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Opinion

One of the world’s leading progressives says “I’m out”

Published

4 years ago

21 minute read

This is a compelling read because of the insight but it’s even more remarkable considering the author.  Michael Schellenberger not only founded and lead “Environmental Progress“, he was an Invited IPCC Reviewer and was named by Time Magazine “Hero of Environment”.  Schellenberger is still a leading environmentalist, but his views have changed significantly over the years as he’s become disillusioned with the movement.  

Michael Shellenberger is author of the best-selling “Apocalypse Never”

This newsletter was sent out to Michael Schellenberger’s subscribers on Substack

Why I Am Not A Progressive

And Why, From Climate Change to Homelessness, Liberal People Are Giving Up

For all of my adult life I have identified as a progressive. To me, being a progressive meant that I believed in empowerment. In 2002, when I co-founded a labor-environmental coalition to advocate for renewable energy, the symbol we chose to represent us was of Rosie the Riveter, an image of a woman factory worker during World War II flexing her muscle beneath the words, “We Can Do It!”. When President Barack Obama ran for office in 2008, it seemed fitting to me that he chose the slogan, “Yes we can!”

But now, on all the major issues of the day, the message from progressives is “No, you can’t.” No: poor nations like Bangladesh can’t adapt to climate change by becoming rich, insist progressives; rather, rich nations must become poor. No: we can’t prevent the staggering rise of drug deaths in the U.S., from 17,000 in 2000 to 93,000 in 2020, by helping people free themselves from addiction; rather, we must instead provide Safe Injection Sites and Safe Sleeping Sites, in downtown neighborhoods, where homeless addicts can use fentanyl, heroin, and meth safely.

Progressives insist they are offering hope. Many scientists and activists yesterday said that, while we have gone past the point of no return, when it comes to climate change, and that “No one is safe,” we can make the situation less bad by using solar panels, windmills, and electric cars, albeit at a very high cost to the economy. And in California, progressive leaders say that we just need to stick with the progressive agenda of Safe Injection Sites and Safe Sleeping Sites until we can build enough single unit apartments for the state’s 116,000 unsheltered homeless, most of whom are either addicted to hard drugs, suffering from untreated mental illness, or both.

But progressives are talking out of both sides of their mouth. Yesterday I debated a British climate scientist named Richard Betts on television. After I pointed out that he and his colleagues had contributed to one out of four British children having nightmares about climate change he insisted that he was all for optimism and that he agreed with me about nuclear power. But just hours earlier he had told the Guardian that we were “hopelessly unprepared” for extreme weather events, even though deaths from natural disasters are at an all time low and that, objectively speaking, humankind has never been more prepared than we are today.

And on the drug deaths crisis, the consensus view among Democrats in Sacramento is that “the problem is fundamentally unsolvable,” according to one of the Capitol’s leading lobbyists. Facing a recall that is growing in popularity, Governor Gavin Newsom yesterday tried to demonstrate that he believes he can solve the problem. He came to Berkeley California and cleaned up garbage created by an open air drug scene (“homeless encampment”) underneath a freeway underpass. A reporter for Politicoposted a picture of Newsom who he said was “looking tired, sweaty and dirty.” But a commenter noted that the video was shot at 12:12 pm and by 12:25 pm Newsom was holding a press conference. The governor hadn’t even bothered changing out of his Hush Puppies into work boots. People close to the governor say that it is Newsom himself who believes homelessness is a problem that cannot be solved.

The reason progressives believe that “No one is safe,” when it comes to climate change, and that the drug death “homelessness” crisis is unsolvable, is because they are in the grip of a victim ideology characterized by safetyism, learned helplessness, and disempowerment. This isn’t really that new. Since the 1960s, the New Left has argued that we can’t solve any of our major problems until we overthrow our racist, sexist, and capitalistic system. But for most of my life, up through the election of Obama, there was still a New Deal, “Yes we can!,” and “We can do it!” optimism that sat side-by-side with the New Left’s fundamentally disempowering critique of the system.

That’s all gone. On climate change, drug deaths, and cultural issues like racism, the message from progressives is that we are doomed unless we dismantle the institutions responsible for our oppressive, racist system. Those of us in Generation X who were raised to believe that racism was something we could overcome have been told in no uncertain terms that we were wrong. Racism is baked into our cultural DNA. Even apparently positive progressive proposals are aimed at fundamentally dismantling institutions. The Democrats’ $1 trillion infrastructure bill, supported by many Republicans, and their $3.5 trillion budget proposal, contain measures that would finance the continuing degradation of our electrical grids by increasing reliance on unreliable, weather-dependent renewables, and establish racial incentives for industries including trucking, where there is already a shortage of drivers in large measure because not enough of them can pass drug tests. And does anyone really believe that, if those bills pass, progressives will abandon their dark vision of the future and return to Rosie the Riveter?

Meanwhile, at the state and local level, progressive governments faced with worsening racial disparities in education and crime, are attempting to “solve” the problem by eliminating academic standards altogether, and advocating selective enforcement of laws based on who is committing them. Such measures are profoundly cynical. Progressives are effectively giving up on addressing racial disparities by ignoring them. But such is the logical outcome of victim ideology, which holds that we can divide the world into victims and oppressors, that victims are morally superior and even spiritual, and no change is possible until the system that produces victims and oppressors is overthrown.

To some extent none of this is new. After World War II, it was progressives, not conservatives, who led the charge to replace mental hospitals with community-based care. After the community-based care system fell apart, and severely mentally ill people ended up living on the street, addicted to drugs and alcohol, progressives blamed Reagan and Republicans for cutting the budget. But progressive California today spends more than any other state, per capita, on mental health, and yet the number of homeless, many of whom are mentally ill and suffering addiction, increased by 31% in California since 2010 even as they declined by 18 percent in the rest of the US.

Also after World War II, it was progressives, not conservatives, who insisted that the world was coming to an end because too many babies were being born, and because of nuclear energy. The “population bomb” meant that too many people would result in resource scarcity which would result in international conflicts and eventually nuclear war. We were helpless to prevent the situation through technological change and instead had to prevent people from having children and rid the world of nuclear weapons and energy. It took the end of the Cold War, and the overwhelming evidence that parents in poor nations chose to have fewer children, as parents in rich nations had before them, where they no longer needed them to work on the farm, for the discourse to finally fade.

But the will-to-apocalypse only grew stronger. After it became clear that the planet was warming, not cooling, as many scientists had previously feared, opportunistic New Left progressives insisted that climate change would be world-ending. There was never much reason to believe this. A major report by the National Academies of Science in 1982 concluded that abundant natural gas, along with nuclear power, would substitute for coal, and prevent temperatures from rising high enough to threaten civilization. But progressives responded by demonizing the authors of the study and insisting that anybody who disagreed that climate change was apocalyptic was secretly on the take from the fossil fuel industry.

Where there have been relatively straightforward fixes to societal problems, progressives have opposed them. Progressives have opposed the expanded use of natural gas and nuclear energy since the 1970s even though it was those two technologies that caused emissions to peak and decline in Germany, Britain and France during that decade. Progressive climate activists over the last 15 years hotly opposed fracking even though it was the main reason emissions in the US declined 22 percent between 2005 and 2020, which is 5 percentage points more than President Obama proposed to reduce them as part of America’s Paris climate agreement.

The same was the case when it came to drug deaths, addiction, and homelessness. People are shocked when I explain to them that the reason California still lacks enough homeless shelters is because progressives have opposed building them. Indeed, it was Governor Newsom, when he was Mayor of San Francisco, who led the charge opposing the construction of sufficient homeless shelters in favor of instead building single unit apartments for anybody who said they wanted one. While there are financial motivations for such a policy, the main motivation was ideological. Newsom and other progressives believe that simply sheltering people is immoral. The good is the enemy of the perfect.

As a result, progressives have created the apocalypse they feared. In California, there are “homeless encampments,” open drug scenes, in the parks, along the highways, and on the sidewalks. But the problem is no longer limited to San Francisco. A few days ago somebody posted a video and photo on Twitter of people in Philadelphia, high on some drug, looking exactly like Hollywood zombies. The obvious solution is to provide people with shelter, require them to use it, and mandate drug and psychiatric treatment, for people who break laws against camping, public drug use, public defecation, and other laws. But progressives insist the better solution is Safe Sleeping Sites and Safe Injection Sites.

Should we be surprised that an ideology that believes American civilization is fundamentally evil has resulted in the breakdown of that civilization? Most American progressives don’t hold such an extreme ideology. Most progressives want police for their neighborhoods. Most progressives want their own children, when suffering mental illness and addiction, to be mandated care. And most progressives want reliable electrical and water management systems for their neighborhoods.

But most progressives are also voting for candidates who are cutting the number of police for poor neighborhoods, insisting that psychiatric and drug treatment be optional, and that trillions be spent making electricity more expensive so we can harmonize with nature through solar panels made by enslaved Muslims in China, and through industrial wind projects built in the habitat of critically endangered whale species.

Does pointing all of this out make me a conservative? There are certainly things I support that many progressives view as conservative, including nuclear power, a ban on public camping, and mandating drug and psychiatric treatment for people who break the law. But other things I support might be fairly viewed as rather liberal, or even progressive, including universal psychiatric care, shelter-for-all, and the reform of police departments with the aims of reducing homicides, police violence, and improving the treatment of people with behavioral health disorders, whether from addiction or mental illness.

And there is a kind of victim ideology on the Right just as there is on the Left. It says that America is too weak and poor, and that our resources are too scarce, to take on our big challenges. On climate change it suggests that nothing of consequence can be done and that all energy sources, from coal to nuclear to solar panels, are of equal or comparable value. On drug deaths and homelessness it argues that parents must simply do a better job raising their children to not be drug addicts, and that we should lock up people, even the mentally ill, for long sentences in prisons and hospitals, with little regard for rehabilitation.

The two grassroots movements I have helped to create around energy and homelessness reject the dystopian victim ideologies of Right and Left. There are progressive and conservative members in both coalitions. But what unites us is our commitment to practical policies that are proven to work in the real world. We advocate for the maintenance and construction of nuclear plants that actually exist, or could soon exist, not futuristic reactors that likely never will. We advocate for Shelter First and Housing Earned, universal psychiatric care, and banning the open dealing of deadly drugs because those are the policies that have worked across the U.S. and around the world, and can be implemented right away.

If I had to find a word to describe the politics I am proposing it would be “heroic,” not liberal, conservative, or even moderate. We need a politics of heroism not a politics of victimhood. Yes, Bangladesh can develop and save itself from sea level rise, just as rich nations have; they are not doomed to hurricanes and flooding. Yes, people addicted to fentanyl and meth can recover from their addictions, with our help, and go on to live fulfilling and rewarding lives; they are not doomed to live in tents for the rest of their shortened lives. And yes, we can create an America where people who disagree on many things can nonetheless find common ground on the very issues that most seem to polarize us, including energy, the environment, crime, and drugs.

On October 12 HarperCollins will publish my second book in two years, San Fransicko, focused on drugs, crime, and homelessnes. It and Apocalypse Never will constitute a comprehensive proposal for saving our civilization from those who would destroy it. What both books have in common is the theme of empowerment. We are not doomed to an apocalyptic future, whether from climate change or homelessness. We can achieve nature, peace, and prosperity for all people because humans are amazing. Our civilization is sacred; we must defend and extend it.

San Fransicko was inspired, in part, by the work of the late psychiatrist, Victor Frankl, who was made famous by a book where he described how he survived the Nazi concentration camps by fixating on a positive vision for his future. During the darkest moments of Covid last year I was struck by how much my mood had improved simply by listening to his 1960s lectures on YouTube. Why, I wondered, had progressives embraced Frankl’s empowering therapy in their personal lives but demonized it in their political lives? Why had progressives, who had done so much to popularize human potential and self-help, claimed that promoting self-help in policies and politics were a form of “blaming the victim?”

Few of my conclusions will surprise anyone, though the agenda, and philosophy, that I am proposing might. It truly is a mix of values, policies, and institutions that one might consider progressive and conservative, not because I set out to make it that way, but because it was that combination that has worked so often in the past. But beyond the policies and values I propose there is a spirit of overcoming, not succumbing; of empowerment, not disempowerment; and of heroism, not victimhood. That spirit comes before, and goes beyond, political ideology and partisan identity. It says, against those who believe that America, and perhaps Western Civilization itself, are doomed: no they’re not. And to those who think we can’t solve big challenges like climate change, drug deaths, and homelessness, it says yes we can.

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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Crime

Canada Blocked DEA Request to Investigate Massive Toronto Carfentanil Seizure for Terror Links

Published on May 2, 2025

By

Exclusive investigation shows U.S. drug officials were stonewalled after linking a historic Toronto opioid seizure to suspected Pakistani and Chinese threat networks

A former top U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official has come forward with explosive allegations that Canadian authorities obstructed a high-level DEA investigation into a 42-kilogram carfentanil seizure tied to a 2018 mass shooting in Toronto and, according to senior U.S. investigators, potentially linked to Pakistani threat networks and Chinese chemical precursor suppliers.

The DEA learned, after 29-year-old Faisal Hussain’s shooting rampage on Danforth Avenue—which left two people dead and thirteen more wounded—that his brother and a network with Pakistani links were connected to a historic seizure of carfentanil, a synthetic opioid 100 times more potent than fentanyl, in September 2017. The drugs were discovered in a suburban Pickering home, alongside specialized equipment consistent with a transnational trafficking operation.

While ISIS’s claim of responsibility for Hussain’s attack initially raised concerns about terrorism, Canadian officials and Toronto police advanced a narrative that the tragedy had no national security implications, attributing it instead to the hardships of a Pakistani immigrant family and a mental health crisis. But the DEA’s elite Special Operations Division—drawing on global informant and intelligence networks—did not fully accept the conclusions of Canada’s investigation or its public disclosures.

The DEA had requested to test the seized carfentanil to determine whether its molecular structure matched opioids trafficked into Atlanta from Quebec, said Donald Im, the DEA’s former Special Operations Division lead on precursor chemicals, dark web drug markets, and narco-terrorism, in an exclusive interview with The Bureau.

Although mid-level RCMP officers were reportedly willing to share the seizure materials and investigative details with the DEA, Im said those efforts were blocked by senior Canadian bureaucrats.

“I coordinated with our DEA office up there in Ottawa, and he was getting the runaround as well,” Im said. “I’m saying, if you guys had some 30 or 40-odd kilograms, and you couldn’t give us a few grams to determine whether or not there were any similar seizures in the United States? And they wouldn’t give it to us.”

Im said that before retiring in 2022, he couldn’t let the case go, and attempted—through the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies—to pressure Canadian authorities to release a sample. Those efforts also failed.

The DEA viewed the Toronto seizure as a potential inbound threat to Americans on multiple levels. According to DEA estimates, as little as 20 micrograms of carfentanil can be fatal to humans. At that potency, one kilogram of carfentanil could yield well over 10 million lethal doses. The 42 kilograms of confirmed carfentanil seized from the Pickering home—linked to Pakistani crime networks—could, in theory, be potent enough to deliver lethal doses to the entire populations of Canada and the United States.

“I could see the frustration in the RCMP guy’s face,” Im said, referring to the Canadian official he directly asked to share samples from the Pickering seizure. “I mean, there was this one guy—he was really good and he did everything he could to get us some stuff, but no—headquarters would not let him release anything,” Im recalled. “And I was told by RCMP officials—not just once, but on a number of occasions—they are frustrated at their headquarters.”

The Bureau confirmed with a current senior U.S. official, with knowledge of discussions involving Public Safety Canada and senior RCMP leaders, that American investigators have allegedly been repeatedly stonewalled on requests for information from the RCMP on fentanyl investigations, so-called ‘superlabs,’ and cross-province distribution networks in B.C., Ontario, and Quebec—cases in which DEA intelligence reportedly led to Canadian investigations.

Senior U.S. officials with direct knowledge of precursor tracking said the chemical compounds, dyes, and containment gear found at the scene in Pickering almost certainly originated in China, where state-tolerated chemical firms supply global narco-networks.

In a lengthy interview, Im—who has testified before Congress on Beijing’s role in global narcotics trafficking and traced fentanyl networks back to Chinese Communist Party officials—said the Toronto carfentanil case and its link to the Danforth shooting expose a growing national security blind spot in Canada, with direct implications for the United States.

He placed the 2017 seizure at the center of escalating U.S. concerns about Canada’s role in the fentanyl supply chain, declining enforcement standards, and Ottawa’s political resistance to RCMP cooperation with American law enforcement.

To date, most Canadian media have largely portrayed the shooter and his family as victims of personal tragedy. Faisal Hussain, the 29-year-old gunman, was said to have suffered from psychosis after his brother’s drug overdose left him in a vegetative state. In September 2017—while Fahad Hussain was in a coma—fire crews responded to a carbon monoxide alarm at the Pickering home and alerted police to a suspicious substance in the basement. Durham Regional Police executed a search warrant, uncovering 33 illegal overcapacity firearms magazines and 53 kilograms of seized material—including 42 kilograms of confirmed carfentanil—the largest known seizure of the drug in Canadian history.

The home’s owner, Pakistani immigrant Maisum Ansari, was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for possession of 33 firearms and 26 kilograms of carfentanil for the purpose of trafficking. He was released on bail in September 2023 pending appeal. The ruling that freed Ansari stated: “The Crown’s theory at trial was that the appellant was not necessarily the mastermind behind the criminal enterprise, but he was a ‘necessary cog in a larger operation.’”

Speaking about the Faisal Hussain shooting case, Liberal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale publicly stated there was “no national security connection between this individual and any other national security issue.”

ISIS claimed responsibility for the Danforth shooting through its AMAQ news agency, describing Hussain as “a soldier of the Islamic State.” Canadian law enforcement dismissed the claim, and then–Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders said no evidence supported it. But Im said the DEA remained concerned.

“Not only did we assume there were links to China, but then we found links back to Pakistan. And I can’t disclose exactly what, but it’s bad,” Im said. “And we were thinking: is this going to be a potential terrorist act? This is where we believed the RCMP didn’t want anything like that to be disclosed—that there was a potential ISIS sympathizer attempting to use carfentanil as a weapon of mass destruction, as opposed to just killing somebody with a pistol.”

In wide-ranging answers that will inform a forthcoming series from The Bureau on Canada’s role in China’s global fentanyl supply networks, Im reiterated that certain details remain classified. However, he said The Bureau’s reporting has already touched on many of the key issues that senior U.S. officials believe the North American public must understand—especially regarding the intersection of narcotics, national security, and foreign interference from hostile states.

Asked to elaborate on the DEA’s view of the Hussain case and its links to Pakistan, Im said:
“Terror networks. It was indirect links, but we needed to follow through with it. We found links to him—and then back to Pakistan.”

Pressing the point, The Bureau asked: “You’re saying what you can share is limited, but there was something that concerned you there in Pakistan?”

“Yes, indirectly, and I won’t say anything further,” Im responded.

Despite escalating efforts through intelligence and defense channels, Im said Canada remained uncooperative.

“We were asking: How does a Pakistani Canadian have all this amount of carfentanil? And it was a staggering amount,” Im said.

What also went unreported, Im noted, was that the brother had overdosed after handling a large quantity of carfentanil—alongside food dyes and chemical-handling gear that suggested commercial production or distribution.

The DEA believed the setup bore the hallmarks of mass trafficking operations or, in a more alarming scenario, possible preparation for a terror-related attack.

“The local police gave us photos and we found food dye coloring. And we were like, what is he doing with this? We think he was trying to market the product to youth with different color variants, but he wasn’t able to do it.”

“So that’s why we were trying to, one, trace the source of the carfentanil and the chemicals, the food dye coloring. And then, was he communicating with anyone in the name of ISIS?”

“But who actually supplied it to him, and how did he get it? It’s got to come from China. But the RCMP wouldn’t give us anything. We couldn’t even get samples to analyze. This was one of my key priorities in 2018 and 2019. They wouldn’t give it to our lab. We just needed a small amount to determine the molecular structure—whether we could trace it or link it to seizures in the States.”

Im also tied the DEA’s blocked Danforth probe to broader concerns about carfentanil exports from Canada. “DEA Georgia, Atlanta had been investigating carfentanil overdoses, and guess who the supplier was? A Canadian named Arden McCann. He had been selling carfentanil through the dark web, and we were wondering—the Mexicans aren’t selling carfentanil, but we’re seeing it coming out of Canada,” Im said.

A current senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of bilateral tensions confirmed that many of Im’s concerns reflect long-standing frustrations. The official said American authorities believe Canada has consistently downplayed cartel infiltration—an issue that escalated after the Trudeau government lifted visa requirements for Mexican nationals.

The official also pointed to Canada’s expanding role in the poly-drug trade—dominated by Chinese organized crime—including fentanyl, methamphetamine, and illicit cannabis. Since the 2018 legalization of recreational marijuana, Canadian supply chains that appear “legal” on paper have increasingly fueled the U.S. black market, the official said.

Once across the border, those shipments merge with synthetic drug flows fueled by Chinese precursors. The resulting profits are laundered through vast trade-based networks controlled by Chinese organized crime groups. These networks operate in tandem with underground banking systems in the Middle East and move money for Latin American cartels, Italian mafias, and other transnational syndicates.

Tensions between the RCMP and U.S. agencies have deepened in recent years. One emblematic episode, according to a U.S. source, came when the Canada Border Services Agency publicly acknowledged that Canada was a fentanyl exporter. The RCMP contradicted the statement, and the admission was quietly withdrawn. “We’re just saying, give us something honest to work with,” a U.S. official said.

As of 2025, the mistrust remains unresolved. The official pointed to recent RCMP claims that none of the fentanyl seized in a series of Vancouver-area lab busts was destined for the United States. “We asked how they knew that,” the official said. “They won’t share the evidence.”

It’s the same pattern Washington has grown increasingly frustrated with—mirroring what Don Im described facing during the carfentanil investigation. In fact, intelligence on fentanyl labs has largely flowed in one direction: from the DEA to Canadian authorities.

Im emphasized that frontline RCMP officers are not to blame. “They’re more than capable,” he said. “But they are politically hamstrung in their ability to share and coordinate. That’s coming from headquarters.”

Looking ahead, Im warned that Canada’s continued resistance to serious fentanyl cooperation could carry long-term economic consequences. “If Mark Carney wants to stay in power, this is where Trump can come in and say: start coordinating with us on the Chinese—or the tariffs stay,” he said.

Im, who has testified before Congress on China’s role in the fentanyl crisis and helped write the groundbreaking 2024 Congressional report on the CCP’s involvement in supporting and subsidizing precursor chemicals, said endemic corruption in China’s provinces has allowed chemical producers to flood North America with precursors. The report found fentanyl being produced in some Chinese prisons, and some CCP officials holding so-called “golden shares” in precursor companies. He identified Canada as a critical conduit in that global system—serving both as a staging ground for drug production and a platform for laundering the proceeds.

“There is insufficient cooperation from Canada on fentanyl, Chinese organized crime, and money laundering with the United States,” Im said.

Im said he is speaking boldly now because lives are being lost across North America, and the political and judicial response so far has been woefully inadequate—in the United States, but especially so in Canada.

“I see it on the global scale here, including the United States, and it’s frustrating because now we’re slowly seeing U.S. government officials discussing Canada. And I’ve been saying all along that there’s an extensive amount of fentanyl and carfentanil that have been coming from Canada for years. And just because there’s only been a few seized does not mean that there’s not a significant amount,” he said.

“And I’ve worked with the RCMP for years, and they’re great until they’re influenced by the Chinese. It was just overwhelming. And we just couldn’t get anything out of RCMP anymore because their headquarters were restricted in providing what we needed. So I mean, they’d give us low-hanging fruit information, but when it came to money and Chinese and fentanyl and chemicals, they were like, ‘No.’ We tried but couldn’t get that information.”

Coming Up: Subscribe to The Bureau for exclusive, paywalled investigations that delve into the intelligence and evidence shaping U.S.–Canada relations. Our upcoming reports expose the rise of Canadian super-labs, Beijing’s United Front Work Department, the covert use of cross-border properties, and growing threats to national security—and lives—across North America. These stories are poised to influence high-level tariff negotiations between Washington and Ottawa.

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Business

Overregulation is choking Canadian businesses, says the MEI

Published on May 2, 2025

By

  From the Montreal Economic Institute

The federal government’s growing regulatory burden on businesses is holding Canada back and must be urgently reviewed, argues a new publication from the MEI released this morning.

“Regulation creep is a real thing, and Ottawa has been fuelling it for decades,” says Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI and coauthor of the Viewpoint. “Regulations are passed but rarely reviewed, making it burdensome to run a business, or even too costly to get started.”

Between 2006 and 2021, the number of federal regulatory requirements in Canada rose by 37 per cent, from 234,200 to 320,900. This is estimated to have reduced real GDP growth by 1.7 percentage points, employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points, according to recent Statistics Canada data.

Small businesses are disproportionately impacted by the proliferation of new regulations.

In 2024, firms with fewer than five employees pay over $10,200 per employee in regulatory and red tape compliance costs, compared to roughly $1,400 per employee for businesses with 100 or more employees, according to data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Overall, Canadian businesses spend 768 million hours a year on compliance, which is equivalent to almost 394,000 full-time jobs. The costs to the economy in 2024 alone were over $51.5 billion.

It is hardly surprising in this context that entrepreneurship in Canada is on the decline. In the year 2000, 3 out of every 1,000 Canadians started a business. By 2022, that rate had fallen to just 1.3, representing a nearly 57 per cent drop since 2000.

The impact of regulation in particular is real: had Ottawa maintained the number of regulations at 2006 levels, Canada would have seen about 10 per cent more business start-ups in 2021, according to Statistics Canada.

The MEI researcher proposes a practical way to reevaluate the necessity of these regulations, applying a model based on the Chrétien government’s 1995 Program Review.

In the 1990s, the federal government launched a review process aimed at reducing federal spending. Over the course of two years, it successfully eliminated $12 billion in federal spending, a reduction of 9.7 per cent, and restored fiscal balance.

A similar approach applied to regulations could help identify rules that are outdated, duplicative, or unjustified.

The publication outlines six key questions to evaluate existing or proposed regulations:

  1. What is the purpose of the regulation?
  2. Does it serve the public interest?
  3. What is the role of the federal government and is its intervention necessary?
  4. What is the expected economic cost of the regulation?
  5. Is there a less costly or intrusive way to solve the problem the regulation seeks to address?
  6. Is there a net benefit?

According to OECD projections, Canada is expected to experience the lowest GDP per capita growth among advanced economies through 2060.

“Canada has just lived through a decade marked by weak growth, stagnant wages, and declining prosperity,” says Ms. Wittevrongel. “If policymakers are serious about reversing this trend, they must start by asking whether existing regulations are doing more harm than good.”

The MEI Viewpoint is available here.

* * *

The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.

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