Roundup: Just who is lacking in self-awareness?

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It’s day one-hundred-and-ten of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces have destroyed a bridge liking Severodonetsk with its twin city of Lysychansk, which cuts off a possible escape route for civilians fleeting Severodonetsk. Street-by-street fighting continues in that city. Meanwhile, here’s a look at the uneasy state that inhabitants of Kyiv find themselves in at this juncture of the war. Elsewhere, two UK citizens and one Moroccan fighting on Ukraine’s behalf has been captured and given an illegal show trial by the so-called separatist government in Donetsk, and has been sentenced to death, creating an international outcry.

https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1535918133801889799

Closer to home, I’ve seen a few conservatives sharing a two-minutes video of Justin Trudeau talking with what I presume to be a radio or podcast that he appeared on while in California last week, talking about how there has been a backsliding of democracy around the world because it’s hard and takes work, and you have people who are offering simple solutions and stirring up hate against other groups to achieve their ends. While these conservatives seem to think that Trudeau lacks self-awareness here, I suspect that they are the ones who need to look in the mirror. Trudeau is not saying that the solution to the problems are to “fire the gatekeepers,” or the governor of the Bank of Canada, while making contradictory statements about the housing market. Are the current Liberal policies getting it done? Some of them, but I struggle to think of some simple solutions he’s offering for complex problems. I’m also not sure who they think he’s stirring up divisions against, unless they think that the unvaccinated are an identifiable minority whose rights need to be protected (they made a choice and get to live with the consequences of that choice), or that because he said mean things about the coalition of far-right extremists, grifters, conspiracy theorists and grievances tourists who occupied downtown Ottawa for three weeks that somehow he’s the monster (and if these conservatives want to go to bat for that crowd, then they should do so honestly and not whitewash just who those occupiers were, pretending that this was some kind of class warfare). And while I don’t have a great deal of affection for Trudeau, and think that he’s really his own worst enemy, he’s not wrong in what he says in that clip, and if conservatives think that he’s somehow talking about himself, they should give their heads a shake.

Good reads:

  • Pascal St-Onge announced new measures to create accountability in sports organisations to prevent abuse, including tying funding to these measures.
  • Randy Boissonnault hopes that airport delays can be solved in “a matter of weeks.”
  • Sean Fraser says he is looking for a faster pathway to turn temporary residents into permanent ones, which will include temporary foreign workers.
  • Here is a dive into the complexity around the new gun control bill and its measures.
  • There was a security incident on Parliament Hill over the weekend with warnings of a potential explosives in vehicles parked near the area; it was based on a bad tip.
  • Other Conservative leadership candidates are casting doubt on the Poilievre camp’s claims of membership sales, citing a particular misleading email sent out.
  • Heather Scoffield points to the upside of the tight labour market, which is getting more women and minorities into the workplace than ever before.
  • My weekend column is on Marco Mendicino having been caught out with his pabulum talking points on invoking the Emergencies Act.

Odds and ends:

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One thought on “Roundup: Just who is lacking in self-awareness?”

  1. ’s day one-hundred-and-ten of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian forces have destroyed a bridge liking Severodonetsk with its twin city of Lysychansk, which cuts off a possible escape route for civilians fleeting Severodonetsk.

    Or which cuts off a possible escape route for retreating Ukrainian forces?

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