Roundup: Sad skits to demand Parliament’s summoning

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With the “reprieve” now granted, the Conservatives are back to demanding that Parliament be summoned, for…reasons. They have not actually spelled out what they need to legislate, because there are no actual proposals on the table, and you don’t need legislation for retaliatory tariffs (which are currently on hold). There may be a need to give new powers to CBSA around export controls, but we’re not there yet. Nevertheless, pretty much every Conservative MP put out some kind of tweet demanding Parliament be summoned, because it’s all about social media. MP Michael Barrett went up to the West Block to shoot a shitpost video where he tried to open the main doors to the House of Commons, but they were locked, so that he could perform for the camera, but the pièce de résistance here is that those doors are normally open when the House isn’t sitting, and closed when they are, which means that he had to get security to close the doors for him so that he could perform his little skit for the cameras. Just ridiculous.

The thing that nobody is really denying is that their only plan is to have Parliament summoned so that they can immediately call for a non-confidence vote, and the poll numbers are moving away from their previous landslide position because Trudeau is on his way out, and most of his likely successors are also moving away from the carbon levy (which is stupid and self-defeating, but I’m not a strategic genius). Poilievre is hoping to still capitalise on the anger against Trudeau while he can, because the longer it goes, the less the election is going to be about Trudeau or the carbon levy, and it will be more about who can deal with Trump, and Poilievre is far less favourable in many eyes on that front, hence his desperation to go now.

That leaves it up to Jagmeet Singh to determine if any proposals to counter Trump threats would pass, or if the country goes straight to an election and be even less ability to respond to any of Trump’s threats, and he continues to play performatively tough, insisting he’ll pass any measures introduced before the beginning of March, but he’s still voting non-confidence at the end, which…makes no sense, other than he’s still playacting like a tough guy. I would ask why everything needs to be so stupid, but we’re in a cursèd timeline.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian missile strike killed five and wounded over 55 in the town of Izium in the Kharkiv region. As well, drone strikes hit a railway depot in Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukrainian drones sparked another fire at an oil refinery, this time in The Krasnodar region. Frozen US aid means that funds to support people evacuated from front-line settlements may be in serious jeopardy.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1886757333042098399

Good reads:

  • David McGuinty suggested that Trump may not have had all of the information on the new border measures before his call with Trudeau (and no troops deploying).
  • McGuinty also tried to explain how the “fentanyl czar” is going to work, primarily as an interlocutor between governments to “enhance collaboration.”
  • Dominic LeBlanc has asked fellow ministers for ideas for the spring budget on how to best fight back against Trump’s predations, particularly no-cost approaches.
  • Several ministers were back in Washington to make Canada’s case to have the threat of tariffs removed entirely.
  • Mary Ng says the government is continuing to pursue trade diversification, with renewed urgency given Trump’s predations.
  • Terry Duguid was named the ministerial lead on rebuilding Jasper.
  • For what it’s worth, The Canadian Press fact-checks Trump’s reasoning in his executive order to impose the tariffs on Canada.
  • The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, has passed away. He was a family friend of Justin Trudeau (and Conservatives derided him as a random billionaire).
  • The Federal Court of Appeal is hearing the government’s call to overturn the Federal Court decision saying use of the Emergencies Act didn’t meet the legal threshold.
  • Kevin Carmichael hopes that we take the opportunity of the tariff crisis to actually build resiliency in our economy for a change.
  • Steve Scherer recalls covering Berlusconi for twenty years, and how Trump may enjoy the same spectacle but with much more at stake.
  • Matt Gurney suggests we pretend the thirty-day “reprieve” isn’t happening, and keep doing the things we need to build resilience and capacity in our economy.
  • Paul Wells looks at Trump’s entire history of harassment and wonders if we should work with the other countries under threat and pre-emptively retaliate.
  • My column points out that Poilievre’s “four-point plan” to tackle internal trade barriers is all talk because it doesn’t actually consider the problem at hand.

Odds and ends:

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