Roundup: Singh’s suck-up to Sanders

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While the Liberals are busy with their leadership race, Jagmeet Singh spent part of his Friday doing the biggest virtue-signal of all in NDP terms—having a meeting with US senator Bernie Sanders. It’s no secret to anyone who’s paid attention that the NDP have essentially turned themselves into a branch plant of the “justice” Democrats, and that a number of their policy proposals in recent elections have been irrelevant in the Canadian context, but because they didn’t bother to actually check if this is a Canadian issue, or they merely divided by ten and decided that’s enough to make it Canadian, when it’s irrelevant to our country.

This comes across to me as “Notice me, Senpai!” pleading from Singh, and looking for an obliging pat on the head from the figure that his party is currently drawing their inspiration from, no matter if Sanders’ prescriptions have little relevance for Canada. Even more hilarious is the part where Singh is seeking praise for pharmacare and dental care when neither programme is fully implemented, nor are they likely to be because he’s decided to start talking tough about bringing down the Liberal government, which will merely sign the death warrant for these plans that he is trying to take credit for.

Honestly, if it’s possible to die of cringe, Singh is in serious danger of doing so.

Ukraine Dispatch

Ukraine downed 33 out of 50 Russian drones overnight Thursday, with damage reported in five different regions. A Russian missile killed at least four people and damaged an educational facility in Kryvyi Rih. Russia claims it retook 63.2 of captured territory in Kursk region. A Ukrainian drone set an oil depot ablaze in Russia’s Kaluga region, south of Moscow.

Good reads:

  • Following a meeting with his new Canada-US Relations Council, Justin Trudeau said that they won’t hesitate to respond to Trump’s threats as soon as he acts on them.
  • The Bank of Canada undertook an internal and external review of their pandemic decisions in order to see what lessons can be learned. (Executive summary here).
  • Disability groups are calling on the government to enact the regulations that will enable the Canada Disability Benefit to actually start paying out on July 1st.
  • Food producers are hoping that the Trump threats will move more supply-chains to Canada, but of course, they want more government supports to make that happen.
  • Chrystia Freeland soft-launched her leadership campaign with a tweet, an op-ed on fighting Trump, and a promise for the formal launch on Sunday.
  • Meanwhile the Star fact-checks the rhetoric in Freeland’s op-ed on tariffs, and finds it to be lacking in an good understanding about how tariffs work.
  • Here is the tale of the mischief of a limo ordered to the site of Mark Carney’s launch.
  • Jean-Yves Duclos called up Chanda Arya to scold him about his comments about French not mattering in a Liberal leader.
  • Jamil Jivani will be attending the inauguration on Monday to support his friend JD Vance, and says he’ll “work to improve” Canada-US relations. (Sure, Jan).
  • Here is a less-torqued recounting of the fight over the Pride declaration in the Northern Ontario township of Emo, which has been weaponised by the far-right.
  • Colin Horgan cautions Liberals against choosing a boring technocrat as leader, as they won’t be able to match Poilievre, but instead lays out what a leader should do.
  • Justin Ling examines self-fashioning in politics and kayfabe, and how this plays out from Donald Trump to Mark Carney, and what the solution should be.

Odds and ends:

For National Magazine, I look back at the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2024, and what to look forward to in 2025 for its 150th anniversary.

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