We’re now on or about day fifty-one of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and has been confirmed that Russia’s Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, has sunk, which is a huge loss for Russia (particularly as Turkey is blockading the entrance to the Black Sea to military vessels, so there will be no replacement for it anytime soon), and it will no longer be able to support Russian ground forces, or to shell cities from afar. In the meantime, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to show that he is a master communicator for his country and his cause.

https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1514681561412780035

This whole Biden must go to Kyiv is just macho bullshit stuff.

This should not be a priority for the administration or for the media. Sure, it is great for leaders to go.

But it is a warzone, it is a distraction, and it is just symbolic bullshit. https://t.co/K71lcCkqm0

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) April 14, 2022

Closer to home, yet another pernicious bit of disinformation has started circulating, courtesy of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation, who read the Emissions Reduction Plan (which was prepared by an arm’s-length advisory panel), found a reference to a proposal to add a surtax to certain kinds of gas-guzzling vehicles, and then wrote an op-ed in the Toronto Sun that declared this was the government’s plan. Jason Kenney picked up on this and decried it, as has the Conservative Party writ-large and several of its leadership contenders. Of course, there are no actual plans for such a tax, but why does the truth matter? This was the tactic they’ve been using on the supposed plans for a capital gains tax on primary residents, which doesn’t exist and never will exist (even if it’s actually decent public policy). This also compounds with the selective quotes they’ve been using from the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s recent report on carbon pricing, which has been torqued into more disinformation.

This kind of politics is divisive and distracting from the important work we all have to do to fight climate change.

I am glad to see that conservatives have read our plan, though, since they've never had a coherent one of their own, but read a little more carefully.

— Steven Guilbeault (@s_guilbeault) April 14, 2022

This is not what the PBO said.

The PBO said that when you factor in other economic impacts, the average household in those provinces comes out behind, though that’s heavily shouldered by the wealthiest quintile and poorer households come out ahead.

Also, less climate change. https://t.co/VADemvKrTn

— David Reevely (@davidreevely) April 14, 2022

The same annexes to the federal emissions reduction plan include submissions from each province. It makes EXACTLY as much sense (ie none) to praise the federal Liberals for planning to embrace international offsets, making things much easier for Saskatchewan. pic.twitter.com/1nlCCwslSM

— David Reevely (@davidreevely) April 14, 2022

What strikes me is how much *effort* this takes. You have to read all the way into Annex 3, nearly 200 pages in, to find the recommendation to tax inefficient trucks (not even all trucks!), all the way past all the stuff the government actually DOES say it will do.

— David Reevely (@davidreevely) April 14, 2022

There’s so much disinformation and lies floating about, as though there weren’t enough actual things that you could absolutely excoriate this government for, and yet they resort to fiction. Utterly boggling.

Programming Note: I will be taking a long weekend off from the blog, because I am exhausted after the past few weeks. See you Tuesday!

Good reads:

• Anita Anand announced that as many as 150 troops will be deployed to Poland to help with the flood of Ukrainian migrants since the war began.
• General Wayne Eyre is also warning that the Canadian Forces’ capabilities are now stretched thin as demands for their assistance continue at home and abroad.
• The government released their GHG emission figures for 2020, and emissions fell by 8.9% thanks largely to the pandemic, but it’s a start in the right direction.
• Marci Ien says the LGBTQ2+ Action Plan is still under development because she wants to get it right, but won’t say when it’ll be released.
• Ahmed Hussen is hoping to target building new housing supply plans need to match immigration levels, and that will help seniors downsize.
• Pascale St-Onge is touting the $16 million in the budget to help stamp out abuse in sports and bring change to sport culture.
• The budget has money to help with supply chain disruptions, but industry says that we also need a better strategic plan to address long-standing issues.
• Health Canada has approved AstraZeneca’s antibody combination that is a substitute for vaccines for those who can’t receive them.
• The Charter of Rights and Freedoms turns 40 this Sunday, and here are ten consequential court cases that arise from it.
• The Conservatives are banning the use of pre-paid credit cards to buy memberships after worries about fraud were raised.
• Jagmeet Singh has demanded that Indian prime minister Narendra Modi stop targeting Muslims. I’m sure Modi, a far-right Hindu nationalist, will get right on that.
• A New Brunswick court has ruled that the province’s Lieutenant Governor must be bilingual (and every constitutional law professor is up in arms).
• Philippe Lagassé is unimpressed with the highly implausible court ruling in BC that says that a unilingual Lieutenant Governor is unconstitutional.
• Andrew Potter reflects on Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the role that honour plays when it comes to the defence of freedom.
• Althia Raj pitches a return of the per-vote subsidy as a means of combatting the radicalization that comes from torqued fundraising appeals.

Odds and ends:

Here are the six proposals for the Block 2 designs, which would be a new building facing Centre Block on Parliament Hill.

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