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A Nation Built on Sand: How Canada Squanders Its Abundance

Published

3 months ago

7 minute read

By Garry Clement

Columnist Garry Clement, former RCMP anti–money laundering expert, argues Canada’s leaders have built prosperity on sand — leaving the nation exposed to collapse unless urgent reforms are made.

Canada is celebrated abroad as a safe, prosperous, and open society. But beneath the surface, a far more precarious reality is taking shape. The pillars of our economy — land, real estate, natural resources, and immigration — have been left vulnerable to foreign manipulation, criminal exploitation, and political negligence. The result is what can only be described as a sandcastle economy — striking at first glance, but fragile. Like the parable of the house built on sand, it is a foundation vulnerable to give way when the storm comes.

Investigative journalist Sam Cooper has long warned that foreign capital and organized crime have deeply infiltrated Canada’s real estate market. On Prince Edward Island, the Bliss and Wisdom Buddhist group quietly acquired swaths of farmland and property, raising questions about how religious fronts with Chinese connections gained such leverage in a province with limited oversight. In Saskatchewan, Chinese investors have been buying up valuable farmland, raising alarms about food sovereignty and the lack of restrictions on foreign ownership of agricultural land. Meanwhile in British Columbia, governments continue to downplay or outright ignore the extent to which transnational money laundering has fueled a housing market now completely detached from local incomes.

All of this has unfolded against a backdrop of minimal transparency, weak beneficial ownership registries, and virtually no effective enforcement. The same blind spots that allowed casinos and luxury real estate in Vancouver to become laundromats for dirty money are now being replicated nationwide.

The most urgent threat tied to these financial blind spots is fentanyl. Canada has become one of the world’s top destinations for proceeds from synthetic drug trafficking — a crisis that has devastated families from coast to coast. Chinese triads, Mexican cartels, and local gangs launder profits through casinos, shell companies, and real estate deals. Yet federal legislation continues to lag behind, leaving law enforcement outgunned. Every toxic opioid death in Canada is not only a health tragedy, but also a reminder of how organized crime is exploiting our lax financial controls. While other countries have implemented tough anti-money laundering regimes, Canada remains dangerously complacent.

That same complacency extends to national security. Canada has repeatedly delayed designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, despite overwhelming evidence of its involvement in financing terrorism and conducting influence operations abroad. Our allies — including the United States — have acted. Canada, however, remains an outlier, seemingly unwilling to confront the risk of Iranian proxy activity operating in plain sight within our borders.

Immigration policy reveals similar weaknesses. Foreign students, particularly from India, have become central to the financial survival of colleges and universities. Yet a growing number are not here primarily to study. Instead, education visas have become a backdoor into Canada’s workforce, particularly in industries such as trucking. The tragic Humboldt Broncos bus crash in 2018 exposed gaps in training and licensing in the trucking sector. Since then, reports have continued to surface of foreign students entering the industry without adequate skills — a risk not only to public safety but to the integrity of our immigration system. Ottawa has failed to adequately regulate this pipeline, preferring instead to rely on the tuition dollars and temporary labour it generates.

Editor’s Note: Forthcoming Bureau investigations, citing U.S. government sources, question how widespread fraud and Indian transnational crime capture of Canada’s commercial trucking industry have fueled the flow of fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine — turning the country into a weak link for its international allies.

The threads running through these crises are clear: willful blindness, weak laws, and short-term political expediency. Land and natural resources are being sold without regard for sovereignty. Real estate markets are distorted by laundered money. Organized crime groups funnel fentanyl profits into Canada with ease. The IRGC operates without effective restriction. And the education system is exploited as a labour channel, with little oversight. Canada is, in effect, trading away its long-term security for short-term economic gains.

Politicians, bureaucrats, and regulators too often dismiss warnings as alarmist or xenophobic, when in fact they reflect real risks to the stability of the country. A sandcastle can stand tall on the shore, admired in the moment, but everyone knows what comes next. Unless urgent steps are taken — enforcing transparency in land ownership, restricting foreign control of farmland and resources, tightening anti-money laundering measures, confronting hostile foreign actors, and restoring integrity to the education and immigration systems — collapse is inevitable.

The signs are already here: families priced out of homes, farmers squeezed out of land, fentanyl overdoses climbing, and a public losing faith in the fairness of the system. Canada prides itself on being open and inclusive. But openness without vigilance is vulnerability. Like unwise stewards, our leaders have been gifted with a land of overflowing abundance, and yet they have squandered its potential through short-sighted choices. That failure must be corrected — immediately and wisely — if the nation is to not only thrive, but survive.

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Former senior RCMP officer Garry Clement consults with corporations on anti-money laundering, contributed to the Canadian academic text Dirty Money, and wrote Canada Under Siege, and Undercover, In the Shady World of Organized Crime and the RCMP

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Business

Carney and other world leaders should recognize world’s dependence on fossil fuels

Published on November 11, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Julio Mejía and Elmira Aliakbari

Simply put, despite trillions invested in the energy transition, the world is more dependent on fossil fuels today than when the United Nations launched its first COP. No wonder that ahead of COP30, leading voices of the net-zero-by-2050 agenda, including Bill Gates, are acknowledging both the vital role of fossil fuels on the planet and the failure of efforts to cut them.

On the heels of his first federal budget, which promises more spending to promote a “green economy,” Prime Minister Carney will soon fly to Brazil for COP30, the 30th United Nations climate summit. Like the former Trudeau government, the Carney government has pledged to achieve “net-zero” emissions in Canada—and compel other countries to pursue net-zero—by 2050. To achieve a net-zero world, it’s necessary to phase out fossil fuels—oil, natural gas, coal—or offset their CO2 emissions with technologies such as “carbon capture” or large-scale tree planting.

But after trillions of dollars spent in pursuit of that goal, it appears more unrealistic than ever. It’s time for world leaders, including Canada’s policymakers, to face reality and be honest about the costly commitments they make on behalf of their citizens.

For starters, carbon capture—the process of trapping and storing carbon dioxide so it’s unable to affect the atmosphere—is a developing technology not yet capable of large-scale deployment. And planting enough trees to offset global emissions would require vast amounts of land, take decades to absorb significant CO2 and risk unpredictable losses from wildfires and drought. Due to these constraints, in their net-zero quest governments and private investors have poured significant resources into “clean energy” such as wind and solar to replace fossil fuels.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), from 2015 to 2024, the world’s public and private investment in clean energy totalled and estimated US$14.6 trillion (inflation-adjusted). Yet from 1995 (the first COP year) to 2024, global fossil fuel consumption increased by more than 64 per cent. Specifically, oil consumption grew by 39 per cent, natural gas by 96 per cent and coal by 76 per cent. As of 2024, fossil fuels accounted for 80.6 per cent of global energy consumption, slightly lower than the 85.6 per cent in 1995.

The Canadian case shows an even greater mismatch between Ottawa’s COP commitments and its actual results. Despite billions spent by the federal government on the low-carbon economy (electric vehicle subsidies, tax credits to corporations, etc.), fossil fuel consumption in our country has increased by 23 per cent between 1995 and 2024. Over the same period, the share of fossil fuels in Canada’s total energy consumption climbed from 62.0 to 66.3 per cent.

Simply put, despite trillions invested in the energy transition, the world is more dependent on fossil fuels today than when the United Nations launched its first COP. No wonder that ahead of COP30, leading voices of the net-zero-by-2050 agenda, including Bill Gates, are acknowledging both the vital role of fossil fuels on the planet and the failure of efforts to cut them.

Why has this massive effort, which includes many countries and trillions of dollars, failed to transition humanity away from fossil fuels?

As renowned scholar Vaclav Smil explains, it can take centuries—not decades—for an energy source to become globally predominant. For thousands of years, humanity relied on wood, charcoal, dried dung and other traditional biomass fuels for heating and cooking, with coal only becoming a major energy source around 1900. It took oil 150 years after its introduction into energy markets to account for one-quarter of global fossil fuel consumption, a milestone reached only in the 1950s. And for natural gas, it took about 130 years after its commercial development to reach 25 per cent of global fossil fuel consumption at the end of the 20th century.

Yet, coal, oil and natural gas didn’t completely replace traditional biomass to meet the surging energy demand as the modern world developed. As of 2020, nearly three billion people in developing countries still relied on charcoal, straw and dried dung to supply their basic energy needs. In light of these facts, the most vocal proponents of the global energy transition seem, at the very least, out of touch.

The world’s continued reliance on fossil fuels should prompt world leaders at COP30 to exercise caution before pushing the same unrealistic commitments of the past. And Prime Minister Carney, in particular, should be careful not to keep leading Canadians into costly ventures that lead nowhere near their intended results.

Julio Mejía

Policy Analyst

Elmira Aliakbari

Director, Natural Resource Studies, Fraser Institute
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Business

Liberals refuse to disclose the amount of taxpayer dollars headed to LGBT projects in foreign countries

Published on November 11, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney will not openly disclose how much money from its foreign-aid budget is going toward overseas “gender identity” and “decolonization” projects.

According to the government, there are “concerns” that disclosing the amount of funds could endanger certain LGBT organizations that get money from it.

On November 3, Global Affairs Canada, in response to a question on the order paper from a Conservative MP, said that the funding amounts could not be made public due to claimed “security concerns” and “confidentiality requirements.”

“These are the most common reasons projects are considered sensitive: the organization or individuals might be in danger if it becomes known that they are receiving funds from a foreign government; (or) implementing a project related to sensitive topics such as two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and additional sexually and gender-diverse people rights, human trafficking, early/forced marriage, (and) human rights defenders,” Global Affairs noted. 

Continuing, Global Affairs said that there is a possible “danger” to partner organizations that could be “forced to close” or even “arrested” due to “harassment from the local population or government.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Carney’s budget will include millions in taxpayer money for “SLGBTQI+ communities,” gender equality, and “pride” safety.

Canada’s 2025 federal budget is allotting some $54.6 million to LGBT groups in a move criticized by Campaign Life Coalition as prioritizing activist agendas over struggling families’ basic needs.

Canadian taxpayers are already dealing with high inflation and high taxes due in part to the Liberal government overspending and excessive money printing, and even admitting that giving money to Ukraine comes at the “taxpayers’” expense.

As recently reported by LifeSiteNews, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem gave a grim assessment of the state of the economy, essentially telling Canadians that they should accept a “lower” standard of living.

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