It’s now official – Catherine McKenna is bowing out of federal politics, citing that she wants to spend more time with her kids while she can (the oldest is off to university next year), but insisting that she still wants to do her part to fight climate change in other arenas. This was immediately met with questions about whether this is a signal that it can’t get done in government, which she flat-out denied, but we should remember that the federal government is limited in what it can do, because it only has so many policy levers at its disposal (which we should all realise after living through those limitations in this pandemic).

https://twitter.com/AaronWherry/status/1409621322649440256

McKenna, who also stated flat-out that she’s not going to run for mayor, dismissed the attacks against her as “noise,” and that they weren’t successful because she did the work of getting the carbon price in place, and made more tangible progress on the environment file than we’ve had since the Mulroney era. But we can’t forget that the abuse was real, it was horrific, and she needed police protection because the threats were so bad. This should be one of those moments of reflection about where we are as a society that these kinds of misogynistic are able to keep happening with little to no recourse for the victims, and few consequences if any for the perpetrators. McKenna did note that she does still want to work with social media companies to address this, but we’ll see if anything actually happens.

https://twitter.com/cathmckenna/status/1409522139380785157

Of course, this has entirely been overshadowed by the spectre of Mark Carney entering the political arena, which he categorically should not, because even if he’s been out of the Bank of Canada for seven or eight years, it still has the possibility to taint the institution by association, and him declaring himself to be sympathetic to the Liberal cause is not helping either – especially given that Pierre Poilievre is currently attacking the institutional independence of the Bank by positing that they are somehow in cahoots with the government, and that they are simply “printing money” to finance the government’s deficits which will drive up inflation – entirely ridiculous notions given that quantitative easing is not actually “printing money” and that their whole mandate is to control inflation at around two percent, which they have been very good at. Nevertheless, people are believing Poilievre’s bullshit (especially as other media won’t actually call it out as such), and this will only get worse if Carney actually enters the political arena. And because the media and the pundit class have decided that they like this narrative of Carney being some kind of heir apparent and saviour, they are trying to make it happen, damn the consequences. It’s not a good look, and yet here we are.

Good reads:

• The rollout of the Black Entrepreneurship Loan Fund is being marred by intrusive questions, and a lack of oversight and transparency.
• CSE says that they responded to 2,206 cyber-attacks last year.
• Lt.-General Frances Allen is now officially the vice-chief of defence staff, the first woman to hold the position.
• An investigation has determined that defective autopilot software was largely to blame for the crash of a Canadian Forces Cyclone helicopter last year.
• The RCMP’s new union has reached a tentative collective agreement with Treasury Board, for the first time in the organisation’s history.
• The Catholic order that operated dozens of residential schools says they are seeking outside advice on how to navigate privacy laws in releasing documents.
• A Canadian woman has been released from an ISIS detention camp in Syria with the assistance of an American diplomat, and is the mother of a girl freed earlier.
• Apparently unable to read the room, Erin O’Toole is positioning the Conservatives as defenders of Canada Day, trying to make this about “cancel culture.”
• Kevin Carmichael looks into the emerging narratives around Indigenomics, and how that can finally address some of the systemic disparities with Indigenous peoples.
• Susan Delacourt recounts some of the misogynistic abuse hurled at Catherine McKenna as being little wonder why she would decide to retire from politics.

Odds and ends:

For the CBA’s National Magazine, I wrote a lengthy profile of the judicial and jurisprudential legacy of Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella as she retires.

My Loonie Politics Quick Take video looks at how the Senate could tackle the final four priority bills of the sitting, if they choose to.

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