Freeland leaves Carney for Zelenskyy but stays an MP...

Plus, Trump into Venezuela and what it means for Canadian oil and Doug Ford on Crown Royal.

Once again, the start of the year has no shortage of news.

I was writing my piece on the impact of Trump going into Venezuela to arrest Maduro, at least from a Canadian oil industry perspective, and then Chrystia Freeland announced she was resigning - kind of.

I’d written a column for the Toronto Sun earlier in the day explaining why she had to resign and it was getting good traffic. I explained the problems with advising both the Canadian and Ukrainian governments on the reconstruction of that country at the same time - eventually there would be a conflict - and that she had to go as Carney’s Special Representative and as an MP.

At 4:22 ET, Freeland announced she was resigning, but not all the way.

I’m sorry, but this isn’t acceptable.

Freeland needs to go as an MP now, not tomorrow. You cannot be a sitting Canadian MP and be an advisor to the President of Ukraine.

I hurriedly wrote another column on the new situation and got that posted before going back to piece on Canada, oil and Venezuela.

Liberals are playing too cute…

As I pointed out in my initial column on Freeland, the Liberals are trying to orchestrate something. We’ve known Freeland isn’t sticking around since November, most of us guessed in September when she stepped down from cabinet.

She has another job starting with the Rhodes Trust in November, so why is she sticking around as an MP when according to reports she doesn’t even live here?

As I explain the column, it’s political games by Team Carney.

It’s been known for some time that the Carney team is trying to line up a bunch of exits at once from his current Liberal caucus and have a series of by-elections. Former cabinet minister Bill Blair is said to be heading to London as Canada’s next High Commissioner in the United Kingdom, Jonathan Wilkinson is said to be tapped as ambassador to the European Union and there was talk of Melanie Joly leaving to become Canada’s ambassador to France — but that was before Steven Guilbeault left cabinet and changed the Quebec electoral equation.

Bottom line, the Carney Liberals want a pile of by-elections at once, maybe even in Edmonton-Riverbend where Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux has announced he will resign. They want a show of force of winning all the by-elections — and if they can take Jeneroux’s seat at the same time and get a majority then all the better.

The problem is, it’s getting messy now.

Seems it’s all about the majority when it should really be about the country.

Venezuela is a threat to Canada, but not the way the left thinks…

There were some pretty wild takes on Maduro from lefties around the world, and especially right here in Canada. Calls for Canada to get nuclear arms to protect us from Donald Trump, claims that arresting Maduro - kidnapping as the lefties call it - would be no different than arrest Carney.

Apparently they view Carney the same as a man who runs a government complicit in cocaine smuggling, which bans a free media, bans political opponents from running and oppresses it’s own people.

My first thought wasn’t about poor Maduro, flying to New York in that Nike sweatsuit, it was for Canada’s oil and gas industry.

Which is what I was writing about when Chrystia Freeland so rudely interrupted.

We’ve heard from plenty of observers that it will take years for Venezuela’s oil infrastructure to be fixed up after years of neglect. That’s probably true, but as I put in my column for the Sun, the immediate threat isn’t Canadian barrels being replaced, it’s investment rushing to Venezuela and leaving Canada behind.

Yes, Venezuela is still a political risk due to instability, but so is Canada due to our complex regulatory scheme, less-than-supportive government, the shifting nature of Indigenous relations for projects like pipelines in B.C. and an unpredictable court system.

To remedy this, Carney needs to do what he promised, “Think big, act bigger, move at speeds not seen in generations.”

Right now we aren’t doing that.

Doug Ford pulling Crown Royal is dumb as a bag of hammers…

On Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced that he plans to go ahead with his promise to pull Crown Royal from stores shelves at the LCBO later this month. Here’s part of the transcript from the news conference.

Q. Richard Southern: Premier, speaking of booze, that Diageo plant is closing next month. In fact, the company’s listed it for sale. Are you going to follow through on your threat to remove Crown Royal from the LCBO?

Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario: Oh, a hundred per cent. I can’t wait.

Q. Richard Southern: You will?

Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario: Yeah, one hundred per cent. But I’m not going to waste another bottle of Crown Royal dumping it, or maybe I’ll take the stopper out. But what we’re looking - and there’s quite a few interested parties, I understand, that are going to go in there and hire back all the Diageo workers. And I know a lot of them already found jobs, and I know a lot of them went down to Stellantis to work in their plant, because they’re hiring and they’re starting up that third shift.

Q. Richard Southern: Sorry, to be clear, you are going to remove Crown Royal from the LCBO store shelves?

Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario: Oh, one hundred per cent, I am.

Q. Siobhan Morris: What about all the other Diageo brands that you had talked about?

Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario: No, I’m just going to focus on Crown Royal for now. But isn’t that great, with the moves that we have made in the last year, we’ve seen the wine sales jump 76 per cent. So that’s great for the grape growers, the small wineries, the large wineries. And any other alcoholic beverage that we have, we’ve seen it spike since we’ve taken the wines off the shelves. So we have great Niagara wineries. We have great Ontario wineries. Not just Niagara, but across Ontario. We grow great grapes and we make great wine. So try a bottle of Ontario wine.

I get it that Ford wants to protect Ontario’s workers, but the decision to close the bottling plant in Amherstberg has nothing to do with Trump or tariffs. This is still a product made in Canada and bottled in Canada, so banning it makes no sense.

It also sends the message that Ontario is closed for business.