After Hours Politics 🍁

A conservative Alberta rancher is urging farmers and ranchers to stop signing new surface leases, and the letter went to Premier @ABDanielleSmith on Thursday. The Alberta Surface Rights Federation says the province has not fixed orphan and abandoned wells, delayed reclamation, or unpaid municipal taxes from some oil and gas companies. President Bill Heidecker says he supports responsible development and is not telling anyone to block sites, only to withhold consent so companies must seek a right-of-entry order. A spokesman for Energy Minister Brian Jean said legislation on liabilities and orphan wells is coming. The federal government declined to comment. Heidecker also says those problems should be fixed before the proposed Pacific Link line proceeds. #cdnpoli #abpoli #Alberta #Energy

2 more oil tankers on fire in the Strait of Hormuz tonight, hours after an LNG tanker hit a mine there earlier Friday. Iran's Revolutionary Guards say both ships struck naval mines while trying to sneak through without checking in with Iranian traffic control, radar and navigation switched off. One was a supertanker. No details yet on the crews or the ships. That's at least 3 mine strikes on Friday alone, after at least 10 ships were hit in the first 10 days of November and 37 in October. Every one of these is a reminder of why the world wants its energy from a stable, reliable country like Canada 🇨🇦 #cdnpoli #Hormuz #Iran #oil

Irish army bomb experts made a crude but viable device safe Friday at an office building on Merrion Square in Dublin, close to where @MarkJCarney had dined the night before. He had joined French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Andy Burnham at a European Political Community dinner Thursday at the National Gallery of Ireland, on another side of the same square. Irish police say the device was not at the gallery. It was reported just after 2:20 p.m. local time and made safe after a long operation. An investigation is under way. No one was hurt, and by then @MarkJCarney was already headed to Manila for the ASEAN meetings. #cdnpoli #Ireland #Canada

Canada just wrapped negotiations on a free-trade deal with the Philippines, the fourth such agreement @MarkJCarney has concluded since taking office. He announced it Saturday in Manila, on his first visit there as prime minister, after meeting President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit. The other three deals were with Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and Ecuador. Unlike the many partnership memos countries sign, a free-trade agreement sets binding rules, and it would still need implementing legislation in Parliament. The government hopes to triple two-way trade with the Philippines to $10 billion a year by 2035. Canada's mission in Manila is now its second-largest in the world, after Washington, with about 300 positions. #cdnpoli #Canada #ASEAN #Trade

Update on those 15 UCP constituency presidents who will not sign the stay-in-Canada pledge. @ABDanielleSmith says she'll be calling them. She says it isn't a free speech issue and she wants the party working as a team to win next year's election. What she didn't say is whether anyone actually loses the job over it. Albertans already voted, about 3 in 4, to stay in Canada. A phone call is a start, not a finish. The deadline to sign was the end of today. #cdnpoli #abpoli #UCP #Canada

2 Iranian attack drones shot down heading for Bahrain. Iran says it hit a US radar. The US says nothing was damaged. The IRGC claims it struck an early-warning radar in Bahrain, home of the US Navy's 5th Fleet, as payback for a strike on a telecom tower in Sirik near the Strait of Hormuz. @CENTCOM says both drones were downed with no injuries or damage. Reuters says it's Iran's first claimed attack on US forces in a Gulf country since early September. Same day, Iran said a tanker hit a mine in Hormuz. Every flare-up there moves oil prices, one more reason getting Canadian energy to new markets matters. #cdnpoli #Iran #Hormuz