This was no ordinary budget day. By orchestrating a floor-crossing during a media lock-up, the Liberals blurred scrutiny of a historic spending plan while inching toward a de facto majority. That sequence raises deeper concerns about media–political entanglements and the democratic legitimacy of building a majority outside the polls.
Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley, in a deeply reported Substack post yesterday, captured months of palace intrigue. A well-sourced politics reporter with lines into Conservatives and Liberals alike, he lays out the knowns, the known unknowns, and the plausible backroom plays. Carney’s courting began right after the April 28 election that left him sitting at 169 seats, Lilley writes. For weeks, the Liberals probed for weak ribs in the Conservative caucus; and on November 4, they landed one.
“One thing is clear, the Liberals have been trying to poach a lot of Conservative MPs and doing everything they can to convince them to cross the floor,” he concluded.
Why? According to Lilley, Carney has been “governing for the most part like he has a majority, and he clearly doesn’t want to engage in the horse trading that a minority Parliament requires, so poaching MPs can solve his problem.”
The fallout was already clear to see last week. And it doesn’t look good for Canadian democracy or Canadian media, which receives significant government subsidies. Even at surface level, the press corps was visibly distracted from its first duty to citizens: scrutinizing a historically large budget packed with nation-building promises and unanswered questions about feasibility. Veteran reporters have already acknowledged this.
In another piece this weekend, Catherine Tunney, a solid CBC reporter, explained how Pierre Poilievre was undermined this way: “For the Opposition, budget week is a communications gift. It’s an easy way for the party to call out government spending,” she wrote. “For a leader who has built his brand on calling out Liberal spending, tabling a budget with a $78-billion deficit is the political equivalent of pitching a strike straight down the middle to Dodger slugger Shohei Ohtani.”
But instead, “of taking a victory lap around the bases, [Poilievre] ended the week facing questions about his leadership — after losing one MP to his rivals and another resigning from federal politics altogether.”
The messaging continued yesterday, with another CBC report amplifying the Liberals’ narrative that Conservative leaders were actively bullying MPs not to cross.
CBC had to issue a correction. After publishing d’Entremont’s account that senior Conservatives “pushed” his assistant, CBC later updated the story to clarify that Andrew Scheer and Chris Warkentin “pushed open the door,” and the aide stepped aside — a meaningful distinction.
Stepping back from the noise, there is a deeper problem.
Making honeyed promises to floor-crossers is legal in Canada’s democracy. But Canada is in a mounting trade war involving China and the United States, in an increasingly dangerous, cutthroat geopolitical environment. Already, the prime minister is pledging renewed engagement with Beijing as a strategic partner.
Doing so in a minority Parliament means facing tough accountability questions — and bruising inquiries in ethics committee hearings. In a majority government, an unprecedented and risky, course-altering national policy — deepening ties with Beijing while loosening ties with Washington — is considerably easier to execute.
And what kind of partner is Carney choosing? Yesterday, Japan lodged formal complaints after a senior Chinese diplomat took to social media and threatened to “cut [the] dirty neck” of Japan’s new leader over her stance on Taiwan. On Friday, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi had said a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute “a survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially requiring the use of force.
“We have no choice but cut off that dirty neck that has been lunged at us without hesitation. Are you ready?” Chinese Consul General Xue Jian said in a message posted on X, which was later deleted.
This is the government Carney is rapidly sliding closer to. The same regime that jailed Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in the Meng Wanzhou affair — and a government that, Canadian intelligence has warned, attempts to shape media narratives in Canada.
As The Bureau reported in 2023, Canada’s own Privy Council Office warned in a January 2022 Special Report that Beijing’s United Front Work Department targets Canadian institutions.
In a section alleging Beijing “manipulates traditional media” in Canada, the report details press conferences held in January 2019 by former Toronto-area Liberal cabinet minister John McCallum, to argue that Canada’s detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was illegal. McCallum, then ambassador to China, was forced to resign after the Conservative opposition condemned his comments.
In the fallout, according to the Privy Council Office report, Canadian intelligence uncovered that several Chinese diplomats in Canada were voicing support for McCallum. One Chinese consulate official “sent information” to an unidentified Canadian media reporter indicating Chinese Canadians have favourable impressions of McCallum, the report says.
Now back to Ottawa media’s role. Why and how did Politico get the floor-crossing scoop during the budget lock-up — and then, that same evening, co-host a post-budget reception branded “Prudence & Prosecco” at the Métropolitain Brasserie, where Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and well-placed Liberals mingled with reporters? Every veteran reporter knows political parties try to influence the press — they’re called spin doctors for a reason. But darker forces can ride the same channels. In Brussels, for example, European security services are investigating a former Politico reporter over alleged ties to Chinese intelligence — still unproven, but a cautionary tale about the murkiness of media–political ecosystems.
Lilley also documents how coverage of another rumoured floor-crosser, Matt Jeneroux, became part of last week’s fog machine. The Toronto Star reported a private meeting between Jeneroux and Carney involving senior Liberal strategists Braden Caley and Tom Pitfield; Jeneroux issued categorical denials to senior Conservatives. “Someone is lying,” Lilley writes — and whether or not a second crossing was imminent, the destabilization served its purpose. Other names floated, such as Michael Chong, were so implausible as to raise suspicion of calculated disinformation.
“I didn’t buy Chong either, but Liberals kept pushing that narrative,” Lilley wrote. “As someone who knows Michael a bit, I simply didn’t believe it, didn’t even reach out to ask — he later called me to confirm the rumours were bogus.”
It is geopolitically notable that Michael Chong — sanctioned by Beijing and repeatedly targeted in PRC pressure campaigns, including a Chinese intelligence operation targeting Chong and his family that Justin Trudeau’s government failed to notify him about — saw his name tossed into this mess. Who benefits from saddling Chong with corrosive rumours?
It would seem that not only the Liberals benefit, but so do Carney’s new “strategic partners” in Beijing. None of this proves any newsroom has wittingly acted in bad faith, nor is there any evidence that Beijing’s shadow looms in the Liberals’ media playbook. But it does suggest how a coordinated political operation can be abetted by domestic media distraction.
Now, consider darker possibilities that could be in play. Not necessarily last week, but in any number of major events and stories shaping relations among Canada, China, and the United States.
The bipartisan NSICOP 2024 Review into allegations of Chinese election interference in Canada’s last two federal elections found that “during the period under review, the intelligence community observed states manipulating traditional media to disseminate propaganda in what otherwise appeared to be independent news publications.”
It added: “Foreign states also spread disinformation to promote their agendas and consequently challenge Canadian interests, which posed the greatest cyber-threat activity to voters during the time under review.”
The report continued: “These tactics attempt to influence public discourse and policymakers’ choices, compromise the reputations of politicians, delegitimize democracy, or exacerbate existing frictions in society.”
According to the intelligence community, “the PRC was the most capable actor in this context, interfering with Canadian media content via direct engagement with Canadian media executives and journalists.”
So what do we have here? Carney’s Liberals have a natural interest in destabilizing the Conservatives and sending Pierre Poilievre — a prosecutorial-style politician who excels at exposing his opponents’ weaknesses — into early political retirement. Arguably, they have a well-founded interest in dividing the Conservative Party itself.
But using the media to float names of opposition MPs who never intended to cross is disinformation, plain and simple. And when that name is Michael Chong — long targeted by Beijing — the stakes rise. If Carney is tilting toward a “strategic partnership” with Beijing, and if that delays the Foreign Influence Transparency Registry, as critics such as Dr. Charles Burton warn, then the tactics on display have moved from questionable to unacceptable — and risk entangling the interests of the Liberal Party of Canada with those of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.
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President Donald Trump on Sunday said every American with the exception of the wealthy will receive $2,000 from the revenue the U.S. has collected from tariffs.
“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high-income people!) will be paid to revenue,” Trump posted on Truth Social. He did not say when or how the tariff revenue would be distributed.
“We are now the richest, most respected country in the world with almost no inflation and a record stock market price. 401Ks are highest ever,” Trump wrote. “We are taking in trillions of dollars and will soon begin paying down our enormous debt, $37 trillion. Record investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place.”
Trump has said he wants to use tariffs to restore manufacturing jobs lost to lower-wage countries in decades past, shift the tax burden away from U.S. families and pay down the national debt. Economists, businesses and some public companies have warned that tariffs will raise prices on a wide range of consumer products.
Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs have been challenged in federal courts as unconstitutional by some business groups and Blue states, who argue that only Congress has the authority to enact tariffs. The U.S. Supreme Court last week heard oral arguments in a consolidated case challenging the tariffs.
Even some of the court’s conservative justices seemed skeptical of Trump’s authority to issue sweeping tariffs. Trump addressed that skepticism in his social media post.
“So let’s get this straight? The president of the United States is allowed (and fully approved by Congress) to stop ALL TRADE with a foreign country (which is far more onerous than a tariff) and LICENSE a foreign country, but it is not allowed to put a simple tariff on a foreign country, even for the purposes of NATIONAL SECURITY,” he wrote. “That is not what our great founders had in mind. The whole thing is ridiculous! Other countries can tariff us, but we can’t tariff them? It is their DREAM!!! Businesses are pouring into the USA ONLY BECAUSE OF TARIFFS. HAS THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT NOT BEEN TOLD THIS??? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON???”
The Center Square’s Brett Rowland contributed to this report.
Dan McCaleb is the executive editor of The Center Square.
With the threat of a “defund the CBC” Conservative government fading ever faster in its rearview mirror, the nation’s publicly-funded commercial news and entertainment corporation (aka public broadcaster) is poised to take an even larger share of the market thanks to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first budget.
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Sure, tens of thousands of public sector employees may be about to lose their jobs, services face cutbacks and the feds might be rewriting collective bargaining rules in their favour. But as we learned Nov. 4, the CBC will – as promised in last spring’s election – get a $150 million top up to the $1.4 billion Parliament already allocates to it. There’s every chance that means it will be an even more aggressive competitor in the news market for viewers, listeners, readers and advertisers. One in three working journalists in the country already work for CBC/Radio Canada. If an 11 percent hike in funding is reflected in newsroom job growth, that number could move closer to 37 per cent.
Federal funding for “private sector” news organizations has remained flat (with the exception of a $12 million boost to a fund introduced as Covid relief). That means the news industry playing field has been tilted even more in the CBC’s favour, making it harder for outlets that are not the CBC to compete or even survive. There will be less opportunity for news innovators and increased private sector job losses will lead to demands for larger subsidies from industry lobby groups such as News Media Canada and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. Good news for the CBC means bad news for others. This is either a really bad mistake by Carney or, making the CBC even more dominant as a news source (it has the most popular domestic website) is part of his plan.
Further brightening the outlook for journos at the Mother Corp was the news from CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard that there’s no need to investigate antisemitism within its ranks and, while its relationship with rural and western Canadians could be better, it’s unlikely the status quo will be disrupted. Editor in Chief Brodie Fenlon confirmed that conclusion by testifying before a Senate committee that the CBC’s newsrooms are the least biased he’s ever worked in.
Yup, life at the Mother Corp’s looking rosier than ever.
Perhaps as an unintended metaphor for CBC’s growth at private media’s expense, Postmedia’s Brian Passifiume illustrated his relative poverty by jocularly complaining about the lack of a free lunch for those within the budget lockup.
Time was when journos would refuse a free lunch from a subject of their coverage. Now they complain publicly about not getting one.
Speaking of the budget, a couple of items caught the eye.
One was the jaw-dropping Tweet by the Hill Times’ Stu Benson noting how journalists were partying post-budget at Ottawa’s trendy Metro Brasserie with government MPs and bigwigs. It, accompanied by photos, stated:
“Hundreds of politicos, journalists, and libatious Liberals joined Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne for a post-budget victory lap at the @MetroBrasserie_ on Nov. 4 at @EarnscliffeCda X @politicoottawa’s”
In response, Twitter sage Norman Spector shared Benson’s post and wrote:
“How it works in Ottawa: Politicos, journalists and Liberals at a post-budget victory lap – a shindig co-sponsored by a lobbying firm.”
And media wonder why so many no longer have faith in them?
The other item involved what is termed an “advance” story posted by the CBC. The problem wasn’t that the story failed to contain all the key elements and expected perspectives. It did. The problem was that none of those were introduced at all until the 10th paragraph and you have to go another 28 paragraphs or so before the Conservatives, Bloc and NDP are even mentioned, making the piece read like a government news release. This is a common error in newsrooms where staff should know by now that most people consume news by reading a headline and – give or take – the top six paragraphs before moving on.
So, unless reporters introduce balance within the first three paragraphs, most people will be unaware that alternative views exist.
CBC is hardly alone in making this error, although its dominance in the market enhances its impact.
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During my spells in Ottawa – briefly within the Parliamentary Press Gallery and longer at the CRTC – I was struck by how little so many reporters working there know about how government and its institutions actually work.
Most, in my recollection, cover only the drama, intrigue and theatre of politics. For too many, the daily routine consists of scanning news releases, phoning their contacts and watching Question Period on CPAC before venturing (maybe) across Wellington Street (is it still called that?) for a scrum or two.
What most don’t bother with at all are some of the most important aspects of the machinery of government such as the work of committees, the regulations that follow passage of legislation or, as Blacklock’s Reporter Publisher Holly Doan pointed out last week, the estimates that follow a budget.
These are important matters and the lack of coverage by subsidized media leaves the public ill-informed. For instance, as the Liberals move to buy off opposition MPs to form a majority government people did not vote for, they will also be able to claim control over committees.
So, as the nation morphs inexorably into a permanent one-party state, the absence of coverage in these areas will be increasingly evident. If you want to be a fully informed citizen, find a news outlet that covers these important matters and subscribe.
That practice delivered an even more devastating impact on public trust in journalism when it was revealed that the BBC program Panorama had blended two phrases from US President Donald Trump. As The Standard reported:
“In a clip from a Panorama programme, broadcast before the election, Trump appears to tell supporters: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol…and I’ll be there with you. And we fight, we fight like hell.
“But the words were taken from different sections of his speech, nearly an hour apart. In the original footage, his language is more restrained: “We’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” adding his supporters will march “peacefully and patriotically” to make their voices heard.”
Opposition MPs are demanding an inquiry. In this clip, GB News takes no prisoners. Reports Saturday indicate the chair of the BBC would be officially apologizing.
Michael Geist is not a journalist. He’s a law professor and internet expert. And his coverage of the budget – in a Substack note – was a fabulous example of the importance of a free and open internet as a source of valuable information about important matters overlooked by mainstream media. He said:
“Canadian government departments are big believers that AI will be the source of reducing expenses. Finance, Justice, CRTC, Fisheries, CRA, ESDC all cite new efficiencies from AI to explain how they will meet the 15% spending reduction target in the budget.”
(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)
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