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Gerald Butts Profile picture
Gerald Butts
@gmbutts
Climate and Geopolitics. Skeptical optimist. Vice Chair @eurasiagroup. Director @World_Wildlife. Born at 327 ppm. Priors: PMO, OPO, CEO @WWFCanada, @McGillU.
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May 5, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This should not be a partisan talking point but a reminder that the geopolitical landscape has changed utterly. It could be the basis for a cross partisan cooperation on China. 1/x

Canada ratifies investment deal with China despite misgivings | CTV News ctvnews.ca/business/canad… Instead we have anonymous leakers breaking the law in our security apparatus, irresponsible journalism amplifying it for clicks, and hysterical politics creating a climate of fear and hysteria. 2/x
Feb 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
How long will it take to search how many of them boosted stories about Andersen shouting at Trudeau in Europe last year? “They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.”
Aug 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Canadian oil major earnings are out. CNRL made $3.5 billion last quarter. That’s up $2 billion yoy. #OOTT 🇨🇦 Cenovus made $2.4 billion. A tidy 985% increase yoy.
May 13, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Yup. Here’s the thing about baby formula: it turned dairy into a global export. Milk spoils too quickly to trade, but skim milk powder doesn’t.

The US uses its power to shield itself from potential competitors in foreign markets. 1/2 The US did all it could to prevent Canada from developing excess production capacity so we couldn’t compete with them in Asia.

That’s why they freaked about a Chinese dairy investment in Kingston, ON. They wanted it shut down. We said no, because jobs. It was a full blown thing.
Feb 20, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Having a healthy disagreement about whether the government was correct to invoke the #EmergenciesAct is good in a democracy. A few points from my perspective fwiw. 1/ First, the foreign coverage is lame. The @FT @nytimes and @TheEconomist editorials read like they were written about a generic protest in a country they don’t pay much attention to, and a law they’ve clearly never read. It was sophomoric stuff from usually careful outlets.
Feb 3, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This is the latest MAGA north conspiracy. They think the Trudeau Foundation is the Clinton Foundation or something. I know you’re new around here, but the Trudeau Foundation commemorates the PM’s father, Pierre Trudeau. He was PM too. It was created after he died. 1/x It was created by the will of Parliament. All parties supported it at the time — which goes to show you how far we’ve come in 20 years — as an apt commemoration for one of our most significant PMs. Look it up in Hansard. Everyone gave lovely speeches. 2/x
Feb 1, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The next leader of the CPC will be its 5th since Justin Trudeau was elected leader of the Liberal Party in 2013. Harper faced 7 Liberal leaders in a little over a decade. He beat 5 of them.
Sep 21, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Vote efficiency isn’t accidental. All three Trudeau Liberal campaigns were among the most efficient in 🇨🇦 history. The unsung team of super geniuses put together and led by @tompitfield at Data Sciences deserves a lot more credit than they’ve ever received. #Elxn44 (43 and 42) Campaigns are a ruthless optimization exercise: where will your incremental investment drive the maximum return in real time, especially at the end. Elexns 42 and 43 were amazing. But the more I look at last night’s returns the more I’m awestruck. #Elxn44
Sep 20, 2021 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
Off to Toronto this morning for @CBCNews #Elxn44 coverage. Send snacks. It’s going to be a long night — probably a long week. Why? 👇👇👇1/ The latest @ElectionsCan_E update is that just over 777k voting kits have been returned by people voting by mail in their home riding. Another 125k have been returned by people who are in Canada, but currently out of their home riding. 2/ #Elxn44

elections.ca/content2.aspx?…
Sep 13, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Just spent a few hours looking at public data from a variety of sources and talking to people whose wisdom I trust. Right now, this is the closest election I’ve ever seen in Canada. Closer than 2019. Hardest working team wins. #Elxn44 My read is there are enough votes for either the LPC or CPC to form a government. It depends on which team better IDs them and turns them out. #Elxn44
Sep 2, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
It’s truly amazing to me that someone can cover politics for 30+ years and understand so little about how politics works. For example, “The Tories” don’t exist anymore. The conservative movement that replaced them is a very different beast.
Sep 2, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
UHN is one of the largest and most important hospitals in Canada. You can see it from the Premier’s Office window. Unbelievable that we’re letting front line health care workers get harassed like this in a pandemic. #Covid19 If these were homeless people occupying a park, we might do something. If they were Indigenous People protesting a pipeline, we’d be reading all about how Canada is Broken.
Aug 31, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Looking for Jason Kenney and/or Doug Ford in #Elxn44 It’s a very different approach than the one Kenney and the CPC took in 2019.

google.com/amp/s/national…
Aug 19, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Give the money to the sick instead of the hospitals, the river crossers instead of the bridge-builders, the people whose houses are burning instead of the firefighters. All joking aside, if the policy advocated here worked, the childcare problem would have been largely solved by the Canada Child Benefit. It doesn’t and it wasn’t.
Aug 18, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
As if @cabotcapebreton Cliffs No 16 weren’t ridiculously beautiful enough, this guy was perched on the side of the green this morning. 🦅 #CapeBreton This place is pure magic.
Jul 5, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The government of Canada starved Indigenous People into accepting treaties — that it never lived up to — in order to get the railway built. #cdnhistory Image It gets worse. Image
Jun 25, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
This is interesting research. @LyleGreg is one of the best, most detail oriented pollsters in Canada. If there is going to be an election, this seems like a plausible pre-game snapshot. 1… The big thing going on is the collapse of the Conservative Party in its current form, which Greg states more diplomatically. It’s one of those small handful of superfactors that can generate really big changes you don’t always appreciate on the surface. 2
Jul 3, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Fellow white people: ask yourself how this story would be framed were this man Black, Indigenous or Muslim. Not meant as a criticism of Mercedes or Global specifically. It’s a systemic problem.