Business
Bank of Canada Study Confirms Collapse in Consumer Confidence Amid Trade War Fallout
They chased applause at climate conferences while dismantling the industries that built this country. They ignored working Canadians, sabotaged our energy sector, and hollowed out our economic defenses in the name of “progress.”
A new Bank of Canada report, yes, that Bank of Canada, just confirmed what millions of working Canadians already feel in their bones: the economy is unraveling. Consumer sentiment, the baseline mood of the average Canadian family, has collapsed. And what triggered this historic plunge? Not inflation. Not interest rates. Not even Pierre Poilievre. No—it was Donald Trump.
According to the report, which was quietly released this month, it all started on February 1, 2025. That’s when former President Trump signed an executive order slapping massive tariffs on Canadian exports, steel, aluminum, energy, potash, lumber. You name it. Up to 35% tariffs. And then, because he’s Trump, he doubled down, casually suggesting in speeches that Canada should just become the 51st state. That’s not a joke. That’s annexation rhetoric.
And here’s the kicker, the numbers don’t lie. The Bank of Canada developed a new tool, the so-called CSCE Indicator, to measure consumer expectations. It tracked 2,000 households in real time, right as the trade war ignited. And what did they find? A total wipeout of all economic optimism from 2024. Jobs? Vanishing. Spending intentions? Cratering. Financial outlook? Bleak.
So here’s what we now know, and it’s not a guess. According to their latest report, Canadian consumer sentiment has collapsed. Not dipped. Not softened. Collapsed. Across the board.
They tracked three critical things: how people feel about their financial health, their job security, and whether they’re planning to spend money. Every single one fell off a cliff. The number of Canadians who believe they’ll be worse off financially next year? Surging. The odds that someone thinks they’ll lose their job? Skyrocketing—especially in regions that actually produce things, places that export goods, like steel, aluminum, and lumber. And major purchases? Cars, homes, furniture? Forget it. People aren’t buying. They’re holding their breath.
And here’s where it gets truly damning. This decline—this emotional and economic freefall—can’t even be explained by the usual suspects. Not inflation. Not unemployment. The Bank of Canada ran the numbers, built a full regression model, and what they found was a massive unexplained drop—a “residual” in economist speak. Translation: this isn’t about what’s happening right now. It’s about what people believe is coming next.
And what’s driving that fear? The answer is plain. A trade war launched by a former U.S. president, and public threats—threats—to annex Canada.
A very large portion of this crisis is the fault of the Liberal Party of Canada. That’s not a talking point—it’s a fact. It’s a fact backed by years of missed opportunities, ideological sabotage, and deliberate inaction by two successive Liberal regimes. And now the consequences have arrived, right on schedule.
Let’s be clear. This didn’t start with Trump’s tariffs. This started long before, when Justin Trudeau, and now his heir Mark Carney, decided that building energy infrastructure was just too messy, too politically inconvenient. For nearly a decade, the Liberals rejected every opportunity to make Canada energy independent. Northern Gateway? Cancelled. Energy East? Killed off. Teck Frontier? Abandoned after the government strangled it in red tape. Trans Mountain? Purchased with your tax dollars, then stalled into irrelevance. Every time a project came forward that could have helped this country get oil and gas to global markets, the Liberals caved to foreign-funded environmental groups and elite climate activists with Ivy League degrees and no skin in the game.
They had no vision—none—for a national energy corridor. They didn’t want one. A pipeline that could move Alberta crude to tidewater, or LNG from B.C. to the Atlantic, was dismissed as a relic of a bygone era. It wasn’t woke enough. Instead, they chose Paris climate targets, photo-ops with Greta Thunberg, and empty moral lectures at Davos. The result? When America decided to weaponize energy policy and slap tariffs on Canadian oil and gas, we had no fallback. No leverage. No global customers. Just bottlenecks and apologies.
And then there’s the LNG disaster. Remember when Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said there was “no business case” for LNG on the East Coast? She wasn’t alone. Her former Natural Resources Minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, said the same thing. No business case. This, as Qatar signed over $60 billion in LNG deals with Europe. As the United States became the largest LNG exporter on Earth. As Germany, desperate for alternatives to Russian gas, pleaded with Canada to send help. We said no. Not because we couldn’t do it. But because the Liberals didn’t want to. It wasn’t aligned with their green ideology. It would offend the climate lobby. And so they let the opportunity pass.
And this—this is exactly what happens when you let a part-time drama teacher run a G7 country like it’s a college theater troupe. This is what Liberal governance looks like in practice: performative, reckless, and utterly disconnected from the real world. They chased applause at climate conferences while dismantling the industries that built this country. They ignored working Canadians, sabotaged our energy sector, and hollowed out our economic defenses in the name of “progress.”
And now? Now we’re supposed to hand the firehose to the very people who started the fire. The same elites who told us there was “no business case” for LNG. The same crowd who canceled pipelines, ignored warnings, and left us totally exposed to a geopolitical and economic assault.
It’s 2025. The country is staggering. And the architects of this collapse—the Trudeau-Carney Liberals—have the audacity to ask for our trust again. They want more time. More power. More control.
No. They’ve had a decade. They lit the match, doused the economy in kerosene, and now they’re pretending they smell smoke for the first time.
Canadians shouldn’t fall for it. We don’t need more empty virtue signaling. We need competence. Backbone. And leadership grounded in reality—not staged in front of a mirror.
Business
P.E.I. Moves to Open IRAC Files, Forcing Land Regulator to Publish Reports After The Bureau’s Investigation
Following an exclusive report from The Bureau detailing transparency concerns at Prince Edward Island’s land regulator — and a migration of lawyers from firms that represented the Buddhist land-owning entities the regulator had already probed — the P.E.I. Legislature has passed a new law forcing the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission (IRAC) to make its land-investigation reports public.
The bill — introduced by Green Party Leader Matt MacFarlane — passed unanimously on Wednesday, CTV News reported. It amends the Lands Protection Act to require IRAC to table final investigation reports and supporting documents in the Legislature within 15 days of completion.
MacFarlane told CTV the reform was necessary because “public trust … is at an all-time low in the system,” adding that “if Islanders can see that work is getting done, that the (LPA) is being properly administered and enforced, that will get some trust rebuilt in this body.”
The Bureau’s report last week underscored that concern, showing how lawyers from Cox & Palmer — the firm representing the Buddhist landholders — steadily moved into senior IRAC positions after the regulator quietly shut down its mandated probe into those same entities. The issue exploded this fall when a Legislative Committee subpoena confirmed that IRAC’s oft-cited 2016–2018 investigation had never produced a final report at all.
There have been reports, including from CBC, that the Buddhist landholders have ties to a Chinese Communist Party entity, which leaders from the group deny.
In the years following IRAC’s cancelled probe into the Buddhist landholders, The Bureau reported, Cox & Palmer’s general counsel and director of land joined IRAC, and the migration of senior former lawyers culminated this spring, with former premier Dennis King appointing his own chief of staff, longtime Cox & Palmer partner Pam Williams, as IRAC chair shortly after the province’s land minister ordered the regulator to reopen a probe into Buddhist landholdings.
The law firm did not respond to questions, while IRAC said it has strong measures in place to guard against any conflicted decision-making.
Reporting on the overall matter, The Bureau wrote that:
“The integrity of the institution has, in effect, become a test of public confidence — or increasingly, of public disbelief. When Minister of Housing, Land and Communities Steven Myers ordered IRAC in February 2025 to release the 2016–2018 report and reopen the investigation, the commission did not comply … Myers later resigned in October 2025. Days afterward, the Legislative Committee on Natural Resources subpoenaed IRAC to produce the report. The commission replied that no formal report had ever been prepared.”
The Bureau’s investigation also showed that the Buddhist entities under review control assets exceeding $480 million, and there is also a planned $185-million campus development in the Town of Three Rivers, citing concerns that such financial power, combined with a revolving door between key law firms, political offices and the regulator, risks undermining confidence in P.E.I.’s land-oversight regime.
Wednesday’s new law converts the expectation for transparency at IRAC, voiced loudly by numerous citizens in this small province of about 170,000, into a statutory obligation.
Housing, Land and Communities Minister Cory Deagle told CTV the government supported the bill: “We do have concerns about some aspects of it, but the main principles of what you’re trying to achieve are a good thing.”
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After scathing warnings from interim budget officer Jason Jacques, Liberals move to silence dissent and install a compliant insider with “tact and discretion.”
It’s remarkable, isn’t it? After a decade of gaslighting Canadians about their so-called “fiscally responsible” governance, the Liberal Party, now under the direction of Mark Carney, finally runs into a problem they can’t spin: someone told the truth. Jason Jacques, the interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, was appointed for six months, six months. And within weeks, he did something this government considers a fireable offense: he read the books, looked at the numbers, and spoke plainly. That’s it. His crime? Honesty.
Here’s what he found. First, the deficit. Remember when Trudeau said “the budget will balance itself”? That myth has now mutated into a projected $68.5 billion deficit for 2025–26, up from $51.7 billion the year before. Jacques didn’t just disagree with it. He called it “stupefying,” “shocking,” and, this is the one they hate the most, “unsustainable.” Because if there’s one thing Ottawa elites can’t handle, it’s accountability from someone who doesn’t need a job after this.
But Jacques didn’t stop there. He pointed out that this government has no fiscal anchor. None. Not even a fake one. A fiscal anchor is a target, like a deficit limit or a falling debt-to-GDP ratio—basic stuff for any country pretending to manage its money. Jacques said the Liberals have abandoned even that pretense. In his words, there’s no clear framework. Just blind spending. No roadmap. No compass. No brakes.
And speaking of GDP, here’s the kicker: the debt-to-GDP ratio, which Trudeau once swore would always go down, is now heading up. Jacques projects it rising from 41.7% in 2024–25 to over 43% by 2030–31. And what happens when debt rises and growth slows? You pay more just to service the interest. That’s exactly what Jacques warned. He said the cost of carrying the debt is eating into core government operations. That means fewer services. Higher taxes. Slower growth. The burden gets passed to your children while Mark Carney gives another speech in Zurich about “inclusive capitalism.”
And let’s talk about definitions. Jacques flagged that the Liberals are now muddying the waters on what counts as operating spending versus capital spending. Why does that matter? Because if you redefine the terms, you can claim to be balancing the “operating budget” while secretly racking up long-term debt. It’s accounting gimmickry, a shell game with your tax dollars.
He also pointed to unaccounted spending, about $20 billion a year in campaign promises that haven’t even been formally costed yet. Add that to their multi-decade defense commitments, green subsidies, and inflated federal payroll, and you’re looking at an avalanche of unmodeled liabilities.
And just to make this circus complete, Jacques even criticized the way his own office was filled. The Prime Minister can handpick an interim PBO with zero parliamentary input. No transparency. No debate. Just a quiet appointment, until the appointee grows a spine and tells the public what’s really going on.
Now the Liberals are racing to replace Jacques. Why? Because he said all of this publicly. Because he didn’t play ball. Because his office dared to function as it was intended: independently. They’re looking for someone with “tact and discretion.” That’s what the job listing says. Not independence. Not integrity. Tact. Discretion. In other words: someone who’ll sit down, shut up, and nod politely while Carney and Champagne burn through another $100 billion pretending it’s “investment.”
Let’s be clear: this isn’t just about replacing a bureaucrat. It’s about neutering the last shred of fiscal oversight left in Ottawa. The Parliamentary Budget Officer is supposed to be a firewall between reckless political ambition and your wallet. But in Carney’s Canada, independence is an inconvenience. So now, instead of extending Jacques’ term, something that would preserve continuity and show respect for accountability, the Liberals are shopping for a compliant technocrat. Someone who won’t call a $68.5 billion deficit “stupefying.” Someone who’ll massage the numbers just enough to keep the illusion intact.
They don’t want an economist. They want a courtier. Someone with just enough credentials to fake credibility, and just enough cowardice to keep their mouth shut when the spending blows past every so-called “anchor” they once pretended to respect. That’s the game. Keep the optics clean. Keep the watchdog muzzled. And keep Canadians in the dark while this government drives the country off a fiscal cliff.
But let me say it plainly, thank god someone in this country still believes in accountability. Thank God Jason Jacques stepped into that office and had the guts to tell the truth, not just to Parliament, but to the Canadian people. And thank God Pierre Poilievre has the common sense, the spine, and the clarity to back him. While Mark Carney and his Laurentian elite pals are busy gutting oversight, rewriting the rules, and flooding the economy with borrowed billions, it’s men like Jacques who refuse to play along. He looked at the books and didn’t see “investment”—he saw a ticking fiscal time bomb. And instead of ducking, he sounded the alarm.
Poilievre, to his credit, is standing firmly behind the man. He understands that without a real watchdog, Parliament becomes a stage play, just actors and scripts, no substance. Backing Jacques isn’t just good politics. It’s basic sanity. It’s the minimum standard for anyone who still thinks this country should live within its means, tell the truth about its finances, and respect the people footing the bill.
So while the Liberals scramble to muzzle dissent and hire another smiling yes-man with a resume full of buzzwords and a Rolodex full of Davos invites, at least one opposition leader is saying: No. We need a watchdog, not a lapdog. And in a city full of spineless bureaucrats, that’s not just refreshing—it’s absolutely essential.
It’s time for Canada to remember, the heroes of Kapyong
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