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90% of Ukraine news outlets get funding from USAID: new report

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From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

USAID, targeted by Elon Musk and Donald Trump for cuts, is a heavy funder of news outlets in Ukraine, according to a new report. The agency has come under scrutiny for wasteful and ideological projects.

The United States Aid for International Development (USAID) provides funds to 90 percent of Ukrainian news outlets, according to a new report from the Columbia Journalism Review and Reporters Without Borders.

While much focus has been on USAID and other federal entities subscribing to news outlets such as Politico, a broader issue may be taxpayers paying for news coverage in foreign countries.

Working off data from Reporters Without Borders, the Columbia Journalism Review reported that “USAID had boasted of supporting more than six thousand journalists, around seven hundred independent newsrooms, and nearly three hundred media-focused civil society groups in thirty or so countries.”

The Trump administration reportedly froze $268 million for these endeavors.

“RSF also noted the harsh effect on journalism in Ukraine, where 90 percent of news organizations rely on USAID funding, some very heavily,” the Journalism Review reported.

The United States has spent nearly $66 billion on direct military assistance to Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia. Taxpayers have sent another $120 billion or so to the country in other foreign aid, according to an inspector general report current as of September 30, 2024.

The journalism groups released the reports ostensibly to defend U.S. funding of outlets.

On a related issue, the Trump administration is also cutting off taxpayer-funded subscriptions that government employees set up with news outlets.

“I can confirm that the more than $8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers’ dime will no longer be happening,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press conference yesterday.

“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now,” she said.

She stated further:

Again, this is a whole-of-government effort to ensure that we are going line by line when it comes to the federal government’s books. And this president and his team are making decisions across the board on ‘Do these receipts serve the interests of the American people? Is this a good use of the American taxpayers’ money? If it is not, that funding will no longer be sent abroad and American taxpayers will be seeing significant savings because of that effort.

Conservatives celebrated the news.

“The Federal Government is not a good steward of your tax dollars,” Josh Tanner, an Idaho state representative, wrote on X. “They spent $8 Million on propaganda media. This is even more of a reason for Idaho tax dollars to be accounted for, applied appropriately, and reduced where necessary. The Fed has failed, our state must succeed.”

“Even if the govt money to Politico wasn’t an outright grant, providing $8 Million in taxpayers funds for ‘subscriptions’ to a super Lefty publication is just absurd and abusive to hard-working Americans!” conservative commentator Steve Cortes wrote.

payroll issue with Politico‘s payroll was initially blamed on the funding freeze, though the company said it was a “technical error” that created the problem.

USAID under scrutiny, uses tax dollars to promote DEI around the world

The Trump administration has closed, at least temporarily, USAID. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now the administrator of the agency, which has funded a variety of ideological projects across the globe.

“USAID has a history of ignoring [the national interest of the United States] and deciding that they’re a global charity. These are not donor dollars, these are taxpayer dollars,” Secretary Rubio said recently.

Leavitt highlighted some of the ideological and wasteful projects funded through this agency, including “$1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia’s workforce.”

The agency has also been used to pressure conservative, poorer countries into adopting pro-abortion policies, as LifeSiteNews previously reported.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce highlighted other wasteful projects in a post on X.

She listed projects the freeze had stopped, including “$16 million in unjustified funding for institutional contractors in the gender development offices,” “$4 million to unjustified funding for the Center for Climate-Positive Development,” and “$600,000 to fund technical assistance for family planning in Latin America.”

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Mark Carney’s Fiscal Fantasy Will Bankrupt Canada

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By Gwyn Morgan

Mark Carney was supposed to be the adult in the room. After nearly a decade of runaway spending under Justin Trudeau, the former central banker was presented to Canadians as a steady hand – someone who could responsibly manage the economy and restore fiscal discipline.

Instead, Carney has taken Trudeau’s recklessness and dialled it up. His government’s recently released spending plan shows an increase of 8.5 percent this fiscal year to $437.8 billion. Add in “non-budgetary spending” such as EI payouts, plus at least $49 billion just to service the burgeoning national debt and total spending in Carney’s first year in office will hit $554.5 billion.

Even if tax revenues were to remain level with last year – and they almost certainly won’t given the tariff wars ravaging Canadian industry – we are hurtling toward a deficit that could easily exceed 3 percent of GDP, and thus dwarf our meagre annual economic growth. It will only get worse. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates debt interest alone will consume $70 billion annually by 2029. Fitch Ratings recently warned of Canada’s “rapid and steep fiscal deterioration”, noting that if the Liberal program is implemented total federal, provincial and local debt would rise to 90 percent of GDP.

This was already a fiscal powder keg. But then Carney casually tossed in a lit match. At June’s NATO summit, he pledged to raise defence spending to 2 percent of GDP this fiscal year – to roughly $62 billion. Days later, he stunned even his own caucus by promising to match NATO’s new 5 percent target. If he and his Liberal colleagues follow through, Canada’s defence spending will balloon to the current annual equivalent of $155 billion per year. There is no plan to pay for this. It will all go on the national credit card.

This is not “responsible government.” It is economic madness.

And it’s happening amid broader economic decline. Business investment per worker – a key driver of productivity and living standards – has been shrinking since 2015. The C.D. Howe Institute warns that Canadian workers are increasingly “underequipped compared to their peers abroad,” making us less competitive and less prosperous.

The problem isn’t a lack of money; it’s a lack of discipline and vision. We’ve created a business climate that punishes investment: high taxes, sluggish regulatory processes, and politically motivated uncertainty. Carney has done nothing to reverse this. If anything, he’s making the situation worse.

Recall the 2008 global financial meltdown. Carney loves to highlight his role as Bank of Canada Governor during that time but the true credit for steering the country through the crisis belongs to then-prime minister Stephen Harper and his finance minister, Jim Flaherty. Facing the pressures of a minority Parliament, they made the tough decisions that safeguarded Canada’s fiscal foundation. Their disciplined governance is something Carney would do well to emulate.

Instead, he’s tearing down that legacy. His recent $4.3 billion aid pledge to Ukraine, made without parliamentary approval, exemplifies his careless approach. And his self-proclaimed image as the experienced technocrat who could go eyeball-to-eyeball against Trump is starting to crack. Instead of respecting Carney, Trump is almost toying with him, announcing in June, for example that the U.S. would pull out of the much-ballyhooed bilateral trade talks launched at the G7 Summit less than two weeks earlier.

Ordinary Canadians will foot the bill for Carney’s fiscal mess. The dollar has weakened. Young Canadians – already priced out of the housing market – will inherit a mountain of debt. This is not stewardship. It’s generational theft.

Some still believe Carney will pivot – that he will eventually govern sensibly. But nothing in his actions supports that hope. A leader serious about economic renewal would cancel wasteful Trudeau-era programs, streamline approvals for energy and resource projects, and offer incentives for capital investment. Instead, we’re getting more borrowing and ideological showmanship.

It’s no longer credible to say Carney is better than Trudeau. He’s worse. Trudeau at least pretended deficits were temporary. Carney has made them permanent – and more dangerous.

This is a betrayal of the fiscal stability Canadians were promised. If we care about our credit rating, our standard of living, or the future we are leaving our children, we must change course.

That begins by removing a government unwilling – or unable – to do the job.

Canada once set an economic example for others. Those days are gone. The warning signs – soaring debt, declining productivity, and diminished global standing – are everywhere. Carney’s defenders may still hope he can grow into the job. Canada cannot afford to wait and find out.

The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal.

Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who was a director of five global corporations.

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Carney Liberals quietly award Pfizer, Moderna nearly $400 million for new COVID shot contracts

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Carney’s Liberal government signed nearly $400 million in contracts with Pfizer and Moderna for COVID shots, despite halted booster programs and ongoing delays in compensating Canadians for jab injuries.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has awarded Pfizer and Moderna nearly $400 million in new COVID shot contracts.

On June 30th, the Liberal government quietly signed nearly $400 million contracts with vaccine companies Pfizer and Moderna for COVID jabs, despite thousands of Canadians waiting to receive compensation for COVID shot injuries.

The contracts, published on the Government of Canada website, run from June 30, 2025, until March 31, 2026. Under the contracts, taxpayers must pay $199,907,418.00 to both companies for their COVID shots.

Notably, there have been no press releases regarding the contracts on the Government of Canada website nor from Carney’s official office.

Additionally, the contracts were signed after most Canadians provinces halted their COVID booster shot programs. At the same time, many Canadians are still waiting to receive compensation from COVID shot injuries.

Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) was launched in December 2020 after the Canadian government gave vaccine makers a shield from liability regarding COVID-19 jab-related injuries.

There has been a total of 3,317 claims received, of which only 234 have received payments. In December, the Canadian Department of Health warned that COVID shot injury payouts will exceed the $75 million budget.

The December memo is the last public update that Canadians have received regarding the cost of the program. However, private investigations have revealed that much of the funding is going in the pockets of administrators, not injured Canadians.

A July report by Global News discovered that Oxaro Inc., the consulting company overseeing the VISP, has received $50.6 million. Of that fund, $33.7 million has been spent on administrative costs, compared to only $16.9 million going to vaccine injured Canadians.

The PHAC’s downplaying of jab injuries is of little surprise to Canadians, as a 2023 secret memo revealed that the federal government purposefully hid adverse effect so as not to alarm Canadians.

The secret memo from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Privy Council Office noted that COVID jab injuries and even deaths “have the potential to shake public confidence.”

“Adverse effects following immunization, news reports and the government’s response to them have the potential to shake public confidence in the COVID-19 vaccination rollout,” read a part of the memo titled “Testing Behaviourally Informed Messaging in Response to Severe Adverse Events Following Immunization.”

Instead of alerting the public, the secret memo suggested developing “winning communication strategies” to ensure the public did not lose confidence in the experimental injections.

Since the start of the COVID crisis, official data shows that the virus has been listed as the cause of death for less than 20 children in Canada under age 15. This is out of six million children in the age group.

The COVID jabs approved in Canada have also been associated with severe side effects, such as blood clots, rashes, miscarriages, and even heart attacks in young, healthy men.

Additionally, a recent study done by researchers with Canada-based Correlation Research in the Public Interest showed that 17 countries have found a “definite causal link” between peaks in all-cause mortality and the fast rollouts of the COVID shots, as well as boosters.

Interestingly, while the Department of Health has spent $16 million on injury payouts, the Liberal government spent $54 million COVID propaganda promoting the shot to young Canadians.

The Public Health Agency of Canada especially targeted young Canadians ages 18-24 because they “may play down the seriousness of the situation.”

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