Business
While China Hacks Canada, B.C. Sends Them a Billion-Dollar Ship Building Contract

This is like finding out your house was broken into and, instead of calling the cops, you hire the burglar to remodel your kitchen because he offered a good price.
Just days—days—after British Columbia Premier David Eby shrugs off federal concerns over awarding a billion-dollar ferry contract to China, and I’m quoting here, tells Ottawa to “honestly, just mind your own business”… we learn that China is hacking Canadian telecommunications infrastructure.
Let that sink in.
So here’s the story. British Columbia, a province of Canada that still pretends to care about sovereignty and jobs—just handed a massive, publicly funded ferry contract to China. Yes, China. Not a B.C. shipyard. Not a Canadian company. But a Chinese Communist Party–owned industrial complex. Because apparently, in the year 2025, a G7 nation that once built warships and railroads can’t even build a ferry. The country that designed the Avro Arrow now outsources its boatbuilding to Beijing.
Why? According to BC Ferries, the Chinese bid was the “strongest” and “most cost-effective.” Translation: they were the cheapest totalitarian regime available.
And to justify that? We’re told Canadian shipyards didn’t even bid. Why? Because they don’t have the “capacity.” Which sounds an awful lot like: we’ve let this industry rot for decades and now we’re pretending it’s just the market doing its thing.
Now, Premier Eby didn’t deny it. He didn’t fight it. He didn’t try to fix it. He just said, “It’s not ideal. But it’s too late.” Five years of procurement, so we’re locked in. No turning back. As if surrender is somehow a neutral policy.
And Chrystia Freeland? She called it “dismaying,” which is Canadian for we’re not going to do a thing about it. No federal funding, she said, and please make sure it’s cybersecure. From a Chinese state firm. Sure.
Meanwhile, here’s the part no one wants to say out loud: China is actively attacking Canada’s digital infrastructure. This isn’t some distant cyber operation. It’s happening now. Salt Typhoon, a Chinese state-linked group, exploited a Cisco vulnerability to compromise three core telecom devices. They siphoned data. Created a GRE tunnel. Pulled configuration files. They were inside the system. Watching. Collecting. Spying.
And while that’s going on, B.C. writes them a check.
This is like finding out your house was broken into and, instead of calling the cops, you hire the burglar to remodel your kitchen because he offered a good price.
Now business analysts, the same people who said NAFTA would be great for everyone, argue this is “industry standard.” They point out Canadian firms have used Chinese shipyards for years. Yes—and look where that got us. No shipbuilding capacity, no strategic leverage, and no national pride.
BC Ferries insists it’s not a total sellout. They’re spending $230 million on local refits and maintenance. Great—so we send the billion overseas and toss the leftovers to local workers. That’s not industrial policy. That’s industrial hospice care.
Unions and domestic builders like Seaspan have said clearly: We can do the work. We want to build. But they need policy. They need backing. And instead of standing up and saying, “Let’s build ships in Canada again,” David Eby shrugs and signs the dotted line.
And what does B.C. Premier David Eby say when the federal government dares to ask a reasonable question—like, “Hey, is sending a billion-dollar infrastructure deal to a Chinese state-owned company while China’s hacking your telecoms and stealing your IP a smart move?”
Eby’s response?
“Honestly, just mind your own business.”
That’s not spin. That’s what he said—on the record, during a Jas Johal radio interview. He told Ottawa, Chrystia Freeland, and every single Canadian taxpayer footing the bill: Stop asking questions. Don’t expect accountability. Just sit quietly and watch us outsource the building blocks of our own sovereignty to an authoritarian regime.
Eby then admits—almost casually—that the deal is “not ideal.” Right. Because funneling public funds to a hostile regime that’s openly undermining your democracy and infiltrating your critical infrastructure isn’t ideal. But he claims the decision can’t be reversed. Why? Because it would cost too much, and we don’t have the capacity to build our own ferries anymore.
Let that sink in. This isn’t Somalia. This is Canada. A G7 country. And the Premier of one of its most important provinces is now saying: We’re too broken to build ferries, so let the CCP do it.
While B.C. writes checks to a Chinese Communist Party–controlled shipyard to build vessels for public service, Chinese state-sponsored hackers are already inside Canadian networks—pulling data, monitoring traffic, and spying on political officials. These aren’t amateur criminals. These are agents of a foreign authoritarian regime. And they’re not looking for cat videos. They’re not trying to intercept your hockey stream. They’re looking for call metadata, SMS content, real-time location tracking, and political communications. You know, espionage.
This isn’t some speculative post from a blog or a heated Reddit thread. This is straight from a government-issued cyber intelligence bulletin, published on June 19, 2025, by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Canada’s frontline cyber defense agency, in collaboration with the FBI. The bulletin confirms that a sophisticated Chinese state-sponsored threat actor, known as Salt Typhoon, orchestrated a targeted cyberattack in mid-February 2025, exploiting vulnerabilities in Cisco’s IOS XE software to infiltrate critical telecommunications infrastructure in Canada.
Specifically, Salt Typhoon zeroed in on a critical flaw, CVE-2023-20198, which allowed them to gain unauthorized access to three network devices registered to a major Canadian telecom provider. For those unfamiliar, this vulnerability is a remote code execution flaw that grants attackers admin-level privileges—essentially handing them the keys to the network. Once inside, they didn’t just poke around. They retrieved sensitive configuration files, which are like the blueprints of a network’s operations, and modified at least one to establish Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnels. If you’re not a techie, GRE tunnels are a clever technique to create virtual pathways that bypass standard security controls, allowing attackers to quietly siphon off network traffic—think of it as tapping a phone line, but for entire data streams.
This wasn’t a smash-and-grab job. The bulletin details how Salt Typhoon’s actions were methodical, aimed at enabling long-term surveillance and data collection. By rerouting traffic through these GRE tunnels, they could access bulk customer data, including call metadata, location information, and potentially even the content of SMS messages or other communications. The targets? High-value individuals, such as government officials and political figures, whose data could fuel China’s broader espionage objectives. The bulletin warns that this is part of a global campaign, with similar attacks hitting telecoms in the U.S. and dozens of other countries, compromising providers like AT&T and Verizon.
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security doesn’t mince words: Salt Typhoon is “almost certainly” backed by the People’s Republic of China, and their campaign is expected to persist, targeting Canadian organizations, especially telecoms and their clients, for the near and present future.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Or infuriating.
Let’s look at CSIS’s own public report, released in 2024. Salt Typhoon isn’t named, no. But China is named. Over and over. Page 6 reads like a war warning that no one in Ottawa even bothered to read. It says, and I quote, “The People’s Republic of China continues to engage in sophisticated espionage and foreign interference… especially in critical mineral sectors and technology supply chains.”
Translation? They’re not just watching your data—they’re coming for your economy, your elections, and your sovereignty. This is more than cybercrime. This is geopolitical warfare. And China is winning because we’re too weak or too afraid to say no.
The CSIS report goes on: Chinese actors are infiltrating elections, immigration channels, even using AI and front groups to manipulate discourse and policy. Not someday. Now. Right now.
Let’s be completely clear: In February, China penetrated Canadian telecom infrastructure.
In June, we paid them to build ships.
How is that not a national scandal?
How do you allow that?
This is the collapse of common sense in real time. National security is not a partisan issue. It’s not theoretical. It’s not about trade. It’s about who holds the keys to your data, your infrastructure, and your future.
And right now, Canada’s government—and yes, its provinces—are not just letting that fall into China’s hands. They’re delivering it.
On a silver ferry.
Let that sink in.
Now ask yourself—what exactly are we getting in return? Where’s the national benefit? Where’s the plan? Where’s the damn spine?
David Eby says “BC First” like it means something. But how does it square with shipping public contracts straight to Beijing while China’s hacking your telecoms and eyeing your elections? You can’t call it “BC First” when you’re literally bankrolling Chinese state-owned industry while Canadian shipyards rot on the sidelines. That’s not leadership. That’s surrender.
And here’s the kicker—Eby’s been in multiple meetings with the feds. Four major First Ministers’ meetings, plus two sit-downs with Mark Carney, the man Liberals are touting as their next economic messiah. And you’re telling me not one person at those tables could put two brain cells together and say:
“Hey Mark, B.C. needs ferries. You want a manufacturing revival. Let’s cut a deal. You give us federal subsidies, we build these ships here at home. Yeah, it costs more up front, but it proves we’re serious about national industry. And we’re not handing vital infrastructure contracts to the same regime that’s compromising our telecoms and undermining our democracy.”
Would that not be common sense? Apparently not—because neither Carney nor Eby made that deal. They let it slide. They let the CCP win a contract while Salt Typhoon was actively hacking Canada’s backbone.
That’s not “hard choices.” That’s strategic failure. It’s cowardice masked as pragmatism.
Eby isn’t a dealmaker. He’s a decline manager. He’s the guy who shrugs and says, “Well, we can’t do it here,” and then signs a billion-dollar check to a foreign power with no accountability, no dignity, no leverage.
And Carney? The guy trying to pitch himself as the future of Canada’s economic revival? The guy who says we need to build, invest, strengthen? He let this go. Either he didn’t care, or he wasn’t paying attention. Either way—it’s incompetence at the highest level. And it proves the Liberals and the B.C. NDP are fully aligned in managing decline, not reversing it.
They told us Donald Trump was the threat. They told us he would sell out our values, undermine democracy, and abandon national interests. David Eby said it. Mark Carney echoed it. They told you they were the adults in the room—the ones who would put Canada first.
And what did they actually do?
They handed a billion-dollar public contract to a Chinese state-owned shipyard—while China is actively hacking our telecom networks and undermining our elections. They outsourced jobs, security, and dignity to the same regime their own intelligence agencies are warning us about.
David Eby said “BC First.” Mark Carney talks about reviving Canadian industry. But when the opportunity came—when they could have drawn a line, invested in our workforce, and told Beijing “no”—they caved. They chose cheap. They chose weak. They chose decline.
This is not leadership.
It’s not “strategic.”
It’s not “pragmatic.”
It’s pathetic.
And if this is what the NDP and Liberal vision looks like—deals for China, excuses for inaction, and silence while Canadian industry is gutted—then it’s time for an election.
We need real leadership. We need people who will fight for Canadian workers, Canadian infrastructure, and Canadian sovereignty. Not performative speeches. Not hollow slogans. Results. Accountability. Courage. This government has failed. Let the people decide. Call an election—before we lose more than just jobs and we can let someone lead who actually wants to make Canada First.
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Business
Bill C-8 would allow minister to secretly cut off phone, Internet service

From the Canadian Constitution Foundation
“I worry that this law could be used to secretly cut off political dissidents from their phone or Internet service on the pretense that they may try to manipulate the telecom system”
The Canadian Constitution Foundation is concerned about the civil liberties implications of the Carney government’s proposed cyber security bill, C-8, which would allow the minister of industry to secretly order telecommunications service providers like Telus, Bell and Rogers to stop providing services to individual Canadians.
The minister would be allowed to make such an order if she has “reasonable grounds to believe that it is necessary to do so to secure the Canadian telecommunications system against any threat, including that of interference, manipulation, disruption or degradation.”
An individual who does not comply, including by failing to keep the order secret, could face fines of up to $25,000 for the first contravention and $50,000 for subsequent contraventions. Businesses could face fines of up to $10 million for the first contravention and up to $15 million for subsequent contraventions.
The orders would remain secret indefinitely, with the minister required only to present an annual report to Parliament on the number of orders made and her opinion on their necessity, reasonableness and utility.
CCF Counsel Josh Dehaas said that the power to cut off the Internet or cellphone service of Canadians is a “very serious power that requires very strong safeguards, which are presently lacking in the bill.”
“While this power may be necessary in some cases to prevent cyber attacks, it also poses serious risks to civil liberties,” Dehaas said. “I worry that this law could be used to secretly cut off political dissidents from their phone or Internet service on the pretense that they may try to manipulate the telecom system,” Dehaas explained. “Such an action would violate our most cherished freedoms including free speech.”
CCF Litigation Director Christine Van Geyn said that the government cannot be trusted with such a power unless proper safeguards are in place.
“You may think that the idea of the government cutting off political dissidents from the necessities of life sounds far-fetched, but that’s exactly what happened during the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa,” she said. “The federal government ordered banks to freeze hundreds of bank accounts without any judicial authorization, cutting protesters off from their money in the middle of a very cold winter.”
“Although the Federal Court agreed with the CCF that freezing bank accounts this way violated the constitutional right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, that kind of damage isn’t easily repaired,” Van Geyn added.
Ottawa has appealed the Federal Court’s finding. The CCF is awaiting a decision from the Federal Court of Appeal.
Dehaas said that Parliament should consider requiring either judicial pre-authorization or an immediate, automatic judicial review of any decision to cut off an individual or business from their Internet or phone.
The CCF is also concerned that Bill C-8 would allow the minister to weaken telecommunications companies’ encryption standards, allowing for unconstitutional access to Canadians’ private information.
Finally, the CCF is concerned that the bill could allow the minister or any person designated by the minister to engage in unconstitutional searches.
Joanna Baron, the CCF’s Executive Director, said that Canadians must be vigilant about their constitutional rights and freedoms because they can be easily taken away, especially in times of crisis.
“I would encourage Canadians to fight for their freedoms, whether it’s by taking the CCF’s free privacy course, signing up for our weekly Freedom Update newsletter or becoming a monthly donor,” Baron said.
“Concerned Canadians are also encouraged to write to their MPs using our form letter, to tell them to amend these bills to ensure Canadians’ rights to privacy and free expression are protected,” Baron added.
Alberta
Taxpayers: Alberta must scrap its industrial carbon tax

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Carney praises carbon taxes on world stage
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Alberta must block Carney’s industrial carbon tax
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the government of Alberta to completely scrap its provincial industrial carbon tax.
“It’s baffling that Alberta is still clinging to its industrial carbon tax even though Saskatchewan has declared itself to be a carbon tax-free zone,” said Kris Sims, CTF Alberta Director. “Prime Minister Mark Carney is cooking up his new industrial carbon tax in Ottawa and Alberta needs to fight that head on.
“Alberta having its own industrial carbon tax invites Carney to barge through our door with his punishing industrial carbon tax.”
On Sept. 16, the Alberta government announced some changes to Alberta’s industrial carbon tax, but the tax remains in effect.
On Friday night at the Global Progress Action Summitt held in London, England, Carney praised carbon taxes while speaking onstage with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“The direct carbon tax which had become a divisive issue, it was a textbook good policy, but a divisive issue,” Carney said.
During the federal election, Carney promised to remove the more visible consumer carbon tax and change it into a bigger hidden industrial carbon tax. He also announced plans to create “border adjustment mechanisms” on imports from countries that do not have national carbon taxes, also known as carbon tax tariffs.
“Carney’s ‘textbook good policy’ comments about carbon taxes shows his government is still cooking up a new industrial carbon tax and it’s also planning on imposing carbon tax tariffs,” Sims said. “Alberta should stand with Saskatchewan and obliterate all carbon taxes in our province, otherwise we are opening the door for Ottawa to keep kicking us.”
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