The surprising news last night was that Andrew Scheer had finally had enough and removed Maxime Bernier from his shadow cabinet, reassigning his critic portfolio to Matt Jeneroux. The ostensible reason that Bernier was booted? That he uploaded that chapter from his cancelled book in which he decries the tyranny of Supply Management. Never mind that the chapter was already floated to the Globe and Mail and was published weeks ago, which led to the outcry that had Bernier pull the book until his political retirement. Scheer said that this constituted Bernier breaking his word to caucus on the book, never mind that it was already in the public domain.

A more plausible explanation? That Scheer was getting a lot of heat about Bernier’s views about Supply Management in the face of Trump’s tweets about dairy tariffs that are part of the system, where the government could point to Bernier being on Scheer’s front bench as proof that the Liberals cared more about Supply Management than the Conservatives did. In fact, the swipes about this got increasingly nasty in QP the last few days, to the point that Luc Berthold got right indignant about it when it was thrown in his face yesterday. Add to that, there’s a by-election coming up in a rural Quebec riding, where this is one of those issues that they care a lot about, and Scheer (who is campaigning there later this week with the former Bloc leader who has renounced separatism and taken out a Conservative membership card) wanted to prove that he’s listening to Quebeckers on Supply Management – even though Bernier himself is a Quebecker. (Note: This is also why the Conservatives rarely ask Supply Management questions in English during QP – this is all about pandering for Quebec votes).

Will be interesting to get Conservative caucus views tomorrow. They were solidly against Bernier for blabbing about his book last time. I suspect they will think he has been treated unfairly now.

— John Ivison (@IvisonJ) June 13, 2018

I do think that this is further proof that there is little room in the current Conservative party for actual free-market conservatives, and that they are working hard to cravenly embrace right-flavoured populism that is divorced from the values that they claim to espouse (as I wrote a year ago when Scheer first won the leadership). My only question now is whether Bernier will be banished to the nosebleeds along with fellow disgraced caucus member Kellie Leitch.

Weren’t they all derided as Liberals and driven out of the party?

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) June 13, 2018

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau is not responding to Donald Trump’s further provocations, while Chrystia Freeland says we have to expect moments of drama.
• In the event you missed it, here is Trump’s latest explanation for his threats against Canada and his promise that Trudeau will “cost Canadians a lot of money.”
• A tie vote in the Senate defeated the attempt to restore random alcohol breath sampling in Bill C-46, which is setting up a showdown with the Commons.
• The government’s $7 billion fund in the Estimates got automatically approved when the committee ran out the clock raising a fuss about it. (Yes, the deemed rule sucks).
• Ralph Goodale made an announcement on next steps in the government’s cybersecurity framework, but many of the details remain vague.
• With the trade dispute with the US now in the offing, the government is trying to get a move on diversifying our trade markets.
• The Clerk of the Privy Council is firing back at the Auditor General, calling some of his report on the Phoenix pay system an “opinion piece.” (He may not be wrong).
• One of the directors of AggregateIQ returned to the Ethics committee and denied that they lied to Parliament in their previous outing.
• DND plans to look for possible contaminated sites where Agent Orange stockpiles were surreptitiously buried.
• It looks like we handed over more artefacts from the Franklin Expedition wrecks to Britain, without agreed-upon compensation, than was initially indicated.
• A motion has been tabled in the Nunavut legislature to remove the premier, which is a novel move in their consensus-based legislature.
• Samara Canada has completed their report on exit interviews from MPs in the last parliament, and they show how top-down and scripted everything became.
• Susan Delacourt conducts a thought experiment about Trudeau calling a snap election to capitalise on the current trade dispute and head off Ford and Kenney.
• In order to maximise American economic pain in a trade war, Amir Attaran suggests expropriating American pharmaceutical patents.
• My column reiterates the point that no, Doug Ford’s election win is not “proof” that there is some crisis for which we need electoral reform.

Odds and ends:

Former Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar says his brain cancer is terminal, and he wants to spend his remaining time on a youth initiative. MPs paid tribute to him yesterday.

Maclean’s has some suggestions if you want to conduct your own personal boycotts of American products.

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