It’s a gorgeous day in Ottawa, some may say it’s a perfect one for the beaches… Plenty of sunshine to go around, but when it comes to powering the country’s future, Ottawa may be stuck in the shade. For now.

Back in January, Energy Minister Tim Hodgson promised Canada’s new electricity strategy would be released in the “coming weeks.”

There was relative silence on the file until Prime Minister Mark Carney said in late March his government would publish the strategy the following week.

But that deadline has come and gone, and the Liberals still haven’t gone public with their plans for the sector, including how Canada will double generation by 2050.

Industry sources blamed the delay on ongoing negotiations between Alberta and the federal government on their memorandum of understanding reached last fall. A key part of that deal was suspending the implementation of clean electricity regulations in the province until an agreement on industrial carbon pricing is reached.

The clean electricity regulations, which are slated to go into effect in 2035, set a goal of moving Canada to a net-zero grid by 2050.

One industry source said it “would not be in the federal government’s interest to release the electricity strategy while the MOU negotiations are still ongoing.”

Find out more from Marco Vigliotti. 

The federal government is facing criticism for waiting nearly a year to begin consultations on a report ordered by the government exploring labour challenges in federally-regulated sectors.

Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu announced Friday that they would stand up “targeted virtual and in-person roundtables” to discuss issues flagged in the report, including potential changes to s. 107 of the Canada Labour Code, which gives the government broad powers to act to maintain industrial peace.

Written feedback will be accepted until May 18.

The Liberals used the controversial power to end last year’s strikes by Air Canada flight attendants, as well as similar labour stoppages at the major railways and ports. Unions are challenging the government’s use of the measure, arguing it’s an unfair curtailing of the constitutionally-protected right to strike.

Those in federally regulated sectors are questioning why the Liberals decided to wait a year since the report was issued last year to start consultations, noting that negotiations with railway workers are set to resume in September.

Vigliotti’s got this one too. 

Meanwhile, chatters about restricting age on social media use may be getting a bit louder in Ottawa.

After Liberal members backed a proposal to restrict youth access to social media at the convention over the weekend, the federal government is now studying whether a ban or moratorium could become law.

However, ministers say it would only be one piece of a broader online harm strategy.

Over the weekend, Liberal Party members voted in favour of restricting young Canadians’ access to social media platforms. Similar to the one passed in Australia last year, it seeks to set a “minimum age of 16 for creating social media accounts” and would hold companies that run the platform accountable for preventing underage users.

While policies approved at the convention doesn’t mean the cabinet would automatically bring it into law, it serves as a major form of influence, and Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller said a lot still needs to be studied.

Sydney Ko has more. 

In Other Headlines

Internationally

Elsewhere, President Trump’s top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, Todd Lyons, said he would resign on Thursday as acting director, adding to the list of leadership shakeups at the Department of Homeland Security.

His exit, which will be effective May 31, comes amid continued scrutiny of his agency’s aggressive immigration tactics and a record-long funding lapse from Congress that resulted in a lack of pay for ICE attorneys, investigators and administrative staff. It was not immediately clear why he was leaving.

Under his tenure, the agency took the lead in Trump’s mass deportation agenda, rapidly scaling up sweeping arrests across the country. Lyons faced intense pressure to carry out the administration’s deportation goals, which included 3,000 arrests a day. ICE has not met that number.

He also oversaw a hiring surge that brought on 12,000 new employees, a record-high number of people in immigration detention and over 570,000 deportations.

Read more from NPR. 

When Samuel Samson, a senior adviser at the State Department, sat down privately with far-right German lawmakers in an office just steps from the White House, he was breaking with history.

For eight decades after World War II, America’s foreign policy establishment had usually steered clear of Germany’s hard-right parties, seeking to ensure that they never seized power again. That changed under President Trump, leading last September to Mr. Samson’s meeting with Beatrix von Storch and Joachim Paul of Alternative for Germany, or AfD — a party designated as a suspected extremist organization by German intelligence.

As the meeting evolved into a general gripe session, the AfD politicians told Mr. Samson, then 26, and several other American diplomats that they feared the German government might ban their party, according to Mr. Paul and another person familiar with the conversation. The Americans railed against European regulation of social media, calling it a tool for stamping out conservative opinions. And the group discussed a bogus far-right conspiracy theory that mainstream European leaders were seeking to replace white populations with nonwhite immigrants.

“I got the impression — partly from the length of the conversation — that they were very interested in hearing from us,” Mr. Paul said in an interview. “They took a lot of notes.”

The New York Times has more. 

In Other International Headlines

The Kicker

In: Pokémon Cards.

Out: Day trading.

Here’s why: a new Business Insider report found that young Pokémon collectors are flipping cards for profit, tracking prices and building what they’re seeing as investment portfolios.

Forget Bay Street, because it seems like the real action is happening at recess.

Read more about it form Business Insider.