It was short, concise and eyebrow raising.
At the Liberals’ national caucus meeting in Ottawa on Wednesday morning, the chair of the Atlantic caucus — an ambitious, young Nova Scotia MP named Kody Blois — went to the microphone to report on the discussions earlier held at the regional caucus.
“Atlantic caucus had a difficult, frank and open conversation about the future of the party,” he told Liberal MPs, according to sources in the room. Then he left.
The evidence mounts daily that, regardless of Hurricane Milton and other climate events, neither Canada nor the world are on track to achieve the net-zero fossil fuel emission reduction targets said to be necessary to save the world from the “existential” threat of climate change. Despite the calls for action, oil and gas production continue to increase as energy corporations boost fossil fuel investments.
More than five years after COVID first emerged, amid rising and falling waves, calls are growing for a public inquiry into Canada’s pandemic response on the scale of the Krever inquiry into the country’s tainted blood scandal of the 1980s.
It’s been a tough year for some auto companies. Sales of electric vehicles continue to grow, especially in China and India, though more slowly than expected in North America and Europe. Demand is even falling in Italy, Japan and Germany. Meanwhile, cheaper Chinese EVs are grabbing market share in Europe and Asia. While improving recently, global vehicle sales remain sluggish at 90 million units in 2023, four million short of 2018.
The Trudeau government’s ban on new gas and diesel vehicles is a non-starter for three powerful reasons.
First, Canadians want to drive gas-powered minivans and diesel pickups.
Second, Canada does not have the electrical power to fuel these battery-powered cars.
OTTAWA — With no new campaign director, no new ad campaign rollout, no major cabinet shuffle, and no change at the top amid grim polling data for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, anxiety and dread amongst MPs and insiders about their electoral prospects has ramped up, sources tell the Star.
Most MPs head out Friday — some fled Ottawa earlier — into a Thanksgiving week parliamentary break which should be a reprieve from parliamentary wrangling with the opposition Conservatives that has stalled government business for two weeks.
Former public safety minister Marco Mendicino says he is very worried the public conversation about some parliamentarians being complicit in foreign interference is becoming a “kangaroo court.”
Mendicino said at a federal inquiry into foreign meddling today that it’s important to follow due process under the law before leaping to conclusions about the conduct of parliamentarians.
Recently revealed documents show that members of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet were looking to associate rising inflation in Canada with “climate change” by using the term “heat-flation,” but abandoned the idea after negative feedback from polls.
An article by former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair this week suggested Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is shaping Canada’s foreign policy to please a few thousand voters in her own Montreal riding, particularly as it would pertain to Israel. “Thomas, have you seen the demographics of my riding”? Joly asked Mulcair.
While the defining feature of our parliamentary system is that MPs represent constituents, pandering to them in such a role as Joly holds becomes an obvious dereliction of a higher duty, and an act of moral cowardice.
Mulcair notes that it “can’t be debated” that Joly’s positions on the Israel-Hamas war have been “utterly incomprehensible.”
I wouldn’t call it cowardice, it’s the sinister math needed to keep her seat.
OTTAWA — The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s corrected analysis of the carbon tax has confirmed most Canadians are getting back more in rebates than they pay in carbon taxes but that the policy will make most Canadians worse off financially.
Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux corrected a mistake he made in two previous reports, but it came to the same broad conclusion. Those previous reports counted both the fuel tax that average consumers pay and the tax on heavy emitters, which they don’t.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had to make then-Public Safety Minister Bill Blair feel “comfortable” with a request for surveillance powers on an Ontario politician, a former top Public Safety official told the Foreign Interference Commission.
The commission has been probing why it took Blair 54 days to approve the 2021 warrant application against a subject whose identity was not revealed during proceedings.
It’s time to put this Parliament out of its misery — or at least on life support.
Canadians can be excused for ignoring the dysfunction of this fall, or tuning it out. Even people paid to keep an eye on the antics in Parliament are finding it hard to watch.
“Antics” = Getting to the roots of yet another LPC scandal.
If you thought the Freedom Convoy types played a role in the last federal Conservative leadership race, just wait and see what the Hamas and Hezbollah types will do when the Liberals try to find a new leader.
Trudeau laid the groundwork for this and I don’t doubt it could happen.
OTTAWA — As the House of Commons remains in procedural suspended animation, Canada’s Opposition leader is standing firm on his pledge to hold the government to account.
During question period on Wednesday, Liberal House leader Karina Gould said the quagmire — triggered by a Conservative privilege motion over the government’s refusal to hand over unredacted documents related to the now-defunct Sustainable Development Technology Canada’s billion-dollar “green slush fund” scandal — should be resolved in the committee room, not the House.
I was packing for a trip to Germany when the first reports of Hamas’ massacre of civilians began circulating online. Initially, what I saw fit the pattern of other Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis, and I went to bed that night believing the IDF would eliminate the perpetrators and that would be that.
