Day twenty-three, and the campaigns are starting to converge around Montreal as debate prep starts to take over, but they are still getting platform planks announced in the meantime. Mark Carney was in Dorval, Quebec, to announce his plan to overhaul defence procurement, including re-promising a centralized agency, to focus on Canadian defence industries and those of non-US allies, along with some other pledges around giving members of the armed forces another raise, and working to reform recruitment processes to speed up intake. Carney also offered an apology for the bad button scandal, and said that the culprits have been “reassigned” on the campaign, which doesn’t exactly make it sound like they have suffered much in the way of consequences. Carney will be in Saint-Eustache for his morning announcement before returning to debate prep.

Pierre Poilievre was in Montreal, and he repeated a two-year-old promise to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to ensure that multiple murders get consecutive sentences instead of concurrent, in defiance of the Supreme Court of Canada, but totally swears he wouldn’t invoke it for anything else. Really! It’s all so stupid because a) no mass murders have ever been given parole; b) this would only apply to future mass murders, not those currently serving life sentences, and it’s not going to act as a deterrent; and c) the Notwithstanding Clause needs to be renewed every five years, so this is really nothing more than an exercise in optics so that he looks tough. Poilievre will again hold his announcement today in Montreal before returning to debate prep.

https://bsky.app/profile/emmettmacfarlane.com/post/3lmrn7ukzyk2m

Jagmeet Singh was in Toronto, where he made a whole bunch of promises around healthcare that no federal government could possibly deliver on, because it’s provincial jurisdiction, but hey, he plans to “incentivize provinces.” What in the names of Apollo and Asklepios do you think that federal governments have been trying to do for four decades? How is it possible for him to be that naïve? Singh then headed to Montreal for his debate prep, and he will hold his own announcement there this morning.

In other campaign news, Carney’s campaign says that he has formally renounced his UK and Irish citizenships, and that he does indeed pay his taxes in Canada (because the Conservatives were trying to make more hay over this). LGBTQ+ groups around the country are hoping to hear more from the parties about addressing their issues (though some of them are provincial I must point out). The Debates Commission is defending the decision to invite the Greens even though they no longer meet the criteria of running candidates in at least 90 percent of ridings (which they apparently planned to, but not enough of them registered with Elections Canada).

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia made a second attack on Sumy on Monday, btu this one struck the outskirts of the city and no one was injured. There was also an overnight attack on Zaporizhzhia which ignited a petrol station. The Ukrainian air force said that Russia used new types of missiles and cluster bombs on their attack on Sumy on Sunday, which Russia is falsely claiming was targeting a military gathering, which everyone knows is false (except maybe Trump).

Good reads:

• Trump floated the idea of “pausing” tariffs on the auto sector to give the industry more time to make changes, but there are no details about what that entails yet.
• The SITE task force is warning that the upcoming debates will see a rise in disinformation tied to what people think they saw on TV.
• Canada has not yet entered into a NATO innovation fund as promised, and has not yet given a timeline for when we will actually pay into it.
• Facebook is being flooded with “deepfake” scam ads involving Mark Carney.
• Queen’s Park has just elected their first woman Speaker in their history.
• Doug Ford took some swipes at the Poilievre campaign, saying that the “truth hurts” with regards to Kory Teneycke’s comments about “campaign malpractice.”
• Because this is apparently becoming a Thing, a woman in Saskatchewan got “inadvertently” added to a group chat with several Saskatchewan Party MLAs.
• Anne Applebaum chronicles how America became a full-blown kleptocracy, practically overnight once Trump was back in power.
• Justin Ling recounts the Poilievre and Carney appearances on Tout le monde en parle, and gets to the heart of how the host approached each candidate.
• Susan Delacourt remarks on the shadow Trump will be casting over the leaders’ debates later this week.

Odds and ends:

My Loonie Politics Quick Take recaps week three of the election.

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