Business
103 Conflicts and Counting Unprecedented Ethics Web of Prime Minister Mark Carney

Dan Knight
Brookfield. The PMO. Eurasia Group. One Green Agenda, Billions in Conflicts.
Well, it finally happened. After months of dodging questions and hiding behind vague platitudes about “climate leadership,” Prime Minister Mark Carney’s official conflict-of-interest screen has been released by the Ethics Commissioner—and what it reveals is nothing short of staggering. Not five entities. Not a dozen. One hundred and three. That’s how many corporate and financial interests Carney has quietly acknowledged are too conflicted for him to touch.
At the center of this web? Brookfield Asset Management, the $1 trillion global investment firm where Carney was Vice-Chair before walking straight into Canada’s top political office. The very same Brookfield that owns energy projects, pipelines, nuclear companies, real estate empires, carbon offset schemes you name it, they’ve got a piece of it. And now, they’ve got a former executive running the country.
We’re told it’s all perfectly legal. We’re told Carney has “recused himself.” But what this disclosure actually shows is something much bigger: a government captured by finance, a prime minister with deep, ongoing entanglements in the very sectors his policies now enrich, and a climate agenda that’s beginning to look a whole lot like a money-printing operation for the global elite.
The deeper one digs into Prime Minister Mark Carney’s ethics disclosure, the clearer the picture becomes: what’s been framed as a climate leadership story is, in reality, a tightly wound web of commercial interest wrapped in green rhetoric. The 103-entity conflict-of-interest screen, ostensibly a shield against impropriety, instead serves as a road map of how thoroughly Canada’s top political office is entangled in the global green finance complex centered around Brookfield Asset Management.
As of Q1 2025, Brookfield reports $125 billion in assets under management (AUM) in its Renewable Power & Transition segment, a figure representing 12.5% of its overall $1 trillion portfolio. This segment alone encompasses most of the entities on Carney’s ethics screen: nearly 60 out of 103, even after accounting for duplicates. These aren’t passive holdings they’re the very projects, technologies, and subsidy-eligible vehicles Carney once oversaw directly as vice-chair of Brookfield and as co-lead of its $15 billion Global Transition Fund.
Brookfield’s renewables portfolio is vast: over 41.8 GW in installed capacity globally across wind, solar, hydro, and storage, with a 200+ GW development pipeline. A significant portion of this is owned or operated through the same SPVs and subsidiaries now appearing on the conflict list. Notable entries include Scout Clean Energy ($1B), Urban Grid ($650M), and Standard Solar ($540M). These acquisitions were all completed while Carney was at Brookfield, and they continue to generate revenue from U.S. and Canadian subsidy frameworks programs now shaped by the very government he leads.
Brookfield Renewable Partners L.P., the sector flagship, holds approximately $95 billion in total assets and generated $315 million in funds from operations in Q1 2025 alone. The firm is planning to add another 8 GW in capacity this year expansion that is, in part, subsidized through the same green transition policies Carney has promoted both in office and as a climate finance advocate.
The line between public and private interest blurs even further when examining the entities categorized under the “energy transition” banner; nuclear, CCS (carbon capture and storage), and so-called e-fuels. Carney’s screen includes Brookfield’s recent $8 billion acquisition of Westinghouse Electric Company, a nuclear power behemoth now positioned to benefit from Canada’s federal nuclear incentives and SMR (small modular reactor) program. Other flagged investments like Entropy and Carbon TerraVault fall directly into carbon credit and offset schemes—markets heavily influenced by federal regulation and incentive design.
Let’s stop pretending. What we’re witnessing here isn’t just conflict of interest, it’s a complete merger of state power and corporate ambition, all dressed up in the language of moral urgency. The Ethics Commissioner’s so-called “screen” for Mark Carney? It’s a joke. A checklist. A bureaucratic fig leaf meant to reassure you that everything’s above board. But it’s not.
Because here’s the truth: Carney is policing himself. He’s supposed to recuse himself from decisions that benefit the 103 entities he’s tied to many of which he helped create or oversee as Vice-Chair of Brookfield Asset Management. But who decides if he’s in conflict? He does. Or more accurately, the PMO does. The same PMO now drafting Dominion Barton-style focus groups to figure out how best to sell you the green grift. There’s no third-party oversight, no transparency on what’s actually in his so-called blind trust, and no disclosure of the carried interest he may still be entitled to from Brookfield’s billions in funds.
Meanwhile, the policy levers of government are being pulled in exactly the direction Brookfield bet on. Wind, solar, carbon capture, nuclear, every so-called “transition” sector that Brookfield spent years buying into is now flush with green subsidies, ESG guarantees, and taxpayer-backed investment shields. This isn’t the free market at work, it’s a strategic payoff, engineered by someone who’s now running one of the most powerful G7 economies.
And again, none of it is illegal. That’s the most damning part. Because legality isn’t the standard here. The standard is integrity, and that’s nowhere to be found. The scale of this overlap isn’t just large. It’s systemic. It’s built into the very foundation of the Carney government’s climate policy. The same man who structured these funds is now the man signing off on the policies that make them profitable.
Diana Fox Carney’s Quiet Role in the Climate Cash Machine
And just when you thought the web of influence stopped at the Prime Minister himself, along comes Diana Fox Carney, economist, climate consultant, and spouse of the most well-connected man in Canadian politics. While Mark Carney’s direct financial entanglements with Brookfield Asset Management are now public record, his wife’s career trajectory paints an equally troubling picture of how the same elite networks driving Canada’s green spending are profiting in parallel, behind the curtain.
Diana Fox Carney currently holds a senior advisory role at Eurasia Group, the New York-based geopolitical risk consultancy that’s become a quiet powerhouse in shaping global ESG narratives. It’s also the same firm where Gerald Butts—Trudeau’s longtime fixer and architect of the federal climate playbook—now serves as vice chair. Add in former journalist Evan Solomon and even Conservative stalwart John Baird, and you’ve got a bipartisan consultancy stacked with Canadian political operators. Convenient? Maybe. Coordinated? You decide.
And what has this firm staffed with Liberal-era insiders received in return? Millions in untendered government contracts, including a $446,210 deal from Natural Resources Canada in 2024 for vaguely defined “geopolitical research.” That’s nearly half a million dollars in taxpayer money handed out without competition, to a firm employing the sitting Prime Minister’s wife—and his former colleagues. Just coincidence, right?
But Eurasia Group is only the start. Diana’s reach extends far beyond advisory calls. She’s connected to:
- BeyondNetZero, a climate equity fund backed by U.S. private capital giant General Atlantic.
- Helios CLEAR, investing in African climate “resilience.”
- ClientEarth U.S. and the Shell Foundation, both pushing aggressive environmental litigation and policy influence.
- Canada 2020, a Trudeau-aligned think tank that’s pocketed over $1 million in federal grants.
Throw in indirect ties to Gates Foundation funding, Save the Children, and research networks influencing African agriculture, and you’re looking at a network of transnational climate consultants with deep, ongoing influence over the exact climate policies the federal government is now implementing under her husband’s leadership.
Now, legally, Diana is in the clear. She’s not a public office holder. But that’s the point. The rules weren’t designed for this new class of political operator—the dual-career globalist power couple, where one side signs the climate cheques while the other cashes them. No formal disclosure is required. No recusals. No transparency. Yet the influence is there. The access is there. The money is flowing.
Opposition Reaction: Pierre Poilievre Slams Carney’s Hidden Conflicts, Demands Real Transparency
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre wasted no time responding to the bombshell ethics screen showing Prime Minister Mark Carney is recusing himself from dealings with over 100 companies, many tied to his former employer, Brookfield Asset Management. In a pair of direct and widely shared posts, Poilievre accused Carney of concealing critical financial entanglements from voters during the 2025 election, and warned that the Liberal leader is now either positioned to profit from federal decisions or paralyzed from making them.
“Mark Carney must explain why he kept these conflicts secret from voters until after the election,” Poilievre wrote. “Now he will be in a position to profit from big decisions or will be forced to sit out those decisions altogether. Either way, Canadians will pay the price.”
In a second post earlier that morning, Poilievre challenged the credibility of Carney’s so-called blind trust, urging the Prime Minister to liquidate his holdings entirely and hand the cash to a trustee who can invest it without Carney’s knowledge or influence:
“Otherwise, he will always know how political decisions can affect his personal wealth.”
These statements mark the strongest opposition rebuke yet of the Carney government’s financial entanglements. Poilievre’s message echoes growing public criticism that the ethics screen is little more than window dressing, lacking third-party oversight, and that it fails to address indirect benefit through carried interest, deferred compensation, or spousal affiliations.
While Carney has claimed he is in full compliance with federal ethics laws, the fact that the disclosures were released only after the election is fueling outrage—not just among Conservatives but from broader accountability watchdogs. With over 100 entities flagged, many of them tied to green energy, infrastructure, and climate finance—the same sectors receiving billions in federal spending—the Conservative leader has positioned himself as the voice of those demanding a full forensic audit of the Prime Minister’s interests.
The message from the opposition is clear: if this were a Conservative leader, the media would be calling it a scandal. But because it’s Carney—the global banker, the climate envoy, the Liberal savior—the establishment is looking the other way. Poilievre’s Conservatives aren’t. And they’re turning this into a defining issue of integrity and accountability in Canadian politics.
Let’s Call This What It Is
This isn’t subtle. This isn’t nuanced. This is what a grift looks like—on paper, in public, in black and white. Over one hundred conflicts of interest tied directly to Mark Carney. Entire portfolios of foreign and domestic holdings, billions in green investments, shell companies in Bermuda—and that’s before we even get to his wife’s global consultancy work, advising firms that quietly gobble up federal contracts without a single public tender.
And here’s the thing: we weren’t told any of this during the election. There was no press conference, no headline, no public vetting of the sprawling web of corporate and climate interests now tied to the highest office in the country. Why? Because it would have compromised the Liberal grip on power. Because the last thing this party wanted Canadians to know was that their new leader wasn’t just a banker—but a banker with a boardroom’s worth of financial strings still attached.
Now imagine—just for a moment—if it had been Pierre Poilievre. Or Andrew Scheer. Or any Conservative leader with over a hundred screened entities, global finance ties, offshore SPVs, and a spouse employed by a company collecting millions in government money. The press would be in a frenzy. The CBC would be running specials. They’d be calling him compromised, unfit, a foreign agent.
But because it’s their guy—because it’s the Liberal elite’s banker-in-chief—we’re told it’s fine. It’s all above board. Move along, nothing to see here.
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
This is not leadership. This is ideological grifting at the highest level. The Liberal Party, once the party of national unity and democratic accountability, has become a hollowed-out machine for elite interests. They’re not liberals. They’re grifters—grifting for green subsidies, globalist contracts, and personal access to power. They have no principle left. Just consultants, contracts, and a taxpayer-funded narrative to keep the game going.
Enough. Canadians didn’t vote for this. They weren’t told the truth. And now the entire climate agenda, the whole “just transition,” looks more like a get-rich scheme for the political class than any serious public mission.
It’s time for an election. Time to clear house. Time to drain this toxic, green-glossed swamp once and for all.
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Bruce Dowbiggin
Where Carney’s Canada Now Stands : Elbows Up. Pants Down.

Our weekly Monday column is nominally a sports column. But sometimes we are lured by a sporting theme other than on the field. And with the capitulation of Mark Carney’s cringeworthy Elbows Up theme this week we can now safely reflect on the impact of the nation’s hockey obsession on tariff wars.
For those who don’t know by now, Carney’s Elbows Up meme popularized in cringeworthy commercials with actor Mike Myers was a reference to going into the corners with the legendary Gordie Howe. Legends abound on the lethality of Howe’s elbows that separated opponents from their senses. Thus, the message of Carney and Myers in Team Canada jerseys quoting Mr. Hockey was as simple as it was ridiculous.
Canada was going to go into the corner to separate Donald Trump from his tariffs? How? Carney has boasted of his hockey savvy as a goalie for Harvard. Where other nations were collapsing Carney’s Canada promised to be a stout backstop. 51st State? Hah! Locking arms with Myers and Doug Ford, Carney would show the Americans what Canadians are made of. At least that’s what they said in the election campaign to restore the Liberal brand to the nation.

The hockey theme was buttressed by the emotional victory by Team Canada over Team USA in February’s Four Nations Tournament. Having been filleted in the round-robin by the Yanks, Canada won the final game, reinforcing the nation’s dominance in a sport most Americans ignore 365 days a year. To those looking for any reason to anger Trump (hello, Andrew Coyne) it seemed like destiny for the Elbows Up crew.
As an example of the Team Canada approach Carney and his paid media wind therapists savaged Alberta premier Danielle Smith for trying build bridges with the Americans. Smith had the idea there was more to be gained from energy negotiations than from sulking. Traitor! They cried when she was seen with Trump. Consorting with the Cheeto was tantamount to selling nuclear secrets.
Elbows Up Canada, like China, would inflict counter tariffs on the U.S. after a decade of Justin Trudeau frippery. It would shut down the accusations that Canada was now a benchwarmer in global affairs. It never occurred to Team Carney or the Boomer midwits who elected him that launching a trade war against a nation whose economy was ten times the size of Canada’s might be a seriously bad idea. (Like hoping to wear down the Russian military.) Anyone pointing out this small problem was immediately denounced as hating hockey, ergo hating Canada.

To further illustrate his hockey pluck Carney’s backers bragged that the former head of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England was a skilled negotiator who would wipe the floor in negotiations with the erratic Trump. Nobody gets away with publicly declaring a post-Trudeau Canada as a failed state that should ally with the U.S. The Americans will come running to Canada when they want water, oil, aluminum, steel and maple syrup.
Then a funny thing happened. While Canada stood by, Zambonis running, ready to take it to overtime, the Americans simply ignored the taunts. Trump acted as if Elbows Up was a mirage. As trade deals were announced with other nations and international meetings convened, Carney’s Canada was left outside. In spite of the tough talk on tariffs, a blasé Trump whacked Canada with 35 percent tariffs.
The meme of Carney as a potted plant at the Ukraine White House summit came to epitomize the afterthought that is post-Trudeau Canada in this climate. Inspired by their allies at CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Canada’s purchased media fought back with all their favoured/ debunked Russian conspiracy theories and stories of Trump’s alleged mental incapacities. To no avail.
At just the moment that embarrassment was too great for even Team Carney’s most fervent media pals, Trump last week summoned him like a call-up from the minors to be told how it was going to be. Suddenly the implacable Carney was declaring how swell it was that Canada had the best treaty in the world. Elbows Up had suddenly become Pants Down.
Of course the beaming banker acted as if it was all part of some master plan he’d worked out between periods of the game with USA. Sure, his bluster about going into the corners was all bluff, no stuff. The Master Negotiator thing was all a cover for him to reduce government spending, re-commit to the futile climate war and (don’t tell anybody) recognize Palestine as a state in the near future.
Sure. Go with that. Anyone wanting an apology from the Potted Plant will wait a long time for satisfaction. For while Liberals talk a tough game they don’t talk at all when they’re been exposed. Even more sepulchral are the media that so readily grabbed the Elbows Up hustle to defeat Pierre Poilievre. Remember the Little Trump jibes? The Sloganeer slurs? The riding defeat?
Now that Trump had blocked their righteous elbow with a right cross they’re acting as if nothing is wrong. They’re off chasing stories about Poilievre being parachuted into an Alberta riding or Trump with Jeffrey Epstein. They’re reviving the murdered Rez babies hoax. And they’re ignoring international concerns about money laundering and drug trafficking.
Anything but the utter futility of Elbows Up and the next four years of watching the decline of Canada’s formerly respected position in the world. In heaven Gordie Howe is just shaking his head.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Business
Carney’s housing plan will likely spend a lot for very little

From the Fraser Institute
By Jake Fuss and Austin Thompson
The Carney government recently released its plan for a new federal housing “entity” called Build Canada Homes (BCH). Unfortunately, the plan is rife with conflicting priorities and major risks. Without course correction, Canadians could end up spending more while seeing no real progress on the housing crisis.
BCH’s core mandate is to cut the cost of homebuilding. Yet the plan would require BCH to favour Canadian-made and “net-zero” or environmentally conscious products. These goals are at odds. If a product needs a government preference to be used, it’s not the most cost-effective option. BCH won’t deliver affordable housing if it’s shackled by competing mandates. Simply put, chasing unrealistic “net-zero” targets and propping up domestic industries will drive up building costs.
To boost construction, BCH plans to use taxpayer dollars to reduce the financial risks to housing developers by providing loans, loan guarantees and equity investments for homebuilding. But slow and costly municipal approval processes remain one of the biggest sources of investment risk for housing developers. For example, developers face a 25-month wait, on average, for municipal planning approval in Toronto (compared to just 3.4 months in Edmonton). Federal spending won’t solve this problem—it will simply paper over the problem with expensive subsidies. In other words, to reduce financial risk for housing developers, the Carney government plans to stick Canadian taxpayers with the risks and costs of BCH loans and investments that may fail or underperform.
With BCH, the Carney government is also betting big on modular housing, based on the untested assumption that if Ottawa “drives demand” costs will plummet. Skepticism is warranted. If modular housing truly delivered on its promises of being cheaper, why haven’t private housing developers leapt at the opportunity? A study by Canada’s federal housing regulator found that modular housing is “no silver bullet,” noting that cost savings were uncertain and modular construction faces unique challenges related to transporting large prefabricated sections and protecting materials from weather damage.
At its core, the BCH approach rests upon a flawed assumption that the private sector cannot provide enough affordable housing. But that’s ahistorical—Canada had broadly affordable housing in decades past, provided almost entirely by the private sector. In reality, more private housing would be built today if all levels of government simply got out of the way and reduced taxes on housing development, relaxed rules on what can be built and where, and provided shorter and more certain approval processes.
Instead, through BCH, the Carney government plans to pump federal dollars into a broken housing system. Due to the shortage of construction labour, BCH projects may compete with private development rather than add greatly to the overall stock of houses—all at considerable cost to taxpayers.
Canada’s housing crisis won’t be solved by new agencies or lofty promises. On the contrary—governments should step back and let the private sector build. Build Canada Homes is yet another misguided Ottawa experiment: expensive, overreaching and ineffective.

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