And Good Sunday Morning! We awaken to a world alarmingly less safe than last Sunday morning. I know we all feel it. It is not possible to focus. Israel bombs Iran. Iran will retaliate. In Gaza the humanitarian crisis escalates. In Ukraine the Russian assault increases, no doubt as Putin was humiliated by the Ukrainian drone attack on Russian bombers, jet fighters sitting on tarmacs. Russian pilots spared but bombers in flames. Then there is he who must not be named declaring war on immigrants, targeting raids and as Los Angeles residents protest to protect their peaceful neighbours being abducted – their waitresses, cooks, gardeners and labourers,. The protests predictably become targets. Trump proclaims himself the protector of law and order, while inciting violence. He does not see the irony in his January 6^th celebration of violence against the peaceful transfer of power, as he calls out the National Guard against primarily peaceful protests, over the objections of California’s governor. And then, even more unconstitutionally, he dispatches active duty Marines- soldiers to the streets of Los Angeles. Then the assassination of Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, and shot by the same assassin – so far surviving – Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife. While Trump readies his birthday military parade in Washington. And today he will join our Prime Minister at the G7 in Kananaskis Alberta…Too much all at once. How do we cope?

We have to be able to hang on to principle. To stand in solidarity with the oppressed. Coping strategies will vary. Stop watching the news? Turn off all devices? Or compartmentalize. I can only handle this much and no more. Here’s the rub. We who see the wrongs and seek to right them must stay aware and able to think and research, document and remember. To bear witness, we have to remain engaged.

And of all the bad stuff I have disgorged in the last few paragraphs, none of it touches dramatic changes underway in Canada. Last week I wrote about the appalling bill to fast track projects in the “national interest” – Bill C-5. I mentioned it was in two, quite separate parts- the first to improve labour mobility across provincial borders, and I wrote “no issues with that!” And moved on to focus on part 2 – the national-interest projects part. Turns out there are problems with part 1. The Canadian Cancer Society is raising the alarm that in reducing inter-provincial trade barriers, C-5 could launch a “race to the bottom” on environmental and health standards. To gain quick progress in removing inter-provincial barriers, a weaker provincial standard could replace a more stringent federal standard. As is normally the case with such provisions, the Cancer Society is asking for environmental and health exemptions. I have raised these concerns in the House.

As we grappled with C-5, parts 1 and 2, I had many conversations with environmental law groups and others concerned with giving Cabinet such sweeping unilateral powers. We were trying to figure out how the process of studying the legislation would work. I was certainly prepared to see work continue over the summer. I could not imagine how else the legislation could be passed. Normal legislative process requires a debate at Second Reading and a vote. Following Second Reading, every bill goes to committee, for study. Witnesses are called, amendments prepared. Generally even with fast-tracking as under Harper, this takes weeks or months depending on the bill. But, as of last week, only one committee had been set up, the Committee on House and Procedural affairs – not where C-5 would go.

So we speculated. Adding up the stages. Once the clause by clause review of amendments has been done, those amendments are “Reported back” to the House, leading to a vote at Report Stage, and lastly, following Third Reading debate is the last step – the vote at Third Reading and then over to the Senate. In our imaginings of how much time it would take to consider C-5 we knew we had time to improve the bill. That is, after all, the job of Parliament.

On Thursday I had the shock of my life. This whole bill is to be passed at every stage, done and dusted by Friday June 20. It is called a “programming motion” and the Liberal House Leader dropped it on us on Thursday. Tuesday will be debate on Second Reading and pushed through. Tuesday at 3:30 a new committee will be set up and have two hours to study. And Wednesday all amendments are due and by midnight will be considered carried or defeated. Thursday will be Report Stage debate and vote and Friday Third Reading debate and vote. No delays. No study.

Trespassing on your patience, and knowing my Sunday Morning readers are not afraid of details, here is what the programming motion says- in total:

No. 1 — June 11, 2025 — The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons — That, notwithstanding any standing order, special order or usual practice of the House, Bill C-5, An Act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act, be disposed of as follows:

(a) the bill be ordered for consideration at the second reading stage immediately after the adoption of this order, provided that,

(i) two members from each recognized party, one member from the New Democratic Party and the member from the Green Party may each speak at the said stage for not more than 10 minutes, followed by five minutes for questions and comments,

(ii) during consideration of the bill at second reading, the House shall not adjourn, except pursuant to a motion moved by a minister of the Crown,

(iii) at the conclusion of the time provided for the debate or when no member wishes to speak, whichever is earlier, all questions necessary to dispose of the second reading stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment and, if a recorded division is requested, the vote shall not be deferred;

(b) if the bill is adopted at the second reading stage and referred to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities,

(i) if the report on the striking of membership of Standing and Standing Joint Committees of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs has not yet been concurred in by the House, the whip of each recognized party shall deposit with the Clerk of the House a list of their party’s members of the committee no later than the adjournment of the House on the day of the adoption of this order,

(ii) the committee shall meet on Tuesday, June 17, 2025, and on Wednesday, June 18, 2025, at 3:30 p.m., provided that,

(A) the committee shall have the first priority for the use of House resources for committee meetings,

(B) the committee shall meet until 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 17, 2025, for the election of the chair and vice-chairs, the consideration of routine motions governing its proceedings, and to gather evidence from witnesses,

(C) the committee meet until 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, June 18, 2025, to gather evidence from witnesses and undertake clause-by-clause consideration of the bill,

(D) all amendments be submitted to the clerk of the committee by noon on Wednesday, June 18, 2025,

(E) amendments filed by independent members shall be deemed to have been proposed during the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill,

(F) if the committee has not completed the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill by 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, June 18, 2025, all remaining amendments submitted to the committee shall be deemed moved, the Chair shall put the question, forthwith and successively, without further debate, on all remaining clauses and amendments submitted to the committee, as well as each and every question necessary to dispose of the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill, and the committee shall not adjourn the meeting until it has disposed of the bill,

(G) a member of the committee may report the bill to the House by depositing it with the Clerk of the House, who shall notify the House leaders of the recognized parties and independent members, provided that if the report is presented on Thursday, June 19, 2025, the bill shall be taken up at report stage on the next sitting day;

(c) the bill be ordered for consideration at report stage on Friday, June 20, 2025, provided that,

(i) two members from each recognized party, one member from the New Democratic Party and the member from the Green Party may each speak on report stage motions for not more than 10 minutes, followed by five minutes for questions and comments,

(ii) at the conclusion of the time provided for the debate or when no member wishes to speak, whichever is earlier, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, and in turn every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment, and, if a recorded division is requested, the vote shall not be deferred, except pursuant to Standing Order 76.1(8),

(iii) the bill be ordered for consideration at the third reading stage immediately after concurrence of the bill at report stage;

(d) when the bill is taken up at the third reading stage, pursuant to subparagraph (c)(iii) of this order,

(i) two members from each recognized party, one member from the New Democratic Party and the member from the Green Party may each speak at the said stage for not more than 10 minutes, followed by five minutes for questions and comments,

(ii) at the conclusion of the time provided for the debate or when no member wishes to speak, whichever is earlier, all questions necessary to dispose of the third reading stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment, and, if a recorded division is requested, the vote shall not be deferred;

(e) on Friday, June 20, 2025, the House shall not adjourn until the proceedings on the bill have been completed, except pursuant to a motion moved by a minister of the Crown, provided that once proceedings have been completed, the House may then proceed to consider other business or, if it has already passed the ordinary hour of daily adjournment, the House shall adjourn to the next sitting day; and

(f) no motion to adjourn the debate at any stage of the said bill may be moved except by a minister of the Crown.

At first I just couldn’t breathe. I did get to question our new Minister for Natural Resources in main estimates. Tim Hodgosn has replaced Jonathan Wilkinson. He kept insisting that C-5 protected Indigenous rights and would require a “consensus.” not mentioned in the act. I am afraid he does not seem to understand the bill. And after me trying to explain it, I don’t think this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K3X6vHq_5o.

We still had debate in the House this week on other bills- like C-2 the Affordability Act which inexplicably reduces privacy rights in part 4 with amendments to the Elections Act. Those sections will enter into force in the year 2000. You read that right. The changes are retroactive to 25 years ago.

It is also hard for the media to focus. Very few reporters are looking at C-5 nor the bulldozer approach to ram it through.

And Carney has also just announced a huge increase in military spending, tied to economic development. We are shifting to a petrostate with war as an economic driver. The Trump emergency is driving significant changes in our national budgetary priorities, our psyche, to who we are as a country. And as long as Trump is the emergency, slowing down to think about it, is not in the cards.

See below for Andrew Coyne’s take. I have cut and pasted from behind the Globe and Mail pay wall. It is a solid perspective.

Until next week, pray for peace. Urge all to stand firm on international law and keep each other buoyed by shared love of this glorious creation!

My best moment this week was at my little church, St Andrews in Sidney, when Bishop Anna, riding in the bucket of the cherry picker, rose to the roof to bless the solar panels on  the church hall. A solid act of community resilience!

thanks to Rev Kelly Duncan and all at St. Andrews for the liturgy of the blessing of the solar panels!

 

much love

Elizabeth

 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/authors/andrew-coyne/

Prime Minister hits the ground running, unconcerned by deficits, principle or the rights of Parliament

Andrew Coyne

Published 5 hours ago (June 13, 2025)

For Subscribers

If Mr. Carney is not in much of a rush to reveal his fiscal plan to Parliament, he is in a rush to make significant decisions without it, and to push through major legislative changes.

Tuesday marks a couple of anniversaries of sorts for Mark Carney. It will have been 100 days since he was elected leader of the Liberal Party and, as such, became Prime Minister of Canada. And it will have been 50 days since the general election confirmed him in that position.

What have we learned in that time about his philosophy of government, and – a related but distinct point – his approach to governing?

We know that he is in a hurry, or certainly wants people to think he is. Parliament was recalled less than a month after the election, which would not be considered particularly hasty in other parliamentary democracies – the British House typically returns inside of a week, two at the most – but is lightning-fast by Canadian standards.

Mind you, it had been more than five months since it last sat. And having sat for four weeks, it is scheduled to rise on June 20, not to return until September 15. All told, the Commons is scheduled to sit just 73 days this year, the fewest since 1937. (Britain’s will sit for 196.)

So for all the rhetorical flourishes about doing “things we haven’t imagined at speeds we didn’t think possible,” he’s maybe not in that much of a rush. Some of us think it would have been quite possible to bring in a budget this spring, but that’s been put off until the fall.

Still, if he’s not in much of a rush to reveal his fiscal plan to Parliament, he is in a rush to make significant decisions without it, and to push through major legislative changes, some of which he had not previously disclosed – as they might have been, for example, in the recent election campaign.

So we have the sudden decision to increase defence spending by $9-billion in the current fiscal year, instantly bringing Canadian military spending up to the two per cent of GDP target we promised our NATO allies we would reach years ago. That’s praiseworthy, but it’s a little different than the 2030 target Mr. Carney ran on.

And without further details, or a sense of how it would be paid for – Mr. Carney has ruled out raising taxes, so either there will have to be cross-government cuts in spending that were not previously advertised, or the deficit will have to go higher – it’s hard to judge how well considered this is.

Looming in the offing, moreover, is the NATO summit later this month, at which member states will be asked to raise “core” defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035 (another 1.5 per cent would be devoted to defence-related infrastructure). That would mean roughly tripling defence spending in real terms.

How that squares with Mr. Carney’s pledge to bring “operating” spending in line with revenues within three years – limiting borrowing to that required to cover capital spending – we can only guess at, but it suggests a whole bunch of operating spending is about to get reclassified as capital spending.

And even if it is all legitimately capital spending, it still has to be paid for, which is to say borrowed. The economist Trevor Tombe estimates a purely debt-financed defence buildup would bring the federal debt-to-GDP ratio to north of 50 per cent.

One thing we know about Mr. Carney, then, is that he is not overly vexed about deficits. Neither does he seem particularly attached to principle. The carbon tax was a central, even defining part of his economic and political philosophy – until it got in the way of his election chances, at which point it was jettisoned, mercilessly, complete with phony presidential-style signing ceremony.

Standing up to Donald Trump, while steering a new, more independent course for Canada, including trade agreements with more “reliable” partners, was all that he wanted to talk about during the election. Since then it’s been all about striking a new economic and security agreement with (checks notes) the United States, tightening up the border, perhaps even participating in Mr. Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” system of ballistic missile defence.

But if Mr. Carney is concerned to protect Canada from Mr. Trump, he is even more concerned to protect his Liberal government from the Conservatives. Of the seven priorities in the mandate letter he sent to his 28 cabinet ministers (it was 22, before the election), fully six (“expediting nation-building projects… bringing down costs for Canadians… making housing more affordable … strengthening the Canadian Armed Forces… returning our overall immigration rates to sustainable levels … spending less on government operations”) were directly aimed at Conservative voters. Progressive voters who flocked to his side to save them from Pierre Poilievre may be somewhat dismayed to see him implementing Mr. Poilievre’s agenda.

Certainly that seems to be the gist of his early legislative agenda, with an admixture of cynicism and contempt for Parliament. The three major government bills introduced so far – C-2, the Strong Borders Act; C-4, the Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act; and C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act – are noteworthy, not only for their conservative tilt, but for combining in one bill manifestly different pieces of legislation, with different objectives and different impacts: the dreaded “omnibus bills” that Liberals used to oppose.

C-2 yokes together a number of provisions for tightening refugee policy, which might at least be considered part of the promise to “get control of immigration” on which Mr. Carney ran, with a set of quite appalling measures expanding the government’s powers of surveillance that were never mentioned on the campaign trail.

C-4 is advertised as enacting the Liberal election promise to cut the base rate of income tax from 15 per cent to 14 per cent. Yet tucked within it one finds – surprise! – a little mini-bill exempting federal political parties from provincial privacy legislation, much as they are already exempt from federal legislation: a transparent attempt to head off a pending appeals court judgment in British Columbia, after a lower court found the province’s legislation applied to federal parties. What on Earth does this have to do with cutting taxes?

Likewise, C-5 combines measures to implement Mr. Carney’s campaign promise to remove federal barriers to interprovincial trade – the provinces’ own barriers will take a great deal more work to uproot – with a quite separate, and potentially more controversial, set of provisions to fast-track government approval of development projects that meet a certain list of criteria.

As with the other bills, members of Parliament will be forced to vote on the whole package, up or down, as if it were one bill with a single purpose, rather than an ungainly mishmash of different pieces of legislation, some of which they might support but much of which they might oppose. In each case it amounts to an abuse of power, which no amount of urgent-sounding rhetoric (“the largest transformation of the Canadian economy since the Second World War”) can paper over.

The substance of the bills is in many places as objectionable as the process. Several observers have taken issue with the surveillance-state provisions in C-2 – empowering the government, for example, to demand that internet service providers hand over information on their subscribers, or Canada Post to open your mail.

But the refugee provisions are no less draconian. It may appeal to people’s impatience to deny asylum applicants a hearing if they file their claim more than a year after they arrive (in the general case) or two weeks (in the case of those crossing the border from the United States), but it does not alter the fundamental right that is at stake: the right to due process, to have your claim heard by an impartial arbiter before you are sent back to a country where you may face persecution or worse.

If you are suspected of robbing a bank, but evade capture for more than two weeks, it does not give the government the right, once it gets its hands on you, to imprison you without trial. You still get your day in court. Neither would it be sufficient for the government to make its own assessment of how much danger you would be in if it did, as the bill proposes it should do with refugee claimants: It would have no right to send you there without a hearing, period.

C-4’s main provisions, likewise, may be odious together, but they are just as odious separately. The tax cut is a massively expensive proposal that will do nothing to improve productivity while conferring a windfall gain on upper-income taxpayers. The privacy exemption is a wholly unjustified special privilege of a kind the parties are wont to confer upon themselves: See “do-not-call list.”

As for the “Building Canada” provisions of C-5, there are two main lines of objection. One is the danger that important environmental, Indigenous or other concerns may be overlooked in the haste to approve projects with important political backers. The other, perhaps opposite concern: Why should some projects be exempt from the sort of scrutiny to which others are obliged to submit? Is this not “picking winners” by another name? If there is consensus that Canada’s approval process is too burdensome and too slow, doesn’t that argue for reforming the process generally – for everyone, not just for the favoured few who tick the right political boxes?

But that would take time. Fine. What’s the rush? Why not divide each of these contentious bills into its component parts, and let Parliament consider them separately, giving each the sort of scrutiny that we theoretically elect MPs to provide? Or if the matters are that urgent, then why not let Parliament sit through the summer, rather than shutting down until September?

I realize that would cut into Mr. Carney’s performance of “Julius Caesar in One Act,” but I’m willing to take that chance.