National
We Tried To Warn Them
From the National Citizens Coalition
By Alexander Brown
After a week of open insults to Western Canada and Canada’s great energy producers, a refusal to address the generational housing crisis concerns held by millions of Canadians, and (another) refusal to table a federal budget, one might be forgiven for assuming we’re living the last decade all over again.
But in many ways, so far, we are.
“This has been as bad a start as it can get,” I put in a press release Thursday morning, and on that, there can be little doubt.
Gregor Robertson, Carney’s new housing minister, already represents a Brantford Boomer-style middle-finger to young and working Canadians. The architect of Vancouver’s historic affordability crisis, and one of the pioneer early-allowers of the ‘Vancouver model’ of foreign investment fraud, Robertson, just days into his federal role, declared that home prices “don’t need to come down,” dismissing the struggles of millions of Canadians priced out of the market. This tone-deaf stance, his apparent refusal to understand basic principles of supply and demand, coupled with his track record of overseeing Vancouver’s affordability crisis and the price of new homes soaring by 140%, suggests the Liberals have no plan to deliver on their promise to allow Canadian under-50s back into the housing market.
On pipelines and the dire need to kill Bill C-69, both Steven Guilbeault — a walking, talking unity crisis — and Dominic LeBlanc have already contradicted Mark Carney’s carefully-worded half-promises on becoming an “energy superpower.” The provinces may well be committed to working together — even, perhaps surprisingly, Carney’s Liberal-lite allies at Queen’s Park — but if the feds continue to be adversarial towards Canadian unity and prosperity, the doldrums of the past few years won’t just continue — they’ll accelerate.
On budgets — well, there isn’t one. (Maybe a mini one in the fall.) Still coasting on the convenient excuse of Donald Trump, even with those elbows down already, the Carney PMO, run by the same Trudeau advisers, who champion the PM as some “economic genius” (the collapse of GFANZ would suggest otherwise), have picked up right where Justin left off when it comes to economic unaccountability.
The decision to appoint Sean Fraser as minister of justice is just as troubling. Fraser, who previously oversaw historically unsustainable immigration levels as immigration minister and delivered no measurable results as housing minister, now takes on a justice portfolio at a time when random violent attacks are leaving families shaken across Canada. Reports of stabbings, assaults, and public safety breakdowns dominate headlines, yet Fraser’s early comments suggest he may prioritize working from home over tackling the crime wave head-on. Canadians need a justice minister focused on restoring safety and locking up criminals, not one repeatedly failing upward into another role he’s unprepared to handle. Like the endless healthcare wait-times coupled with unvetted mass-immigration, the continuation of a status-quo on drugs, crime, chaos, and catch-and-release will quite literally kill, and kill by the thousands.
On all of this, the hollowness of “elbows up,” the cynical fear-mongering, the blaringly-obvious rhetorical hedges to ever avoid saying “oil,” “gas,” or “pipeline” on the campaign trail, the lack of movement on crime or chaos, and the threat of more of the same on housing, we tried to warn Liberal voters.
That it didn’t matter to them, that it still won’t, will be a source of frustration and alienation that doesn’t bode well for the future of ‘Team Canada,’ if that team still even exists at all. You deserved better. Your kids and grandkids deserved better. There’s still time to right some of this wrong, to soften the beginnings of a new lost Liberal decade, that, together, we may mercifully cut short. But this is bad. There’s no beating around the bush.
We tried. We failed. They failed.
We get up, and try again.
Alexander Brown is the Director of the National Citizens Coalition.
The Great Enlightment Buddhist Academy, PEI
Prince Edward Island’s government has formally asked the RCMP to investigate allegations of foreign interference and money laundering tied to Buddhist-affiliated organizations operating in the province — an escalation that follows The Bureau’s reporting and last week’s press conference on Parliament Hill calling for a federal public inquiry.
In a letter sent today to RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme, Premier Rob Lantz and Minister of Housing Cory Deagle urge federal authorities to “review any evidence available, engage with the individuals who have made these claims, and conduct an investigation into any wrongdoing.” A companion letter was sent to FINTRAC, asking Canada’s financial intelligence unit to assess whether regulatory action is warranted.
The government move comes a week after The Bureau reported on findings presented at an October 8 news conference tied to the book Canada Under Siege: How P.E.I. Became a Forward Operating Base for the Chinese Communist Party.
In a following op-ed, co-author Garry Clement said the press conference had “set down a marker: Canada has entered a new era of contestation — over influence, sovereignty, and the integrity of its democratic institutions.” In related coverage by CBC, representatives of the religious groups have denied any links to the Chinese Communist Party or any improper dealings.
Clement and co-authors argued that the allegations demand “action, reform, and reckoning,” and called for a federal public inquiry with full powers — an appeal joined by former Solicitor General and long-time P.E.I. MP Wayne Easter, who urged an inquiry capable of compelling testimony and documents.
The Bureau also revealed a development that stunned Islanders: a response subpoenaed by P.E.I. lawmakers showed that an anticipated 2016–2018 Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission (IRAC) investigation into Buddhist-linked land holdings was never completed. A January 26, 2018 letter from IRAC’s appointed counsel notified firms representing the groups that the section 15 probe “has ended,” without public findings or any explanation of who ordered the closure or why. The disclosure raised fresh questions about oversight and potential conflicts, and now forms part of the backdrop to the province’s formal request for federal action.
The Bureau contacted IRAC last week with questions related to the agency’s management, including counsel relationships and prior positions within P.E.I. legal networks. New developments on this breaking story will be reported.
Today’s letter to RCMP Commissioner Duheme from the P.E.I. government explicitly references the October 8 statements by a former Solicitor General of Canada and a former RCMP Superintendent, noting it was “suggested that information exists that could provide grounds for a criminal investigation.” The Premier further flags assertions that P.E.I. has been used as “a forward operating base for the Chinese Communist Party,” calling the claim “serious” and stating it must be examined by federal agencies to determine whether any factual basis exists.
The province also points to what it describes as a newly mandated and ongoing investigation by IRAC into land holdings “associated with some of the same entities referenced in the public allegations,” using powers expanded in 2022 under the Lands Protection Act. Any findings with criminal or national-security implications, the letter says, will be referred to federal authorities.
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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Lee Harding
Ottawa’s Major Projects Office is a fix for a mess the Liberals created—where approval now hinges on politics, not merit.
They are repeating their same old tricks, dressing up political favouritism as progress instead of cutting barriers for everyone
On Sept. 11, the Prime Minister’s Office announced five projects being examined by its Major Projects Office, all with the potential to be fast-tracked for approval and to get financial help. However, no one should get too excited. This is only a bad effort at fixing what government wrecked.
During the Trudeau years, and since, the Liberals have created a regulatory environment so daunting that companies need a trump card to get anything done. That’s why the Major Projects Office (MPO) exists.
“The MPO will work to fast-track nation-building projects by streamlining regulatory assessment and approvals and helping to structure financing, in close partnership with provinces, territories, Indigenous Peoples and private investors,” explains a government press release.
Canadians must not be fooled. A better solution would be to create a regulatory and tax environment where these projects can meet market demand through private investment. We don’t have that in Canada, which is why money has fled the country and our GDP growth per capita is near zero.
Instead of this less politicized and more even-handed approach, the Liberals have found a way to make their cabinet the only gatekeepers able to usher someone past the impossible process they created. Then, having done so, they can brag about what “they” got done.
The Fraser Institute has called out this system for its potential to incentivize bribes and kickbacks. The Liberals have such a track record of handing out projects and even judicial positions to their friends that such scenarios become easier to believe. Innumerable business groups will be kissing up to the Liberals just to get anything major done.
The government has created the need for more of itself, and it is following up in every way it can. Already, the federal government has set up offices across Canada for people to apply for such projects. Really? Anyone with enough dollars to pursue a major project can fly to Ottawa to make their pitch.
No, this is as much about the show as it is about results—and probably much more. It is all too reminiscent of another big-sounding, mostly ineffective program the Liberal government rolled out in 2017. They announced a $950-million Innovation Superclusters Initiative “designed to help strengthen Canada’s most promising clusters … while positioning Canadian firms for global leadership.”
That program allowed any company in the world to participate, with winners getting matching dollars from taxpayers for their proposals. (But all for the good of Canada, we were told.) More than 50 applications were made for these sweepstakes, which included more than 1,000 businesses and 350 other participants. In Trudeau Liberal fashion, every applicant had to articulate how their proposal would increase female jobs and leadership and encourage diversity in the long term.
The entire process was like one big Dragon’s Den series. The Liberals trotted out a list of contestants full of nice-sounding possibilities, with maximum hype and minimal reality. Late in the process, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Navdeep Bains picked the nine finalists himself (all based in cities with a Liberal MP), from which five would be chosen.
The alleged premise was to leverage local and regional commercial clusters, but that soon proved ridiculous. The “Clean, Low-energy, Effective and Remediated Supercluster” purported to power clean growth in mining in Ontario, Quebec and Vancouver. Not to be outdone, the “Mobility Systems and Technologies for the 21st Century Supercluster” included all three of these locations, plus Atlantic Canada. They were only clustered by their tendency to vote Liberal.
Today, the MPO repeats this virtue-signalling, politicking, drawn-out, tax-dollar-spending drama. The Red Chris Mine expansion in northwest British Columbia is one of the proposals under consideration. It would be done in conjunction with the Indigenous Tahltan Nation and is supposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70 per cent. That’s right up the Liberal alley.
Meanwhile, the project is somehow part of a proposed Northwest Critical Conservation Corridor that would cordon off an area the size of Greece from development. Is this economic growth or economic prohibition? This approach is more like the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 than it is nation-building. And it is more like the World Economic Forum’s “stakeholder capitalism” approach than it is free enterprise.
At least there are two gems among the five proposals. One is to expand capacity at the Port of Montreal, and another is to expand the Canada LNG facility in Kitimat, B.C. Both have a market case and clear economic benefits.
Even here, Canadians must ask themselves, why must the government use a bulldozer to get past the red tape it created? Why not cut the tape for everyone? The Liberals deserve little credit for knocking down a door they barred themselves.
Lee Harding is a research fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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