Opinion
Ontario mayor refuses to cave in to demands after town rejected ‘pride’ flag

Mayor Harold McQuaker of Emo, Ontario
From LifeSiteNews
Emo, Ontario mayor Harold McQuaker said he will ‘absolutely not’ pay a fine or attend re-education classes, emphasizing that ‘I will not be extorted.’
Last month, the Ontario Human Rights Commission ordered the township of Emo to pay the LGBT activist group Borderland Pride $10,000 for voting in 2020 not to fly a “Pride” flag. Mayor Harold McQuaker was ordered to personally pay $5,000 — and take a re-education course titled “Human Rights 101” to boot. We covered both the original story as well as a follow-up, detailing Borderland Pride’s threats and demands.
There is a new development in the case: Mayor Harold McQuaker is flatly refusing to do what is being demanded of him. Asked by the Toronto Sun if he will pay the fine or attending re-education classes, the 77-year-old McQuaker was blunt. “Absolutely not,” he replied. “I will not be extorted.” He also stated that he will not host Drag Queen Story Hour at the local library, either — one of the demands laid out in an open letter published by Borderland Pride.
Emo Township is a small town of just over 1,200 people located 380 kilometers west of Thunder Bay. The township now has to decide whether to pay the LGBT activist group as demanded by the Ontario Human Rights Commission or refuse to do so. McQuaker has made up his mind. “I utterly refuse to pay the $5,000 because that’s extortion,” he stated. “I have a lot of respect for our four councillors. We have a special meeting of council, and they will decide that and what to do next, either pay the fine or appeal it.”
McQuaker grew up in the area and owned a construction company there for 50 years, and he cannot be pushed around easily. “I will not pay the $5,000 I have been fined and will not take the training,” he emphasized to the Sun. “The council will decide on the fine levied to it. I did not do anything wrong … if anybody needs training it’s the LGBTQ2+ to quit pushing their weight around and making demand that people can’t live with.”
Ironically, the Emo town hall doesn’t even have a flagpole — but that didn’t matter to Borderland Pride, which has, in addition to other demands, stated that it expects a written apology as well as “diversity and inclusion training for council, and a commitment to adopt Pride proclamations in the future without stripping out their 2SLGBTQIA+-affirming language.” Borderland Pride insisted that despite the lack of flagpole the LGBT flag could have been displayed somewhere else, “such as in a window or on a counter in the municipal office.”
McQuaker emphasized that he “doesn’t hate anyone” and that he will not tolerate the accusations being leveled at him by Borderland Pride. “I am a husband to my wife for 51 years, father of two, a grandfather of seven and a great grandfather of one,” he said. “I consider myself a very reasonable person and a good leader for our community and I would have a lot of support if there was an election.”
In response, Doug Judson of Borderland Pride suggested that the mayor should be happy to learn from the LGBT group because his role:
(A)ctually requires that the mayor ‘participate in and foster activities that enhance the economic, social and environmental well-being of the municipality and its residents.’ Part of showing this kind of community leadership is to set the tone for civil debate and to demonstrate a willingness to learn and adapt one’s perspective on issues that, for various reasons, they may have more limited understanding of. It seems obvious enough that the mayor does not have many ties to the queer community. We hope that the training that was ordered by the tribunal will assist him in his leadership role moving forward.
In short, Judson and his LGBT activist buddies hope that forcing the 77-year-old mayor of a small town to take re-education classes will create “ties to the queer community” and that he will be a good boy from now on and do what they demand the first time. Harold McQuaker isn’t having any of it — and we need more like him. Godspeed to the mayor — I hope that the council follows suit.
illegal immigration
ICE raids California pot farm, uncovers illegal aliens and child labor

Quick Hit:
ICE raided a California cannabis farm Thursday suspected of employing illegal immigrants, uncovering 10 underage workers — including 8 unaccompanied minors. The operation sparked protests, but federal officials defended the action as a necessary crackdown on illegal labor and child exploitation.
Key Details:
- ICE agents executed a lawful raid at Glass House Farms in Camarillo, targeting illegal immigrant laborers employed at the state-licensed cannabis operation.
- Ten underage illegal immigrants were found working at the site — eight of them unaccompanied minors — prompting a federal investigation into potential child labor violations.
- Protesters attempted to interfere with the operation and were dispersed by federal agents using crowd control measures; multiple arrests and injuries were reported.
🚨BREAKING: ICE just swarmed Ventura County fields, hauling away the very farm workers who keep America’s produce aisles stocked.
We’re arresting assets; treating the backbone of our food chain like a threat. That’s not “border security.” That’s self-sabotage in uniform. pic.twitter.com/GgZvnXbVsd
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) July 10, 2025
Diving Deeper:
Federal immigration agents executed a large-scale raid Thursday at a cannabis farm in Camarillo, California, targeting illegal immigrant laborers and uncovering possible child labor violations. The operation, led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), took place at Glass House Farms, a state-licensed marijuana facility that remains illegal under federal law.
Dozens of agents stormed the property with a federal warrant, encountering resistance from left-wing protesters who attempted to disrupt the operation. Agents responded with tear gas and smoke devices, and helicopters were deployed to ensure no suspects could flee or hide in nearby fields. Authorities later confirmed that 10 minors were working at the facility—eight of whom were unaccompanied illegal aliens.
Despite clear evidence of immigration and labor violations, California Democrats rushed to attack the enforcement action. Governor Gavin Newsom lashed out on social media, posting video of people running from the scene. Rep. Salud Carbajal called the raid “deplorable,” complaining about the use of tactical gear.
Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott pushed back, calling out Newsom directly. “Here’s some breaking news: 10 juveniles were found at this marijuana facility – all illegal aliens, 8 of them unaccompanied,” he posted on X. “It’s now under investigation for child labor violations.”
While California officials cried foul, ICE defended the operation as necessary and lawful. The raid is part of a broader push under President Trump to enforce federal immigration laws and shut down operations that exploit illegal labor to undercut American workers.
The clash in Camarillo follows similar enforcement actions earlier this week in Los Angeles, where ICE also faced hostility from local officials. Nonetheless, the Trump administration appears undeterred, making clear that sanctuary policies will not shield illegal activity from federal scrutiny.
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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