Roundup: A failed vote, a policy pretzel

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It was not unexpected that the Conservatives’ non-binding Supply Day motion on removing the carbon price from all forms of home heating failed, because the Bloc had no interest in supporting it, and lo, none of the Liberals broke ranks and voted for it either. (Liberal MP Ken McDonald, who had voted for such motions previously, “scratched his head” with two fingers as he voted, which the Conservatives took to be giving them the finger, and lo, cried victim about it). And once the vote was over, Conservatives took to social media to call out all of those Liberal MPs they had been targeting in advance of it, because this is the bullshit state of where Canadian politics have degenerated to.

In advance of the vote, Jagmeet Singh was in the Foyer, twisting himself into a pretzel to say that he didn’t really agree with the Conservative motion, but he was going to vote for it anyway to send a message to the Liberals that he disagrees with them, but he also wants to push his boneheaded “cut GST on all home heating” policy, which is as dumb as a bag of hammers. (No, seriously—it would be impossible to disentangle the heating portion of certain sources of heating, such as electric heating, or what natural gas goes to heating and what goes to hot water tanks, or natural gas barbecues; plus, the policy disproportionately benefits the wealthy, who have bigger houses). There is no policy coherence, because this is all about posturing and performance, and Canadians are ill-served as a result.

While this was going on, the premiers met in Halifax, ostensibly to talk healthcare but it would up being another gang-up session where they all demanded that the federal government remove the carbon price on all home heating out of “fairness” (never mind the problems of energy poverty, that heating oil is four times as expensive as natural gas, and that some of those premiers should have been doing more about this problem years ago). They also groused that the federal Housing Accelerator Fund was being negotiated directly with municipalities and not them, which, again, forgets that they have studiously ignored the housing problem in their own provinces for decades and now they’re getting put out that the federal government has had to step up after they refused to. But that’s the state of our federation, and it’s a

https://twitter.com/aballinga/status/1721622048345149688

https://twitter.com/aballinga/status/1721628581921509676

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russian air strikes on Odessa late Sunday night struck the city’s principal art gallery and wounded eight. A criminal investigation has been launched into the decision to hold a troop-honouring ceremony in Zaporizhzhia which was easily detected by surveillance drones, allowing the Russians to target it; around the same time, the top aid to Ukraine’s commander-in-chief was killed when a grenade was hidden inside a birthday present.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1721649238642245908

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau has now formally appointed Justice Mary Moreau to the Supreme Court of Canada, and she was sworn-in by the Chief Justice yesterday.
  • Dominic LeBlanc announced another $5 million for the fund that allows groups who fear being targeted by hate-motivated violence to add new security measures.
  • Government documents show the mandatory gun buyback could cost as much as $1.8 billion, which is higher than original estimates.
  • The CRTC announced new changes to wholesale internet rates in order to increase competition, and Bell Canada immediately threw a tantrum over it.
  • There was an explosion at the Canadian High Commission in Nigeria in what appears to have been an accident with the fuel tank in the generator building.
  • At the veterans affairs committee, a female veteran witness called out the Conservatives for their attempted shenanigans during her time to testify.
  • The Star has a profile of housing minister Sean Fraser.
  • The Ford government had to walk back a zoning order exemption after it was discovered it was for a skyscraper in the flight path of the Pearson airport runway.
  • Alberta is proposing a law that will let anyone call themselves a “software engineer” without a professional body’s qualifications. Surely that won’t go wrong!

Odds and ends:

My Loonie Politics Quick Take looks at the calls for the Liberal Party to rethink Trudeau’s leadership, and why there aren’t any mechanisms to do so.

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