The Liberals’ capacity to be their own worst enemy continues apace, that in the wake of Thursday’s ill-considered plan to “pause” the carbon price on heating oil (note that this is for the entire country, but the benefit is primarily felt in Atlantic Canada), rural economic development minister Gudie Hutchings made it all the worse with an appearance on CTV’s Question Period (taped Friday, and aired Sunday, but the news story went out on Friday evening). In it, Hutchings tried to defend the policy saying that Atlantic caucus was particularly vocal, and maybe if the Prairies voted in more Liberals, they “could have that conversation as well.” Oof.
Big #cdnpoli energy this weekend. https://t.co/iu4mG7lIci
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) October 29, 2023
Unsurprisingly, the Conservatives had an absolute field day with this over the weekend and claimed that this was “proof” that the carbon price was simply about punishing Western Canadians for not voting Liberal (which doesn’t make any logical sense, but this is about anger and not logic). Yes, there is a constant in Canadian politics that all of the parties pander to Quebec because they have a lot of seats and their votes are up for grabs, whereas the prairies reliably vote mostly Conservative so it doesn’t really pay for the Liberals to pander to them while the Conservatives take them for granted. But this was not the way to make that argument in relation to this carbon price issue, and it just made everything worse, so well done there.
Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, says he’ll support any motion to remove the carbon price on all heating, which is going to be the constant demand now because the Liberals did such a poor job of coming up with a fix for the Atlantic Canada problem (and there were much better options available). But now they’ve undermined their signature policy, opened the door to more exceptions that will just corrode the whole system, and yes, the Conservative still have their propaganda victory. The Liberals couldn’t have handled this any worse.
The Conservatives, ironically, have probably given the Liberals the easiest way out here. Once the Liberals started moving faster down the road of deciding which emissions should be free, both in agriculture and in home heating, they did this to themselves.
— Andrew Leach (@andrew_leach) October 29, 2023
Ukraine Dispatch:
Not much news from Ukraine this weekend, other than the fact that they are hoping to hold a global peace summit of world leaders later this year, following talks held in Malta over the past couple of days.
More than 1,500 Ukrainian-made FPV drones purchased under the state program were sent to Donetsk sector of the front.
Source: Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine pic.twitter.com/mBclErcgpJ— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) October 29, 2023
Russian losses in Avdiivka amount to approximately 4,000, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said on Oct. 28 in a phone call with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense reported. https://t.co/QHCXKC9EYX
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) October 29, 2023