While Alberta premier Danielle Smith continues to prefer capitulation to Trump’s predations and boot-licking as her preferred course of action, she announced that she would be creating a $29 million Interdiction Patrol Team using Alberta Sheriffs, which are not actually police officers because they don’t enforce criminal laws, along with dogs and drones. Nevertheless, the plan is that they will create a two-kilometre “interdiction zone” along the entire border with Montana, and arrest people in said zone, which grossly exceeds their constitutional authority and any provincial exercise of power. This is supposed to be done in coordination with the RCMP and CBSA, but again, this is going well beyond her constitutional authority for a lot of security theatre, particularly because there is not exactly a lot of traffic across that border to begin with. This being said, she had been planning to do something like this for years now, likely as kayfabe because she relies on a lot of American narratives to feed her radicalised support base, but with the added context of Trump, it just legitimises his position unnecessarily.

The UCP didn't scratch together this plan on the fly after Trump's threat.
Premier Smith requested a border patrol in her mandate letter to Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis after the 2023 election https://t.co/z3OOgH8Tst

— Jason Markusoff (@markusoff) December 12, 2024

I look forward to all the right-wingers who whined endlessly about the federal government's very reasonable use of the Emergencies Act to react to this rule-of-law destroying nonsense.

— Emmett Macfarlane (@emmettmacfarlane.com) 2024-12-12T20:28:44.210Z

Meanwhile, it looks like one option the federal government might explore is potential export taxes instead of retaliatory tariffs as a last resort, but upon hearing this, Smith and Scott Moe freaked out, and Moe began demanding a federal election, because of course he did, given that he would rather capitulate. So much for Team Canada!

Between this and Ford’s musing about export controls on hydro, my intuition is this is a better approach than chats over meatloaf and ipad playlists. Granted, there’s a certain ‘spaghetti on the wall’ -ishness to handling Trump 2.0

— Jennifer Robson (@jrobson.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T19:40:32.132Z

But promising to never ever, no matter what, reduce oil exports, is … not wise. Oil is leverage.Pledging loyalty is not.

— Jennifer Robson (@jrobson.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T19:49:03.034Z

Of course, this is again all for show. CBSA’s president says that US law enforcement knows that the amount of fentanyl that comes from Canada is essentially “slippage,” and that the small packages are difficult to detect. The RCMP Commissioner says that there is talk with American counterparts about joint aerial patrols along the border. We’ll see how this starts to shape up over the next few weeks, but it is diverting a great deal of resources for a relatively minor problem that isn’t really our responsibility to begin with because Americans are supposed to police their own side of the border.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian officials say that they have reclaimed three settlements in Kursk region, while Ukrainian troops have been ordered to hold the line, at least until Trump takes office. President Zelenskyy visited an artillery unit on the southeast frontline.

Today, I visited one of our combat brigades at the Zaporizhzhia frontline, which uses American High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS. Our guys are very open about these systems, and they are extremely grateful to the United States for providing them. HIMARS are a… pic.twitter.com/3BvPyZAJgj

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 12, 2024

⚡️Russian guided bomb attacks fall sharply after ATACMS, Storm Shadow strikes, analysts say.

Russian guided bomb attacks against Ukraine have reportedly fallen by over 50% since Western partners allowed Kyiv to target Russia with long-range missiles.https://t.co/yazJaeM3jH

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) December 12, 2024

Good reads:

• The Fiscal Update will apparently contain a $2 billion pot of money to help entice pension funds to invest in Canadian start-ups.
• Steven Guilbeault unveiled new climate targets for 2035, which industry says are too tough and environmentalists say is not ambitious enough.
• The government doesn’t know how many “lost Canadians” could regain citizenship next week if they don’t get an extension from the courts in invalidating the old law.
• The gun buyback programme has expanded to include parts as a way of trying to close loopholes, but there is no released estimate on how much more it will cost.
• The federal government said that they can’t tell the Human Rights Tribunal when the Jordan’s Principle backlog will be cleared.
• A law firm carrying out a legal review of the AFN’s child and family welfare settlement says that it could all be moot if the Conservatives come to power.
• After a lengthy fight, Facebook/Meta has finally relinquished and disclosed to the CRTC their measures for complying with the Online News Act.
• The Victims of Communism memorial has finally opened to the public, but without any names inscribed on it (because they’re still checking that they weren’t Nazis).
• It looks like a $32.5 billion settlement has been reached in the lawsuit against tobacco companies (and their creditors), and should be approved shortly.
• The Globe says that there have been fresh attempts to recruit Mark Carney, but none of the theories really add up. (More to come in my weekend column).
• Doug Ford’s bill to combat homeless encampments contains unrealistic fines, and dollars for municipalities predicated on clearing those encampments.
• Former Alberta premier Rachel Notley is resigning her seat on December 30th.
• Trevor Tombe and Jennifer Winter summarize their research that proves that carbon pricing has a negligible impact on food prices.
• Charlie Warzel examines the political culture that has emerged around crypto that Trump tapped into—which Poilievre is hoping to do here.
• Justin Ling reflects on whether human rights tribunals are effective at helping to change culture, or if they create more barriers.

Odds and ends:

Three. More. Sitting. Days.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2024-12-13T01:32:04.839Z

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.