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A daily look inside Canadian politics and power. | | | | |  | | By Nick Taylor-Vaisey and Maura Forrest with Philippe J. Fournier | Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Nick | Follow Politico Canada Thanks for reading the Ottawa Playbook. I'm your host, Nick Taylor-Vaisey, with Maura Forrest and Philippe J. Fournier. Today, as Ottawa does its speculation thing on the impact of a huge public service strike, we get a sense of what it means for New Democrats and Liberals on the Hill. |  | DRIVING THE DAY | | | 
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh in the thick of it on Parliament Hill. | Sean Kilpatrick, The Canadian Press | STRIKE STAKES — There's no question about JAGMEET SINGH's allegiance on the Public Service Alliance of Canada picket line. The NDP leader stood (literally) with striking workers on Parliament Hill on a chilly Wednesday. He's all in against the government — for now. On Day 2 of the PSAC strike, we have so many questions: Does the strike threaten the survival of the Liberal-NDP confidence and supply deal? Not yet. So says MÉLANIE RICHER, a senior consultant at Earnscliffe who was Singh's d-comm for two years until she left the Hill in January. "Does it mean that they're less collaborative on stuff? I think that's definitely something that you'll see," she tells Playbook. "But if you're asking if this means that they walk away from the deal, I don't think we're there anytime soon." The NDP has too much leverage on key priorities like dentalcare, which will expand this year but require more votes in the House to get the next phase to the finish line. Where's the red line? PSAC and government negotiators were reportedly at the table on Wednesday. But if talks break down, that means mounting delays for passport applications, immigration services and annual tax returns that families are counting on receiving ASAP. If those delays become a political liability for the Liberals, the government's next option will be back-to-work legislation. The Liberals have known since striking the confidence deal with the NDP that forcing workers back on the job would be a no-go for their dance partners. That was made “super clear,” said Richer. What are the stakes? It's no secret every party is courting unionized workers. A week before Finance Minister CHRYSTIA FREELAND tabled her 2023 budget, she toured an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers training center in Oshawa and made remarks surrounded by union members. In January, she headlined a party fundraiser at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Hall in North York. In early April, Labor Minister SEAMUS O'REGAN toured a Hamilton training center run by the LiUNA construction union. What about the rest of the labor movement? Playbook got a few minutes with Canadian Labour Congress president BEA BRUSKE. The CLC represents 55 affiliate unions — and millions of members — in both the public and private sector, including the electrical workers, painters and construction workers. Does the strike poison the Liberals' relationship with every affiliate? No, said Bruske. Not as long as they're bargaining in good faith, even if it's tense and messy — which is not exactly uncommon. Would back-to-work legislation raise more hackles? "100 percent," she said. "Because you're really taking away our right to strike, you're really taking away our charter right to bargain freely and fairly, and to withdraw our labor," she said. Bruske sent a letter to Treasury Board President MONA FORTIER imploring the minister not to table a bill. — Who disagrees? The Canadian Federation for Independent Business has urged the feds to prepare a back-to-work bill. — All politics is local: A veteran union staffer reminded Playbook that the Canada Revenue Agency, whose 35,000 workers are among the PSAC strikers, employs approximately 3,000 people in Sudbury. Former mayor PAUL LEFEBVRE has held the riding for the Liberals since 2015, but then-New Democrat MP GLENN THIBEAULT — he later flipped to the provincial Liberals — carried the riding twice under JACK LAYTON's banner. 338Canada lists the riding as a three-way toss-up. — All picketing is local: Strikers targeted the office of Chief Government Whip STEVEN MACKINNON and Orleans MP MARIE-FRANCE LALONDE. When will it end? Redditors are taking bets. More than 2,000 users made predictions, with 55 percent predicting the stoppage would stretch past April 24. Are there memes? Yes. Here's one.
| | For your radar | | | | 
The government wants to reach zero plastic waste by the end of the decade. | Getty | PLASTIC PLANS — This week, the federal government quietly released the next steps in its plan to crack down on plastic waste. You’ve no doubt heard about the Liberals’ ban on six single-use plastic items, which started to come into effect last December. But that’s just one part of the government’s larger push to reach zero plastic waste by the end of the decade. The Liberals have also promised to require 50 percent recycled content in plastic packaging by 2030, to introduce tougher labeling rules and to establish a plastics registry that would require producers to report annually on plastics in the Canadian economy. Documents published this week offer more detail about exactly what the government has in mind. Here’s what jumped out at Playbook: — Fifty percent, sort of: The government wants all plastic packaging to be made of 50 percent recycled content by 2030 — except for a bunch of exemptions. According to a regulatory framework published Tuesday, packaging for food, medical devices and hazardous products won’t have to meet the new standards. Also exempt? CD and DVD cases, toolboxes, printer cartridge cases, lighters and earphone cases that act as charging ports, since they’re meant for long-term use. Ottawa is also planning to phase in the minimum standards gradually, starting in 2026, and the rules will vary for different materials. Plastic drink bottles will have to be made of 60 percent recycled content by 2030, for example, while some thin, flexible plastics will only have to hit 35 percent. — Honor system: By 2028, companies will have to report to an independent third party on their use of recycled content. Until then, they’ll just have to promise that annual reports submitted to the environment minister are accurate. — Honest labels: The government says it wants to ban the use of the chasing-arrows symbol on plastic products unless 80 percent of residents of a province or territory have access to recycling facilities that process those items. It also wants to ban the term “biodegradable” for plastic products. The old chasing-arrows symbol — currently used on many types of plastic that aren’t commonly recycled — would be replaced with symbols that show whether a product is recyclable or not. They would be accompanied by QR codes linking to more information. — Small but mighty: You know those tiny stickers on fruits and vegetables? They might seem like nothing, but they cause a big headache for compost facilities. Ottawa plans to require that all those stickers be compostable. — Open book: The government plans to set up a registry that would require producers to be more transparent about what happens to the plastics they make, starting in 2025. According to a new technical paper, manufacturers will have to cough up data on how much plastic they produce, and how much of it is reused, recycled, burned, exported or sent to a landfill. — What’s next: The government has launched consultations on all its proposals until May 18. It’s promising draft regulations by the end of this year, and final regs by the end of 2024. | | | TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS | | |
— Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU is in the National Capital Region. He'll speak with Brazilian President LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA.
— Deputy PM CHRYSTIA FREELAND is in Pickering, Ont. 8:30 a.m. Trudeau will virtually participate and deliver remarks at the fourth Leaders-level meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, convened by U.S President JOE BIDEN. 11 a.m. NDP leader JAGMEET SINGH meets with the Canadian Association of Retired Persons. 11 a.m. Liberal MP NATHANIEL ERSKINE-SMITH, whose not-yet-official run for Ontario Liberal leader has him hosting events outside of both Ottawa and his Toronto riding, will be at the House health committee — via videoconference. He'll answer questions about his private member’s bill, C-293, related to pandemic prevention and preparedness. 11:30 a.m. NDP MP ALEXANDRE BOULERICE will hold a news conference on a private member's bill that "aims to better protect airport workers' jobs, salaries, benefits and rights." 12 p.m. Green leader ELIZABETH MAY will speak at the Hope in High Heels on the Hill event on the front lawn of Centre Block in support of ending gender-based violence against women and girls. 12:30 p.m. Freeland will tour an energy facility. 5:30 p.m. Tory leader PIERRE POILIEVRE is in Vaughan, Ont., for a fundraiser. | | FROM THE DESK OF 338CANADA | | I HEART OIL AND GAS — A newly released survey from Nanos Research for the University of Ottawa reveals a majority of Canadians support growth of the oil and gas sector. In fact, the proportion of Canadians who agree the oil and gas sector should expand has increased in recent years. When Nanos asked Canadians in January to rate the importance of oil and gas to Canada’s economy, 74 percent ranked it between 7 and 10; 32 percent chose a 10 — up nine points since November 2020, a variation outside the poll’s margin of error.
|  | The disconnect between the survey findings and Canada’s ambitious climate goals could become a major problem for the Liberals, writes PHILIPPE J. FOURNIER. Read the rest of Fournier's column here. | | HALLWAY CONVERSATION | | VIGILANCE REQUIRED — Canadian Centre for Cyber Security head SAMI KHOURY is in Belfast today for the 2023 CYBERUK conference. Khoury is on a morning panel that tackles Russia, ransomware and resilience — and how countries can protect themselves against cyberthreats. Khoury talked through the issues over the phone with Playbook. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. How did the cyber threat landscape change after the invasion of Ukraine? We started before the invasion to send alerts to encourage Canadians and Canadian businesses to raise their resilience, to secure their defenses, to be on top of their IT. As the invasion started, we started to see fairly nasty capabilities being used in Ukraine — and by nasty I mean they were deploying destructive malware on Ukrainian government networks. We've also seen Russia go after satellite systems, Viasat. And while the attacks might have been intended to limit the communications of the Ukrainians, it had second-order effects with other users of that satellite. The threat is real. You've identified helping small and medium-sized companies as a priority for your organization. How successful has that outreach been? We're not resourced to talk to every small-medium business. We try to leverage associations and chambers of commerce to promote the message, and then make available tools for them. The small-medium business baseline cyber security controls tool is something the CCCS has put out, and is now almost a standard in Canada. We try to tailor the message from a security point of view, recognizing that resources are sometimes limited. People often don't consider the entirety of their security envelope when they look at their business, and all we can do is tell them to invest in security, and the good hygiene to be aware of. When the Ukrainian prime minister was in Toronto earlier this month, Prime Minister Trudeau's website went down for several hours — a suspected distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack brought by Russian hackers. How concerned should Canadians be? Every IT disruption comes at a price. In that case, a DDoS attack against a website denies Canadians access to either information or services. Our priority at the cyber center is to make sure that there was no compromise of any information on that website, or on a service that's behind that website. For protection against DDoS, we do work with other government partners to ensure that upstream there are the necessary protections in place. | | Talk of the town | |
BACKUP PLAN — The latest episode of the Hacks and Flacks pod out of the U.K. gossiped about prime ministerial foreign trips abroad. ANDREW MACDOUGALL, a director at Trafalgar Strategy in London and a former d-comm for STEPHEN HARPER, dished about the tight security that engulfed a controversial Francophonie summit in the Congo in 2012.
At the time, the Congolese government's hold on power was tenuous — and the Harper government rebuffed calls to boycott the summit. "The airport was a ways out of town. And it was in rebel territory at that time, because there was a bit of argy-bargy going on between the government of the day and some rival political factions. They had to build a new road to the airport ahead of the summit. We had to go through that. And there were guys with machine guns on the back of pickup trucks bringing our motorcade in. "We were told, 'You do not go out at night. You do not leave the hotel.' We brought our own chef, our own food. We actually stashed another plane across the river from Kinshasa. Just in case something kicked off, we'd rented barge boats to get us across the river from the hotel. And that was all done because we couldn't trust where we were." Catch the rest of the episode here.
| | MEDIA ROOM | | — Interim ethics commissioner MARTINE RICHARD, a longtime employee of the commissioner's office and sister-in-law to Minister DOMINIC LEBLANC, has resigned from the post. The House ethics committee voted on Tuesday to call her to testify about her appointment in March. Richard will remain in the office as senior general counsel. The Post's CHRISTOPHER NARDI reports that the resignation prevents new investigations into Liberal government. — Conservative commentator JAMIL JIVANI is running to run to replace ERIN O’TOOLE, the CBC reports. Jivani is giving up his job as president of the Manning Cent — sorry, the Canada Strong and Free Network. — TONDA MACCHARLES writes on Ambassador IAN MCKAY, who was just named lead Indo-Pacific envoy and co-ordinator. — Trudeau has privately told NATO officials Canada will never meet the military alliance’s two percent target for defense spending, the Washington Post’s AMANDA COLETTA reports based on a leaked Pentagon assessment. — From POLITICO’s LISA KASHINSKY: The Kennedy campaign the Kennedys don’t want to see — “How do we avoid a political climate that pits millennials and Gen Zers against their parents and grandparents?” SEAN SPEER asks DARRELL BRICKER on the latest episode of the Hub Dialogues.
| | PLAYBOOKERS | | | | 
Suzanne Clark delivers a speech in Ottawa on Wednesday. | Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press, via AP Photo | Spotted: Diplomats at the AmCham Canada breakfast marking SUZANNE CLARK’s visit to Ottawa: U.S. Ambassador DAVID COHEN, who held the elevator door open for everyone to exit before him on the 22nd floor of the Westin Hotel; Israeli Ambassador RONEN HOFFMAN; Korean Ambassador LIM WOONG-SOON; India’s High Commissioner to Canada SANJAY KUMAR VERMA; and Ukrainian Ambassador YULIYA KOVALIV. ÉRIC GRENIER with social media guidance: “There’s no point in trying to win Twitter. Twitter isn’t real life. And if you try to win Twitter in real life, you’ll run into real problems.” DAVID HERLE, leaving Twitter altogether: “If you want to communicate with me try LinkedIn.” Birthdays: HBD to CBC's The House associate producer CHRISTIAN PAAS-LANG. EVAN SOLOMON and DANIELLE CRITTENDEN (60!) also celebrate today, along with former MNA RITA DIONNE-MARSOLAIS. Do you have a birthday coming up? Does a colleague? Send us the dates and we'll tell the world. Movers and shakers: KAREN RESTOULE has joined Crestview Strategy as a Toronto-based vice-president: "Uncertainty has become a defining factor of our time. And with it comes great opportunity," she wrote on LinkedIn. Former Tory MP GURBAX SINGH MALHI, awarded the Key to the City of Brampton. Media mentions: LUKE DYMENT joins the Globe and Mail as an intern next month.
| | PROZONE | |
If you’re a , don’t miss our latest policy newsletter by MAURA FORREST: Fortier: ‘We cannot write a blank check.’
In news from ZI-ANN LUM: U.S. Chamber brings China reality check to Canada. In other Pro headlines:
— Manchin and Rounds call for national security AI rules.
— Durbin bill allows child sexual abuse victims to sue online platforms.
— Hand over $1B of Russian 'blood money,' Ukraine tells Shell.
— Austin huddles with leaders in Sweden as momentum builds for NATO bid.
— Russian hackers went after Eastern European oil pipeline, Google says. | | On the Hill | |
→ Find the latest House committees here
→ Keep track of Senate committees here 9 a.m. PAMELA PALMATER, Toronto Metropolitan University’s Indigenous Governance Chair, is a notable witness at the Senate fisheries and oceans committee. 9 a.m. The Senate agriculture and forestry committee continues its study of soil health with department officials from the Alberta and Manitoba governments. 9 a.m. The Senate energy committee meets to pick up its study of climate change and what the Canadian oil and gas industry has to do with it. 9 a.m. The Senate internal economy, budgets and administration committee has a scheduled meeting to consider financial and administrative matters. 11 a.m. Transport Minister OMAR ALGHABRA will be at the House transport committee on the main estimates for 2022-2023. 11 a.m. Liberal MP NATHANIEL ERSKINE-SMITH will be at the House health committee to answer questions about his private member’s bill, C-293, related to pandemic prevention and preparedness. 11 a.m. The House procedure and House affairs committee will hear from British Columbia MPs about proposed riding redistributions. 11 a.m. PETER ROUTLEDGE, superintendent of financial institutions, will be at the House finance committee to discuss the current state of play on green finance. 11 a.m. The House foreign affairs committee will take Bill C-281 through clause-by-clause consideration. 11:30 a.m. Bank of Canada Governor TIFF MACKLEM and Senior Deputy Governor CAROLYN ROGERS return to the red chamber to take questions about the economy at the Senate banking committee. 11:30 a.m. It’s former foreign affairs minister LLOYD AXWORTHY’s turn in the hot seat at the Senate foreign affairs committee, where Global Affairs Canada’s foreign policy machinery is under study. 11:30 a.m. The Senate social affairs committee meets to study Bill C-22. 11:30 a.m. The Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee meets to take Bill C-9 through clause-by-clause consideration. 3:30 p.m. The House status of women committee will continue its study of human trafficking. 3:30 p.m. The House environment committee will hear from Imperial Oil CEO BRAD CORSON about the Kearl oil sands tailings leak. 3:30 p.m. The House fisheries committee will continue its study of the ecosystem impacts and management of pinniped populations. 3:30 p.m. Auditor General KAREN HOGAN will appear before the House public accounts committee to discuss her report on international assistance in support of gender equality. 3:30 p.m. The House international trade committee takes Bill C-282 through clause-by-clause consideration with department officials. 3:30 p.m. KENT WALKER and RICHARD GINGRAS of Google appear before the House heritage committee to discuss the company’s activities and response to Bill C-18. 6:30 p.m. The House veterans affairs committee will hear from witnesses about the experiences of women veterans. | | TRIVIA | |
Wednesday’s answer: MOUNT WADDINGTON is the highest mountain entirely within the boundary of British Columbia.
Props to TOBY HARPER-MERRETT, BOB GORDON, DOUG RICE, ROBERT MCDOUGALL, NEIL SWEENEY and SHAUGHN MCARTHUR. Today’s question: When asked if they’d ever smoked pot, what leader told Much Music: “Yes, and some might say I never exhaled.” Send your answer to ottawaplaybook@politico.com Want to grab the attention of movers and shakers on Parliament Hill? Want your brand in front of a key audience of Ottawa influencers? Playbook can help. Contact Jesse Shapiro to find out how: jshapiro@politico.com Playbook wouldn’t happen: Without Luiza Ch. Savage and Sue Allan. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |  |
