Business
Closing information gaps to strengthen Canada’s border security and track fentanyl
By Sean Parker, Dawn Jutla, and Peter Copeland for Inside Policy
To promote better results, we lay out a collaborative approach
Despite exaggerated claims about how much fentanyl is trafficked across the border from Canada to the United States, the reality is that our detection, search, and seizure capacity is extremely limited.
We’re dealing with a “known unknown”: a risk we’re aware of, but don’t yet have the capacity to understand its extent.
What’s more, it may be that the flow of precursor chemicals—ingredients used in the production of fentanyl—is where much of the concern lies. Until we enhance our tracking, search, and seizure capacity, much will remain speculative.
As border security is further scrutinized, and the extent of fentanyl production and trafficking gets brought into sharper focus, the role of the federal government’s Precursor Chemical Risk Management Unit (PCRMU)—announced recently by Health Canada—will become apparent.
Ottawa recently took action to enhance the capabilities of the PCRMU. It says the new unit will “provide better insights into precursor chemicals, distribution channels, and enhanced monitoring and surveillance to enable timely law enforcement action.” The big question is, how will the PCRMU track the precursor drugs entering into Canada that are used to produce fentanyl?
Key players in the import-export ecosystem do not have the right regulatory framework and responsibilities to track and share information, detect suspect activities, and be incentivized to act on it. That’s one of the reasons why we know so little about how much fentanyl is produced and trafficked.
Without proper collaboration with industry, law enforcement, and financial institutions, these tracking efforts are doomed to fail. To promote better results, we lay out a collaborative approach that distributes responsibilities and retools incentives. These measures would enhance information collection capabilities, incentivize system actors to compliance, and better equip law enforcement and border security services for the safety of Canadians.
Trade-off bottleneck: addressing the costs of enhanced screening
To date, it’s been challenging to increase our ability to detect, search, and seize illegal goods trafficked through ports and border crossings. This is due to trade-offs between heightened manual search and seizure efforts at ports of entry, and the economic impacts of these efforts.
In 2024, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) admitted over 93 million travelers. Meanwhile, 5.3 million trucks transported commercial goods into Canada, around 3.6 million shipments arrived via air cargo, nearly 2 million containers were processed at Canadian ports, roughly 1.9 million rail cars carried goods into the country, and about 145.7 million courier shipments crossed the border. The CBSA employs a risk-based approach to border security, utilizing intelligence, behavioral analysis, and random selection to identify individuals or shipments that may warrant additional scrutiny. This triaging process aims to balance effective enforcement with the facilitation of legitimate travel and trade.
Exact percentages of travelers subjected to secondary inspections are not publicly disclosed, but it’s understood that only a small fraction undergo such scrutiny. We don’t learn about the prevalence of these issues through our border screening measures, but in crime reporting data—after it’s too late to avert.
It’s key to have an approach that minimizes time and personnel resources deployed at points of entry. To be effective without being economically disruptive, policymakers, law enforcement, and border security need to strengthen requirements for information gathering, live tracking, and sharing. Legislative and regulatory change to require additional information of buyers and sellers—along with stringent penalties to enforce non-compliance—is a low-cost, logistically efficient way of distributing responsibility for this complex and multifaceted issue. A key concept explored in this paper is strengthening governance controls (“controls”) over fentanyl supply chains through new processes and data digitization, which could aid the PCRMU in their strategic objectives.
Enhanced supply chain controls are needed
When it comes to detailed supply chain knowledge of fentanyl precursor chemicals moving in and out of Canada, regulator knowledge is limited.
That’s why regulatory reform is the backbone of change. It’s necessary to ensure that strategic objectives are met by all accountable stakeholders to protect the supply chain and identify issues. To rectify the issues, solutions can be taken by the PCRMU to obtain and govern a modern fentanyl traceability system/platform (“platform”) that would provide live transparency to regulators.
A fresh set of supply chain controls, integrated into a platform as shown in Fig. 1, could significantly aid the PCRMU in identifying suspicious activities and prioritizing investigations.
Our described system has two distinctive streams: one which leverages a combination of physical controls such as package tampering and altered documentation against a second stream that looks at payment counterparties. Customs agencies, transporters, receivers, and financial institutions would have a hand in ensuring that controls in the platform are working. The platform includes several embedded controls to enhance supply chain oversight. It uses commercially available Vision AI to assess packaging and blockchain cryptography to verify shipment documentation integrity. Shipment weight and quantity are tracked from source to destination to detect diversion, while a four-eyes verification process ensures independent reconciliation by the seller, customs, and receiver. Additionally, payment details are linked to shipments to uncover suspicious financial activity and support investigations by financial institutions and regulators like FINTRAC and FINCEN.
A modern platform securely distributes responsibility in a way that’s cost effective and efficient so as not to overburden any one actor. It also ensures that companies of all sizes can participate, and protects them from exploitation by criminals and reputational damage.
In addition to these technological enhancements and more robust system controls, better collaboration between the key players in the fentanyl supply chain is needed, along with policy changes to incentivize each key fentanyl supply chain stakeholder to adopt the new controls.
Canadian financial institutions: a chance for further scrutiny
Financial institutions (FIs) are usually the first point of contact when a payment is being made by a purchaser to a supplier for precursor chemicals that could be used in the production of fentanyl. It is crucial that they enhance their screening and security processes.
Chemicals may be purchased by wires or via import letters of credit. The latter is the more likely of the two instruments to be used because this ensures that the terms and conditions in the letter of credit are met with proof of shipment prior to payment being released. Payments via wire require less transparency.
Where a buyer pays for precursor chemicals with a wire, it should result in further scrutiny by the financial institution. Requests for supporting documentation including terms and conditions, along with proof of shipment and receipt, should be provided. Under new regulatory policy, buyers would be required to place such supporting documentation on the shared platform.
The less transparent a payment channel is in relation to the supply chain, the more concerning it should be from a risk point of view. Certain payment channels may be leveraged to further mask illicit activity throughout the supply chain. At the onset of the relationship the seller and buyers would link payment information on the platform (payment channel, recipient name, recipient’s bank, date, and payment amount) to each precursor or fentanyl shipment. The supplier, in turn, should record match payment information (payment channel, supplier name, supplier’s bank, date, and payment amount).
Linking payment to physical shipment would enable data analytics to detect irregularities. An irregularity is flagged when the amounts and/or volume of payments far exceed the value of the received goods or vice versa. The system would be able to understand which fentanyl supply chains tend to use a particular set of FIs. This makes it possible to conduct real-time mapping of companies, their fentanyl and precursor shipments and receipts, and the payment institutions they use. With this bigger picture, FIs and law enforcement could connect the dots faster.
Live traceability reporting
Today, suppliers of fentanyl precursors are subject to the Pre-Export Notification Online (PEN Online) database. This database enables governments to monitor international trade in precursor chemicals by sending and receiving pre-export notifications. The system helps prevent the diversion of chemicals used in the illicit manufacture of drugs by allowing authorities to verify the legitimacy of shipments before they occur.
To further strengthen oversight, the platform utilizes immutability technologies—such as blockchain or secure immutable databases—which can be employed to encrypt all shipping documents and securely share them. This presents an auditable form of chain-of-custody and makes any alterations apparent. Customs and buyers would have the capability to verify the authenticity of the originating documents in a way that doesn’t compromise business confidentiality. With the use of these technologies, law enforcement can narrow down their investigations.
An information gap currently exists as the receivers of the shipments don’t share their receipts information with PEN. To strengthen governance on fentanyl supply chains, regulatory policy and legislative changes are needed. The private sector should be mandated to report received quantities of fentanyl or its precursors, as well as suspicious receiving destinations. This could be accomplished on the platform which would embed the receiving process, a reconciliation process of the transaction, the secure upload and sharing of documents, and would be minimally disruptive to business processes.
Additionally, geo-location technology embedded in mobile devices and/or shipments would provide real-time location-based tracking of custody transactions. These geo-controls would ensure accountability across the fentanyl supply chain, in particular where shipments veer off or stop too long on regular shipping routes. Canadian transporters of fentanyl and its precursor chemicals should play an important role in detecting illicit diversion/activities.
Digital labelling
Licensed fentanyl manufacturers could add new unique digital labels to their shipments to get expedited clearance. For example, immutable digital labelling platforms enable tamper-proof digital labels for legitimate fentanyl shipments. This would give pharmacies, doctors, and regulators transparency into the fentanyl’s:
- Chemical composition and concentrations (determining legitimate vs. adulterated versions of the drug)
- Manufacturing facility ID, batch ID, and regulatory compliance status
- Intended buyer authentication (such as licensed pharmaceutical firms or distributors)
Immutable digital labelling platforms offer secure role-based access control. They can display customized data views according to time of day, language, and location. Digital labels could enable international border agencies and law enforcement to receive usable data, allowing legal shipments through faster while triggering closer shipment examinations for those without of a digital label.
International and domestic transporter controls
Transporters act as intermediaries in the supply chain. Their operations could be monitored through a regulatory policy that mandates their participation in the platform for fentanyl and precursor shipments. The platform would support a mobile app interface for participants on-the-move, as well as a web portal and application programming interfaces (APIs) for large-size supply chain participants. Secure scanning of packaging at multiple checkpoints, combined with real-time tracking, would provide an additional layer of protection against fraud, truckers taking bribes, and unauthorized alterations to shipments and documents.
Regulators and law enforcement participation
Technology-based fentanyl controls for suppliers, buyers, and transporters may be reinforced by international customs and law enforcement collaboration on the platform. Both CBSA and law enforcement could log in and view alerts about suspicious activities issued from the FIs, transporters, or receivers. The reporting would allow government personnel to view a breakdown of fentanyl importers, the number of import permit applications, and the amount of fentanyl and its precursors flowing into the country. Responsible regulatory agencies—such as the CBSA and PCRMU—could leverage the reporting to identify hot spots.
The platform would use machine learning to support CBSA personnel in processing an incoming fentanyl or precursor shipment. Machine learning refers to AI algorithms and systems that improve their knowledge with experience. For example, an AI assistant on the traceability system could use machine learning to predict and communicate which import shipments arriving at the border should be passed. It can base these suggestions on criteria like volume, price, origin of raw materials, and origin of material at import point. It can also leverage data from other sources such as buyers, sellers, and banks to make predictions. As an outcome, the shipment may be recommended to pass, flagged as suspicious, or deemed to require an investigation by CBSA.
It’s necessary to keep up to date on new precursor chemicals as the drug is reformulated. Here, Health Canada can play a role, using its new labs and tests—expected as part of the recently announced Canadian Drug Analysis Centre—to provide chemical analysis of seized fentanyl. This would inform which additional chemical supply chains should be tracked in the PCRMU’s collaborative platform, and all stakeholders would widen their scope of review.
These new tools would complement existing cross-border initiatives, including joint U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico crackdowns on illicit drug labs, as well as sovereign efforts. They have the potential to play a vital role in addressing fentanyl trafficking.
A robust, multi-pronged strategy—integrating existing safeguards with a new PCRMU traceability platform—could significantly disrupt the illegal production and distribution of fentanyl. By tracking critical supply chain events and authenticating shipment data, the platform would equip law enforcement and border agencies in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico with timely, actionable intelligence. The human toll demands urgency: from 2017 to 2022, the U.S. averaged 80,000 opioid-related deaths annually, while Canada saw roughly 5,500 per year from 2016 to 2024. In just the first nine months of 2024, Canadian emergency services responded to 28,813 opioid-related overdoses.
Combating this crisis requires more than enforcement. It demands enforceable transparency. Strengthened governance—powered by advanced traceability technology and coordinated public-private collaboration—is essential. This paper outlines key digital controls that can be implemented by global suppliers, Canadian buyers, transporters, customs, and financial institutions. With federal leadership, Canada can spearhead the adoption of proven, homegrown technologies to secure fentanyl supply chains and save lives.
Sean Parker is a compliance leader with well over a decade of experience in financial crime compliance, and a contributor to the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
Dawn Jutla is the CEO of Peer Ledger, the maker of a traceability platform that embeds new control processes on supply chains, and a professor at the Sobey School of Business.
Peter Copeland is deputy director of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
We’ve all seen the headlines — such as the below — loudly proclaiming that due to climate change the insurance industry is in crisis, and even that total economic collapse may soon follow. For instance, since 2019, the New York Times, one of the primary champions of this narrative, has published more than 1,250 articles on climate change and insurance.
 |
Climate advocates have embraced the idea of a climate-fueled insurance crisis as it neatly ties together the hyping of extreme weather and alleged financial consequences for ordinary people. The oft-cited remedy to the claimed crisis is, of course, to be found in energy policy: “The only long-term solution to preserve an insurable future is to transition from fossil fuels and other greenhouse-gas-emitting industries.”
However, it is not just climate advocates promoting the notion that climate change is fundamentally threatening the insurance industry. A climate-risk industrial complex has emerged in this space and a lot of money is being made by a lot of people. The virtuous veneer of climate advocacy serves to discourage scrutiny and accountability.
In this series, I take a deep dive into the “crisis,” its origins, its politics, and its tenuous relationship with actual climate science.¹ Today, I kick things off by sharing three fundamental, and perhaps surprising, facts that go a long way to explaining why insurance prices have increased and who benefits:
- Property/casualty insurance is raking in record profits;
- Insurance underwriting returns vary year-to-year but show no trend;
- “Climate” risk assessments are unreliable and a cause of higher insurance prices.
Grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and let’s go . . .
If you value the deep dives such as this one, which you will find no where else,
please consider supporting THB with a paid subscription!
Property/casualty insurance is raking in record profits
This year is shaping up to be an extremely profitable year for the property/casualty (P/C) insurance industry. In a report covering the first six months of 2025, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) shares the good news (emphasis added):
Despite heavy catastrophe losses, including the costliest wildfires on record, the U.S. Property & Casualty (P&C) industry recorded its best mid-year underwriting gain in nearly 20 years.
In the second half of 2025, returns got even better for the P/C industry. According to a new report from S&P Global Intelligence, as reported by Carrier Management (emphases added):
For U.S. P/C insurers, it just doesn’t get any better than this. . . With a combined ratio of 89.1 for third-quarter 2025, the U.S. property/casualty insurance industry had its best quarter in at least a quarter of a century—and maybe longer, S&P Market Intelligence said.
Taking a longer view, the extremely profitable 2025 follows significant industry profitability in 2023 and 2024, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), as shown in the figure below.
 |
What accounts for the high profits?
The NAIC explains:
Strong premium growth, driven largely by rate increases, coupled with abating economic inflation . . . Net income nearly doubled compared to last year, attributed to the underwriting profit and healthy investment returns.
Below, I’ll pick up the issue of rate increases and explore one big reason why they have occurred.
If there is a P/C insurance crisis, it may be in figuring out how to explain its impressive returns at the same time that the climate lobby is telling everyone that the industry is collapsing.
Insurance underwriting returns vary year-to-year but show no trend
The P/C industry makes money primarily in two ways — underwriting of insurance policies and investment income. Typically, insurance companies seek to break even, or lose little, on insurance underwriting and earn profits on investment income.
Warren Buffet, in his 2009 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, explained concisely how the P/C industry works:
Our property-casualty (P/C) insurance business has been the engine behind Berkshire’s growth and will continue to be. It has worked wonders for us. We carry our P/C companies on our books at $15.5 billion more than their net tangible assets, an amount lodged in our “Goodwill” account. These companies, however, are worth far more than their carrying value– and the following look at the economic model of the P/C industry will tell you why.
Insurers receive premiums upfront and pay claims later. In extreme cases, such as those arising from certain workers’ compensation accidents, payments can stretch over decades. This collect-now, pay-later model leaves us holding large sums– money we call “float”– that will eventually go to others. Meanwhile, we get to invest this float for Berkshire’s benefit. Though individual policies and claims come and go, the amount of float we hold remains remarkably stable in relation to premium volume. Consequently, as our business grows, so does our float.
If premiums exceed the total of expenses and eventual losses, we register an underwriting profit that adds to the investment income produced from the float. This combination allows us to enjoy the use of free money– and, better yet, get paid for holding it. Alas, the hope of this happy result attracts intense competition, so vigorous in most years as to cause the P/C industry as a whole to operate at a significant underwriting loss. This loss, in effect, is what the industry pays to hold its float. Usually this cost is fairly low, but in some catastrophe-ridden years the cost from underwriting losses more than eats up the income derived from use of float.
The figure below, using data from the Insurance Information Institute, shows the underwriting performance of the P/C industry from 2004 to 2024.
The time series shows lots of ups and downs, but no trend — by design, as Buffet explained. There are certainly no signs of an underwriting crisis, much less indications of a coming collapse. The P/C industry looks both well-managed and healthy.
“Climate” risk assessments are unreliable and a cause of higher insurance prices
 |
If profits are high and underwriting is steady, then what then accounts for increasing insurance prices — which, as of the end of 2024, increased 29 consecutive quarters in a row (above)?
A big part of the answer is Climate Change. But not how you might think.
A decade ago, Mark Carney — then Governor of the Bank of England and today Prime Minister of Canada — gave an influential speech titled, Breaking the Tragedy of the Horizon – climate change and financial stability.
Carney argued that the insurance industry was at risk due to changes in the climatology of extreme events that were not properly understood by experts in the industry:
[T]here are some estimates that currently modelled losses could be undervalued by as much as 50% if recent weather trends were to prove representative of the new normal. . . Such developments have the potential to shift the balance between premiums and claims significantly, and render currently lucrative business non-viable.
Coincident with Carney’s 2015 speech, the Bank of England released a report on the impacts of climate change on the insurance industry, and noted that conventional catastrophe modeling did not effectively consider a changing climate. The Bank of England kicked off a longstanding campaign to convince people that extreme weather events were changing dramatically in the near term.
Subsequently, in 2019, the Bank of England required firms to assess their “climate risks.” This guidance was updated last week. In (a coordinated) parallel effort, national and international organizations focused on “climate risk” to the financial sector started multiplying — such as the Climate Financial Risk Forum and the Network for Greening the Financial System.
The climate-risk industry was born circa 2019.
There is an incredible story to be told here (and Jessica Weinkle is the go-to expert), but for today, the key takeaways are that (a) the notion of “climate risk” to finance, including insurance, led to the creation of a “climate risk” industry, and (b) within this industry, a new family of risk assessment vendors emerged, promising to satisfy the new demands for climate risk disclosure and risk modeling.
The Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) explains:
As this [“climate risk”] was a new discipline for most financial firms, many turned to third party providers (“vendors”) to help them with different areas of expertise. There are now many physical risk data vendors, which offer a variety of services to financial institutions. While vendor offerings often sound alike — providing projections of how physical risk could evolve for locations across a range of risks and climate scenarios — they can differ significantly in terms of features, approach, or suitability for specific needs, and the underlying models that these providers use differ in methodology and assumptions.
GARP just published an incredibly important study that assessed how 13 different “climate risk” vendors modeled physical risk and risk of loss across 100 individual structures around the world.²
The results are shocking — given how they are used in industry, but should not be surprising — given what we know about modeling.
There is absolutely no consensus across vendors about “climate risk” in terms of either physical risks or risks of loss.
The figure below shows, for 100 different properties around the world, the differences in modeled 200-year flood risk across the 13 vendors, as refelcted in modeled flood heights. The maximum difference among the properties across vendors is about 12 meters and the median difference is about 2.7 meters — These are huge differences.
 |
In terms of risk of loss, the models have an even greater spread. The figure below shows that for a modeled 200-year flood, 10 properties are modeled by at least one vendor to have total losses (100%) while another vendor models the same properties to have no losses, under the exact same event. The median difference between minimum and maximum modeled loss ratio is 30% — Another huge number.³
 |
Insurance pricing does not scale linearly with increasing modeled loss ratios. Consider that the difference between a modeled 10% loss ratio and a 40% loss ratio (i.e., the 30% median difference across vendors from above) might result in a 10x increase in insurance rates. Risk adverse insurers have incentives to price at the most extreme modeled loss.
Model inaccuracies, unceratinties, spread, and ambiguity are feature not flaws when it comes to making money. “Climate risk” modeling has resulted in a financial windfall not just for the newly created climate analytics industry, but also for insurers and reinsurers who have seen the envelope of modeled losses expand. The need for new models, of questionabl fidelity, are necessary to satisfy industry guidance and government regulators.
The net result has been a seemingly scientific justification for increasing insurance rates.⁴
There are of course real changes in physical risk, exposure, and vulnerability as well as the regulatory and political contexts within which the P/C industry must operate. The discipline of catastrophe modeling has long integrated these factors to assess risks. As insurance policies and reinsurance contracts are typically implemented on a one-year basis, and this well-positioned to incorporate changng perceptions of risk, this series will explore why a new “climate risk” assessment industry was even needed in the first place.
What about that “climate risk”? THB readers will be very familiar with the science of extreme events and climate change, which, as reported here, happens to be consistent with both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and those in the legacy catastrophe modeling community.
One of those modeling firms, Verisk, gets the last word for today:
We estimate about 1% of year-on-year increases in AAL [Average Annual Loss] are attributable to climate change. Such small shifts can easily get lost behind other sources of systematic loss increase discussed in this report, such as inflation and exposure growth. The random volatility from internal climate variability also dwarfs the small positive climate change signal.
Before you go — If you learned something from this post, please click that “
Like” button — More likes mean that THB rises in the Substack algorithm and gets in front of more readers. More readers mean that THB reaches more people in more places, broadening understandings and discussions of complex issues where science meets politics. Thanks!
Comments, questions, discussion, critique — all welcome!
If you value THB please consider subscribing. Paid subscribers make THB go and also have access to THB Pro, with PDFs of some of my books, THB Insider, Five Figures, and paywalled THB posts. Plus you get to participate in the lively, diverse, and informed discussions under every post. Thank you!
““He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” George Bernard Shaw
In the days immediately following Donald Trump’s rude intervention into the 2025 Canadian federal election— suggesting Canada might best choose American statehood— two schools of thought emerged.
The first and most impactful school in the short term was the fainting-goat response of Canadian’s elites. Sensing an opening in which to erode Pierre Poilievre’s massive lead in the 2024 polls over Justin Trudeau, the Laurentian elite concocted Elbows Up, a self-pity response long on hurt feelings and short on addressing the issues Trump had cited in his trashing of the Canadian nation state.
In short order they fired Trudeau into oblivion, imported career banker Mark Carney as their new leader in a sham convention and convinced Canada’s Boomers that Trump had the tanks ready to go into Saskatchewan at a moment’s notice. The Elbows Up meme— citing Gordie Howe— clinched the group pout.
(In fact, Trump has said that America is the world’s greatest market, and if those who’ve used it for free in the past [Canada] want to keep special access they need to pay tariffs to the U.S. or drop protectionist charges on dairy and more against the U.S.)
The ruse worked out better than they could have ever imagined with Trump even saying he preferred to negotiate with Carney over Poilievre. In short order the Tories were shoved aside, the NDP kneecapped and the pet media anointed Carney the genius skewing Canada away from its largest trade partner to the Eurosphere. We remain in that bubble, although the fulsome promises of Carney’s first days are now coming due.
Which brings us to the second reaction. That was Alberta premier Danielle Smith bolting to Mar A Lago in the days following Trump’s comments. Her goal was to put pride aside and accept that a new world order was in play for Canada. She met with U.S. officials and, briefly, with Trump to remind them that Canada’s energy industry was integral to American prosperity and Canadian stability.
Needless to say, the fainting goats pitched a fit that not everyone was clutching pearls and rending garments in the wake of Trump’s dismissive assessment of his northern neighbours. Their solution to Trump was to join China in retaliatory tariffs— the only two nations to do so— and to boycott American products and travel. Like the ascetic monks they cut themselves off from real life. Trump has yet to get back to Carney the Magnificent
And Smith? She was a “traitor” or a “subversive” who should be keel hauled in the North Saskatchewan. For much of the intervening months she has been attacked at home in Alberta by the N-Deeps and in Ottawa by just about everyone on CBC, CTV, Global and the Globe & Mail. “How could she meet with the Cheeto?”
Nonetheless conservatives in the province moved toward a more independence within Canada. Smith articulated her demands for Alberta to prevent a referendum on whether to remain within Confederation. At the top of her list were pipelines and access to tidewater. Ergo, a no-go for BC’s squish premier David Eby who is the process of handing over his province to First Nations.
It became obvious that for all of Carney’s alleged diplomacy in Europe and Asia (is the man ever home?) he had a brewing disaster in the West with Alberta and Saskatchewan growing restless. In a striking move against the status quo, Nutrien announced it would ship its potash to tidewater via the U.S., thereby bypassing Vancouver’s strike-prone, outdated port and denying them billions.
Suddenly, Smith’s business approach began making eminent good sense if the goal is to keep Canada as one. So we saw last week’s “memorandum of understanding” between Alberta and Ottawa trading off carbon capture and carbon taxes for potential pipelines to tidewater on the B.C. coast. A little bit of something for everyone and a surrender on other things.
The most amazing feature of the Mark Carney/Danielle Smith MOU is that both politicians probably need the deal to fail. Carney can tell fossil-fuel enemy Quebec that he tried to reason with Smith, and Smith can say she tried to meet the federalists halfway. Failure suits their larger purposes. Which is for Carney to fold Canada into Euro climate insanity and Smith into a strong leverage against the pro-Canada petitioners in her province.
Soon enough, at the AFN Special Chiefs Assembly, FN Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told Carney that “Turtle Island” (the FN term for North America popularized by white hippy poet Gary Snyder) belongs to the FN people “from coast to coast to coast.” The pusillanimous Eby quickly piped up about tanker bans and the sanctity of B.C. waters etc.
Others pointed out the massive flaw in a plan to attract private interests to build a vital bitumen pipeline if the tankers it fills are not allowed to sail through the Dixon Entrance to get to Asia.
But then Eby got Nutrien’s message that his power-sharing with the indigenous might cause other provinces to bypass B.C. (imagine California telling Texas it can’t ship through its ports over moral objections to a product). He’s now saying he’s open to pipelines but not to lift the tanker ban along the coast. Whatever.
Meanwhile the kookaburras of isolation back east continue with virtue signalling on American booze— N.S. to sell off its remains stocks — while dreaming that Trump’s departure will lead to the good-old days of reliance on America’s generosity.
But Smith looks to be wining the race. B.C.’s population shrank 0.04 percent in the second quarter of 2025, the only jurisdiction in Canada to do so. Meanwhile, Alberta is heading toward five million people, with interprovincial migrants making up 21 percent of its growth.
But what did you expect from the Carney/ Eby Tantrum Tandem? They keep selling fear in place of GDP. As GBS observed, “You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Media bound to pay the price for selling their freedom to (selectively) offend
Sometimes An Ingrate Nation Pt. 2: The Great One Makes His Choice
Recent price declines don’t solve Toronto’s housing affordability crisis
From Exception to Routine. Why Canada’s State-Assisted Suicide Regime Demands a Human-Rights Review
-
MAiD2 days ago
From Exception to Routine. Why Canada’s State-Assisted Suicide Regime Demands a Human-Rights Review
-
Business2 days agoCarney government should privatize airports—then open airline industry to competition
-
Business2 days agoWhat’s Going On With Global Affairs Canada and Their $392 Million Spending Trip to Brazil?
-
Energy2 days agoCanada following Europe’s stumble by ignoring energy reality
-
Bruce Dowbiggin10 hours ago
Integration Or Indignation: Whose Strategy Worked Best Against Trump?
-
COVID-1911 hours agoUniversity of Colorado will pay $10 million to staff, students for trying to force them to take COVID shots
-
Banks2 days agoTo increase competition in Canadian banking, mandate and mindset of bank regulators must change
-
Business2 days agoWhy Does Canada “Lead” the World in Funding Racist Indoctrination?