We’re in day one-hundred-and-twenty-six of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and much of the attention has been on the reverberations of the attack on the shopping centre in Kremenchuk, where the death toll is up to 18, with more than 20 missing, and many more wounded. French president Emmanuel Macron denounced the attack, and said that because of it, Russia “cannot and should not win” the war (but then again, Macron’s attempts to get Ukraine to give territorial concessions to end the conflict is not exactly reflecting well on him either). As well, CBC interviews a Ukrainian marine who survived the battle of Mariupol with severe injuries before spending two weeks as a Russian prisoner of war before he was able to be sent back to Ukraine for treatment.

https://twitter.com/MFA_Ukraine/status/1541839370747011072

Meanwhile, Turkey has dropped their objections to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, which means that their membership can move ahead. This while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is talking about an eight-fold increase in Western troops being placed at an increased state of readiness, and more troops headed to the Baltic states, to make Russia very aware that they really, really shouldn’t cross their borders.

Many dear colleagues are happy that 🇸🇪&🇫🇮 will join @NATO. Here with 🇮🇸🇨🇦🇬🇧🇳🇴🇩🇰🇺🇸🇪🇸. #NATOSummit #WeAreNATO pic.twitter.com/aBLbVzvAEk

— Ann Linde (@AnnLinde) June 28, 2022

https://twitter.com/ChristinsQueens/status/1541845991225278474

Closer to home, I spent way too much time yesterday being angry at a garbage piece of Canadian Press wire copy that was bad PR masquerading as a news story. I mean, we’re not even a week into Parliament’s summer recess, and this is what CP is using as void fill for the news hole? The piece claims that 56 percent of Canadians oppose the oath of allegiance to the Queen, then cites a “poll,” but it wasn’t actually a poll, it was online panels that are not actually random samples, but that fact isn’t mentioned until six paragraphs down. The only person quoted in the piece is the guy who runs the think tank who commissioned the panels, and he says that most Canadians are unaware that newcomers have to swear an oath to be “faithful to the Royal Family,” which is a wilful distortion of the truth. The oath is to the Queen and her “heirs and successors,” because heredity is kind of the point of monarchy. It’s not the whole Royal Family. Nobody is swearing fealty to Prince Andrew, or even Princess Anne for that matter. And for a think tank that claims to be devoted to increasing Canadians’ knowledge of their country, that kind of distortion is malpractice at best, but I suspect it’s more about trying to build a case that the monarchy is not a unifying force, particularly for immigrants. As for the CP journalist, this was simply retyping a press release with no added context. There were no basic civics in there about how we’re a constitutional monarchy, that the Queen of Canada is different from the Queen of the UK, or that the oath to the Queen is not to her natural person, but to the Crown as the central organizing principle of our constitution (which is why we would need to rewrite the entire thing if we ever were insane enough to ditch the monarchy—not that we would ever get the unanimous agreement of the provinces to do so). It’s really disappointing that CP has descended to this kind of stenography when they used to be one of the most enviable bureaux on the Hill.

You're not actually swearing allegiance to some old British lady. You're swearing allegiance to uphold our fundamental system of government. I can see why even the latter might be objectionable to some, but to fulfill the duties of a lawyer it's likely at least reasonable.

— Emmett Macfarlane 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 (@EmmMacfarlane) June 27, 2022

Good reads:

• As the NATO summit gets underway, Justin Trudeau is defending the current level of military spending (which, frankly, we don’t have the capacity to spend more).
• The government has waived Cabinet confidence on documents related to the Emergencies Act invocation for the public inquiry.
• Another RCMP official claims that Commissioner Lucki said she was being pressured by the minister to release information on the guns in the mass shooting.
• Marci Ien, co-chairing the Cabinet committee on service delays, wants “something tangible” in weeks.
• Marco Mendicino is trying to make the case to expand the use of the ArriveCan app beyond the pandemic, but is getting a lot of resistance.
• Service Canada processing delays are meaning delays for EI recipients.
• The government has struck an advisory group to help with a forthcoming apology around the Black Battalion and the rejection of Black men trying to sign up for WWI.
• The CRA released a report on the “tax gap” from 2014 to 2018, finding an average of $22 billion per year is being lost in unpaid taxes.
• CSE released their annual report, and it showcased their defensive operations to prevent foreign interference in the last election, along with their aid to Ukraine.
• Google has been trying to stir up public opposition to the online news bill (which is flawed in how it proposes a link tax).
• The Star talks to some of the right-wing extremists, conspiracy theorists and grievance tourists who are planning to return to Ottawa for Canada Day.
• Ian Brodie and Gerald Butts spent the “Alberta Relaunch” event justifying PMO centralisation, and I just can’t even.
• Here is a look at how Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith got the government to change competition laws to include wage-fixing and no-poach agreements.
• The Greens have finally outlined the rules for their leadership contest, and already there are people chafing at the bilingualism requirement.
• BC premier John Horgan announced that he will step down in the fall.
• Matt Gurney reads the signals sent by Doug Ford’s choice in health minister.
• Heather Scoffield wades through the government’s announcement on its clean fuel standard, and why it’ll still be years for the effects to be felt.
• Colby Cosh calls out the absurdity of the Alberta MLA being charged for a “white hat” hack instead of the government being held to account for website vulnerability.
• My column wonders why the government has gone silent on their digital transformation as they try to deal with service delays.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/LindsayTedds/status/1541957300822298624

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