With the Cabinet meeting in Winnipeg, Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland took an opportunity to meet with premier Brian Pallister yesterday, and boy howdy, was his tone in interviews afterward a hugely problematic mess. Pallister kept insisting that the province wasn’t getting the “respect” they deserved for their environmental plans, while ignoring the legitimate concerns that the federal government has – to the point where he was deliberately obscuring the actual issues at play.

One of the main issues in contention is the federal carbon price, which Pallister has famously waffled on (to the point where Paul Wells has referred to him as “Canada’s tallest weather vane”) – first he was going to implement one, then got huffy and stopped the plans because he didn’t want to increase it every year as is the plan, and because he saw momentum with other conservative premiers in challenging it in the courts. With those challenges coming down squarely in the federal government’s favour, Pallister is again floating the idea of implementing it, but doesn’t want it to increase, saying that a low price will let them meet their Paris targets. The problem, of course, is that there needs to be a common carbon price across the country so that provinces don’t undercut one another, which Pallister (and others) continue to ignore, as though the fact is a triviality when it’s the crux of the whole issue. All the while, Pallister is swearing up and down that he’s not asking for a special deal, when he is in fact demanding just that. I’m not sure how else you would describe being exempted from increasing the carbon price in line with the rest of the country as anything other than a special deal.

Add to that, Pallister is demanding a cookie for past emissions reductions when there is a hell of a long way for the country to go to meet our current targets. Ontario is trying this tactic as well, when the Ford government has completely derailed the province’s planned reductions, and insisting that you’ve already done your bit just puts even more pressure on Alberta and Saskatchewan, which I’m not sure Kenney and Moe would appreciate terribly. Pallister was also on TV grousing that he’s not getting credit for exporting cleaner electricity to Saskatchewan and the United States, which is funny because the reward for that is money, which presumably they are earning for doing so. Suffice to say, all of Pallister’s excuses are amounting to a pile of bullshit, and it would be great if our media brethren could do better at calling him out on it.

Good reads:

• Surprising no one, the Cabinet plans to prioritize the New NAFTA when the Commons returns next week.
• The Canadian Forces are warning that all of the work doing disaster relief is cutting into their training programs, which could have long-term repercussions.
• There is still uncertainty on the PS752 black boxes in Iran, and it has been confirmed Iran won’t recognize any dual-citizenships for Canadians on the flight.
• The Infrastructure Bank is losing a second senior executive within its first year as a result of “organizational changes.”
• Nearly a quarter of the federally owned or leased buildings in the National Capital Region are listed as being in poor or critical condition.
• The government is rolling out a five-year, multimillion dollar “buy Canadian” marketing campaign for produce and food products.
• Meng Wanzhou’s extradition hearing has begun, and her lawyers are arguing the fraud charges are a “façade” for the Americans.
• The special Commons committee on Canada-China relations met yesterday to hammer out details, and to declare they want to hear from the new ambassador.
• Oil and gas companies continue to not pay property taxes to municipalities in Alberta, and the courts consider those municipalities unsecured creditors.
• Matt Gurney urges us to heed the warning of the Canadian Forces on dulling their capabilities, because our current peaceable state may not last forever.
• Colby Cosh boggles at the opacity – and sheer incomprehensibility – of the US Primaries.

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