Taxpayers release Naughty and Nice List

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

CBC President and CEO Catherine Tait tops the Taxpayer Naughty List for announcing hundreds of layoffs weeks before Christmas without cancelling bonuses for executives.

“It takes a special type of Scrooge to lay off hundreds of employees weeks before the holidays and not be willing to give up your own bonus, but that’s exactly what taxpayers heard from CBC big shots,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Meanwhile, Senator Pierre Dalphond delayed and watered-down carbon tax relief for farmers and now Santa’s furious because the bills for his candy cane farm and reindeer barn are through the chimney.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the Taxpayer Naughty List for removing the carbon tax from furnace oil for three years while leaving 97 per cent of Canadian families out in the cold. Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston also found himself in Santa’s bad books for taking more money from taxpayers through the sneaky income tax hike known as bracket creep.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew made the Taxpayer Nice List for providing taxpayers with Santa-sized fuel and income tax relief. The Parliamentary Budget Officer also made Santa’s good books for improving accountability and transparency in Ottawa.

“‘Tis the season for giving, but Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek and Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi shouldn’t be giving their residents steep tax hikes while they give themselves a raise,” said Kris Sims, Alberta Director of the CTF. “The entire Alberta village of Ryley made Santa’s good books for using recall legislation to boot a big-spending politician.”

The 2023 Taxpayer Naughty and Nice List

The Naughty List (So…. long!)

CBC President & CEO Catherine Tait – For clinging to executive bonuses

It takes a special type of Scrooge to announce hundreds of layoffs weeks before Christmas. Even worse, Tait isn’t willing to end the tens-of-millions of dollars in bonuses the CBC doled out in recent years. ‘Tis the season for giving… but giving out bonuses while firing hundreds of staffers is a sure-fire way to land yourself on Santa’s Naughty List!

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – For leaving 97 per cent of Canadians out in the cold

All Canadians need a warm home to celebrate during the holiday season. But Trudeau thinks only three per cent of Canadians need carbon tax relief this winter. Trudeau is removing the carbon tax from furnace oil while keeping the tax on for 97 per cent of Canadian families. Santa is stuffing the prime minister’s stocking with lumps of coal this year and Trudeau will be sure to carbon tax those lumps, too.

Senator Pierre Dalphond – For making Santa’s milk and cookies more expensive

The holiday season is a time to enjoy festive feasts with loved ones. But Senator Pierre Dalphond is making the holiday season more expensive by delaying and watering down a bill that would take the carbon tax off all farm fuels. Canadians worry they may have to cut back on the milk and cookies they leave out on Christmas eve. Unfortunately for Senator Dalphond, Santa is not a happy camper, because the bills for his candy cane farm and reindeer barn are going through the chimney.

Mayor of Quebec City Bruno Marchand and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim – For hiking taxes on pets

It’s one thing to tax the air we breathe, the money we earn or the presents we buy. But taxing our pets … have you no heart, Mr. Grinch? Mayors Marchand and Sim are hiking the taxes families pay to own pets in Quebec City and Vancouver. Rumour has it Santa is launching a campaign to take the tax off his reindeer.

Federal Minister of Industry François-Philippe Champagne – For giving billions of dollars to multinational corporations

There’s only one place you’ll find yourself if you pull a reverse Robin Hood … Santa’s Naughty List! Champagne has been busy taking money from struggling taxpayers and giving billions of dollars to multinational corporations to build electric car battery plants. Champagne should take notes from
Santa and his little helpers. They’ve been building batteries and remote-control hot rods for decades, at no cost to taxpayers!

Mayor of Calgary Jyoti Gondek and Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi – For hiking taxes and their own pay

‘Tis the season for giving … and mayors Gondek and Sohi sure do love giving. They’re giving their residents steep property tax hikes. And they’re giving themselves pay raises. Calgary City Council and Edmonton city council both took a raise this year. More lumps of coal: both Gondek and Sohi take bigger salaries than the premier of Alberta.

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston – For his bracket creep income tax hike

Nothing makes Santa more upset than bracket creep. It’s a sneaky backdoor tax grab that allows politicians to use inflation to raise income taxes. Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston is using bracket creep to gouge taxpayers. And for that, Houston finds himself on Santa’s Naughty List this year.

University of Manitoba’s former law dean Jonathan Black-Branch – For racking up half-a-million in expenses

Black-Branch’s term was cut short after an internal investigation found he expensed upwards of $500,000 in public funds, including for personal dinners and drinks. Now that’s a lot of cookies and eggnog! There’s only one way for Black-Branch to get off the Naughty List: pay the money back.

The Nice List (So… short!)

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew – For the gift of tax relief

Kinew is giving Manitobans Santa-sized fuel and income tax relief in the New Year. He committed
to suspending the province’s fuel tax and providing significant income tax relief. And kudos to the previous Manitoba government who didn’t forget about the Tiny Tims. Thanks to the last budget, taxpayers earning less than $15,000 won’t pay any provincial income taxes.

Liberal MP Ken McDonald – For getting his constituents carbon tax relief

It takes a lot of courage to stand up for your convictions and constituents, and vote against your party leader. McDonald did just that when he voted to “repeal all carbon taxes.” Because of his advocacy, the feds took the carbon tax off furnace oil for three years. Santa just wishes Liberal MPs in other parts of Canada had McDonald’s courage and were willing to stick up for their constituents too.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux – For the gift of government accountability and transparency

Taxpayers always deserve the gift of transparency and accountability in Ottawa. And the PBO delivered it in droves in 2023. From showing the full cost of Trudeau’s two carbon taxes, to fact-checking Ottawa’s deficit numbers and analyzing tax plans, the PBO has been holding politicians accountable all year.

Alberta’s Village of Ryley – For recalling a big-spending mayor

Ryley is the first municipality in Canada to recall a city hall politician, former mayor Nik Lee. During Lee’s tenure, the village’s spending almost doubled from $1.7 million to $3 million in 2022. Lee also spent more than $5,000 on meetings without approval. When Lee refused to resign from council, residents of Ryley took matters into their own hands, launched a recall campaign and booted Lee. For their civic engagement and holding a big-spending politician accountable, all residents of Ryley land themselves on Santa’s Nice List this year!

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Canada is failing dismally at our climate goals. We’re also ruining our economy.

Published on November 20, 2025

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From the Fraser Institute

By Annika Segelhorst and Elmira Aliakbari

Short-term climate pledges simply chase deadlines, not results

The annual meeting of the United Nations Conference of the Parties, or COP, which is dedicated to implementing international action on climate change, is now underway in Brazil. Like other signatories to the Paris Agreement, Canada is required to provide a progress update on our pledge to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. After decades of massive government spending and heavy-handed regulations aimed at decarbonizing our economy, we’re far from achieving that goal. It’s time for Canada to move past arbitrary short-term goals and deadlines, and instead focus on more effective ways to support climate objectives.

Since signing the Paris Agreement in 2015, the federal government has introduced dozens of measures intended to reduce Canada’s carbon emissions, including more than $150 billion in “green economy” spending, the national carbon tax, the arbitrary cap on emissions imposed exclusively on the oil and gas sector, stronger energy efficiency requirements for buildings and automobiles, electric vehicle mandates, and stricter methane regulations for the oil and gas industry.

Recent estimates show that achieving the federal government’s target will impose significant costs on Canadians, including 164,000 job losses and a reduction in economic output of 6.2 per cent by 2030 (compared to a scenario where we don’t have these measures in place). For Canadian workers, this means losing $6,700 (each, on average) annually by 2030.

Yet even with all these costly measures, Canada will only achieve 57 per cent of its goal for emissions reductions. Several studies have already confirmed that Canada, despite massive green spending and heavy-handed regulations to decarbonize the economy over the past decade, remains off track to meet its 2030 emission reduction target.

And even if Canada somehow met its costly and stringent emission reduction target, the impact on the Earth’s climate would be minimal. Canada accounts for less than 2 per cent of global emissions, and that share is projected to fall as developing countries consume increasing quantities of energy to support rising living standards. In 2025, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), emerging and developing economies are driving 80 per cent of the growth in global energy demand. Further, IEA projects that fossil fuels will remain foundational to the global energy mix for decades, especially in developing economies. This means that even if Canada were to aggressively pursue short-term emission reductions and all the economic costs it would imposes on Canadians, the overall climate results would be negligible.

Rather than focusing on arbitrary deadline-contingent pledges to reduce Canadian emissions, we should shift our focus to think about how we can lower global GHG emissions. A recent study showed that doubling Canada’s production of liquefied natural gas and exporting to Asia to displace an equivalent amount of coal could lower global GHG emissions by about 1.7 per cent or about 630 million tonnes of GHG emissions. For reference, that’s the equivalent to nearly 90 per cent of Canada’s annual GHG emissions. This type of approach reflects Canada’s existing strength as an energy producer and would address the fastest-growing sources of emissions, namely developing countries.

As the 2030 deadline grows closer, even top climate advocates are starting to emphasize a more pragmatic approach to climate action. In a recent memo, Bill Gates warned that unfounded climate pessimism “is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.” Even within the federal ministry of Environment and Climate Change, the tone is shifting. Despite the 2030 emissions goal having been a hallmark of Canadian climate policy in recent years, in a recent interview, Minister Julie Dabrusin declined to affirm that the 2030 targets remain feasible.

Instead of scrambling to satisfy short-term national emissions limits, governments in Canada should prioritize strategies that will reduce global emissions where they’re growing the fastest.

Annika Segelhorst

Junior Economist

Elmira Aliakbari

Director, Natural Resource Studies, Fraser Institute

Artificial Intelligence

Lawsuit Claims Google Secretly Used Gemini AI to Scan Private Gmail and Chat Data

Published on November 19, 2025

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By Ken Macon

Whether the claims are true or not, privacy in Google’s universe has long been less a right than a nostalgic illusion.

When Google flipped a digital switch in October 2025, few users noticed anything unusual.

Gmail loaded as usual, Chat messages zipped across screens, and Meet calls continued without interruption.

Yet, according to a new class action lawsuit, something significant had changed beneath the surface.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

Plaintiffs claim that Google silently activated its artificial intelligence system, Gemini, across its communication platforms, turning private conversations into raw material for machine analysis.

The lawsuit, filed by Thomas Thele and Melo Porter, describes a scenario that reads like a breach of trust.

It accuses Google of enabling Gemini to “access and exploit the entire recorded history of its users’ private communications, including literally every email and attachment sent and received.”

The filing argues that the company’s conduct “violates its users’ reasonable expectations of privacy.”

Until early October, Gemini’s data processing was supposedly available only to those who opted in.

Then, the plaintiffs claim, Google “turned it on for everyone by default,” allowing the system to mine the contents of emails, attachments, and conversations across Gmail, Chat, and Meet.

The complaint points to a particular line in Google’s settings, “When you turn this setting on, you agree,” as misleading, since the feature “had already been switched on.”

This, according to the filing, represents a deliberate misdirection designed to create the illusion of consent where none existed.

There is a certain irony woven through the outrage. For all the noise about privacy, most users long ago accepted the quiet trade that powers Google’s empire.

They search, share, and store their digital lives inside Google’s ecosystem, knowing the company thrives on data.

The lawsuit may sound shocking, but for many, it simply exposes what has been implicit all along: if you live in Google’s world, privacy has already been priced into the convenience.

Thele warns that Gemini’s access could expose “financial information and records, employment information and records, religious affiliations and activities, political affiliations and activities, medical care and records, the identities of his family, friends, and other contacts, social habits and activities, eating habits, shopping habits, exercise habits, [and] the extent to which he is involved in the activities of his children.”

In other words, the system’s reach, if the allegations prove true, could extend into nearly every aspect of a user’s personal life.

The plaintiffs argue that Gemini’s analytical capabilities allow Google to “cross-reference and conduct unlimited analysis toward unmerited, improper, and monetizable insights” about users’ private relationships and behaviors.

The complaint brands the company’s actions as “deceptive and unethical,” claiming Google “surreptitiously turned on this AI tracking ‘feature’ without informing or obtaining the consent of Plaintiffs and Class Members.” Such conduct, it says, is “highly offensive” and “defies social norms.”

The case invokes a formidable set of statutes, including the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, the Stored Communications Act, and California’s constitutional right to privacy.

Google is yet to comment on the filing.