On blockades, Tories muse about another word starting with 'T' Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Do rail blockades count as terrorism? That particularly pointed question came from Conservative MP Doug Shipley as he sat across from Public Safety Minister Bill Blair (this newsletter's prediction, to no one's surprise, came true). Shipley was referring specifically to protests in which demonstrators set small fires as trains passed. Blair's response: "No, they're not" terrorists. Shipley wondered where Blair draws the line. Blair deferred to law enforcement agencies. Michael Fraiman's image of the week in Maclean's is, as it happens, the fire that Justin Trudeau can’t get under control. Meanwhile, Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs are meeting with federal and provincial ministers for two days of talks. That long-sought dialogue marks a moderate step forward after weeks of stalemate. Happy that Alberta's oil-fuelled party is over? Think again. Whatever comes of the negotiations with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and the solidarity blockades on Canada's railways, Jen Gerson writes that the country is in for a rude awakening if every major energy proposal that meets any amount of opposition is stopped in its tracks. It'll mean less wealth generation—and that, writes Gerson, has consequences. The more wealth we sacrifice as a nation, the less capacity we will have to address any number of issues, including Indigenous reconciliation and climate change. We will have less money to invest in disaster relief and mitigation, and less cash to develop the technologies that reduce emissions. Climate change is an opportunity for a wealthy, educated country. Canada ought to be creating the technologies and processes the world will need. That's not the path we're choosing. Deadline day: Yesterday at 5 p.m., Conservative leadership organizers flipped the proverbial open/close sign on the figurative doorway into the race. As of that moment, seven candidates had passed the party's first threshold of a $25,000 entry fee and 1,000 signatures: Marilyn Gladu, Jim Karahalios, Leslyn Lewis, Peter MacKay, Erin O'Toole, Rick Peterson and Derek Sloan. Two more candidates—Rudy Husny and Richard Décari—say they're awaiting party approval. They'll all eventually have to raise $300,000 and collect 3,000 signatures. Just as the roster of candidates was set in stone, O'Toole launched an attack against rival MacKay, comparing his position on issues of conscience including abortion to—gasp!—Justin Trudeau. The broadside came in the rhetorical hotbed known as a fundraising letter, where O'Toole said he'd never force his cabinet to vote a certain way on moral issues. The race is clearly on for the so-con vote. Ken Boessenkool, a longtime conservative campaign strategist who has emerged as a post-Harper prescriber of potential Tory paths to victory, writes in Maclean's that his party cannot win if it can't find a vote-winning climate plan. Of the most accessible Conservative voters in the 905, 32 per cent would be “more likely” to vote for the party if it had a more credible climate change plan. And such a plan wouldn’t affect the vote of over 90 per cent of existing Conservative voters in the 905. This suggests that one path for the Conservative Party in the 905: to make climate change a higher priority, and to present a plan to do so. BuzzFeed News published a major investigation into widespread global use of a controversial facial recognition technology produced by Clearview AI. Law enforcement agencies in 26 countries use the service, BuzzFeed reported, including 30 in Canada, the country with the most clients outside the U.S. The Toronto Star reported that the RCMP admitted to using Clearview AI tech after previously refusing to confirm or deny that fact. The Mounties said it proved useful in child exploitation investigations. Public Safety Minister Blair confirmed to CBC News that the Mounties have been offering protection to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as the royal-ish couple makes a new life at least partly in Canada. The feds won't pay for those services after March. It turns out Harry and Meghan have had Mounties in their midst since last October, a couple months before their very public holiday visit. Niki Ashton, an NDP MP and avowed Bernie Sanders supporter (she campaigned for him as long ago as 2015), is trying to siphon some of the Democratic frontrunner's energy. Ashton wants fellow Sanders fans to tell her what the NDP can learn from a "bold, principled, democratic socialist movement." She'll also, naturally, collect a bunch of personal data. —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 
