Roundup: Five sitting weeks remain

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The final five weeks of the spring sitting of the House of Commons begins today, and it’s going to be raucous, and ugly, and exhausting. The government has  a tonne of bills they need to pass, starting with the implementation for the fall economic statement (no, seriously, it still hasn’t passed), pharmacare, the bill to ban replacement workers, the online harms bill, and maybe the foreign-agent registry, before we even get to the budget implementation bill. It’s a lot, and it will depend on the cooperation of the NDP (and possibly the Bloc) to come to agreements on time allocation for those bills, because the Conservatives will do everything they can to slow them up.

In the middle of this will be the Conservatives continued use of committees for dog-and-pony shows about ArriveCan, the Winnipeg Lab documents, or any other particular witch-hunts the Conservatives want to pursue, and on most of these committees, the NDP and Bloc are game to play along, because they are still keen to embarrass the government at every opportunity, whether the subject is within the remit of that committee or not. Because that’s what Parliament is these days—a content factory for social media.

The lever that the government has is the ability to call midnight sittings, and why that matters is because we have a shortage of interpreters, which means they can’t cover both the midnight sittings and all of the committee meetings, so the Conservatives will need to start making choices—do they want to talk bills to death in the House of Commons, or do they want to hold their committee dog-and-pony shows? This is what things are going to boil down to, so we’ll see how well Steve MacKinnon can wield this power.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukrainian forces still control about 60 percent of the village of Vovchansk, near Kharkiv, with the fighting being describe as being house-to-house. Ukrainian forces downed all 29 Russian drones launched on Monday night, and all 37 drones launched on Sunday night. At least eleven civilians have been killed in the outskirts of Kharkiv as Russians continue their advance, shelling civilian targets along the way. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did an interview with Reuters, in which he called out the Americans in particular for being a year late with their assistance, especially around air defences.

https://twitter.com/zelenskyyua/status/1792157706737868830

Good reads:

  • At a school food programme re-announcement in Winnipeg, Justin Trudeau said that people should heed CSIS’ warning about the risks associated with TikTok.
  • Trudeau set the date for the Toronto—St. Paul’s by-election for June 24th
  • Chrystia Freeland and Dominic LeBlanc were in Brampton on Monday to re-announce measures for their auto-theft strategy  that were in the budget.
  • Sean Fraser is warning Oakville that they could lose their federal housing money because they have failed to live up to their promised zoning changes.
  • Ya’ara Saks has formally turned down Toronto’s request for a drug decriminalisation programme, as they don’t have adequate supports.
  • François-Philippe Champagne is hinting that he could force Costco and Walmart to be part of the grocery code of conduct if they don’t sign on voluntarily.
  • Here is a look at the possibility of changing medical standards for the military, as their recruitment and retention crisis worsens.
  • Canada is working toward renewing its strategy to help the Rohingya displaced by the military junta in Myanmar, but critics say we should be doing more.
  • CBC president Catherine Tait says that she isn’t making any plans for how to keep the CBC running if the Conservatives win and remove their funding.
  • Liberal MP John Aldag says he’ll resign his seat next month in the hopes of securing a provincial NDP nomination for the coming election.
  • Liberal MP Serge Cormier is opposing the government’s measures to protect right whales because of the impact it has on local fishers.
  • Anthony Housefather says that the organisers of a pro-Israel rally in Montreal refused to let him speak, or play a video of the prime minister sending regards.
  • Another would-be Conservative nominee is accusing the party of meddling in his nomination process, and has texts to prove they changed the rules retroactively.
  • Kevin Carmichael posits that one of the problems leading up to the housing crisis is the relative lack of productivity gains within the construction sector.
  • John McGrath recalls the original housing crisis in Toronto in 1947, and how governments failed to learn those lessons then and now.
  • Philippe Lagassé notes how unusually bold Bill Blair has been in his comments about the defence portfolio, and isn’t just relying on canned talking points.
  • Althia Raj worries about a re-energised Parti Québécois, whose leader is promising another sovereignty referendum by the end of the decade.
  • Shannon Proudfoot demonstrates how Poilievre is training his audience to distrust anyone critical of him, which is a Very Bad Thing in a democracy.
  • My weekend column points to reasons why political mergers don’t necessarily add up, and are about more than just horserace poll numbers.

Odds and ends:

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