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2025 Federal Election

Conservative Party urges investigation into Carney plan to spend $1 billion on heat pumps

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From Conservative Party Communications

Mark Carney Must Be Investigated For His Conflicts of Interest

Michael Barrett, Conservative Candidate for Leeds–Grenville–Thousand Islands–Rideau Lakes, wrote the following letter to Canada’s Lobbying Commissioner:

Dear Commissioner,

I am writing to draw attention to remarks made by Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday, which raise serious concerns about conflicts of interest.

On Tuesday, April 8, 2025, Mr. Carney announced his intention to spend $1 billion on heat pumps, a decision which would clearly benefit companies in the heat pump business.

Brookfield Infrastructure “is the flagship listed infrastructure company of Brookfield Asset Management (BAM).” Brookfield Infrastructure in turn owns Ontario-based Enercare, which specifically advertises heat pump retrofits as one of its offered services – including taking advantage of government rebate programs.

As you are well aware, Mr. Carney was previously Chair of the board at BAM. While Mr. Carney has repeatedly declined to publicly disclose his assets and conflicts of interest, he has also refused to rule out some sort of continued financial interest in Brookfield.

As such, it is conceivable that Mr. Carney might well benefit financially from the Liberals’ announced $1 billion heat pump program.

This is not the first time that Mr. Carney has been caught using his political influence to advance Brookfield’s heat pump interests.

In October 2024, London’s Telegraph newspaper broke news that Mr. Carney used his political connections to personally lobby the British Cabinet for heat pump programs. At the time, the Chairman of BAM subsidiary HomeServe bluntly stated, “Mark is working on our behalf in Government.”

Also, last October, at the Prime Quadrant Conference in Toronto on October 10, 2024, Mr. Carney discussed how he provides advice to governments around the world while simultaneously benefiting Brookfield’s business interests.

Here is what Mr. Carney had to say to a business audience:

Well, I do spend some time advising on what… you know, again, pro-bono…but advising on the types of policies that are going to have maximum impacts for investors. So I’ll give you an example. Which is one of the issues… it’s not the biggest issue, it’s like 2% of global emissions, you wouldn’t know it from the headlines, but 2% of global emissions is for air travel…emissions from air travel. 

Now, so the question is, are we going to have green sustainable aviation fuel? What’s happened in the UK, the EU, is they’ve said to major airlines, ‘look if you’re flying in and out of Heathrow or wherever, you have to have 10% of your load has to be sustainable aviation fuel by…’, I think it’s 2030. 

A consequence of that policy has been to convert some entrepreneurs in Texas, in this case a company called Infinian, to become economic. Because all of a sudden American Airlines, British Airways need to buy that fuel. They’ll pay a green premium. You’ve got an off-take, you know, that’s high credit quality. And in that case, we put, we Brookfield, put a billion dollars to work there and it’s a fantastic opportunity

The point being, without the policy … the policy has to drive it and drive things down.

Mr. Carney appears to admit to using his political influence to advocate for commercial policies for the benefit of himself and Brookfield. It is also notable that these comments were made after Mr. Carney was appointed to head then-Prime Minister Trudeau’s ‘Task Force on Economic Growth’ in September 2024, leading one to wonder whether Mr. Carney lobbied for similar policies within the Government of Canada.

While Mr. Carney has said that he moved his assets into a ‘blind trust,’ Mr. Carney certainly knows what assets he moved into that trust, be it shares, stock options, or ‘carried interest’ bonus payments from Brookfield funds Mr. Carney personally set up.

Mr. Carney should come clean with Canadians and immediately disclose his assets so Canadians can render judgment on Mr. Carney’s conflicts of interest before voting in the election.

I am asking you to immediately begin an investigation into the matter.

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2025 Federal Election

NDP Floor Crossers May Give Carney A Majority

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Walk this way!  …singing, hey diddle diddle with the NDP in the middle…

Rumours are bouncing around that a number of NDP MPs are looking at potentially crossing the floor to join the Liberal Party of Canada and give Mark Carney the majority he is looking for. The final count for the Liberal Party was that they finished with 169 seats, a mere three seats short of the number needed to claim majority and not have to work with other parties to create a workable mandate.

From the NDP perspective, I sort of get it. After all, Singh lost in his own riding, the party no longer enjoys Official Party Status and all the accoutrements that come along with this (the biggest one being money), and the party is rumoured to be bankrupt. From an individual’s perspective, crossing the floor gives them four years of employment (beyond that may be more murky as many will say “I didn’t vote for that”), and if you are amongst the first to cross, your bargaining position (cabinet position) can enhance your political lot in life fairly materially. If this were to occur it will happen quickly as the law of diminishing returns happens exponentially faster should you be the fourth to cross the line (maybe the Lizzy will join the race!)

From the Liberal perspective, I’m not as convinced the benefits are as transparent, from a nation building perspective. Sure, you get the majority (and thus mandate) you wish to pursue, but you truly would be thumbing your nose at Canada when you know that many NDP votes metaphorically crossed the floor to vote during the election (likely without the foresight that it would result in the death of their party), and that the country is actually pretty evenly split between the Liberals and Conservatives. Language like “now is the time for Canada to unite” and “we need a strong mandate to make Canada strong, and now we have it” could be thrown around, but that can create real fractures should that occur.

Personally, I am hoping that Prime Minister Carney says no to any floor crossers, and works to bridge the divides that are significant within this country. There is no reason that Canada cannot be one of the greatest countries, other than getting in the way of ourselves. Now is the time for olive branches, not cactus areoles.

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2025 Federal Election

Post election…the chips fell where they fell

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William Lacey's avatar William Lacey

I put a lot of personal energy into this election, trying to understand why it was that Canadians so wholeheartedly endorsed Mark Carney as their new leader, despite the fact that it was the same party who caused irreparable economic harm to the economy, and he has a similar philosophical outlook to the core outlook of the party. I truly believe that we have moved to a phase in our electoral process where, until something breaks, left leaning ideology will trump the day (pun intended).

Coming out of this election I have three questions.

1. What of Pierre Poilievre? The question for Conservatives is whether the wolves feed on the carcass of Poilievre (in my opinion the worst enemy of a Conservative is a Conservative) and initiate the hunt for a new leader (if they do, I believe the future should be led by a woman – Melissa Lantsman or possibly Caroline Mulroney), or does Poilievre move to Alberta and run for a “safe” seat to get back into the House of Commons, change his tone, and show people he too can be Prime Ministerial? His concession speech gives clues to this.

2. What of Mark Carney? Maybe (hopefully) Carney will see the light and try to bring the nation together, as there is an obvious east-west split in the country in terms of politics. Time will tell, and minority governments need to be cautious. Will we have a Supply and Confidence 2.0 or will we see olive branches extended?

3. What of the House of Commons? As I have mentioned previously, there has been discussion that the House of Commons may not sit until after the summer break, meaning that the House of Commons really will not have conducted any business in almost a year by the time it reconveens. If indeed “we are in the worst crisis of our lives” as Prime Minister Carney campaigned on, then should we not have the House of Commons sit through the summer? After all, the summer break usually is for politicians to go back to their ridings and connect with their constituents, but if an election campaign doesn’t constitute connecting, what does?

Regardless, as the election is behind us, we now need to see what comes. I will try to be hopeful, but remain cautious. May Canada have better days ahead.

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