From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Hopkins

The Canadian government made clear its beefing up its border security apparatus after President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose sweeping tariffs against Canada and Mexico if the flow of illegal immigration and drugs are not reined in.

Trump in November announced on social media that he would impose a 25% tariff on all products from Canada and Mexico unless both countries do more to limit the level of illicit drugs and illegal immigration entering into the United States. In response, Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with the president-elect at his residence in Mar-a-Largo and his government has detailed what more it’s doing to bolster immigration enforcement.

“We got, I think, a mutual understanding of what they’re concerned about in terms of border security,” Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc, who accompanied Trudeau at Mar-a-Largo, said of the meeting in an interview with Canadian media. “All of their concerns are shared by Canadians and by the government of Canada.”

“We talked about the security posture currently at the border that we believe to be effective, and we also discussed additional measures and visible measures that we’re going to put in place over the coming weeks,” LeBlanc continued. “And we also established, Rosemary, a personal series of rapport that I think will continue to allow us to make that case.”

Trudeau’s Liberal Party-led government has pivoted on border enforcement since its first days in power.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) — the country’s law enforcement arm that patrols the border — is preparing to beef up its immigration enforcement capabilities by hiring more staff, adding more vehicles and creating more processing facilities, in the chance that there is an immigration surge sparked by Trump’s presidential election victory. The moves are a change in direction from Trudeau’s public declaration in January 2017 that Canada was a “welcoming” country and that “diversity is our strength” just days after Trump was sworn into office the first time.

While encounters along the U.S.-Canada border remain a fraction of what’s experienced at the southern border, activity has risen in recent months. Border Patrol agents made nearly 24,000 apprehensions along the northern border in fiscal year 2024 — marking a roughly 140% rise in apprehensions made the previous fiscal year, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection.

“While a change to U.S. border policy could result in an increase in migrants traveling north toward the Canada-U.S. border and between ports of entry, the RCMP now has valuable tools and insights to address this movement that were not previously in place,” read an RCMP statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “New mechanisms have been established which enable the RCMP to effectively manage apprehensions of irregular migrants between the ports.”

Trudeau’s pivot on illegal immigration enforcement follows the Canadian population growing more hawkish on the issue, public opinion surveys have indicated. Other polls also indicate Trudeau’s Liberal Party will face a beating at the voting booth in October 2025 against the Conservative Party, led by Member of Parliament Pierre Poilievre.

Trudeau’s recent overtures largely differ from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has indicated she is not willing to bend the knee to Trump’s tariff threats. The Mexican leader in November said “there will be a response in kind” to any tariff levied on Mexican goods going into the U.S., and she appeared to deny the president-elect’s claims that she agreed to do more to beef up border security in a recent phone call.

Trump, who has vowed to embark on an incredibly hawkish immigration agenda once he re-enters office, has tapped a number of hardliners to lead his efforts. The president-elect announced South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security, former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan to serve as border czar and longtime aide Stephen Miller to serve as deputy chief of staff for policy.

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Jay Goldberg

Northvolt’s bankruptcy and the heavy losses traditional auto manufacturers are seeing on EVs is evidence that betting billions on the industry was a terrible gamble for Trudeau, Legault, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Politicians love to gamble with your cash, but, based on their record, you’d think they were rookies getting fleeced by a card shark at a shady bar.

The latest epic failure is the gamble on electric vehicle battery manufacturer Northvolt.

The Legault government bet buckets of cash. And now the company is broke.

“Northvolt’s liquidity picture has become dire,” reads the Swedish EV battery manufacturer’s bankruptcy protection filing.

It turns out Northvolt accumulated $5.8 billion of debt. It’s CEO just resigned. The company’s future is bleak. New leadership is hoping it can remain afloat with the help of a $100-million loan from one of its shareholders.

Both the government of Quebec and the province’s pension fund bet hundreds of millions of dollars on Northvolt. They bought stakes in the company worth a combined $470 million.

That’s money Quebec taxpayers and pensioners may never get back.

Quebec Economy Minister Christine Fréchette admitted the money is “at risk” and taxpayers will only know if that investment remains intact after the company goes through its bankruptcy process.

As bad as the loss is for Quebeckers, Canadian taxpayers might also soon be facing billions in losses. That’s because Northvolt has a Canadian subsidiary that also received buckets of taxpayer cash.

Northvolt’s Canadian subsidiary is currently building a $7-billion EV battery plant in Quebec. Quebec Premier Francois Legault and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a combined $2.4 billion to Northvolt to build it.

Northvolt says its Canadian subsidiary is funded separately from the global company that was forced to file for bankruptcy and will “operate as usual outside the Chapter 11 process.”

But if the parent company’s finances have spiraled out of control, there’s every reason for taxpayers to worry its Canadian operation will too.

Northvolt repeatedly missed its in-house global production targets this year and curtailed some of its operations in Sweden.

If Northvolt is cutting back on global production, what reason does it have to ramp up production on a new facility in Canada?

With Northvolt’s global finances on the rocks, Canadian politicians might be tempted to throw even more cash at the company’s Canadian operation to keep the company afloat.

But throwing good money after bad isn’t a solution. Politicians in Ottawa and Quebec City need to stop gambling with taxpayers’ money.

Sadly, the implications for taxpayers are much wider than the future of one EV battery company.

Canadian politicians bet $57 billion of taxpayer cash on the EV industry.

But the entire industry is in jeopardy. Other than Tesla, every EV manufacturer is losing money making them.

General Motors lost $3.5 billion on EVs in 2023. The Ford Motor Company lost $7.7 billion. And both of those companies received billion-dollar handouts from the Trudeau and Ford governments to build EVs here in Canada.

The only reason GM and Ford aren’t in Northvolt’s position is because they have gasoline-powered cars to sell that turn a profit, allowing them to balance out their earnings (or lack thereof).

But there are signs of a pull-back.

Ford, for example, cancelled plans to produce two different models of electric SUVs, which were supposed to be built in Canada. This is costing the company billions. Meanwhile, the Canadian plant is pivoting back to building gasoline-powered cars.

Northvolt’s bankruptcy and the heavy losses traditional auto manufacturers are seeing on EVs is evidence that betting billions on the industry was a terrible gamble for Trudeau, Legault, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

This is a very expensive lesson: politicians should never gamble with taxpayer dollars by throwing billions at corporations. Businesses don’t need handouts to make investments that make sense.

In all these cases, the financial well-being of Canadian taxpayers should never have been at risk.