Canada
Liberal Party questions leadership candidate Ruby Dhalla over possible interference from India
Ms. Dhalla, the sources say, was provided with 27 questions on Monday and given a deadline to respond. The sources say some of the questions involve possible foreign interference in her leadership campaign from the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There were also allegations, the sources say, of backroom involvement in her campaign by Conservatives such as Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, a former Conservative MP and Ontario party leader.
Carney's campaign admits muddled messaging on pipelines, spending cuts
The Liberal leadership candidate is facing scrutiny for saying one thing in English and something different in French.
Poilievre calls Carney's fiscal plan a 'sneaky accounting trick'
Carney vowed at a press conference in Toronto on Wednesday to split the budget into two streams — capital and operating spending — and to balance the operating side while running small capital deficits. He said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government has been spending "too much."
Correction: Leadership campaign financing
In Wednesday's Roundup, I noted some details about the funding and rules for various federal Liberal leadership campaigns but then, after publishing, I had a chance to read through the latest edition of Éric Grenier's excellent newsletter and he notes:
"The filings show that Carney, Freeland and Baylis have all donated $25,000 to their own campaigns, as contestants are allowed to do by law. Carney also has a $150,000 loan from the Bank of Montreal, while both Baylis and Dhalla have loaned their own campaigns money ($50,000 for Baylis, $25,000 for Dhalla).
I was under the misapprehension that the cap on donations to leadership campaigns -- currently set at $1750/year -- applied to everyone, including the leadership candidates themselves. But nope, as Éric points out, leadership candidates themselves can kick in $25,000 to their own campaigns. The rest of us are capped at $1750/year. I was remiss not to double check Election Canada's Web site on this point. -DA
The Provinces
Alberta premier shuffles deputy health minister amid corruption allegations
The Opposition NDP has called for the United Conservative Party government to order a judicial public inquiry to get to the bottom of the scandal. Asked why she hasn’t ordered an inquiry into the allegations of government interference, Smith spoke instead about holding the health agency to account. “These are AHS internal processes,” she said. “AHS internal processes have been a bit of a black box to government for some time,” she said. Story continues below advertisement
The former head of AHS, Athana Mentzelopoulos, alleges in a lawsuit filed a week ago that she was wrongfully dismissed by Tremblay from her job for looking into questionable contracts pushed by government officials as high up as the premier’s office.
Smith pulls out of governors' meeting in D.C. after White House visit
"We’ve decided to remain in Alberta this week to prepare for the budget that will be released next week,” Smith said in a statement to the National Post. “We need to make sure Albertans have the resources they need to deal with the uncertainty we face from the tariff threat and the potential inflation that could cause.”
N.S. move to allow firing of auditor without cause should be seen as threat: watchdog
Kim Adair, the current auditor general, said in a written statement that she was not consulted on the changes, and added she is meeting with government officials today to understand “the impact to the independence” of her office and its operations. Adair’s reports have been repeatedly critical of the Progressive Conservative government’s spending of billions of dollars outside the budget process and have pointed out that Nova Scotia is the only province that doesn’t require extra spending to be vetted by the legislature. The Houston government is also getting rid of fixed election dates and giving politicians a raise.
Holt government to spend $19,000 US a month lobbying Washington
Province has hired Nashville-based Ingram Group, headed by Tom Ingram, former chief of staff to Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander.
Elsewhere
Donald Trump is living in Russian ‘disinformation space,’ Zelenskyy says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he “would like Trump’s team to be more truthful" after Trump suggested Ukraine “should have never started” the war.
Trump calls Zelenskyy a 'dictator' as tensions rise between the leaders over the Russia-Ukraine war
“Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and “TRUMP,” will never be able to settle,” Trump said of Zelenskyy, who was popular television star in Ukraine before running for office. Trump added in his social media post that Zelenskyy is “A Dictator without Elections”!!
Facing Trump’s tariff war: A defensive blueprint for the EU
...maintaining a minimum degree of unity on a strategy to respond, will be the EU’s greatest challenge. The EU will need to protect its interests by appeasing Trump’s hunger for a winning narrative while pursuing a more serious cooperation with Greer on China. At the same time, the EU will need to convincingly threaten retaliation on US businesses if tariffs are imposed.
Pete Hegseth orders Pentagon to look for 8 percent in budget cuts
Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by Monday, according to the memo, which is dated Tuesday and includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern U.S. border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense, and acquisition of submarines, one-way attack drones and other munitions. (🎁 link)
Media
Judge Orders Mississippi Newspaper to Remove Editorial, Alarming Press Advocates
The owner of The Clarksdale Press Register said he planned to challenge a judge’s order against an editorial that criticized city officials. (🎁 link)
Schizophrenia: Proportionality and erasure in Canadian news media
Sources such as police, lawyers and others from the legal system dominate the articles by a wide margin in absolute and relative terms compared to the baseline. Organizational sources, such as advocacy groups, correlate to the minority of reports with a positive tone. Those living with schizophrenia or their families are quoted more frequently compared to the same kinds of voices in the baseline, but they do not result in positive tone. Political sources are under-represented in the corpus; reports related to the themes of resources and health care funding are coded at the lowest frequency.
Science and tech
Electricity demand surges for the world’s two biggest polluters
China and the US, the world’s two top greenhouse gas polluters, could burn through a lot more electricity over the next couple of years, according to the latest forecast from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The steepest rise in global electricity demand in a while is expected over the next few years, with much of that coming from new data centers and the manufacturing of electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, and semiconductors in the two countries.
Trump's NIH budget cuts threaten ‘entire fields of research,’ stirring panic among scientists
Sweeping layoffs, funding freezes and executive orders have provoked outcry among federal researchers and their university partners, who fear that science itself is under siege.
The Calendar
- 0930 ET: Montreal - Small Business Min Rechie Valdez makes a funding announcement
- 1000 ET: Sherbrooke, QC - Revenue Min Elisabeth Briere makes a funding announcement
- 1030 ET: NPT - Heritage Min Pascale St-Onge speaks about the future of the CBC.
- 1045 ET: Toronto - FEDDEV Min Ruby Sahota makes a funding announcement
- 1200 ET: Winnipeg - LPC MP Ben Carr makes a funding announcement
- 1200 ET: Whistler, BC - LPC MP Patrick Weiler makes a funding announcement
- 1230 ET: Saint John - LPC MP Wayne Long makes a funding announcement
- 1330 ET: Edmonton - NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh speaks at a Canadian Labour Congress event.
- 1400 ET: Edmonton - NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh speaks to reporters.
- 1430 ET: Ottawa - PM Trudeau will meet with provincial and territorial premiers.
- 1800 ET: Fort Erie, ON - CPC MPs Tony Baldinelli and Larry Brock speak at the campaign kick-off for the Niagara South CPC EDA.
- 1800 ET: Brentwood Bay, BC - GPC MP Elizabeth May attends a meeting about biosolids.
