Found out Team Canada's mystery DC broker for meetings is: **Checkmate** When I asked around, no one in DC had heard of them. That’s because they just opened their office 3 months ago, highlighting a young DC based employee that just joined from an online marketing job in December. Their company is actually based in North Carolina. Three things: 1. This doesn’t look right to me for a G7 nation - but I don’t begrudge Checkmate the business they hustled to get from Canada. Good for them. 2. Serious question for Council of Federation: how did Canada end up contracting at $85k/month to a firm as new and young as Checkmate after we’ve been told for months that our feds have ‘deep influence’ in DC? Especially after they gave such a hard time to Premier Smith for meetings they’re now trying desperately to replicate with a broker? 3. This is a poor signal for meetings. DC is a very tough place. Competency matters and so do the advisors you choose. You often only get one shot. - Our reps are going to be meeting with well-informed WH Advisors, Senators, and Governors who - unlike Canadians and our press - know the facts on Canada's decrepit border, law enforcement gaps, growing terror interdictions, lax courts, immigration/asylum fraud, freeloading off US taxpayers for NATO/NORAD, and mercurial foreign affairs. They also know our 69cent dollar and 3x trade exposure make our domestic ‘trade war’ talk hopelessly naive. Those are tough meetings - and performing effectively in them matters on their own terms - and as stepping stones to other, more important meetings. Canada is embarking on a hugely consequential two year phase of negotiations that will re-set the terms of our economic and security relationship with the USA. This is an extraordinary opportunity but fraught with pitfalls. That’s why it has been critical to get Team Canada out of Ottawa and off the CBC - and into DC actually doing the work. But now that they’re there, we have to be dead serious in what we are saying and doing - and who represents us. Or it will be checkmate, indeed. #cdnpoli #melaniejoly

MSM: Who did you speak to in the White House today? Doug Ford: I'd rather not disclose that. I'm not at liberty to say. David Eby: We spoke with the Deputy Chief of Staff and Sergio Gor. 🤣🤣🤣

If you want to reform rent-seeking arrangements without relying on external shocks or economic crises (e.g. Argentina), compensating those who extract rents can be a politically necessary strategy. Rent-seekers—whether they are businesses benefiting from protectionism, unions securing privileged wages, or bureaucracies expanding their scope—have strong incentives to resist reform. Since their benefits are concentrated while the costs of rent-seeking are diffused across the broader economy, they are often well-organized and politically powerful. The only way out is to take some of the future benefits of reform as compensation to get on another path. Its also why its far more important to have institutions that limit rent-seeking in the first place.

In case you missed the #SuperBowlLIX Halftime Show! 😉🏈 👉 #ONyourside #ONpoli

Premier Wab Kinew announces $80 million into the Port of Churchill and its rail line as a key strategy to diversify Manitoba’s trade beyond the U.S.