Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: Lost jobs and falsely attributed blame

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The news out of Calgary yesterday was that Imperial Oil plans to reduce their workforce by about 20 percent—some 900 jobs, mostly out of Calgary—by the end of 2027, in order to realise “substantial efficiency and effectiveness benefits.” The kicker, however, is that they’re not planning to cut production, or reduce their footprint, or anything like that­—they are, in fact, making themselves more productive, and that means cutting staff.

Anyone who has paid the slightest attention to the oil and gas sector knows that they have been automating and cutting their workforce for years, which is why I have always thought it foolish to count on them to create jobs.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-30T15:30:28.106Z

Of course, people like Danielle Smith have managed to blame the federal Liberals for those losses than the industry, which doesn't help those angry Albertans whose promise of giant paycheques in oil jobs forever won't be realized, but boy have they stoked federal tensions.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-30T15:30:28.107Z

Right on cue:

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-30T15:41:47.811Z

The thing to remember here, however, is that it doesn’t matter what is actually happening, or that this has been happening in the industry since the price crash in 2014, but that everyone is going to blame the federal Liberals for these job losses. And you can bet that that blame was happening over social media, entirely falsely, because if they had planned to cut production or their footprint, then maybe you could blame it on the emissions cap, or whatnot. But that’s not what’s happening. The problem becomes what to do about the hopes and dreams of all of those straight white guys with high school diplomas who were counting on being able to make a large six-figure salary doing minimal work in the oil sands, but that dream is fast escaping because the industry has changed. But because they are angry that said dream is slipping away, they are looking for someone to blame, and they don’t want to blame the industry for increasing its productivity, so they will try and pin this on the Liberals. Because of course they will.

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1961437440595693741

The thing about oilsands companies is that over the past decade they have focused on cutting as many jobs as possible in the name of efficiency while paying as little as possible for the pollution they cause.

— Catherine McKenna (@cathmckenna.bsky.social) 2025-09-30T23:53:16.532Z

Of course, the federal government is expressing their concern about this, because they decided to put a whole lot of eggs in this basket in spite of the fact that it’s not 2014, and it won’t be 2014 again, and that no matter how much they gut the country’s environmental regulations by stealth, it won’t make the oil and gas sector come back, or make it the economic driver that it used to be. But I’m not sure that most of them are capable of grasping this fact, and that’s a problem, because we do need an economic transformation and that shouldn’t mean doubling down on the fossil fuel industry.

Ukraine Dispatch

A Russian guided aerial bomb attack hit Kharkiv overnight, injuring at least six. This after a daytime attack on Dnipro that killed one and injured at least twenty, and a previous overnight attack on a village in Sumy region that killed four. Ukraine has sent a mission to Denmark to train European militaries on how to combat drones. Princess Anne made a secret visit to Ukraine in support of children affected by the war. (Still the best royal).

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Roundup: Another politicized terror listing

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The federal government has listed the Bishnoi gang, which largely operates out of India, as a terrorist entity, saying that they engage in “murder, shootings and arson, and generates terror through extortion and intimidation.” The Conservatives blame them for the rash of extortion crimes, primarily in the lower mainland in BC, and the BC premier has called for this designation. The problem? Not only are we conflating criminal organisations with terrorism, which gets messy on a number of fronts, but this is another example of process that should be apolitical and technocratic being politicised, and we are now getting into territory where groups are being listed after a vote in the House of Commons, which is Very Bad.

Here’s Jessica Davis on why this is a problem.

Back in the day, when I worked on listings, they were a largely technocratic process. I won't say there was a solid methodology for choosing which groups would get listed, but it was a bureaucratic one, with departments and agencies contributing.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.828Z

Increasingly, we've seen groups listed after votes in the House of Commons, or campaigns to have them listed, or at the behest of our (sometimes) allies like the US.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.829Z

The listings process itself isn't particularly rigorous. A single incident can result in a group getting listed. And there is no real mechanism for challenging listings. (Yes: processes exist. In practice, it would require getting a lawyer to argue the case of a terrorist entity, likely pro bono).

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.830Z

We are overdue for listings reform. We're trying to do far too much with it. Why not create a separate criminal listings regime? Having everything lumped together as terrorist dilutes the analytic power that comes from sensical categorization, and limits our ability to identify finance mechanisms.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.831Z

Increasingly, some of our listings are also not lawful. Look at the listing for the IRGC QF, and more recently the IRGC. There's a clear carve-out that should prevent the listings of state militaries. But we don't seem to care about the lawfulness of this process anymore.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.832Z

Overall, this process is increasingly meaningless: governments press the listings button (not unlike sanctions) and then do very little to actually counter terrorism or tackle hard problems like RCMP reform that could actually result in real improvements in Canadian safety and security.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.833Z

The only way a government will be incentivized to change is to have this process challenged in court, which could actually be both really bad for Canada (undermine a huge part of our sanctions regime and throw our CTF system into turmoil), but could strengthen rule of law in Canada longer term.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.834Z

Or, you know, the Carney government could just do the right thing and fix the system itself and toughen the process so it can't be politicized. Honestly, we're a stone's throw away from listing ANTIFA as a terrorist entity if the US asks. I'm sure it's fine.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.835Z

The added issue here is that the RCMP already don’t have enough resources or capacity to enforce existing terrorist designations, let along the mounting sanctions, so these declarations are rapidly becoming symbolic, and that’s a very bad thing. This is one more reason why we need wholesale reform of the RCMP and most especially its federal policing responsibilities (and by wholesale reform, I generally mean disband it and stand up a new federal policing agency), but ultimately, this situation is just exacerbated by these political listings, which are about to even more problematic the more the Trump administration starts making demands, like they did with Mexican cartels.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims that they have taken control of two villages in the Donetsk region, as Ukraine is pushing back on other fronts in the same region. The nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia has been without external power needed to cool its reactors for six days. Neighbouring Moldova saw the pro-EU party win the election in spite of a spate of Russian interference.

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Roundup: The supposed fiscal precipice

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My sinking feeling about the interim Parliamentary Budget Officer continues to plummet, not only in response to last week’s committee appearance where he not only used a bunch of over-the-top adjectives to describe his read of the fiscal situation, but also telegraphed that he has taken all of the wrong lessons from his predecessor and that he intends to make himself a media darling, in defiance of what his role is actually supposed to be according to his legislated mandate:

“If the government wants to go 12 months without producing a budget, as a citizen I would feel a little bit uncomfortable. But as somebody who works in the Parliamentary Budget Office, I’d say, ‘That’s great for us. Because we will occupy all the space that they decide to give up.’”

He was back on TV this weekend, and saying a bunch of alarmist things about how we’re on a “precipice” and so on, which…is not what his office was saying just a few months ago. If anything, this is the kind of alarmism that we’re used to hearing from the “it’s 1995 and will always be 1995” crowd, where any budget deficits are treated as some kind of national catastrophe, and that we’re sitting on a “debt bomb,” but we’re not. People are actively forgetting the measures taken to save the economy during the height of COVID, pretending that it didn’t happen, and now they’re downplaying just what exactly the effect that Trump’s tariffs are having on the economy—or the fact that we have managed to avoid a recession so far (not that it has stopped Poilievre from insisting that our economy is “collapsing.”)

Meanwhile, we’re once again getting the litany of demands from business groups about the budget, and they’re entirely of the “cut taxes and deregulate” variety, because nobody has learned a single lesson about how trickle-down doesn’t work, and that the scars from the last round of government austerity have not healed. And from the looks of it, this PBO is not only trying to become a media darling, but he’s basically rooting his analysis/opinion in these very same frameworks, which I suspect is going to really start to skew just what his analysis is and what it’s saying, which is going to do a real disservice to the job that he’s supposed to be doing.

Ukraine Dispatch

There was another major attack on Kyiv early morning Sunday, with 595 drones and 48 missiles, which killed four people, including a child.

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Roundup: Giving credence to Poilievre’s trolling

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In spite of it being an exhaustingly packed news week, The Canadian Press took time out to get some reaction to Pierre Poilievre’s trolling tweets about prime minister Mark Carney’s many international trips of late. Yes, it’s summit season right now and there is a lot more travel coming up, but he has made a number of trips since he was appointed PM, and we have to ensure that it’s not “excessive” or something. Never mind that we’re in a moment of global crisis as the United States has turned into an authoritarian regime that is upending the post-war international order and tacitly siding with other authoritarian regimes, and this requires a global realignment of liberal democracies, but is he travelling too much? Guys.

The one thing that irked me the most in the story was the point about Carney having only attended three Question Periods since Parliament resumed last week, and only nine in the four-week spring session. There was no context to this, which is that it means once or twice per week, which is perfectly normal for any sitting prime minister. Once or twice a week was all Stephen Harper could deign to attend. Justin Trudeau started out with three a week, but then fell back to two on most weeks, but sometimes was just once. The difference of course was that Trudeau made it his practice to answer every question on Wednesdays, which no previous PM had done, and which Carney has not kept up (possibly because he may not have stamina enough to pat himself on the back for a full forty-five minute). In other words, Carney’s QP attendance is fully within the norm, and you would think that the national wire service could point this out, but that might mean that they would have to have someone with enough institutional knowledge and memory to know this, but pretty much every bureau on the Hill no longer has either. (As a reminder, I am the only journalist who goes to QP every day, because someone has to).

This being said, I think we need to once again have a discussion about the kind of insular nativism that Poilievre is stoking by making it sound like foreign travel by the prime minister is somehow illegitimate, or that every trip must come with some kind of signed agreement (even though we may already have signed agreements with countries like Mexico, and forging stronger ties is important beyond just a signed piece of paper). Trying to create this false expectation that the PM can’t go anywhere so long as there is “crime and chaos” at home is juvenile and frankly troubling, because it means that they have absolutely no idea how the real world works, and are playing with fire, especially if they ever want to form government one day.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-26T13:24:02.797Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The front line in the conflict has grown to nearly 1250 km in length, as Russian forces have shifted tactics to try and make breakthroughs. That said, both president Zelenskyy and his top military commander say that Russia’s 2025 offensive has failed to meet their goals, and suffered heavy losses in the process. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s assessment of the drone incursions into NATO airspace is that Russia is trying to stoke fatigue in Ukraine’s allies in the hopes of drawing down military support.

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Senate QP: Guilbault explains the coming cuts

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The Senate, under its new leadership, has returned to the recent practice of holding a special Question Period in order to question a minister, and today it was Steven Guilbeault, while we are told this will happen every couple of weeks—and hey, because they held it at 3:30 and not competing with Commons QP, I could be here. As things were about to get started, it was the Speaker pro tempore in the Big Chair today, and he offered a reminder that questions are limited to one minute, and answers to a minute-and-a-half, which is a far sight better than the thirty-five second clock in the Commons. It was also a much longer QP than usual, being about sixty-five minutes, which I didn’t realise going into it. (I also didn’t have access to an earpiece for the first couple of rounds so I had difficult following, so please forgive any particular lapses).

At the Senate for a special #SenQP with minister Guilbeault.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-09-25T19:31:34.022Z

Senator Housakos led things off by asking about the appointment of a new official languages commissioner, and accused the government of holding out for a Liberal friend. Guilbeault disputed this, and noted the support the government has given to official languages over the past few years. Housakos again pressed that they have not take this appointment seriously, and Guilbeault again pointed to the resources they are devoting to official languages.

Housakos switched to English to ask about policies that allowed a Canada Post employee to be bullied a at work for displaying a Canadian Flag at his desk. Guilbeault noted that Canada Post is not under his remit, but he suggested he could raise it with his colleague. Housakos again worried about the harassment this employee suffered for being patriotic, and Guilbeault again deferred any response. (I have to wonder if there was more to this story than Housakos claimed).

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QP: Harvesting food insecurity clips

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The PM was freshly back from his trip to the UN General Assembly, and was stopping into the House of Commons before meeting with the President of Indonesia, who was dropping by Parliament for a visit. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, and he accused the government of taking money away from border officers and police for the gun buyback, and then switched to English halfway through to call for the public safety minster to be fired. Mark Carney said that they were going to do a voluntary buyback the right way. Poilievre repeated the accusation of “ripping money away” in English, and railed about hunting rifles. Carney said that he didn’t know where to begin that intervention, that Poilievre voted against gun control, and that the government was doing things the right way. Poilievre said that he voted against soft on crime policies, complained about the “broken border,” and implored the government to “leave Grandpa Joe’s hunting rifle alone.” Carney said that he doesn’t know any hunters who use AR-15s, and that the government was strengthening the border. Poilievre listed guns used by farmers to kill gophers being banned, and implored Carney to read his briefing books. Carney insisted that they providing fair compensation for illegal weapons, and that they were tightening the border. Poilievre again listed guns that are being banned, and accused the government of harassing farmer and duck hunters while gun crime rages in the streets. Carney said the RCMP gets this, and that they want these guns off the streets. Poilievre moved onto food prices, and declared Carney to have been a failure. Carney patted himself on the back for cutting taxes and cutting the carbon levy. 

Yves-François Blanchet led for the NDP, and he calmly spouted absolute rot about the factum before the Supreme Court on the Quebec “secularism” law challenge. Carney cited that the Charter protects everyone, and it was the government’s responsibility to defend it. Blanchet declared that Liberal applause was an insult to Quebeckers, and Carney again praised the Charter and that it was the government’s job to defend it. Blanchet insisted that the constitution was “imposed” on Quebec (not true) and demanded that Carney withdraw the factum and apologise to Quebeckers. Carney declared that the government would not backtrack on this.

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Roundup: Ford casting blame for his own failures—bail edition

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While the federal Conservatives are tabling a litany of “tough on crime” bills in order to make themselves look like they’re offering solutions to what they term the “warzone” on Canadian streets, Ontario premier Doug Ford decided that he didn’t want to be left out. Ford tasked his attorney general with sending an open letter to the federal government to call for a bunch of performative nonsense like mandatory minimum sentences or “three strikes” laws, most of which are unconstitutional, and is making all kinds of noises about the problems with the bail system and demanding that the federal government fix them. The problem? The biggest problems with bail are Ford’s fault.

The administration of justice is a provincial issue, and the biggest problem with bail by far is resourcing in the court system. There aren’t enough functional courthouses (especially in Peel Region), there aren’t enough clerks and other staff at these court houses to run trials, there are not enough provincially-appointed judges who handle the bulk of criminal cases, there are issues with the appointment and training of justices of the peace, who deal with nearly all bail hearings. The province isn’t hiring enough Crown attorneys to prosecute cases, and they are burnt out and nearly went on strike fairly recently because of being underpaid. Oh, and provincial remand facilities are overcrowded and they can’t keep people in custody there, and those who are will wind up getting sentencing discounts if they are convicted, because the conditions are so terrible. All of these things are on Ford. But he would rather blame the federal government. Oh, and during this all, Ford is also going to war against photo radar, because of course he is—apparently, it’s all well and good to break traffic laws (which are provincial jurisdiction), but he’s big mad about other laws being broken. Just incoherent.

This being said, I am once again absolutely livid that the media outlets who did report on this letter couldn’t be arsed to get the basics right, such as the provincial responsibilities. It was straight-up stenography from both The Canadian Press and CBC, both of whom should know better. (Neither the Star nor the National Post ran this story). So once again, Ford gets his bullshit repeated uncritically, the federal government again gets blamed, and the very real problems that are his responsibility will again go unchallenged. Utterly infuriating.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-21T20:02:03.613Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s attack on Zaporizhzhia early Monday morning killed three and injured at least two others.

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Roundup: Freeland out—for good this time

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It was nine months to the day since Chrystia Freeland first resigned from Cabinet, previously under Justin Trudeau, when he told her that he planned to replace her as finance minister with Mark Carney, but would she mind first delivering the fall economic update that had a bigger-than-promised deficit number in it? Carney had not said yes to the position at the time, and things went downhill from there. This time, Freeland says she’s leaving to take up new opportunities—in this case, a position of special envoy related to the reconstruction of Ukraine. Her roles got split up, as the transport portfolio was given to Steve MacKinnon, and the internal trade to Dominic LeBlanc.

https://twitter.com/cafreeland/status/1967994021227401685

I do think that this move solidifies a few narratives that have been floating around, one of which is that Carney is consolidating loyalists. Freeland supporters were pretty much entirely frozen out of Cabinet and other senior roles, and Freeland herself was made a minister as a gesture of unity in the party, but six months later, she’s out. That’s fairly problematic on its face. As well, it’s one more woman out of a senior role, and one who had influence behind the scenes, which again consolidates the bro atmosphere in the PMO, which is not good, and will cause plenty of problems going forward as the blind spots start to grow. For the moment, Freeland is keeping her seat, but will eventually resign it once she has consulted with her riding association and so on. With rumours that Carney plans to offer diplomatic posts to at least two other former ministers, he could be looking to free up a handful of fairly safe seats that he can put more friends or loyalists into (like he did with Evan Solomon).

Alberta carbon price

Danielle Smith is making changes to her province’s industrial carbon price, exempting companies from paying it if they invest in their own emissions reduction projects. You know, which the carbon price incentivised them to do so that they didn’t have to pay as much, because that’s the whole gods damned point of carbon pricing. Absolutely unbelievable stupidity on display here.

About that ovation

There has been a lot of talk about how the House of Commons gave a standing ovation about Charlie Kirk on Monday. That’s not exactly true, and has been torqued by people who may or may not be acting in good faith. The ovation had more to do with standing against political violence rather than Kirk himself. That said, of course it was Rachael Thomas who got up to praise a fascist like Kirk, because this is who Thomas is. She has been marinating in the fever swamps of the American far-right discourse for years, and imports it into Canadian politics all the time, including the very careful creation of an alternate dystopian reality where Justin Trudeau is a “dictator,” and the Liberals are busy censoring tweets on the Internet and are generally being authoritarians, in all defiance of the logic and reality. Thomas absolutely deserves to be called out for venerating a fascist, but I think everyone needs to calm down about the applause that happened afterward because it’s pretty clear the context was about the broader message.

— Effin' Birds (@effinbirds.com) 2025-09-16T21:22:02.480Z

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy is calling for a combined European air defence system given that Russia’s attacks are now extending beyond just Ukraine. Here is a look at the struggle for Ukrainian authorities to identify their war dead.

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Roundup: The problem with “building things” nostalgia

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In all of the announcements that prime minister Mark Carney made this week, particularly around the Major Projects Office and the first tranche of projects that he was championing, there was something he said that bothers me. “We used to build big things in this country and we used to build them quickly,” he said, which is something that we hear a lot, particularly from conservatives. “We built a cross-country railroad in seven years!” But nobody wants to mention how that railroad, or any of those big projects got built, and what changed, because nostalgia is a seductive liar.

What changed, of course, is that we realized we can’t just devastate the environment, and that we can’t just keep displacing Indigenous peoples on their own lands, or that we can’t treat imported labour like slaves, or with working conditions that ensured that a great many of them died along the way. (Yes, I know there are problems with temporary foreign workers and modern-day slavery, but that is a separate discussion). And what is particularly concerning is that while Carney is not acknowledging what changed is that he gave himself a giant Henry VIII clause in his major projects legislation that lets him ignore environmental legislation, or whatever he finds inconvenient, in order to get these big things built fast. Does nobody see a problem here? Really?

Meanwhile, Poilievre mocks the “speeds not seen in generations” talks, and the unspoken part of his “government get out of the way” line is that it ultimately means environmental degradation, ignoring Indigenous rights, labour rights, you name it, because those are the things that are inconvenient. So, in a way, Carney and Poilievre are ultimately aligning on these particular things, and we shouldn’t be shrugging this off. Things changed for a reason. Going back to the 19thcentury is not a sustainable way forward, no matter how dire the economic situation we find ourselves in.

Ukraine Dispatch

Three people were killed in an incursion in the Sumy region, but that incursion has been pushed back. Ukrainian drones hit Russia’s key oil terminal in Primorsk. NATO announced plans to further shore up defences on their eastern flank after the incursion into Polish airspace. And Prince Harry made a surprise visit to Kyiv in support of wounded soldiers.

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Roundup: Five projects already approved or underway

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As expected, prime minister Mark Carney revealed the first five projects for the Major Project Office yesterday, and they were all…projects that have approvals and are underway in some stage, some more than halfway through construction, making one wonder just what exactly this was supposed to do. Carney made some vague remarks about getting them over the finish line, but the only halfway plausible explanation I heard came from an executive from one of the mining projects on Power & Politics who said this was sending positive signals necessary for investor confidence. Carney also made vague remarks about greenhouse gas targets and whether he planned to keep them, but his talk of a “grand bargain” doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of economic sense.

It was less the five announced projects that got premiers (other than David Eby) salivating, but the promises in the next tranche of projects that Carney says will be announced “by the Grey Cup,” because Canadian sports references. This includes a potential offshore wind farm in Nova Scotia, and expanding the Port of Churchill in Manitoba, which would also mean a need for expanded icebreaking capacity in Hudson’s Bay, which sounds an awful lot like a fairly significant federal subsidy. Dominic LeBlanc touted the possibility of construction on high-speed rail starting within four years (at least in the Toronto-to-Quebec corridor, and not the Windsor-to-Toronto arm). Perhaps most surprising, however, was Danielle Smith praising the projects, including the possibility of “Pathways Plus” (being the Pathways Alliance carbon capture scheme, which remains unviable without a high enough carbon price), and being effusive about her meeting with Carney on Wednesday, which one might take as a worrying sign that she is finding common conservative ground with Carney.

And predictably, the federal Conservatives went out to mock everything as being pathetic, that this was just an email to an office that doesn’t exist yet, and that everything is in the realm of mere possibility—and the lack of a pipeline on the list, though they are unable to name any pipeline project that is ready for federal approval. And the worst part remains that there is plenty to criticise, particularly that these five projects are already at underway, and that this is Carney trying to give himself undue credit for them. But no, they instead need to make cartoonish arguments, because they are incapable of being serious, even when they have been handed legitimate criticisms on a silver platter.

Ukraine Dispatch

President Zelenskyy says that allies need to rethink their air defences in light of the drone incursion in Poland, given that countering drones requires different, layered defences than planes or missiles.

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