As the drama over Doug Ford using the Notwithstanding Clause to ram through his petty vengeance on Toronto City Hall drags on, we saw new levels of stupid demands yesterday, as Toronto City Council voted on a motion yesterday to request the federal government use its constitutional disallowance powers on the bill and kill it. But that’s never going to happen. Likewise with people writing the Lieutenant Governor to demand that she not sign the bill. That’s never going to happen. As this piece explains, disallowance is a dead letter because it would create a constitutional crisis over federalism, just like a Lieutenant Governor disallowing a bill from a government that has the confidence of the legislature would also be a constitutional crisis. And Trudeau has stated repeatedly that he’s not going to get involved – sure, his Toronto MPs can write a letter to Queen’s Park to express their concern, but this isn’t his fight, and he knows full well that getting involved would create a shitstorm the likes we haven’t seen in this country in decades. So no, Ontario – you get to lay in the bed you made.

More concerning, however, is the fact that Power & Politics brought on a bunch of former premiers who all gave Ford a pass on using the Notwithstanding Clause, and each of them going after the courts in one way or another – Christy Clark in particular making it sound like she would rather a government run roughshod over the rights of minorities rather than let courts protect them at the expense of project approvals (thinking specifically of Trans Mountain). And most alarming was the fact that there was no pushback against any of this, which you’d think would be important to have. Apparently not.

https://twitter.com/cmathen/status/1040427270945464321

Meanwhile, Supriya Dwivedi writes a stunning takedown of Ford’s many hypocrisies on this issue, and the fact that there is far too much silence over his attack on the fundamental democratic notion of judicial review. As well, the former Executive Legal Officer of the Supreme Court of Canada has some interesting analysis about how Ford’s move could violate international law.

Good reads:

• Surprising no one, Justin Trudeau said he won’t be rushed into signing a bad NAFTA deal just because there’s another deadline.
• Trudeau also held a town hall while in Saskatchewan, and gave a hint of the new messaging around carbon pricing while responding to questions.
• The Department of Justice has started using Deep Learning tools to help research on tax law cases and to develop predictive tools of how they will be adjudicated.
• Here’s a look at the different dispute resolution chapters in NAFTA, and why Mexico and Canada have different red lines.
• Not unsurprisingly, the Liberals are gearing up for a campaign of painting Andrew Scheer as Harper 2.0.
• The NDP caucus retreat ended with assurances they’ll totally fix their fundraising issues, and they plan to campaign as being…Liberals in a hurry.
• Undaunted (for some reason), Erin Weir wants to run for the NDP nomination, and since Singh says that’s not going to happen, Weir may run as an independent.
• It looks like Maxime Bernier has settled on the “People’s Party of Canada” as the title of his vanity project.
• Professor Linda Trimble looks at how the media’s use of gendered terms undermines women political leaders.

Odds and ends:

Here’s a longread about the patchwork of cannabis regulations around the country, which will make for a lot of headaches come October.

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