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.

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

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Audrey Streb

The Trump administration has an opportunity to free the U.S. of draconian climate regulations and directives the European Union (EU) has imposed on American oil and gas companies for years, energy sector experts and industry insiders told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Though the Trump administration made a major trade deal with the EU in July that benefitted American energy, the EU still imposes a number of climate regulations and directives that drive up U.S. energy costs, according to some energy policy experts. The Trump administration is positioned to pressure the EU into a fairer trading atmosphere and ease burdens on the American energy sector, industry insiders told the DCNF.

“It’s going to take the pressure of the Trump administration in the trade negotiations to get the EU to back down from these extraterritorial regulations imposed on American companies, including U.S. oil and natural gas producers,” Vice President of Corporate Policy at the American Petroleum Institute (API) Aaron Padilla told the DCNF. “The EU should not make it more difficult for companies to provide the energy that their consumers need.”

Trump has threatened the EU with tariffs to buy American oil and gas, and part of the major July trade deal required the EU to purchase $750 billion in American energy by 2028.

“The Administration continues to address trade barriers against every American industry with our trading partners, and commitments from the EU, Japan, South Korea, and other countries to buy hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American energy over the next few years reflect how President Trump is delivering on his agenda of fair trade and drill, baby, drill,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told the DCNF.

Tammy Nemeth, a strategic energy analyst, told the DCNF that the climate regulations and directives are burdensome to American oil and gas companies. Nemeth argues that these regulations increase costs on U.S. businesses and Americans as companies hoping to do business in the EU have to wrestle with layers of red tape and adopt a net-zero transition plan. It is difficult to estimate, but compliance with EU climate regulations and directives can add significant costs, according to Nemeth.

“I think if companies are approaching [these non-tariff barriers] with open eyes, they’ll say we need the government to help us maybe eliminate some of these non-tariff barriers, because if the compliance costs [equate to a] 10 to 30% increase, then that’s something that they have to pass on, not just to those to whom they’re exporting, but also domestically, because those are costs that are borne by the entire company,” Nemeth told the DCNF. “[These non-tariff barriers] could therefore increase costs to Americans, not just passing it on only to the Europeans, because all of those bureaucratic structures have to be established within the company, and that’s cost they have to absorb or pass on in some way.”

If American oil and gas companies decide to not comply with the climate regulations, they can be heavily fined or essentially forced out of trading with the EU, Nemeth said.

“It’s really quite absurd,” Nemeth said, noting that the EU already requires a significant amount of red tape and environmental reporting paperwork. Nemeth added that all the reporting also can open companies up to environmental litigation.

API has generally supported President Donald Trump’s energy policy and praised his April decision to exempt oil and gas from new reciprocal tariffs, however, the trade association argues that now is the time to force the EU into relaxing its non-tariff barriers. API has asked the Trump administration to negotiate EU non-tariff barriers, including the CSDDD and the EU methane regulation, to ease burdens on American oil and gas companies hoping to do business in the EU, Padilla noted.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected the International Maritime Organization’s net-zero framework on Tuesday, stating that the U.S. “will not tolerate any action that increases costs for our citizens, energy providers, shipping companies and their customers, or tourists.”

An EU official told the DCNF that negotiations with the U.S. are still ongoing, though any amendments to EU legislation would represent a non-negotiable boundary for the EU.

Energy costs have been a major concern for European officials following the 2022 spike in prices, which hit the continent’s economies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and weaponization of its natural gas supply. Many European countries are also devoted to a green energy transition as the continent faces high electricity prices and grid instability.

Notably, several European countries have recently moved to rethink or reverse their anti-nuclear pledges in search of a sustainable energy resource.

“We say to the Europeans, you don’t need to put these non-tariff barriers into place. The only result of them is going to be to make it more expensive and difficult for Europeans to import the energy that they need from the United States. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” Padilla said. “You need oil and you need natural gas from the United States, especially in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So, don’t make it more difficult to get that energy that you need from the United States.”

Nemeth and other energy policy experts argued that these non-tariff barriers work to benefit EU oil and gas companies and disincentivize American companies from competing in the European market.

“For years, the European Union has used trade policy as a backdoor to impose its climate agenda on American businesses. Their reporting rules and carbon tariffs aren’t about saving the planet, they’re about controlling markets and kneecapping competitors,” CEO and founder of the American Energy Institute Jason Isaac told the DCNF. “As President Trump negotiates with the EU, the first order of business must include a clear commitment to scrap these schemes. The United States should set the terms and not let European bureaucrats punish American energy.”