CTV had a two-part look at the government’s record yesterday, both in terms of what they accomplished that changed Canada, and what they did not accomplish as promised. The accomplished list is not quite as interesting – gender balance, more refugee resettlement, restoring the long-form census, legalising cannabis – I’m not sure their “reforms” to the Senate are as much of an accomplishment as people may think given the broader unintended consequences.

The other list, however, strikes me as requiring a bit more nuance than was really offered in some cases. For example, not balancing the budget was in part because there was an oil crash at the beginning of their mandate that affected their figures, and it wasn’t really balanced when the Conservatives lost power (particularly given that they booked a bunch of fictitious savings for things like the Phoenix pay system and Shared Services Canada, which the Liberals had to clean up). That said, they did increase spending once revenues increased, so it is a bit more complex than the piece offered. Electoral reform? It wasn’t one of their biggest campaign promises, but one of a myriad that was simply overblown in many instances, but that aside, it again doesn’t quite capture that the attempt to explore consequences resulted in a hot garbage report that was unworkable at best, and was based on a stupid promise that evidence showed was not feasible (leaving aside that the Liberals stupidly didn’t bother to promote their own preferred system until it was too late). The Indigenous file is still rocky? If anyone thinks that centuries of colonisation can be reversed in four years, well, that’s fantasyland, but it’s not as though there hasn’t been significant progress. The final, more nebulous point about scandals and “doing politics differently” is one of those unicorn promises that lets people’s imaginations run wild. For the most part, he did things differently than Stephen Harper did, but it wasn’t different enough or utopian enough for some people, and it qualifies as a failure, which I’m not sure is fair to anyone.

Speaking of stupid promises, the Ontario government is having to walk back on their promise to end “hallway medicine” in twelve months, and yeah, that’s not going to happen and it’s hey, it’s a complex and intractable problem that not even shovelling money at the problem is likely to solve. But it’s not like people believed anything Ford promised because it was only about their anger at Kathleen Wynne, right? But that’s what you get with populist blowhards – snake oil promises pulled out of their asses with no ability to implement them, but hey, so long as you keep them angry about the other guy/woman, then that’s all that matters, right? And nobody ever seems to learn.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau met with the Secretary General of NATO, who again urged higher levels of defence spending (but part of the problem is getting money out the door).
• Trudeau also made a very diplomatic response when asked about Donald Trump’s latest racist comments (because he still has to deal with Trump).
• Donald Trump signed an executive order to up the Buy America content provisions, and once again, Canada is disadvantaged by protectionism.
• Word has it that the government will hold off on any decisions about Huawei until after the election.
• The Commons public safety committee met to discuss the Desjardins hack, but the chair notes that the laws as they currently stand can do little to prevent these hacks.
• While some people have been demanding new SINs after the Desjardins breach, the deputy minister of ESDC says that won’t fix any problems.
• Many of the Air Passenger Bill of Rights rules went into place yesterday.
• Here’s a look at how policre forces in Canada – particularly the RCMP – have been reluctant to start using body-worn cameras on officers.
• Apparently, there is an audit and possible RCMP investigation into the finances of the Métis National Council.
• A Polytechnique shooting survivor quit the firearms advisory panel out of frustration that the government won’t outright ban assault rifles.
• Members of the Jewish community are taking Elections Canada to court to move the election date back by a week to accommodate a Jewish holiday.
• A Senate report calls for easier access to temporary foreign workers to help the agri-food sector, as well as improvements to transportation networks.
• Anne Kingston enumerates some of the Canadian political connections around the anti-abortion film Unplanned, as well as some of the falsehoods therein.
• Chris Selley makes a salient point about the Liberals using “conversion therapy” as a MacGuffin to trap Scheer (but he conveniently ignores Scheer’s own weasel words).
• Matt Gurney points out that the Liberals are trying to put the focus on Scheer rather than the fact that they will miss their climate targets.
• Andrew Coyne explores the whole fool’s errand of trying to construct a “ballot box question” for an election to be fought around.

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