By Zi-Ann Lum and Kyle Duggan

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In today's edition:

→ What are we talking about when we talk about the housing crisis? This week, it’s international students.

→ Russian telecom giant MTS wants to take the government to court to beat back sanctions.

→ Post-shuffle musical chairs: Playbook has the names of three more new chiefs of staff.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with his Cabinet in Charlottetown on Wednesday. | Darren Calabrese | The Canadian Press

RHYMES AND REASONS — A political debate that impinges international students? This could get messy.

Federal politicians are driving the current conversation around housing, the latest focal point in the shape-shifting, dynamic debate over the cost of living and its upward trajectory in Canada.

“I think we have to be very careful,” Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU said Wednesday in the final stretch of a three-day Cabinet retreat in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, cautioning against slipping into a blame game to identify scapegoats in the housing crisis.

“At one point it was foreign homebuyers. At another point, it was developers being super aggressive,” he said, adding that funding failures from different levels of government was another mark. “Now, it's people who say, ‘Oh, it's international students.’”

— Insert eyeball emoji: Those people include Trudeau’s immigration-turned-housing minister, SEAN FRASER, who on Monday said capping international student visas is an option worth consideration.

Spoiler alert: Quebec isn’t a fan of the idea, according to reporting by The Globe and Mail’s JOE FRIESEN and MARIEKE WALSH.

— Rewind the tape: It’s a quick evolution (in government time) from what Fraser said during an April interview with DAVID HERLE about the “explosion of interest” in Canada's international student program, which is uncapped.

It brings large numbers of people to “certain highly populated pockets” already feeling housing strains, Fraser said. “It’s difficult for me with the policy levers I have to simply solve the challenge because there is mixed federal, provincial jurisdiction.”

On Monday, Fraser kicked to the future and said one crack at solving the problem would be to partner with post-secondary institutions “to understand what role they may play” in remedying the problem.

— Department of duplication: MPs are already engaging with institutions on the topic. The House immigration committee clocked two meetings in its ongoing study on “exploitation schemes targeting certain international students” before Parliament rose.

Housing was only mentioned once during its first meeting. Conservative MP MICHELLE REMPEL GARNER made it a bigger part of discussion the second time MPs met.

She asked Sheridan College President and Vice Chancellor JANET MORRISON if the committee should recommend to the government that educational institutions that accept international students “should be formally required to match their admissions levels to available housing in the area.”

“We're happy to be held accountable,” Morrison said, adding if profits were the college’s priority, they would have taken in more international students than they have. “I think the complexity of the housing market is really difficult when there are 70 private colleges with no on-campus housing and thousands of international students living in the communities that Sheridan calls home.”

— Political red meat: Conservatives sense opportunity and are doubling down on housing issues to court disenchanted Liberal voters.

Liberals, meanwhile, are in damage control as evidenced by Trudeau ending the Cabinet retreat with a daytime, summertime message to millennials to ward off any potential electoral backlash over sluggish housing results.

He rejuvenated an old talking point, appealing to “young people who are working hard to join the middle class.” Watch for that throwback phrase to make a pre-election comeback.

— Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU has “private meetings” in the National Capital Region.

— Deputy Prime Minister CHRYSTIA FREELAND is in Toronto with “private meetings.”

STILL COUNTING — It’s been 64 days since the House rose for summer. It’s been 76 days since DAVID JOHNSTON resigned as special rapporteur on foreign interference, a topic that was super hot at the start of summer and has since faded in political urgency.

NEXT ON THE SUMMER CIRCUIT — Conservative Leader PIERRE POILIEVRE’s “Axe the Tax” rallies in regions where people’s lives have been interrupted by wildfires have been postponed.

A trio of meet-and-greets have since appeared on the Conservative leader’s calendar, with separate Tibetan, Persian and Chinese communities this weekend in Richmond Hill, Ontario, in the vote-rich Toronto area.

Trudeau, meanwhile, is due in Western Canada headlining fundraisers in Edmonton and Vancouver (three on Friday alone, all at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver with Treasury Board President ANITA ANAND and Liberal MP TALEEB NOORMOHAMED).

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former VP Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy talk during a break in the Republican presidential primary debate Wednesday in Milwaukee.

HIGHLIGHTS AND TAKEAWAYS — The first Republican primary debate of 2024 took place Wednesday evening. Even without DONALD TRUMP, it did not lack for fireworks. Who had the best night? Who had the worst night? Our colleagues in Washington have the answers.

Video highlights: The first GOP debate, in 3 minutes.

In analysis for POLITICO Magazine, JEFF GREENFIELD writes: “A few months from now — maybe a few days from now — this debate will be better remembered as an example of the famous philosophical question: If a debate takes place on a national cable network and it does not have the impact of a cup of water in the Pacific did it happen at all?”

More POLITICO coverage:
— The spiciest moments.
— 5 of the harshest burns.
— Deep divide over war in Ukraine.
— A clash over national abortion ban.

Meanwhile on X: 
Trump tried to upstage his lower-polling opponents in a rambling interview with former Fox News host TUCKER CARLSON on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

SANCTIONS PROTEST — Russian telecom giant MTS filed in Federal Court opposing Cabinet’s decision last month to slap it with sanctions, which caught the business by surprise, over Russia’s war with Ukraine.

According to court documents filed in Toronto on Aug. 18, the telecom describes itself as a “civil mobile operator that fulfills an important humanitarian mission to provide telecom and connectivity services to tens of millions of civil subscribers both in Russia and abroad,” and insists it is not part of “Russia’s military-industrial complex.”

It’s seeking a speedy hearing due to “significant damage to its business dealings and reputation,” noting that Rogers Communications told it earlier this month it would suspend its bilateral roaming services with MTS as of Aug. 23. MTS argued the suspension will have “significant ramifications for millions of civil subscribers.”

The federal government has not yet filed its response, but when it issued the sweeping sanctions on July 19, it described the move as targeting “entities in Russia and Ukraine supporting or enabling Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”

GLEN MCGREGORreported on his Substack in July that several Russian nationals are also opposing their sanctions through the court.

— Unintended side effects: Lawsuits aside, WILLIAM PELLERIN, an international trade lawyer at McMillan, tells Playbook there’s an obvious problem with the way the government went about issuing sanctions against Russia’s telecom sector that could severely hurt the “credibility of Canada's sanctions regime.”

Ordinary Canadians (anyone with service contracts, traveling or living abroad) who use the communications services have to directly appeal to Foreign Affairs Minister MÉLANIE JOLY to get an exemption.

“It's a bit problematic to have a sanctions regime that potentially criminalizes hundreds of Canadians with obviously no intent to go after those Canadians,” he said. “I'm not sure that the government fully understood the ramifications of sanctioning [telecom] entities like MTS and MegaFon.”

An Aug. 16 analysis he penned with colleagues NEIL CAMPBELL and TAYLER FARRELL notes this could be fixed quickly by issuing a general permit, which could offer a sort of blanket exemption to prevent average people from getting caught in the fray.

They wrote the issue “raises important questions about enforceability, and further, the legitimacy of Canada’s sanctions regime.”

Canada has sanctioned more than 430 entities and 1,300 people in its stand against Russia, according to the analysis, with another batch announced Wednesday targeting the defense, banking and nuclear sectors.

Heather Exner-Pirot is managing editor of the Arctic Yearbook. | Courtesy of Heather Exner-Pirot

REALITY CHECK — HEATHER EXNER-PIROT penned a memo to Canada’s energy and environment ministers last month urging them to reform Canada’s regulatory and permitting process. Her parting shot: “Canada needs to be seen as a country that can build big things again.”

The special adviser to the Business Council of Canada is managing editor of the Arctic Yearbook and a member of several boards, including the Saskatchewan Indigenous Economic Development Network.

She spoke with POLITICO Canada during the Wilson Center’s two-day symposium on critical minerals in the North American Arctic. Here’s one excerpt:

What’s the most important thing policymakers need to understand about the future of critical minerals?

Eighty percent of people live in urban areas. We’ve become very divorced from where we get our food and our fuel and our minerals. We've never experienced scarcity, we've never experienced shortages. We take it for granted we never will again — “the market will sort itself out.” Now we have a very different beast moving from a fossil-fuel system to a mineral system.

We have not reached 2012-2013 levels of mining expenditure. Mining finance is a third of what it was in 2013. Even though critical minerals are making some jumps — mostly because of lithium — the International Energy Agency says we need six times more production if we're going to hit net zero by 2050.

The reserves don't exist. The mines don't exist. The workforce doesn't exist. The supply chain doesn't exist. And yet we have big 2030, 2035 goals.

Pro subscribers can read the full interview here.

— From POLITICO’s ASHLEIGH FURLONG this morning: Top review says COVID lockdowns and masks worked, period.

— JEN GERSON writes on The Hub about the Online News Act, wildfire season and the PR war: “Cut the crap. This isn't about saving lives. It's about using this highly emotionally charged emergency to score points, to draw Meta into a PR war in retaliation for their failure to succumb to PABLO RODRIGUEZ’s charms.”

— Following reporting from Noovo’s GUILLAUME THÉROUX, Quebec Education Minister BERNARD DRAINVILLE confirms the province is facing a shortage of more than 8,500 teachers ahead of the school year.

— SERGE SCHMEMANN writes in The New York Times from Quebec: “This has been the summer from climate hell all across Earth, when it ceased being possible to escape or deny what we have done to our planet and ourselves.”

— OMAR MOUALLEM writes in WIRED on “the impossible fight to stop Canada’s wildfires.”

— In the Toronto Star, SHELLENE DRAKES TULL weaves in Jamaican patois in a column about “wasteman behavior” and traces it to Ontario Premier DOUG FORD.

HBD to retired Sen. LILLIAN EVA DYCK and former MP GORDIE HOGG.

HBD + 1 to journos CRAIG SILVERMAN and former CAJ president HUGO RODRIGUES.

Send birthdays to [email protected].

Spotted: Harvard’s men’s basketball team had lunch at Lornado with U.S. Ambassador DAVID COHEN before playing the Carleton Ravens.

Movers and shakers: International Trade Minister MARY NG’s new chief of staff is KEVIN COON … DAN VANDAL’s former director of communications, RYAN COTTER, is now chief of staff to Citizens’ Services Minister TERRY BEECH … MILED HILL has been promoted as Transport Minister PABLO RODRIGUEZ’s chief of staff after service as policy director in the transport minister's office.

After recently leaving a posting in the Quebec government office in Washington, JUSTIN MARGOLIS is now a senior trade policy analyst in Ottawa at Global Affairs Canada’s Mexico and trilateral affairs desk.

The City of Ottawa has a new city manager: WENDY STEPHANSON.

If you’re a subscriber, don’t miss our latest policy newsletter: ‘Everyone wants our pie.’

In other Pro headlines:

— Republicans attack Biden on climate change and energy, but claims mostly miss the mark.

— More schools want your kids to use Chat GPT. Really.

— Putin has a strange deep voice in address to BRICS summit.

— The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting more high tide coastal flooding events this year.

— Sen. Ted Cruz slams agency for ‘collusion’ with EU on Big Tech rules.

Wednesday’s answer: Loads of you wrote in to say 1960: Kennedy v. Nixon.

Here’s the answer we had in mind — from the website of the U.S. Senate: “In fact, the first televised debate occurred four years earlier, when Democratic candidate ADLAI STEVENSON challenged incumbent Republican president DWIGHT EISENHOWER.” 

The candidates did not appear in the debate, however. “Instead, on Nov. 4, 1956, two surrogates debated the issues on network television: for the Democrats, former First Lady and party icon ELEANOR ROOSEVELT; for the Republicans, the senior senator from Maine, MARGARET CHASE SMITH.”

Props to BOB GORDON, DOUG SWEET, GEORGE SCHOENHOFER, JOHN DILLON, ROBERT MCDOUGALL, JIM CAMPBELL and SM LEDUC. 

Today’s question: In one sentence, what happened at the Bladensburg Races — on this date in history?

Send your answer to [email protected]

Want to grab the attention of movers and shakers on Parliament Hill? Want your brand in front of a key audience of Ottawa influencers? Playbook can help. Contact Jesse Shapiro to find out how: [email protected]

Playbook wouldn’t happen without: POLITICO Canada editor Sue Allan, Luiza Ch. Savage and Emma Anderson.

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