CANADA'S NEXT ENERGY DEBATE — Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU and his ministers announced lethal aid to Ukraine on Monday in the form of anti-tank weaponry and rockets. Immigration Minister SEAN FRASER unveiled a suite of measures aimed at making it easier for Ukrainians to stay in or get to Canada (though he stopped short of dropping visa requirements). The PM also declared a ban on Russian oil imports. (POLITICO's ZI-ANN LUM confirms: Canada doesn't import any oil from Russia.) But it wasn't an oil ban that riled up a leading Tory on Monday. The leading candidate for the party's permanent leadership, PIERRE POILIEVRE, zeroed in on Canada's inability to export vast reserves of oil and gas that could help Europe shake its addiction to Russian energy. — The 'world's cleanest' energy: Poilievre followed up a National Post op-ed with a slick video on how Canada should face off against Russian aggression. Here's the elevator pitch: "As always, petroleum is driving geopolitics. Europe has to beg Putin for energy, so Putin holds all the cards. But we can help take away those cards, because Canada has what Europe needs, and lots of it: energy." — "My government will": Poilievre's six-minute vid is as bold as ever. Skipping past the leadership race, Carleton's MP argues from the front benches. “As prime minister,” he says, “I will scrap Trudeau's anti-energy laws.” (That's C-69 and C-48, which beef up rules around pipeline approvals and maritime crude transport.) What would replace those laws? Better ones, he says, that consult First Nations and produce quick decisions. (He offers no specifics.) Poilievre would also fast-track energy projects — say, LNG terminals — that could export Canadian energy to international markets. (Again, no specifics.) — Reality check: While replacing Europe’s reliance on Russian natural gas with a Canadian supply makes for a compelling political argument, it glosses over the realities of building resource projects in this country. Spoiler alert: It takes a long time. The only liquefied natural gas terminal in Atlantic Canada is in Saint John, N.B. — and it's an import facility. LNG Canada’s Kitimat, B.C. export facility, Canada’s first, is 50 percent complete. — The view from Alberta: Premier JASON KENNEY was singing from the same songbook as Poilievre: "Message to Ottawa and Washington: stop helping Putin and OPEC by killing pipelines" QUOTE OF THE DAY: Deputy PM CHRYSTIA FREELAND set the stakes for Ukraine's defense of its capital city under siege — a pivotal moment with few parallels that deserves the world's full attention. "There are moments in history when the great struggle between freedom and tyranny comes down to one fight in one place which is waged for all of humanity. In 1863 that place was Gettysburg. In 1940 it was the skies above Britain. Today in 2022 it is Kyiv." — Honorable mention: Canada's man at the U.N., BOB RAE, delivered his second rebuke of Putin's invasion in a week: "We don’t go to war," he told an emergency session of the General Assembly. "We go to the negotiating table. We go to court. We go to mediators. That is how we resolve disputes. The other way lies madness." Read the full transcript here. — From POLITICO: International Criminal Court to open probe. HUMANITARIAN CRISIS — FILIPPO GRANDI didn't mince words at the U.N. Security Council on Monday. The U.N. high commissioner for refugees painted a stark crisis of the mass westward migration away from hostilities in Ukraine: "As we speak, there are 520,000 refugees from Ukraine in neighboring countries. This figure has been rising exponentially, hour after hour, literally, since Thursday. I have worked in refugee crises for almost 40 years and I have rarely seen such an incredibly fast-rising exodus of people — the largest, surely, within Europe, since the Balkan wars." — From POLITICO: Russian escalation in Ukraine could lead to humanitarian crisis. Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova are all throwing their doors open to Ukrainians fleeing their homeland. But not everyone is so lucky. A desperate family of Afghan refugees who dream of a new life in Canada can't find their way out of Ukraine. The Safis were twice turned away from Slovakia last week. They took a train to the Polish border, where they were again deemed ineligible by border guards. — From Kabul to Kyiv: Mir Safi was a prosecutor in the Attorney General's Office of Afghanistan before Kabul fell last August. The 47-year-old managed to escape with his family on a flight to Kyiv, where they hoped to sort out the paperwork required to get to Canada and claim asylum. A special immigration program for human-rights defenders seemed tailor-made for people like Mir, who'd put Talib criminals in jail. But they made little headway with the Canadian bureaucracy. They lived for several months in a UN Refugee Agency-operated facility in western Ukraine. When VLADIMIR PUTIN's forces invaded to the east, the Safis knew they couldn't stay put. Now they're on the move, desperate for a lucky break but not sure how they'll find one. Read your Playbook host's full story here. — Chalk it up to racism: The Safis' experience isn't unique. The Globe's PAUL WALDIE and GEOFFREY YORK chronicle the racial discrimination faced by African and Asian refugees at the Polish border. One account from a woman in Przemysl: “To be honest, there was a lot of racism. Because the Ukrainians always came first, even though we Africans would be there for days and sometimes three days with no food. Everyone was just exhausted. Any time Ukrainians came, they told us to go back. They were shouting at us, ‘go back.’ It was really crazy.” — From POLITICO: JOSH POSANER sent this video dispatch from Lviv in western Ukraine which is a key staging post for refugees en route out of the country.
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