We are now on or about day sixty-four of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the big news is that Russia is cutting off natural gas to Poland and Bulgaria, ostensibly because they refuse to pay in rubles as Russia demands. The real reason is, of course, blackmail over support for Ukraine, as well as an attempt to divide Europe, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Oleksiy Arestovych's full comments on a possible Russian operation in Transnistria:

“They apparently did it to prevent the possibility of deploying our forces there. What can we presume? That they could organise a paratrooper operation there"

— Samuel Ramani (@SamRamani2) April 27, 2022

Closer to home, there is some procedural bullshit going down, and I’m unimpressed. The government has put forward an omnibus motion that would give them the power to start implementing late-night sittings right away, rather than in the few weeks before the break, and even more curious is the notion that they would give ministers the ability to adjourn the Commons for the summer with no notice, and a simple vote call. The late-night sittings—with the added language that those sittings can’t be obstructed with dilatory motions—makes a certain amount of sense in that the procedural warfare that plagued them last year has made a comeback, and they haven’t even managed to pass the budget implementation bill from December, which is not good. This is in a sense make-up time for all of the time wasted on dilatory motions—actions have consequences. But that ability for a minister to pull the plug for summer at any point really sticks in my craw, and I’m not mollified by Mark Holland insisting that this is only intended for use during the final week. It feels to me a lot like the ability to give themselves a nuclear option to hold over the other parties, including the NDP, if they don’t want to play ball in getting bills through. If Holland really wants this only for the final week, the motion should be drafted to say so.

At the same time, Holland also announced that they were going to move ahead with creating a special security-cleared committee for those Winnipeg Lab documents, whether or not the Conservatives agree to join in. But…this feels like theatre at this point, because the Conservatives stopped boycotting NSICOP, and that’s exactly the kind of thing that committee exists to deal with. And the government already turned over the unredacted documents to NSICOP, so what really is the point here? Aside from political theatre? Why can’t we have grown-ups in charge?

Good reads:

• Canada has imposed sanctions on 200 more Russians and Belarussians, and Mélanie Joly is now pushing G7 partners to also seize assets of oligarchs.
• Pablo Rodriguez is hitting back at Facebook’s suggestion that they might pull news content in Canada in protest of upcoming legislation.
• Statistics Canada released 2021 census data, which shows that we are now an aged society (no longer aging); it also gave the first picture of the trans community.
• The Environment Commissioner’s report also concluded that while the federal government’s direct emissions are dropping, their reports are incomplete.
• The head of the Infrastructure Bank says the new marching orders in the budget will likely make it easier to deploy project funds faster.
• Moderna has chosen Montreal to be the site of its new biomanufacturing plant.
• The House of Commons gave unanimous consent to a motion to declare Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “genocide” (erm, which should come with obligations, guys).
• Leslyn Lewis is suing her former campaign manager, as they are making accusations and counter-accusations about money and badmouthing.
• Jagmeet Singh is bringing a phony war over climate change, and certain members of the media are calling it “cracks” in the agreement with the Liberals. It’s not.
• Alberta is stepping up their diplomatic representation in the US, because Jason Kenney is tired of not being treated the same as the Emir of Oman. No, seriously.
• Taylor Owen and Supriya Dwivedi ask some of the necessary questions about Elon Musk’s understanding about free speech as he takes over Twitter.
• Heather Scoffield draws the connections between the census report on our aging population and the state of our labour market.

Odds and ends:

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.