Roundup: End of round one

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The first round of NAFTA talks has ended without any firm conclusions in one way or another, which is to be expected. It is also noted that they were free from any public drama, but it’s still early days, so we’ll see how long that lasts, especically considering that we’re dealing with an Uncertainty Engine for a president in the United States. While the US is signalling that Buy America is a non-negotiable in NAFTA talks, the PMO has assembled a crack unit to deal with the fallout of a US walkout on talks, seeing as Trump already played his walkout card months ago so it gave them time to prepare.

Meanwhile, trouble with NAFTA talks could mean an economic slowdown, as there have already been some signs of slowdown in the manufacturing sector, and expectations that GDP growth could start to slow for the remainder of the year. That having been said, there’s also talk that if the Trump administration tries to simply tear up NAFTA, there are recourses that Congress has at its disposal that would essentially work to keep the existing agreement up and running by backdoor means, but it’s messy and complicated (and you can see Alex Panetta talking about that starting at 10:51 on this Sunday Scrum segment).

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau took aim at planned “racist rallies” in this country, while also telling would-be asylum seekers that border crossing won’t fast track them in the system.
  • Trudeau later marched in the Montreal Pride parade with Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and other political leaders (but not Andrew Scheer, notably).
  • Varadkar also inspected customs checkpoints on the Canada-US border as part of his visit.
  • Here’s a look at the “twilight status” Haitians (and soon to be others) who are making a move for the Canadian border, hoping for more leniency.
  • Status of Women wants the government to use “social procurement” tools to support women entrepreneurs using their enormous purchasing power.
  • A federal appointee to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation is under scrutiny for some of her writings on Islam.
  • DND is looking at ways to keep our satellites from being shot down or disabled while still respecting the 1967 treaty preventing weaponization of space.
  • The number of international adoptions has dropped dramatically in Canada over the last five years, due to tighter country controls, higher costs, and new fertility tech.
  • Despite some media stories, those “Proud Boys” in the military in Halifax have not be put on paid leave, but were assigned to supervised secondary duties.

Odds and ends:

A Quebec Conservative senator is defending his participation in some far-right Facebook groups with anti-immigrant sentiments.