Business
The Strange Case of the Disappearing Public Accounts Report
A few days ago, Public Services and Procurement Canada tabled their audited consolidated financial statements of the Government of Canada for 2024. This is the official and complete report on the state of government finances. When I say “complete”, I mean the report’s half million words stretch across three volumes and total more than 1,300 pages.
Together, these volumes provide the most comprehensive and authoritative view of the federal government’s financial management and accountability for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024. The tragedy is that no one has the time and energy needed to read and properly understand all that data. But the report identifies problems serious enough to deserve the attention of all Canadians – and especially policy makers.
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Following the approach of my Parliamentary Briefings series, I uploaded all three volumes of the report to my AI research assistant and asked for its thoughts. Each one of the observations that came out the other end is significant and, in calmer and more rational times, could easily have driven a week’s worth of news coverage. But given the craziness of the past few weeks and months, they’re being largely ignored.
With that in mind, I’ve made this special edition of the Parliamentary Briefings series fully accessible to all subscribers.
We begin with a summary of the purpose and scope of the three uploaded volumes of the Public Accounts of Canada for 2023–2024:
Volume I: Summary Report and Consolidated Financial Statements
- Purpose: Provides a high-level overview of the federal government’s financial performance, presenting the consolidated financial statements audited by the Auditor General. It serves as the primary accountability report.
- Scope:
- Audited financial statements.
- Analysis of revenues, expenses, and the accumulated deficit.
- Overview of assets, liabilities, and financial position.
- Discussion of economic context, risks, uncertainties, and ten-year comparative financial data.
Volume II: Details of Expenses and Revenues
- Purpose: Presents the financial operations of the government, broken down by ministries and agencies, for detailed accountability.
- Scope:
- Financial transactions segregated by ministry.
- Details of appropriations, revenues, and transfer payments.
- Summary tables on ministerial expenditures by type, object, and other dimensions.
- Appendices providing additional details on budgetary authorities and their sources.
Volume III: Additional Information and Analyses
- Purpose: Offers supplementary analyses and financial data beyond what is included in the first two volumes, focusing on revolving funds, professional services, and shared-cost programs.
- Scope:
- Financial statements of revolving funds (e.g., Passport Canada, Canadian Grain Commission).
- Expenditure details on acquisitions, transfer payments, and public debt charges.
- Analyses of federal-provincial shared-cost programs and claims against the Crown.
- Miscellaneous financial and operational data for broader transparency.
The Audit: Based on these documents, could you identify the most serious threats to Canada’s economic stability?
From the Public Accounts of Canada 2023–2024, several serious threats to Canada’s economic security can be identified. These threats emerge from the broader fiscal and economic analyses, contingent liabilities, and uncertainties highlighted in the documents.
1. Growing Public Debt and Debt Servicing Costs
- Observation: Canada’s public debt charges increased significantly in 2024, rising by 35.2% year-over-year, largely due to higher interest rates on debt. The total accumulated federal debt stood at $1.24 trillion, representing 42.1% of GDP, up from 41.1% the previous year.
- Risk: Rising debt servicing costs reduce fiscal space for critical public investments, making the economy vulnerable to future economic shocks or downturns.
2. Contingent Liabilities and Indigenous Claims
- Observation: The government recorded $16.4 billion in contingent liabilities related to Indigenous claims in 2024, reflecting ongoing efforts to address past injustices. These liabilities have been increasing at an average annual growth rate of 30% since 2016.
- Risk: The unpredictable nature and scale of these liabilities could create significant financial pressures if settlements or court decisions require substantial payouts.
3. Legacy Costs from the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Observation: The government recorded $4.7 billion in pandemic-related expenses for 2024, including write-offs for expired vaccines and provisions for unrecovered loans and benefits.
- Risk: These costs highlight vulnerabilities in emergency financial planning and expose the government to further financial risks if similar large-scale public health crises occur.
4. Economic Pressures from High Inflation and Interest Rates
- Observation: Inflation returned to the Bank of Canada’s 2% target by mid-2024 after 41 consecutive months above this threshold. However, elevated interest rates (peaking at 5%) contributed to a softening economy.
- Risk: Prolonged periods of high interest rates could suppress household and business spending, slowing economic growth and increasing the likelihood of a recession.
5. Climate Change and Environmental Commitments
- Observation: Significant spending is allocated to addressing climate change, with over $1 billion dedicated to environmental programs in 2024, including pollution pricing proceeds and clean energy initiatives.
- Risk: Canada’s reliance on resource-intensive industries and increasing costs to meet climate targets create economic vulnerabilities, particularly in regions heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
6. Global Economic Instability
- Observation: Global supply chain disruptions, energy price volatility, and geopolitical events (e.g., Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) significantly impacted Canada’s economy, with slower GDP growth (1.5% in 2023) and reduced trade.
- Risk: External shocks could exacerbate domestic economic challenges, such as rising import costs or reduced demand for Canadian exports.
7. Labor Market and Productivity Challenges
- Observation: While job creation remained positive, population growth outpaced employment gains, leading to an increase in the unemployment rate to 6.5% by October 2024. Productivity improvements have been uneven.
- Risk: Labor shortages in key sectors and declining workforce participation among certain demographics (e.g., aging population) could undermine economic resilience.
8. Dependence on Resource Revenues
- Observation: Volatile global commodity prices impacted nominal GDP growth, with gains slowing to 2.9% in 2023 after double-digit growth in prior years.
- Risk: Fluctuations in resource revenues leave Canada exposed to external shocks, particularly in provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan, heavily reliant on oil and gas.
These challenges underscore the need for proactive fiscal and policy measures to safeguard economic stability, manage liabilities, and address emerging risks.
The Audit: What would you recommend as the three most urgent areas to address to avoid deepening the economic crisis?
1. Manage Rising Public Debt and Debt Servicing Costs
- Why It’s Urgent: The rapid increase in public debt charges (35.2% in 2024) is crowding out fiscal space for essential programs. The federal debt, at 42.1% of GDP, has become a significant liability, with interest rate fluctuations posing an ongoing threat.
- Recommendations:
- Introduce stricter fiscal discipline by prioritizing expenditures that yield long-term economic benefits (e.g., infrastructure, innovation).
- Develop a comprehensive debt reduction strategy to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio in the medium term.
- Explore debt refinancing strategies to lock in lower interest rates where feasible.
- Impact: Reducing debt servicing pressures will free up resources for critical investments and improve Canada’s fiscal resilience.
2. Mitigate the Economic Impact of Contingent Liabilities
- Why It’s Urgent: Contingent liabilities related to Indigenous claims have grown exponentially (30% annually since 2016), creating fiscal unpredictability and potentially overwhelming future budgets.
- Recommendations:
- Accelerate settlement negotiations to limit litigation costs and interest on outstanding claims.
- Establish a transparent reserve fund specifically for contingent liabilities, ensuring predictable future payouts.
- Increase collaboration with Indigenous communities to address systemic issues and prevent further claims.
- Impact: Resolving liabilities promptly will reduce fiscal uncertainty and demonstrate Canada’s commitment to reconciliation.
3. Address Structural Labor Market and Productivity Challenges
- Why It’s Urgent: Despite job creation, rising unemployment (6.5% in late 2024) and productivity stagnation threaten long-term economic growth. Labor shortages in critical sectors further exacerbate vulnerabilities.
- Recommendations:
- Expand skilled immigration programs to address labor shortages in healthcare, technology, and green industries.
- Increase investment in workforce retraining programs, particularly for sectors undergoing automation or transition due to climate policies.
- Promote workplace flexibility and childcare access to increase labor force participation, particularly among women and aging workers.
- Impact: Enhancing workforce productivity and participation will strengthen the economic foundation and support GDP growth.
Rationale for Prioritization
These areas represent the most immediate threats to economic security and fiscal stability. Addressing them proactively can reduce vulnerabilities and position Canada for sustainable growth.
The Audit: What are the most surprising and disturbing details in these documents?
1. Rapid Growth of Public Debt Charges
- Detail: Public debt charges increased by 35.2% year-over-year to $47.3 billion, representing one of the fastest-growing expense categories. This reflects a combination of higher interest rates and the significant size of Canada’s debt.
- Why Disturbing: Such a rapid increase in debt servicing costs could divert funds from essential public services and programs. It also signals limited fiscal flexibility in the event of future economic shocks.
2. Ballooning Contingent Liabilities
- Detail: The federal government recorded $16.4 billion in expenses for Indigenous contingent liabilities in 2024. This is part of an ongoing surge, with liabilities increasing by 30% annually since 2016.
- Why Disturbing: While reconciliation efforts are vital, the sheer scale and rapid growth of these liabilities are fiscally unsustainable without structural changes or dedicated funding mechanisms. The risk of further liabilities emerging adds to fiscal uncertainty.
3. Significant Write-offs and Provisions for Pandemic Programs
- Detail: The government wrote off $1.2 billion in expired COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics and recorded $3.5 billion in provisions for unrecovered pandemic-era loans.
- Why Disturbing: These figures highlight inefficiencies in planning and administration during the pandemic response, leading to substantial financial losses. The scale of unrecovered funds also raises questions about accountability in the deployment of emergency programs.
4. Rising Unemployment Despite Job Creation
- Detail: While 475,000 jobs were created in 2023, the unemployment rate rose to 6.5% by late 2024 due to population growth outpacing employment gains.
- Why Surprising: Despite strong job creation, an inability to keep pace with population growth signals structural issues in labor force integration. This poses a risk to Canada’s economic competitiveness and social cohesion.
5. Declining Corporate Income Tax Revenues
- Detail: Corporate income tax revenues decreased by 0.7%, driven by reduced taxable income despite an overall increase in total revenues.
- Why Surprising: The decline in corporate tax revenues during a period of economic recovery raises concerns about potential tax avoidance, economic inequality, or over-reliance on other revenue streams, such as personal income taxes.
6. Substantial Environmental and Climate Spending
- Detail: Over $1 billion was allocated to environmental programs, including pollution pricing proceeds. However, the documents note Canada’s slow progress toward net-zero targets and risks to resource-dependent provinces.
- Why Disturbing: While necessary, this spending may be insufficient given the scale of the climate challenge. The mismatch between spending and measurable progress on climate goals risks long-term environmental and economic consequences.
7. Unanticipated Costs of Indigenous Reconciliation
- Detail: Beyond contingent liabilities, the government is facing unpredictable settlement costs due to increasing litigation and the complexity of claims. These have already exceeded $60 billion since 2016.
- Why Disturbing: The ongoing financial impact of these settlements reflects Canada’s historical neglect of Indigenous issues. Resolving these claims is essential, but the lack of predictability or dedicated funding highlights systemic shortcomings in reconciliation strategies.
8. Softened GDP Growth and Inflation Challenges
- Detail: Real GDP growth slowed to 1.5% in 2023, and inflation remained high throughout the year, only reaching the Bank of Canada’s 2% target by mid-2024.
- Why Disturbing: The prolonged inflationary period and sluggish growth signal a fragile recovery. These economic conditions could exacerbate income inequality and lead to further fiscal strain.
9. High Provisions for Unrecovered Loans
- Detail: Provisions of $3.5 billion were recorded for emergency loans provided during the pandemic. The government continues to face difficulties in recovering these funds.
- Why Disturbing: This provision raises serious questions about the efficiency of loan administration and the government’s ability to safeguard public funds during emergencies.
10. Heavy Dependence on Volatile Resource Revenues
- Detail: Nominal GDP growth slowed to 2.9% in 2023, largely due to easing commodity prices after a surge in 2022. Resource dependence remains a key economic vulnerability.
- Why Surprising: Despite global shifts toward renewable energy, Canada’s reliance on resource revenues remains high, posing long-term risks to economic diversification and stability.
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It’s been nearly a year since I last wrote about the CBC. In the intervening months, the Prescott memo on bias at the BBC was released, whose stunning allegations of systemic journalistic malpractice “inspired” multiple senior officials to leave the corporation. Given how the institutional bias driving problems at the BBC is undoubtedly widely shared by CBC employees, I’d be surprised if there weren’t similar flaws embedded inside the stuff we’re being fed here in Canada.
Apparently, besides receiving nearly two billion dollars¹ annually in direct and indirect government funding, CBC also employs around a third of all of Canada’s full time journalists. So taxpayers have a legitimate interest in knowing what we’re getting out of the deal.
Naturally, corporate president Marie-Philippe Bouchard has solemnly denied the existence of any bias in CBC reporting. But I’d be more comfortable seeing some evidence of that with my own eyes. Given that I personally can easily go multiple months without watching any CBC programming or even visiting their website, “my own eyes” will require some creative redefinition.
So this time around I collected the titles and descriptions from nearly 300 stories that were randomly chosen from the CBC Top Stories RSS feed from the first half of 2025. You can view the results for yourself here. I then used AI tools to analyze the data for possible bias (how events are interpreted) and agendas (which events are selected). I also looked for:
- Institutional viewpoint bias
- Public-sector framing
- Cultural-identity prioritization
- Government-source dependency
- Social-progressive emphasis
Here’s what I discovered.
Story Selection Bias
Millions of things happen every day. And many thousands of those might be of interest to Canadians. Naturally, no news publisher has the bandwidth to cover all of them, so deciding which stories to include in anyone’s Top Story feed will involve a lot of filtering. To give us a sense of what filtering standards are used at the CBC, let’s break down coverage by topic.
Of the 300 stories covered by my data, around 30 percent – month after month – focused on Donald Trump and U.S.- Canada relations. Another 12-15 percent related to Gaza and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Domestic politics – including election coverage – took up another 12 percent, Indigenous issues attracted 9 percent, climate and the environment grabbed 8 percent, and gender identity, health-care worker assaults, immigrant suffering, and crime attracted around 4 percent each.
Now here’s a partial list of significant stories from the target time frame (the first half of 2025) that weren’t meaningfully represented in my sample of CBC’s Top Stories:
- Housing affordability crisis barely appears (one of the top voter concerns in actual 2025 polls).
- Immigration levels and labour-market impact.
- Crime-rate increases or policing controversies (unless tied to Indigenous or racialized victims).
- Private-sector investment success stories.
- Any sustained positive coverage of the oil/gas sector (even when prices are high).
- Critical examination of public-sector growth or pension liabilities.
- Chinese interference or CCP influence in Canada (despite ongoing inquiries in real life).
- The rest of the known galaxy (besides Gaza and the U.S.)
Interpretation Bias
There’s an obvious pattern of favoring certain identity narratives. The Indigenous are always framed as victims of historic injustice, Palestinian and Gazan actions are overwhelmingly sympathetic, while anything done by Israelis is “aggression”. Transgender representation in uniformly affirmative while dissent is bigotry.
By contrast, stories critical of immigration policy, sympathetic to Israeli/Jewish perspectives, or skeptical of gender medicine are virtually non-existent in this sample.
That’s not to say that, in the real world, injustice doesn’t exist. It surely does. But a neutral and objective news service should be able to present important stories using a neutral and objective voice. That obviously doesn’t happen at the CBC.
Consider these obvious examples:
- “Trump claims there are only ‘2 genders.’ Historians say that’s never been true” – here’s an overt editorial contradiction in the headline itself.
- “Trump bans transgender female athletes from women’s sports” which is framed as an attack rather than a policy debate.
And your choice of wording counts more than you might realize. Verbs like “slams”, “blasts”, and “warns” are used almost exclusively describing the actions of conservative figures like Trump, Poilievre, or Danielle Smith, while “experts say”, “historians say”, and “doctors say” are repeatedly used to rebut conservative policy.
Similarly, Palestinian casualties are invariably “killed“ by Israeli forces – using the active voice – while Israeli casualties, when mentioned at all, are described using the passive voice.
Institutional Viewpoint Bias
A primary – perhaps the primary job – of a serious journalist is to challenge the government’s narrative. Because if journalists don’t even try to hold public officials to account, then no one else can. Even the valuable work of the Auditor General or the Parliamentary Budget Officer will be wasted, because there will be no one to amplify their claims of wrongdoing. And Canadians will have no way of hearing the bad news.
So it can’t be a good sign when around 62 percent of domestic political stories published by the nation’s public broadcaster either quote government (federal or provincial) sources as the primary voice, or are framed around government announcements, reports, funding promises, or inquiries.
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In other words, a majority of what the CBC does involves providing stenography services for their paymasters.
Here are just a few examples:
- “Federal government apologizes for ‘profound harm’ of Dundas Harbour relocations”
- “Jordan’s Principle funding… being extended through 2026: Indigenous Services”
- “Liberal government announces dental care expansion the day before expected election call”
Agencies like the Bank of Canada, Indigenous Services Canada, and Transportation Safety Board are routinely presented as authoritative and neutral. By contrast, opposition or industry critiques are usually presented as secondary (“…but critics say”) or are simply invisible. Overall, private-sector actors like airlines, oil companies, or developers are far more likely to be criticized.
All this is classic institutional bias: the state and its agencies are the default lens through which reality is filtered.
Not unlike the horrors going on at the BBC, much of this bias is likely unconscious. I’m sure that presenting this evidence to CBC editors and managers would evoke little more than blank stares. This stuff flies way below the radar.
But as one of the AI tools I used concluded:
In short, this 2025 CBC RSS sample shows a very strong and consistent left-progressive institutional bias both in story selection (agenda) and in framing (interpretation). The outlet functions less as a neutral public broadcaster and more as an amplifier of government, public-sector, and social-progressive narratives, with particular hostility reserved for Donald Trump, Canadian conservatives, and anything that could be construed as “right-wing misinformation.”
And here’s the bottom line from a second tool:
The data reveals a consistent editorial worldview where legitimate change flows from institutions downward, identity group membership is newsworthy, and systemic intervention is the default solution framework.
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Is Updating a Few Thousand Readers Worth a Half Million Taxpayer Dollars? |
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| Plenty has been written about the many difficulties faced by legacy news media operations. You might even recall reading about the troubled CBC and the Liberal government’s ill-fated Online News Act in these very pages. Traditional subscription and broadcast models are drying up, and on-line ad-based revenues are in sharp decline. | ||||||
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Business
COP30 finally admits what resource workers already knew: prosperity and lower emissions must go hand in hand
From Resource Works
By Jim Rushton
What a difference a few weeks make
Finally, the Conference of the Parties to the UN climate convention (COP30) adopted a pragmatic tone that will appeal to the working class. Too bad it took thirty meetings. Pragmatism produces results, not missed targets.
We should not have been surprised. Influential figures like Bill Gates and Canadian-Venezuelan analyst Quico Toro, who have long argued that efforts to reduce CO₂ should focus more on technology and prosperity, and less on energy consumption and declining growth, have gained ground.
In the World Energy Outlook 2025, prepared by the International Energy Agency for COP30, you can see that many of the views held by the people above had already gone mainstream before the conference started.
The World Energy Outlook 2025 lays out three scenarios: Current Policies (CPS), Stated Policies (STEPS), and Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (NZE). In WEO 2025, all three scenarios reflect longer timelines for the decline of fossil fuels than in earlier editions, and the NZE pathway explicitly states that major technological breakthroughs will be required.
Unfortunately, many potential technologies are adamantly opposed by the loudest groups within the Climate Change Movement because they are not perfect. Even some continue to oppose nuclear power, one of the few proven sources of large-scale, zero-carbon, firm electricity.
Another noteworthy standout in WEO 2025 was the strong recognition that energy security, costs, and supply chains are now the primary considerations in determining each country’s energy mix.
What all this means is we are breaking away from emotionally charged, fear-based policies and rhetoric and moving toward a practical “let’s do things better” approach.
For 30 years, the radical leadership of the environmental movement has focused on what we should stop doing and on sacrificing prosperity. Essentially, what has been going on is an attack on working people in the industrialized and developing world.
Today, workers in the developed world are so anxious that many are losing faith in democratic institutions. Meanwhile, people in the emerging and developing world see light at the end of the tunnel and are determined to industrialize.
Clearly, it is time to merge the fight to lower CO₂ emissions with prosperity. “Let’s do things better” captures the history of human progress and resonates with working people today.
What does it take for longer, healthier, safer, and more sustainable lives? It takes the pragmatism of workers. They spend their lives striving to improve workplace safety, to develop tools that enable them to perform tasks more effectively with less physical effort, to earn higher pay, to produce more food with less land, and to preserve their opportunity to continue working.
Resource workers have felt under attack and are humiliated when celebrities fly in on a helicopter to denigrate their work and make references to the virtues of small-plot gardening, or politicians who tell them to go back to school for “jobs of the future”, only to find themselves in low-paying service jobs.
As the COP30 discussion indicates, we have reached a turning point. It is time to focus on doing what needs to be done, but doing it better. It is time to stop banning activities entirely as though circumstances and technology never change. Demanding perfection hides what is possible, slows progress and, in some cases, stops it altogether.
Bill Gates’ memo to COP30 points to the turn in the road:
“We should measure success by our impact on human welfare more than our impact on the global temperature, and our success relies on putting energy, health, and agriculture at the centre of our strategies.”
Gates also makes a point that will resonate with working people: “Using more energy is a good thing because it is closely correlated with economic growth.” Ironically, a statement made by a billionaire resonates with working people more than does the message of many climate activists.
The work at the Port of Prince Rupert comes to mind, given its growing role in supplying cleaner cooking and heating fuels, when we are reminded that 2 billion people worldwide cook and/or heat their homes with highly polluting open fires (wood, charcoal, dung, agricultural waste).
Persuasion published Quico Toro’s essay on November 13, 2025, which speaks another truth.
“COP imagines these emissions as something a country’s government can set, like the dial on a thermostat. But emissions are more like GDP: the outcome of a complex process that politicians would like to be able to control, but do not actually control.”
I am feeling more secure about the future here in Canada and BC, as governments, First Nations and the public are leaning into climate and economic pragmatism.
There will be hard discussions and uncomfortable trade-offs. Past decisions need to be re-examined in good faith. Do they meet today’s demands? Are we doing what needs to be done better? Is it the right move for today’s youth and future generations? Will we bring back the hope and opportunity of a growing middle class?
Nobody, not the Liberal government, the BC NDP government, First Nations, none of us would have predicted the world we are facing today, where our economy and sovereignty are challenged.
Today, oil, natural gas, and critical minerals, not one or two but all three, are the financial backstop Canada needs, as we rebuild the economy and secure our sovereignty.
Look West: Jobs and Prosperity for Stronger BC and Canada is as much of an admission that we are falling behind as it is a call to action. Success will take billions of dollars, the exact amount unknown.
But what we do know is that oil, gas, and critical minerals generate the most public revenue, the highest incomes, and are our most significant exports. They are Canada’s bank and comparative advantage. They will provide the cash flow needed to get it done.
Not maximizing oil production and exports is fighting with both hands tied behind our back. We all know it; now we need to focus on doing it better because circumstances have changed dramatically.
Jim Rushton is a 46-year veteran of BC’s resource and transportation sectors, with experience in union representation, economic development, and terminal management.
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