevent the listings of state militaries. But we don't seem to care about the lawfulness of this process anymore.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.832Z

Overall, this process is increasingly meaningless: governments press the listings button (not unlike sanctions) and then do very little to actually counter terrorism or tackle hard problems like RCMP reform that could actually result in real improvements in Canadian safety and security.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.833Z

The only way a government will be incentivized to change is to have this process challenged in court, which could actually be both really bad for Canada (undermine a huge part of our sanctions regime and throw our CTF system into turmoil), but could strengthen rule of law in Canada longer term.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.834Z

Or, you know, the Carney government could just do the right thing and fix the system itself and toughen the process so it can't be politicized. Honestly, we're a stone's throw away from listing ANTIFA as a terrorist entity if the US asks. I'm sure it's fine.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.835Z

The added issue here is that the RCMP already don’t have enough resources or capacity to enforce existing terrorist designations, let along the mounting sanctions, so these declarations are rapidly becoming symbolic, and that’s a very bad thing. This is one more reason why we need wholesale reform of the RCMP and most especially its federal policing responsibilities (and by wholesale reform, I generally mean disband it and stand up a new federal policing agency), but ultimately, this situation is just exacerbated by these political listings, which are about to even more problematic the more the Trump administration starts making demands, like they did with Mexican cartels.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims that they have taken control of two villages in the Donetsk region, as Ukraine is pushing back on other fronts in the same region. The nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia has been without external power needed to cool its reactors for six days. Neighbouring Moldova saw the pro-EU party win the election in spite of a spate of Russian interference.

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Roundup: The supposed fiscal precipice

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My sinking feeling about the interim Parliamentary Budget Officer continues to plummet, not only in response to last week’s committee appearance where he not only used a bunch of over-the-top adjectives to describe his read of the fiscal situation, but also telegraphed that he has taken all of the wrong lessons from his predecessor and that he intends to make himself a media darling, in defiance of what his role is actually supposed to be according to his legislated mandate:

“If the government wants to go 12 months without producing a budget, as a citizen I would feel a little bit uncomfortable. But as somebody who works in the Parliamentary Budget Office, I’d say, ‘That’s great for us. Because we will occupy all the space that they decide to give up.’”

He was back on TV this weekend, and saying a bunch of alarmist things about how we’re on a “precipice” and so on, which…is not what his office was saying just a few months ago. If anything, this is the kind of alarmism that we’re used to hearing from the “it’s 1995 and will always be 1995” crowd, where any budget deficits are treated as some kind of national catastrophe, and that we’re sitting on a “debt bomb,” but we’re not. People are actively forgetting the measures taken to save the economy during the height of COVID, pretending that it didn’t happen, and now they’re downplaying just what exactly the effect that Trump’s tariffs are having on the economy—or the fact that we have managed to avoid a recession so far (not that it has stopped Poilievre from insisting that our economy is “collapsing.”)

Meanwhile, we’re once again getting the litany of demands from business groups about the budget, and they’re entirely of the “cut taxes and deregulate” variety, because nobody has learned a single lesson about how trickle-down doesn’t work, and that the scars from the last round of government austerity have not healed. And from the looks of it, this PBO is not only trying to become a media darling, but he’s basically rooting his analysis/opinion in these very same frameworks, which I suspect is going to really start to skew just what his analysis is and what it’s saying, which is going to do a real disservice to the job that he’s supposed to be doing.

Ukraine Dispatch

There was another major attack on Kyiv early morning Sunday, with 595 drones and 48 missiles, which killed four people, including a child.

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