Round 2 against the ethics committee Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. This afternoon, brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger, co-founders of WE Charity, will appear (for the second time) before the House of Commons ethics committee. Though the bros initially declined this latest invitation to answer questions about their role in last summer's student-grant scandal, they eventually acquiesced, so long as their lawyer shows up with them. (The lawyer isn't allowed to speak to the parliamentarians directly, or answer questions; he's only allowed to advise them on what to say.) This marks the Kielburgers' second appearance before the ethics committee. Year One: The latest print edition of Maclean's is dedicated entirely to one single story: the first full year of life in lockdown. Our team explained why we made this unique decision to commemorate the moment: In publishing this piece, Maclean’s rejects the argument, prevalent in this country, that good enough is good enough. Hindsight is 20/20, the argument goes. We’ve done better than Italy and France; not as well as Australia and Japan. We’re middle of the pack. What’s to complain about? Pandemics are hard. We reply: More than 21,000 Canadians are dead. More die every day. As the federal Conservatives ramp up for their virtual convention next weekend, party insiders are worrying about leader Erin O'Toole. He hasn't pulled ahead in the polls, nor has he started pushing policy positions on the public—like, for example, a climate strategy. For Maclean's, Paul Wells wonders what O'Toole is waiting for. Those who come from the West and especially Alberta are starting to suspect the cheerfully inoffensive O’Toole they knew from 2012 to 2019 was the real one, and the firebrand who showed up for a leadership campaign in 2020 was fibbing. They didn’t run four national election campaigns against carbon taxes between 2008 and 2019, winning two of those elections and losing two more, because they thought it was strategically clever. They ran against carbon taxes because they don’t want carbon taxes. They’re less and less sure the new boss agrees with them. The Liberals will face a reckoning of their own at their convention in April, and the main debate will focus on universal basic income, which has emerged as a priority for grassroots party members and some sitting MPs. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, however, is not convinced, preferring to focus on the pandemic without overhauling the nation's social safety net at the same time. That idea will be debated among more than 40 other resolutions at the convention on April 9–10. A tale of two hydrogens. Tomorrow, the feds will sign an agreement with Germany to work together to develop policies, regulations and production plans for a new green energy initiative, the focus of which will be hydrogen. But there are two types of hydrogen: a "green" kind, derived from non-fossil fuels (which could be made in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces), and a "blue" kind, derived from natural gas (hello, Alberta). Germany would prefer the green stuff, but it's a debate that could be settled this week, as delegates from both countries meet to hash out a plan. After various levels of Canadian government have tapped military generals to handle their vaccine rollouts, Canadians would be justified in asking why. That's what Shannon Proudfoot asked—and, for Maclean's, she writes all that she learned, including, crucially, what the heck "logistics" is, anyway. At a military scale, logistics is vast and complex, not quite like anything in civilian life. It means planning to get people where you need them and when, and then coordinating the transportation, packing, paperwork and storage to have all the needed supplies and equipment meet them where they land, building supply chains as you go. Perhaps if you combined the coordination of people, equipment and goods required to run a large airline with the supply chains of a grocery store and the speed and efficiency of Amazon, you get close to what the military is accustomed to doing—often in far-flung locations and under urgent conditions. In Alberta, the executive board of the United Conservative Party announced in a Friday-night email that they will hold a leadership review of Premier Jason Kenney next year during their annual general meeting in October, just six months ahead of Alberta's 2023 election. The decision comes after numerous constituency associations called for a review last week, following Kenney's poor approval ratings during the pandemic. Indeed, Philippe J. Fournier, in his latest 338Canada column for Maclean's, dives into polls that show an Alberta NDP resurgence is underway. But while a leadership review may satisfy disgruntled party insiders, the odds of a party booting its reigning leader six months before an election are, to put it mildly, highly unlikely. Kenney vs. Yeti. Also in Alberta, the government's multimillion-dollar war room, set up by the current United Conservatives, has a stated goal of promoting the energy industry and getting into fights with those who disagree. Its latest target: Bigfoot Family, a relatively unknown cartoon flick on Netflix with a 32 per cent approval on Rotten Tomatoes (or, if you prefer, a 5.8 on IMDb). The movie, according to the Wikipedia synopsis , does indeed feature a villainous oil tycoon named Conor Mandrake who secretly plans to bomb the valley of a nature preserve in order to more easily extract oil. The war room has launched a petition to force Netflix to "tell the truth" and stop "brainwashing our kids." So far, the group says more than 1,000 people have signed it. Congratulations to Phyllis Ridgway, the oldest living person on record in Canadian history, who received her COVID-19 vaccination over the weekend. She turned 114 years old on March 10. That means she was around 10 when the Spanish Flu decimated populations worldwide. Life comes at you fast—if you live long enough. —Michael Fraiman | 
