Roundup: Hutchings made everything worse

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The Liberals’ capacity to be their own worst enemy continues apace, that in the wake of Thursday’s ill-considered plan to “pause” the carbon price on heating oil (note that this is for the entire country, but the benefit is primarily felt in Atlantic Canada), rural economic development minister Gudie Hutchings made it all the worse with an appearance on CTV’s Question Period (taped Friday, and aired Sunday, but the news story went out on Friday evening). In it, Hutchings tried to defend the policy saying that Atlantic caucus was particularly vocal, and maybe if the Prairies voted in more Liberals, they “could have that conversation as well.” Oof.

Unsurprisingly, the Conservatives had an absolute field day with this over the weekend and claimed that this was “proof” that the carbon price was simply about punishing Western Canadians for not voting Liberal (which doesn’t make any logical sense, but this is about anger and not logic). Yes, there is a constant in Canadian politics that all of the parties pander to Quebec because they have a lot of seats and their votes are up for grabs, whereas the prairies reliably vote mostly Conservative so it doesn’t really pay for the Liberals to pander to them while the Conservatives take them for granted. But this was not the way to make that argument in relation to this carbon price issue, and it just made everything worse, so well done there.

Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, says he’ll support any motion to remove the carbon price on all heating, which is going to be the constant demand now because the Liberals did such a poor job of coming up with a fix for the Atlantic Canada problem (and there were much better options available). But now they’ve undermined their signature policy, opened the door to more exceptions that will just corrode the whole system, and yes, the Conservative still have their propaganda victory. The Liberals couldn’t have handled this any worse.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Not much news from Ukraine this weekend, other than the fact that they are hoping to hold a global peace summit of world leaders later this year, following talks held in Malta over the past couple of days.

Good reads:

  • There are Canadian special forces members on the ground in Israel doing “contingency planning” at the Canadian embassy.
  • Unifor says they have a tentative agreement with the St. Lawrence Seaway workers.
  • The opposition in Nova Scotia is trying to keep the legislative session going to press issues of housing and healthcare after the government has exhausted their agenda.
  • There are concerns about the impending renovations in Queen’s Park as work on adjacent buildings are delayed and over budget.
  • Kevin Carmichael suggests that the Bank of Canada will need to start changing up its policies to deal with the “new normal” of supply chains in the current environment.
  • My weekend column looked at the motion for the Senate to rise early on Thursdays, which is both unnecessary and betrays the established ethos of the Chamber.

Odds and ends:

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