For a Thursday

Happy Santa Claus Day!

Don't threaten; just do it:

Doug Ford’s office says the Ontario premier is prepared to walk away from the upcoming first ministers meeting meeting Friday if it does not include specific discussions on the federal carbon tax. 

Ford was set to meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Montreal on Thursday afternoon.

Sources familiar with the dispute said Ford and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe have not been satisfied by the federal response that the first ministers meeting agenda already includes a discussion on economic competitiveness — a broad topic that Ottawa says will allow premiers to raise all the issues they please.

Ontario government house leader Todd Smith said the agenda doesn’t deal with the concerns of the provinces, which include the carbon tax, the GM plant and the oil-price crisis.

Federal officials have privately conceded that little headway is likely to be made on the official objective of the meeting: reducing interprovincial trade barriers.

The carbon tax is nothing more than highway robbery and it should be treated as such.


And - Justin doesn't like it when people fight back:

The federal government is opposing a pitch by Alberta's United Conservative Party for intervener status in an upcoming court case in Saskatchewan over the national carbon tax.

Documents filed by Ottawa in Saskatchewan's Court of Appeal on Wednesday say the party's interest in the case is political and speculative.

"It is disappointing to see Conservative politicians across the country using taxpayer money and resources to oppose serious action on climate change," Caroline Theriault, a spokeswoman with federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna's office, said in a statement.

(Sidebar: live carbon-free then, Climate Barbie.)

Also:

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley says she'll have allies in the room to help push talks on the oil-price crisis at the upcoming first ministers meeting.

"There is really no province in the country that doesn't owe Alberta to some degree for their schools, their hospitals, their roads. The fact of the matter is Alberta has to do well for Canada to do well," Notley said in Edmonton Thursday before leaving for the meeting in Montreal.

After having been burned before, one should understand the reluctance to be twice-immolated:

New Brunswick's premier is hoping to restart the Energy East pipeline project — even though the company behind the project has no plans to do so.

TransCanada opted to kill the $16-billion project, which would have transported oil from Alberta to refineries in Eastern Canada and an export terminal in Saint John, N.B., in October 2017.

(Sidebar: let's clarify that, CBC, you Liberal Party mouth-piece you. Justin killed it with his regulatory processes and then bought it at a great cost and at rising interest to Canadians. You know it's bad when even Big Aboriginal can't stand you.)

At the time, it cited "existing and likely future delays resulting from the regulatory process, the associated cost implications and the increasingly challenging issues and obstacles" as the reasons to pull the plug.

Terry Cunha, manager of communications for TransCanada, said there's no plan to revisit the project.

"We are focused on developing the more than $36 billion in commercially secured pipeline and power generation projects that we currently have underway across North America, including Keystone XL and the Coastal GasLink project," Cunha said in an emailed statement.

You know who to blame, Mr. Higgs.

Why, it must be an election year!:

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan pledged Canada’s enduring support for Iraq and the war against ISIL on Thursday — but stopped short of extending Canada’s military mission in the region, most of which is set to expire next spring.

To wit:

Sixty-eight per cent of Canadians support sending Canadian fighter jets to support the U.S.-led coalition of airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, according to an exclusive Ipsos poll conducted for Global News.

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remains steadfast in keeping an election promise to withdraw Canada’s CF-18s from the international coalition, the new poll found the majority of Canadians support the use of fighter jets.

**

Canada is committing up to $24 million to support “elections and democracy” in Ukraine, including money to counter Russian disinformation, as tensions between Russia and the West continue to rise.

(Sidebar: how very Harper of you!)



If this woman ran afoul of the Chinese communist party, she would be in chains mining rocks somewhere:

The arrest of a Huawei executive on Canadian soil represents another setback to Justin Trudeau’s push for stronger ties with Beijing, which are already strained by differences over trade and investments.

Canada arrested Huawei Technologies Co. Chief Financial Officer Wanzhou Meng on Saturday in Vancouver as she was switching flights in the Pacific coast city. The arrest was made at the request of U.S. authorities, who want to extradite her. The arrest comes amid a probe of suspected violations of Iran trade sanctions.

China quickly lashed out at the Canadian move, saying it “firmly opposes” and “strongly protests” the arrest of Meng, according to a statement from the Chinese embassy in Ottawa late Wednesday.

Why, this could even upset things between the US and China!:

The daughter of Huawei's founder, a top executive at the Chinese technology giant, was arrested in Canada and faces extradition to the United States, stirring up fears it could reignite a Sino-U.S. trade row and roiling global stock markets.

The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, 46, who is Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's chief financial officer, threatens to drive a wedge between the United States and China just days after they agreed a 90-day trade war truce in Argentina on Saturday - the day she was detained.

I have yet to see a professional white-collar woman mow her own lawn let alone work in the middle of nowhere doing back-breaking work:

Trudeau talked about the “gender lens,” so maybe we should hear from somebody who will peep at his comments through a working-class lens. As a bonus, I have also participated in public panel discussions, so I sympathize with the prime minister a little on that score. Tyler was too polite to write this explicitly, but Trudeau was pretty much babbling in Argentina. You have to be extremely disciplined — more so than the good Lord made myself or Mr. Trudeau — to not run off at the mouth on one of these panels. One minute the PM seemed to be arguing for getting women better jobs, perhaps in those man camps themselves. (BREAKING NEWS: they are already there!) But just a few seconds later he was talking about “women entrepreneurs.” ...

Tying entrepreneurship back to the social impacts of camp labour would require a lot of filling in of blanks: that is perhaps more help than I am willing to give the prime minister, seeing as he was sitting on that panel mostly to burnish his own international star credentials. (If it helps Canada somehow, great.) But I am in a position to explain why Albertans might be touchy about the topic of labour camps.

It’s because everybody hates them. Remote construction jobs offer high pay in exchange for being apart from civilization and family for two weeks of every three, or three of four, or three of five. They become an option when you can’t find a nine-to-five job in a heated shop or Quonset in your town, or in any town, and you don’t want to throw away your education and training or go on pogey.

I would never accuse Justin of knowing how the real world works.