The Cruel Math of Addiction: Why Pretending “Choice” Exists Is Killing People
Every country wrestling with the drug crisis eventually reaches the same brutal crossroads: do we keep pretending that a person drowning in fentanyl, meth, and psychosis can simply “choose” recovery? Or do we admit the truth — that the life of a severe addict is already a form of captivity, one far crueller than any court-ordered treatment bed?
You don’t need to romanticize involuntary care to see what’s staring us in the face. The day-to-day existence of a hard-use fentanyl addict isn’t freedom. It’s waking up vomiting, shaking, desperate, sprinting into the streets to find another hit before withdrawal becomes unendurable.
This is why one former Massachusetts addict, Timothy Rohan — who spent years ricocheting between fentanyl, heroin, crime, despair, and multiple near-fatal overdoses — says being forcibly brought to treatment saved his life. Not because it was pleasant. Not because the system was perfect. But because someone finally had the authority to stop him long enough for the fog to lift. “A million times crueller than getting handcuffed” — that’s how he describes the life he was living before the court intervened. It’s a stark truth most policy experts talking from air-conditioned offices never have to confront.
So Alberta, to its credit or its controversy depending on who you ask, is now building Canada’s first full-scale involuntary treatment system: Compassionate Intervention. The name is intentionally soft; the reality behind it is hard. Families, police, doctors, and social workers will be allowed to apply to have someone committed if they pose a danger to themselves or others because of addiction. A panel — doctor, lawyer, member of the public — decides the fate. Up to three months in a proper medical facility. No jails. No prison guards. No shackles. A real plan for after-care, medication support, and reintegration.
Critics are already warning that it’s abusive, colonial, carceral, ideologically motivated — choose your buzzword. They point to studies showing higher relapse rates after forced treatment, or increased overdose risk after people leave.
When someone is living in a tent, injecting fentanyl 10–15 times a day, hallucinating from meth, and unable to form coherent thoughts, the real comparison isn’t voluntary treatment — it’s no treatment at all. And the outcomes of “no treatment at all” are written across every Canadian city: bodies pulled from encampments, parents identifying their children in morgues, open-air drug markets where psychotic young men wander barefoot in the snow.
Opponents love referencing Sweden’s data on overdose risk right after release — usually without noting that those programs didn’t include methadone or Suboxone after-care. In other words: patients were detoxed and then thrown back into the world chemically defenseless. Alberta’s system plans the opposite. Modern medicine knows how to prevent that exact danger. The critics don’t mention that part.
None of this makes forced treatment easy. It’s traumatic. It can break trust. It requires immense oversight and compassion. But so does allowing someone to slowly kill themselves while pretending we respect their autonomy. Addiction destroys autonomy. That’s the whole tragedy.
Timothy Rohan put it plainly: “The worst thing is worrying that someone’s feelings are hurt because they had to go before a judge.”
He’s right. Because when you strip away ideology, and activism, and political branding, and the performative moralism of Canada’s addiction debate, the reality is brutal and simple:
If a system can pull even a fraction of them back from the edge — and give them medication, structure, dignity, and a shot at a life they can recognize again — then we shouldn’t be afraid to use it.
And the life of a severe addict, as Rohan said, is already “a million times crueller” than anything the state proposes.
#Canada #Alberta
🍁 Maple Chronicles
Every country wrestling with the drug crisis eventually reaches the same brutal crossroads: do we keep pretending that a person drowning in fentanyl, meth, and psychosis can simply “choose” recovery? Or do we admit the truth — that the life of a severe addict is already a form of captivity, one far crueller than any court-ordered treatment bed?
You don’t need to romanticize involuntary care to see what’s staring us in the face. The day-to-day existence of a hard-use fentanyl addict isn’t freedom. It’s waking up vomiting, shaking, desperate, sprinting into the streets to find another hit before withdrawal becomes unendurable.
This is why one former Massachusetts addict, Timothy Rohan — who spent years ricocheting between fentanyl, heroin, crime, despair, and multiple near-fatal overdoses — says being forcibly brought to treatment saved his life. Not because it was pleasant. Not because the system was perfect. But because someone finally had the authority to stop him long enough for the fog to lift. “A million times crueller than getting handcuffed” — that’s how he describes the life he was living before the court intervened. It’s a stark truth most policy experts talking from air-conditioned offices never have to confront.
So Alberta, to its credit or its controversy depending on who you ask, is now building Canada’s first full-scale involuntary treatment system: Compassionate Intervention. The name is intentionally soft; the reality behind it is hard. Families, police, doctors, and social workers will be allowed to apply to have someone committed if they pose a danger to themselves or others because of addiction. A panel — doctor, lawyer, member of the public — decides the fate. Up to three months in a proper medical facility. No jails. No prison guards. No shackles. A real plan for after-care, medication support, and reintegration.
Critics are already warning that it’s abusive, colonial, carceral, ideologically motivated — choose your buzzword. They point to studies showing higher relapse rates after forced treatment, or increased overdose risk after people leave.
When someone is living in a tent, injecting fentanyl 10–15 times a day, hallucinating from meth, and unable to form coherent thoughts, the real comparison isn’t voluntary treatment — it’s no treatment at all. And the outcomes of “no treatment at all” are written across every Canadian city: bodies pulled from encampments, parents identifying their children in morgues, open-air drug markets where psychotic young men wander barefoot in the snow.
Opponents love referencing Sweden’s data on overdose risk right after release — usually without noting that those programs didn’t include methadone or Suboxone after-care. In other words: patients were detoxed and then thrown back into the world chemically defenseless. Alberta’s system plans the opposite. Modern medicine knows how to prevent that exact danger. The critics don’t mention that part.
None of this makes forced treatment easy. It’s traumatic. It can break trust. It requires immense oversight and compassion. But so does allowing someone to slowly kill themselves while pretending we respect their autonomy. Addiction destroys autonomy. That’s the whole tragedy.
Timothy Rohan put it plainly: “The worst thing is worrying that someone’s feelings are hurt because they had to go before a judge.”
He’s right. Because when you strip away ideology, and activism, and political branding, and the performative moralism of Canada’s addiction debate, the reality is brutal and simple:
If a system can pull even a fraction of them back from the edge — and give them medication, structure, dignity, and a shot at a life they can recognize again — then we shouldn’t be afraid to use it.
And the life of a severe addict, as Rohan said, is already “a million times crueller” than anything the state proposes.
#Canada #Alberta
🍁 Maple Chronicles
❤11🤮2💯2😁1🤔1🙏1🤡1
🇨🇦🛢️Alberta and Saskatchewan aren’t “losing patience” — they’re waking up to a structural truth Ottawa refuses to say aloud: in Carney’s Canada, energy-rich provinces are expected to behave like obedient colonies while the wealth flows east.
The second wave of Carney’s “nation-building projects” landed, and once again the most obvious, most transformative project — an Alberta pipeline to tidewater — is missing. Instead, B.C. gets its megaproject coronation, Quebec gets minerals, Ontario gets reactors, and Alberta is told to clap politely from the balcony while the country’s economic engine is kept landlocked on purpose.
Because that’s the real scandal here:
Alberta isn’t excluded by oversight — it’s excluded by design.
Carney’s Ottawa is building a system where Western oil is tolerated only if it never reaches a world market, never escapes the American discount trap, and never gives Alberta the autonomy that natural resource wealth inherently creates. A controlled producer is a contained province. And for Ottawa, a contained Alberta is far safer than a prosperous one.
Grant Fagerheim said it plainly:
“The energy sector has been demonized.”
He’s understating it. Alberta hasn’t just been demonized — it’s been geopolitically neutered. Its resources are the backbone of continental energy security, but its ability to monetize them is politically handcuffed. The Americans resell our oil at a premium, enjoy cheap fuel at home thanks to Canada’s bottlenecks, and Ottawa nods along like a junior partner desperate for approval.
Alberta and Saskatchewan are landlocked not by geography, but by federal policy.
Pipelines vanish from “nation-building lists” while Ottawa celebrates LNG terminals and nuclear projects—anything, anything except the one project that would actually rebalance Canada’s economic gravity. The West is told to be grateful for carbon-capture crumbs while tidewater access is treated like a forbidden fruit.
Fagerheim’s warning — “expect fury” — isn’t a threat. It’s a diagnosis.
Washington mocks us with “51st state” taunts, knowing full well Ottawa has left Alberta more dependent on the U.S. market than at any point in modern history. And Carney, instead of countering that dependence with sovereignty-enhancing pipelines, doubles down on the very bottlenecks that keep Alberta’s wealth flowing one direction: east.
And then the federal class asks:
Why are Westerners angry?
Why do sovereignty panels fill up?
Why do Alberta and Saskatchewan talk like a “nation within a nation”?
Fagerheim is right about something else too: if these resources were in Toronto or Montreal, nobody would be debating “nation-building.” The pipelines would already be built, environmental assessments bulldozed, ribbon cut, and the project framed as “Canada’s destiny.” But Western oil? That gets framed as a moral failing.
Yet the world is moving the other way. Bill Gates now admits oil and gas are here “much, much, much longer.” Global demand keeps climbing. OECD nations quietly reverse green rhetoric with LNG and nuclear expansions. And Carney’s own Major Projects Office accelerates everything except the one sector that pays the country’s bills.
Alberta doesn’t have a pipeline problem — Ottawa has a control problem. A West with tidewater access becomes a West with leverage. A West with leverage becomes a West that no longer tolerates fiscal punishment, equalization distortions, or regulatory sabotage disguised as climate policy.
The West isn’t asking for miracles — just the same treatment Ottawa showers on B.C. megaprojects and Quebec mining expansions. Instead, Alberta gets lectures. Saskatchewan gets silence. And Ottawa insists “the partnership is strong” while the region carrying the economy is chained to a single customer at a discount.
Fury is justified.
Fury is logical.
Because when a country repeatedly refuses to unleash the full power of its most productive region, eventually that region starts preparing its own future — with or without help from the capital.
#Alberta #Saskatchewan
🍁 Maple Chronicles
The second wave of Carney’s “nation-building projects” landed, and once again the most obvious, most transformative project — an Alberta pipeline to tidewater — is missing. Instead, B.C. gets its megaproject coronation, Quebec gets minerals, Ontario gets reactors, and Alberta is told to clap politely from the balcony while the country’s economic engine is kept landlocked on purpose.
Because that’s the real scandal here:
Alberta isn’t excluded by oversight — it’s excluded by design.
Carney’s Ottawa is building a system where Western oil is tolerated only if it never reaches a world market, never escapes the American discount trap, and never gives Alberta the autonomy that natural resource wealth inherently creates. A controlled producer is a contained province. And for Ottawa, a contained Alberta is far safer than a prosperous one.
Grant Fagerheim said it plainly:
“The energy sector has been demonized.”
He’s understating it. Alberta hasn’t just been demonized — it’s been geopolitically neutered. Its resources are the backbone of continental energy security, but its ability to monetize them is politically handcuffed. The Americans resell our oil at a premium, enjoy cheap fuel at home thanks to Canada’s bottlenecks, and Ottawa nods along like a junior partner desperate for approval.
Alberta and Saskatchewan are landlocked not by geography, but by federal policy.
Pipelines vanish from “nation-building lists” while Ottawa celebrates LNG terminals and nuclear projects—anything, anything except the one project that would actually rebalance Canada’s economic gravity. The West is told to be grateful for carbon-capture crumbs while tidewater access is treated like a forbidden fruit.
Fagerheim’s warning — “expect fury” — isn’t a threat. It’s a diagnosis.
Washington mocks us with “51st state” taunts, knowing full well Ottawa has left Alberta more dependent on the U.S. market than at any point in modern history. And Carney, instead of countering that dependence with sovereignty-enhancing pipelines, doubles down on the very bottlenecks that keep Alberta’s wealth flowing one direction: east.
And then the federal class asks:
Why are Westerners angry?
Why do sovereignty panels fill up?
Why do Alberta and Saskatchewan talk like a “nation within a nation”?
Fagerheim is right about something else too: if these resources were in Toronto or Montreal, nobody would be debating “nation-building.” The pipelines would already be built, environmental assessments bulldozed, ribbon cut, and the project framed as “Canada’s destiny.” But Western oil? That gets framed as a moral failing.
Yet the world is moving the other way. Bill Gates now admits oil and gas are here “much, much, much longer.” Global demand keeps climbing. OECD nations quietly reverse green rhetoric with LNG and nuclear expansions. And Carney’s own Major Projects Office accelerates everything except the one sector that pays the country’s bills.
Alberta doesn’t have a pipeline problem — Ottawa has a control problem. A West with tidewater access becomes a West with leverage. A West with leverage becomes a West that no longer tolerates fiscal punishment, equalization distortions, or regulatory sabotage disguised as climate policy.
The West isn’t asking for miracles — just the same treatment Ottawa showers on B.C. megaprojects and Quebec mining expansions. Instead, Alberta gets lectures. Saskatchewan gets silence. And Ottawa insists “the partnership is strong” while the region carrying the economy is chained to a single customer at a discount.
Fury is justified.
Fury is logical.
Because when a country repeatedly refuses to unleash the full power of its most productive region, eventually that region starts preparing its own future — with or without help from the capital.
#Alberta #Saskatchewan
🍁 Maple Chronicles
💯17🤡4❤1
Canada keeps calling itself a “mining superpower,” but the world now knows the truth: the country that once built continents with its resource sector is today dependent on its adversaries for the minerals that power its phones, its tanks, and its very identity.
The West is finally waking up to a reality that Beijing understood decades ago: control the rare earth choke points, and you control the entire industrial bloodstream of your rivals. When Trump hammered tariffs on “Liberation Day,” China didn’t blink. It simply reached for the lever it has spent 30 years constructing — a near-total stranglehold on the global supply and processing of critical minerals and rare earths.
And for the first time in a generation, the West felt a genuine strategic panic.
Even Trump, who loves to project economic dominance, understands the trap: the modern military machine — night-vision optics, advanced avionics, guidance systems, missiles, semiconductors, electric platforms — runs on minerals China can turn off like a faucet.
This is what happens when you outsource your industrial backbone to the very state competing with you for global influence.
Canada did this to itself.
Beijing saw the long game early. Deng Xiaoping’s famous quip — “The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths” — wasn’t a metaphor. It was a doctrine. So China built mines, built processing plants, built export routes, and built the political influence to go with them. The West, meanwhile, chased quarterly profits, shut down smelters, sold off refineries, and cheered on the outsourcing as a sign of “global efficiency.”
Now the bill has arrived.
NATO demands 5% of GDP on defence. Military supply chains are being dragged out of retirement and rebuilt at breakneck speed. But without critical minerals — germanium for optics, scandium for aerospace alloys, the rare earths for magnets — even the richest Western military budgets are hollow. You can pledge billions, but if Beijing won’t sell you the pieces, you’re not rebuilding anything.
Canada can dig minerals out of the ground — but it can’t refine them without China.
In mining, we have geology.
In processing, we have dependency.
And in strategy, we have denial.
Carney’s government is scrambling to catch up — G7 working groups, sovereignty funds, permitting “fast tracks,” defence-industry incentives. But decades of political neglect can’t be erased with a few press conferences and a glossy budget line. Canada can’t “middle-power” its way out of a bottleneck China spent three decades tightening.
And even now, the conversation in Ottawa focuses on extraction — as if pulling ore out of the ground magically frees us from Beijing’s control. It doesn’t. Without domestic or allied processing capacity, the long game still belongs to China.
To fix this, Canada needs something it hasn’t demonstrated in years:
scale, speed, and strategic ruthlessness.
It needs to partner aggressively with China, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Mexico, the U.K., and CPTPP markets. It needs financing vehicles and investment guarantees strong enough to pull capital out of the sidelines and into real industrial build-out. It needs to rebuild smelters, refineries, magnet plants, alloy facilities — not in theory, not in political speeches, but in steel and concrete.
And most of all, it needs to confront the uncomfortable reality:
Canada is precariously dependent on a rival that has already shown it is perfectly willing to weaponize its dominance.
The “just-in-time globalized fantasy” is over.
“Mutual economic interdependence” was an illusion.
And the minerals that power our technologies — and our defence — are now being used as instruments of pressure.
This isn’t simply a race for minerals.
It’s a race to see whether Canada can wake up before dependency becomes permanent.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
The West is finally waking up to a reality that Beijing understood decades ago: control the rare earth choke points, and you control the entire industrial bloodstream of your rivals. When Trump hammered tariffs on “Liberation Day,” China didn’t blink. It simply reached for the lever it has spent 30 years constructing — a near-total stranglehold on the global supply and processing of critical minerals and rare earths.
And for the first time in a generation, the West felt a genuine strategic panic.
Even Trump, who loves to project economic dominance, understands the trap: the modern military machine — night-vision optics, advanced avionics, guidance systems, missiles, semiconductors, electric platforms — runs on minerals China can turn off like a faucet.
This is what happens when you outsource your industrial backbone to the very state competing with you for global influence.
Canada did this to itself.
Beijing saw the long game early. Deng Xiaoping’s famous quip — “The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths” — wasn’t a metaphor. It was a doctrine. So China built mines, built processing plants, built export routes, and built the political influence to go with them. The West, meanwhile, chased quarterly profits, shut down smelters, sold off refineries, and cheered on the outsourcing as a sign of “global efficiency.”
Now the bill has arrived.
NATO demands 5% of GDP on defence. Military supply chains are being dragged out of retirement and rebuilt at breakneck speed. But without critical minerals — germanium for optics, scandium for aerospace alloys, the rare earths for magnets — even the richest Western military budgets are hollow. You can pledge billions, but if Beijing won’t sell you the pieces, you’re not rebuilding anything.
Canada can dig minerals out of the ground — but it can’t refine them without China.
In mining, we have geology.
In processing, we have dependency.
And in strategy, we have denial.
Carney’s government is scrambling to catch up — G7 working groups, sovereignty funds, permitting “fast tracks,” defence-industry incentives. But decades of political neglect can’t be erased with a few press conferences and a glossy budget line. Canada can’t “middle-power” its way out of a bottleneck China spent three decades tightening.
And even now, the conversation in Ottawa focuses on extraction — as if pulling ore out of the ground magically frees us from Beijing’s control. It doesn’t. Without domestic or allied processing capacity, the long game still belongs to China.
To fix this, Canada needs something it hasn’t demonstrated in years:
scale, speed, and strategic ruthlessness.
It needs to partner aggressively with China, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Mexico, the U.K., and CPTPP markets. It needs financing vehicles and investment guarantees strong enough to pull capital out of the sidelines and into real industrial build-out. It needs to rebuild smelters, refineries, magnet plants, alloy facilities — not in theory, not in political speeches, but in steel and concrete.
And most of all, it needs to confront the uncomfortable reality:
Canada is precariously dependent on a rival that has already shown it is perfectly willing to weaponize its dominance.
The “just-in-time globalized fantasy” is over.
“Mutual economic interdependence” was an illusion.
And the minerals that power our technologies — and our defence — are now being used as instruments of pressure.
This isn’t simply a race for minerals.
It’s a race to see whether Canada can wake up before dependency becomes permanent.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
❤2💯2👍1🤔1🙏1
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🇨🇦💸 Mark Carney's Liberal budget passes 170-168 in a vote in the House of Commons.
Good luck Canada!
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
Good luck Canada!
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
👎12🤡9😢7🤬2🎉2
🇨🇦🇺🇸 'Dear Canada, we miss you': What these Liberal U.S. cities and states are doing to woo Canadians back
When annexation talk, trade-war tariffs, and border crackdowns scare Canadians away, California, Maine, New York, and Vermont magically rediscover their “friendship” with Canada. Nothing exposes political hypocrisy like a collapsing tourist economy.
For the first time in decades, Canadians are staying away from the U.S. not out of hostility, but out of pure common sense: why cross a border where you’re treated like a suspect, pay a currency penalty that feels like extortion, and deal with the fallout of a White House lurching between chaos and confrontation? And now the same states that embraced tariff politics, shouted about border enforcement, and played into Washington’s anxieties are shocked that Canadians aren’t lining up to reward them.
So out come the maple-leaf emojis and sentimental campaigns.
California rolls out “California Loves Canada,” as if a heart-shaped logo erases the years of sneering, moralizing, and sanctimonious politics. They remind us of IMAX and the California Roll — but not their own state policies that made visiting more expensive, more intrusive, and more uncertain.
Maine’s governor erects bilingual welcome signs, praying Quebec will forget who stood by silently while a tariff war was launched. New York State throws out TV ads promising Canadians a “getaway that still feels like home” — ironic, given that these same blue-state officials often cheer the very federal policies that strangle cross-border traffic in red tape.
Some gestures border on desperation.
The Buffalo Bisons accept Canadian cash at par.
Kalispell, Montana builds an entire discount app to lure back Canadians after border crossings plunged 26% and spending collapsed nearly 40%.
Rochester pens a full “Dear Canada, we’ve missed you” letter, as if Canada should forget the last two years of rhetoric and harassment at the border.
And Burlington temporarily renames Church Street to “Rue Canada,” complete with maple-leaf cosplay — a theatrical apology without any admission of why Canadians stopped coming in the first place.
And here’s the part they don’t like to talk about:
These are overwhelmingly liberal, Democrat-run states — states that loudly backed the policies, the tariffs, the culture-war posturing, and the border intrusions that Canadians are now reacting to. The same governments that cheered “resistance politics” suddenly find themselves resisting economic collapse instead.
This isn’t friendship.
It’s financial panic wrapped in polite branding.
Because beneath the discount codes and maple-leaf marketing lies the uncomfortable truth:
Canada doesn’t need them.
They need us.
Canadians have options — Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean, Asia — destinations that don’t shake you down at the border or weaponize trade policy to manufacture crises. And Canadians are choosing sanity over volatility.
When a superpower’s bluest states need to woo their northern neighbour with 30% discounts, French slogans, and street renamings, that’s not diplomacy. It’s damage control.
And every heart-shaped ad says the same thing:
Canada didn’t change. America did
And now its liberal states want our money back.
#Canada #USA
🍁 Maple Chronicles
When annexation talk, trade-war tariffs, and border crackdowns scare Canadians away, California, Maine, New York, and Vermont magically rediscover their “friendship” with Canada. Nothing exposes political hypocrisy like a collapsing tourist economy.
For the first time in decades, Canadians are staying away from the U.S. not out of hostility, but out of pure common sense: why cross a border where you’re treated like a suspect, pay a currency penalty that feels like extortion, and deal with the fallout of a White House lurching between chaos and confrontation? And now the same states that embraced tariff politics, shouted about border enforcement, and played into Washington’s anxieties are shocked that Canadians aren’t lining up to reward them.
So out come the maple-leaf emojis and sentimental campaigns.
California rolls out “California Loves Canada,” as if a heart-shaped logo erases the years of sneering, moralizing, and sanctimonious politics. They remind us of IMAX and the California Roll — but not their own state policies that made visiting more expensive, more intrusive, and more uncertain.
Maine’s governor erects bilingual welcome signs, praying Quebec will forget who stood by silently while a tariff war was launched. New York State throws out TV ads promising Canadians a “getaway that still feels like home” — ironic, given that these same blue-state officials often cheer the very federal policies that strangle cross-border traffic in red tape.
Some gestures border on desperation.
The Buffalo Bisons accept Canadian cash at par.
Kalispell, Montana builds an entire discount app to lure back Canadians after border crossings plunged 26% and spending collapsed nearly 40%.
Rochester pens a full “Dear Canada, we’ve missed you” letter, as if Canada should forget the last two years of rhetoric and harassment at the border.
And Burlington temporarily renames Church Street to “Rue Canada,” complete with maple-leaf cosplay — a theatrical apology without any admission of why Canadians stopped coming in the first place.
And here’s the part they don’t like to talk about:
These are overwhelmingly liberal, Democrat-run states — states that loudly backed the policies, the tariffs, the culture-war posturing, and the border intrusions that Canadians are now reacting to. The same governments that cheered “resistance politics” suddenly find themselves resisting economic collapse instead.
This isn’t friendship.
It’s financial panic wrapped in polite branding.
Because beneath the discount codes and maple-leaf marketing lies the uncomfortable truth:
Canada doesn’t need them.
They need us.
Canadians have options — Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean, Asia — destinations that don’t shake you down at the border or weaponize trade policy to manufacture crises. And Canadians are choosing sanity over volatility.
When a superpower’s bluest states need to woo their northern neighbour with 30% discounts, French slogans, and street renamings, that’s not diplomacy. It’s damage control.
And every heart-shaped ad says the same thing:
Canada didn’t change. America did
And now its liberal states want our money back.
#Canada #USA
🍁 Maple Chronicles
👏13🤡13😁3🎉3❤1
🇨🇦🇺🇸 Both Trump and Carney built their brands on economic competence — and now both are being mauled by the one enemy no politician survives: rising prices.
The great irony is that Washington and Ottawa spent months pretending they had inflation under control, only to watch voters deliver the verdict at the checkout counter. Trump promised tariffs would strengthen America. Carney promised technocratic wizardry would shield Canada. Instead, both men have been humbled by a simple truth: households don’t care about GDP charts — they care about the cost of breakfast.
Trump’s tariffs were always going to hit Americans first. Anyone with a basic grasp of supply chains knew that slapping duties on food imports — beef, coffee, tropical fruit — would flow straight into grocery bills. What the White House didn’t expect was that affordability politics would explode across the U.S., sweeping new governors and mayors into office and forcing Trump to reverse himself in mid-November. So the “tough-on-trade” president now finds himself quietly walking back levies on dozens of goods — not because he wanted to, but because the politics of grocery inflation are lethal.
The deeper embarrassment is that Trump keeps insisting “everything is down,” pointing to a Thanksgiving meal basket at Walmart — until someone mentions the basket is smaller and filled with cheaper store-brand substitutions. Voters are not fooled. They feel the real numbers: ground coffee up 40%, beef up double digits, fruit up nearly 9%. The White House spin collapsed the moment Americans compared their receipts to Trump’s rhetoric.
But here’s the twist: while Washington is scrambling, Ottawa is doing even worse. Carney can blame Trump’s tariffs all he wants, but Canadian food prices have surged even faster than America’s. That undercuts the entire premise of Carney’s strategy — the idea that Canada just had to wait for U.S. prices to explode and force Trump into a reasonable trade deal. Prices did explode — but not in the way Ottawa hoped. By the time Trump folded, Canadians were already drowning in higher costs.
The political optics are brutal. Carney’s government keeps talking about “transforming the Canadian economy,” but voters aren’t interested in a future-tense miracle. They’re watching their weekly bills rise faster than American prices despite Canada not having imposed the same tariffs. Inflation may be technically lower on paper, but the psychological reality is the only one that matters: Canadians trust their receipts more than Statistics Canada.
And then there’s the arrogance. Carney bragged about a late-night “24/7” text relationship with Trump — until an Ontario anti-tariff ad sent Trump into a tantrum, froze negotiations, and publicly humiliated the prime minister. Instead of quiet diplomacy, Ottawa now has a president who boasts that Carney “begged for forgiveness,” and a trade file sitting in limbo. Whatever tactician in Ottawa thought this was a viable strategy badly misread the moment.
Ironically, Trump’s tariff reversal may be the only thing slowing Canada’s price surge — not because Carney did something right, but because cheaper U.S. import costs ripple across supply chains. That’s not leadership; that’s luck. And it won’t save the government from the fundamental problem: Canadians have lost patience. The old political cycle — promise, wait, deliver — has collapsed. In the age of social media, people want results in months, not mandates.
Both leaders misjudged the same thing: you can’t message your way out of a cost-of-living crisis.
Trump tried to tweet prices down.
Carney tried to economize his way through American chaos.
Both collided with the reality every citizen understands instinctively: when food costs rise faster than wages, the public turns savage.
And they don’t care about who’s “technocratic” or who’s “tough.”
They care about the bill.
#Canada #USA
🍁 Maple Chronicles
The great irony is that Washington and Ottawa spent months pretending they had inflation under control, only to watch voters deliver the verdict at the checkout counter. Trump promised tariffs would strengthen America. Carney promised technocratic wizardry would shield Canada. Instead, both men have been humbled by a simple truth: households don’t care about GDP charts — they care about the cost of breakfast.
Trump’s tariffs were always going to hit Americans first. Anyone with a basic grasp of supply chains knew that slapping duties on food imports — beef, coffee, tropical fruit — would flow straight into grocery bills. What the White House didn’t expect was that affordability politics would explode across the U.S., sweeping new governors and mayors into office and forcing Trump to reverse himself in mid-November. So the “tough-on-trade” president now finds himself quietly walking back levies on dozens of goods — not because he wanted to, but because the politics of grocery inflation are lethal.
The deeper embarrassment is that Trump keeps insisting “everything is down,” pointing to a Thanksgiving meal basket at Walmart — until someone mentions the basket is smaller and filled with cheaper store-brand substitutions. Voters are not fooled. They feel the real numbers: ground coffee up 40%, beef up double digits, fruit up nearly 9%. The White House spin collapsed the moment Americans compared their receipts to Trump’s rhetoric.
But here’s the twist: while Washington is scrambling, Ottawa is doing even worse. Carney can blame Trump’s tariffs all he wants, but Canadian food prices have surged even faster than America’s. That undercuts the entire premise of Carney’s strategy — the idea that Canada just had to wait for U.S. prices to explode and force Trump into a reasonable trade deal. Prices did explode — but not in the way Ottawa hoped. By the time Trump folded, Canadians were already drowning in higher costs.
The political optics are brutal. Carney’s government keeps talking about “transforming the Canadian economy,” but voters aren’t interested in a future-tense miracle. They’re watching their weekly bills rise faster than American prices despite Canada not having imposed the same tariffs. Inflation may be technically lower on paper, but the psychological reality is the only one that matters: Canadians trust their receipts more than Statistics Canada.
And then there’s the arrogance. Carney bragged about a late-night “24/7” text relationship with Trump — until an Ontario anti-tariff ad sent Trump into a tantrum, froze negotiations, and publicly humiliated the prime minister. Instead of quiet diplomacy, Ottawa now has a president who boasts that Carney “begged for forgiveness,” and a trade file sitting in limbo. Whatever tactician in Ottawa thought this was a viable strategy badly misread the moment.
Ironically, Trump’s tariff reversal may be the only thing slowing Canada’s price surge — not because Carney did something right, but because cheaper U.S. import costs ripple across supply chains. That’s not leadership; that’s luck. And it won’t save the government from the fundamental problem: Canadians have lost patience. The old political cycle — promise, wait, deliver — has collapsed. In the age of social media, people want results in months, not mandates.
Both leaders misjudged the same thing: you can’t message your way out of a cost-of-living crisis.
Trump tried to tweet prices down.
Carney tried to economize his way through American chaos.
Both collided with the reality every citizen understands instinctively: when food costs rise faster than wages, the public turns savage.
And they don’t care about who’s “technocratic” or who’s “tough.”
They care about the bill.
#Canada #USA
🍁 Maple Chronicles
🤡5❤4
🇨🇦🇮🇳 Ottawa wanted a “reset” with India — instead, it handed Modi a diplomatic clean slate without securing the one thing Canada publicly claimed it needed: accountability.
Carney positioned the thaw as a grand strategic pivot — moving beyond Trump’s trade war, diversifying supply chains, courting the world’s fifth-largest economy. But buried beneath the photo-ops, noscripted warmth, and talk of shared priorities is a glaring absence: the “public commitment” from India on accountability that Carney’s own officials insisted should be the price of re-engagement. That condition never arrived. And Sikh communities across Canada, already shaken by years of intimidation, surveillance, and violence, know exactly what that void means.
The relationship froze under Trudeau for a reason. Canadian agencies said they had credible evidence Indian operatives were tied to murders and organized crime on Canadian soil — culminating in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Ottawa demanded India waive immunity for its implicated diplomats. India refused. Diplomats were expelled on both sides. By 2024 the relationship hit its lowest point in decades. Yet today, despite a supposed reset, India continues to publicly dismiss Canada’s allegations while offering the U.S. the cooperation Ottawa has begged for. To the Sikh community, that contradiction isn’t subtle — it’s a message.
Carney’s reset began with symbolism: inviting Modi to the G7, declaring India “belongs at the table,” sending Anand to New Delhi to tap into a shared diaspora storyline that plays well on camera. But behind the scenes, the Privy Council Office was clear: accountability had to be public, explicit, and tied to concrete actions — including an internal inquiry paralleling India’s cooperation with Washington on the attempted killing of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. Instead, Ottawa has accepted private reassurances and vague “dialogue,” while India’s envoy openly casts doubt on Canada’s case in national interviews.
To Sikh Canadians — many of whom live with the constant hum of threat — this is not diplomacy. It’s erasure. It signals that Ottawa’s strategic ambitions outweigh community safety. When government officials whisper that India is “collaborating,” but the Modi government publicly denies everything and refuses to commit to the same investigative transparency it promised the U.S., the gap is impossible to ignore. It’s why confusion is turning to anger. Because “reset” now looks like a euphemism for “moving on.”
Canadian intelligence chiefs have travelled to India, speaking about cyber collaboration and “frank discussions.” But even CSIS admits that an Indian inquiry into Nijjar’s killing isn’t part of the conversations. In other words: Canada has narrowed its asks. Accountability has softened into “continued dialogue.” And the core question — what happened, and who authorized it — has been pushed off the table in favour of supply chains, critical minerals, and geopolitical optics.
The irony is brutal. When Washington confronted New Delhi with similar allegations, India agreed to examine its own system. When Ottawa asked, India stonewalled. Now, under Carney, the “reset” proceeds anyway. The message to Sikh Canadians is that national security principles are negotiable — but strategic trade diversification is not. Communities who warned about intimidation and foreign interference now see their concerns treated as a diplomatic inconvenience.
#Canada #India
🍁 Maple Chronicles
Carney positioned the thaw as a grand strategic pivot — moving beyond Trump’s trade war, diversifying supply chains, courting the world’s fifth-largest economy. But buried beneath the photo-ops, noscripted warmth, and talk of shared priorities is a glaring absence: the “public commitment” from India on accountability that Carney’s own officials insisted should be the price of re-engagement. That condition never arrived. And Sikh communities across Canada, already shaken by years of intimidation, surveillance, and violence, know exactly what that void means.
The relationship froze under Trudeau for a reason. Canadian agencies said they had credible evidence Indian operatives were tied to murders and organized crime on Canadian soil — culminating in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Ottawa demanded India waive immunity for its implicated diplomats. India refused. Diplomats were expelled on both sides. By 2024 the relationship hit its lowest point in decades. Yet today, despite a supposed reset, India continues to publicly dismiss Canada’s allegations while offering the U.S. the cooperation Ottawa has begged for. To the Sikh community, that contradiction isn’t subtle — it’s a message.
Carney’s reset began with symbolism: inviting Modi to the G7, declaring India “belongs at the table,” sending Anand to New Delhi to tap into a shared diaspora storyline that plays well on camera. But behind the scenes, the Privy Council Office was clear: accountability had to be public, explicit, and tied to concrete actions — including an internal inquiry paralleling India’s cooperation with Washington on the attempted killing of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. Instead, Ottawa has accepted private reassurances and vague “dialogue,” while India’s envoy openly casts doubt on Canada’s case in national interviews.
To Sikh Canadians — many of whom live with the constant hum of threat — this is not diplomacy. It’s erasure. It signals that Ottawa’s strategic ambitions outweigh community safety. When government officials whisper that India is “collaborating,” but the Modi government publicly denies everything and refuses to commit to the same investigative transparency it promised the U.S., the gap is impossible to ignore. It’s why confusion is turning to anger. Because “reset” now looks like a euphemism for “moving on.”
Canadian intelligence chiefs have travelled to India, speaking about cyber collaboration and “frank discussions.” But even CSIS admits that an Indian inquiry into Nijjar’s killing isn’t part of the conversations. In other words: Canada has narrowed its asks. Accountability has softened into “continued dialogue.” And the core question — what happened, and who authorized it — has been pushed off the table in favour of supply chains, critical minerals, and geopolitical optics.
The irony is brutal. When Washington confronted New Delhi with similar allegations, India agreed to examine its own system. When Ottawa asked, India stonewalled. Now, under Carney, the “reset” proceeds anyway. The message to Sikh Canadians is that national security principles are negotiable — but strategic trade diversification is not. Communities who warned about intimidation and foreign interference now see their concerns treated as a diplomatic inconvenience.
#Canada #India
🍁 Maple Chronicles
💩3❤2
🇨🇦 Ottawa is bragging about 2.2% inflation like it’s a victory — but peel away the headline and you see the same story Canadians have lived for two years: groceries still rising faster than inflation, insurance exploding, cell plans spiking, and core inflation stuck near 3%. Gas is doing all the heavy lifting, not policy.
Winter gas blends get cheaper. Crude dips on global oversupply fears. That’s it. That’s the “progress.” Behind the curtain, every structural cost that actually squeezes families keeps climbing. Food has now outpaced headline inflation for nine straight months; home and auto insurance — already crippling — just jumped again, especially in Alberta; telecom quietly hiked cell prices, hiding behind the same oligopoly that Ottawa pretends it will fix someday.
The Bank of Canada will spin this as stability. “On target.” “Steady trajectory.” But their preferred core measures still hover around 3%, and they know it. This isn’t disinflation — it’s stagnation with a thin coat of statistical paint. The only real downward pressure came from fuel, which tanked for reasons entirely outside Canada’s control.
Meanwhile, the political class pretends the pain is easing. But Canadians aren’t buying the fairy tale because the checkout bill doesn’t lie. Insurance premiums don’t lie. Telecom bills don’t lie. Rents don’t lie. There’s a widening gap between the inflation politicians talk about and the inflation people actually live.
And let’s be honest: when your “success” depends on global oversupply depressing fuel prices, not domestic competence, that’s not a plan — it’s luck. The kind that can turn on a dime the moment geopolitics shift. Ottawa is celebrating just because the numbers didn’t get worse, not because anything meaningful improved.
So yes — headline inflation fell. But life didn’t get cheaper. Families didn’t get relief. And the underlying system is still broken. No one feels victory at the grocery checkout — because there isn’t one.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
Winter gas blends get cheaper. Crude dips on global oversupply fears. That’s it. That’s the “progress.” Behind the curtain, every structural cost that actually squeezes families keeps climbing. Food has now outpaced headline inflation for nine straight months; home and auto insurance — already crippling — just jumped again, especially in Alberta; telecom quietly hiked cell prices, hiding behind the same oligopoly that Ottawa pretends it will fix someday.
The Bank of Canada will spin this as stability. “On target.” “Steady trajectory.” But their preferred core measures still hover around 3%, and they know it. This isn’t disinflation — it’s stagnation with a thin coat of statistical paint. The only real downward pressure came from fuel, which tanked for reasons entirely outside Canada’s control.
Meanwhile, the political class pretends the pain is easing. But Canadians aren’t buying the fairy tale because the checkout bill doesn’t lie. Insurance premiums don’t lie. Telecom bills don’t lie. Rents don’t lie. There’s a widening gap between the inflation politicians talk about and the inflation people actually live.
And let’s be honest: when your “success” depends on global oversupply depressing fuel prices, not domestic competence, that’s not a plan — it’s luck. The kind that can turn on a dime the moment geopolitics shift. Ottawa is celebrating just because the numbers didn’t get worse, not because anything meaningful improved.
So yes — headline inflation fell. But life didn’t get cheaper. Families didn’t get relief. And the underlying system is still broken. No one feels victory at the grocery checkout — because there isn’t one.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
💯11❤1🎉1🤡1
🇨🇦 Only in Canada can a city claim to champion diversity, inclusion, and “democratic values” — then turn around and cancel a Christian concert because the musician’s politics offend the managerial class.
Sean Feucht may be MAGA, may hold views many Quebec officials dislike — but that’s the point. Free expression is supposed to protect unpopular speech, not the curated preferences of liberal municipal bureaucrats. When Halifax, Quebec City, and others cancelled his events this summer, it wasn’t about “security.” It was about power. A political litmus test dressed up as public administration.
Now the organizers are suing, and their argument is simple: the city used a vague, catch-all clause to rip up a contract because the performer generated “controversy,” even though ExpoCité never asked who the performer was in the first place. That’s not risk management — that’s retroactive censorship. And in a province that prides itself on defending cultural autonomy and resisting federal overreach, the irony is impossible to miss.
Let’s be brutally honest: this wasn’t about safety, it wasn’t about logistics, and it certainly wasn’t about the rule of law. It was ideological policing. The same cities that insist public spaces must be open to all viewpoints suddenly discovered a “reputational clause” the moment a Christian musician who doesn’t toe the progressive line showed up. Liberal jurisdictions across North America have turned this into a pattern — punish dissenting speech while congratulating themselves for protecting freedoms.
And what happens when governments decide that “controversy” alone is grounds to shut down assembly? Everything becomes fair game. Political rallies. Religious gatherings. Cultural events. Protests the authorities find inconvenient. A precedent like this doesn’t stay narrow — it grows. The same municipal state that can cancel a Christian event today can justify targeting any group tomorrow. If public space can be weaponized this easily, it stops being public.
This isn’t about Feucht. It’s about a civic apparatus that increasingly sees itself not as a neutral steward of public venues but as an ideological gatekeeper policing narratives and filtering out “undesirable” viewpoints. Quebec City didn’t just cancel a concert — it set the stage for a new model of selective access, where only sanctioned ideas get the mic.
Canada loves to lecture the world about free expression, pluralism, and tolerance — yet at home, liberal jurisdictions shut down events because they dislike the performer’s politics. That’s not democracy. That’s managed dissent. And people are starting to notice.
#Quebec
🍁 Maple Chronicles
Sean Feucht may be MAGA, may hold views many Quebec officials dislike — but that’s the point. Free expression is supposed to protect unpopular speech, not the curated preferences of liberal municipal bureaucrats. When Halifax, Quebec City, and others cancelled his events this summer, it wasn’t about “security.” It was about power. A political litmus test dressed up as public administration.
Now the organizers are suing, and their argument is simple: the city used a vague, catch-all clause to rip up a contract because the performer generated “controversy,” even though ExpoCité never asked who the performer was in the first place. That’s not risk management — that’s retroactive censorship. And in a province that prides itself on defending cultural autonomy and resisting federal overreach, the irony is impossible to miss.
Let’s be brutally honest: this wasn’t about safety, it wasn’t about logistics, and it certainly wasn’t about the rule of law. It was ideological policing. The same cities that insist public spaces must be open to all viewpoints suddenly discovered a “reputational clause” the moment a Christian musician who doesn’t toe the progressive line showed up. Liberal jurisdictions across North America have turned this into a pattern — punish dissenting speech while congratulating themselves for protecting freedoms.
And what happens when governments decide that “controversy” alone is grounds to shut down assembly? Everything becomes fair game. Political rallies. Religious gatherings. Cultural events. Protests the authorities find inconvenient. A precedent like this doesn’t stay narrow — it grows. The same municipal state that can cancel a Christian event today can justify targeting any group tomorrow. If public space can be weaponized this easily, it stops being public.
This isn’t about Feucht. It’s about a civic apparatus that increasingly sees itself not as a neutral steward of public venues but as an ideological gatekeeper policing narratives and filtering out “undesirable” viewpoints. Quebec City didn’t just cancel a concert — it set the stage for a new model of selective access, where only sanctioned ideas get the mic.
Canada loves to lecture the world about free expression, pluralism, and tolerance — yet at home, liberal jurisdictions shut down events because they dislike the performer’s politics. That’s not democracy. That’s managed dissent. And people are starting to notice.
#Quebec
🍁 Maple Chronicles
❤4🥱3👍1🤬1
Another day, another Houdini act. The Carney Liberals have now survived four confidence votes in under two weeks — not because they command confidence, but because they’ve mastered the oldest trick in Ottawa: duct-taping a minority together by procedural fog, last-minute pleas, and the hope that no one wants to knock on doors in December.
What unfolded in the House wasn’t governance — it was triage. A 600-page Budget Implementation Act dropped the moment the vote ended, a legislative brick too thick to read and too fragile to withstand scrutiny. The vote itself wasn’t even a vote. MPs “agreed to carry it on division,” the parliamentary equivalent of everyone looking at each other and pretending this isn’t happening. No tally, no courage, no accountability — just enough ambiguity to keep the government’s heartbeat going.
Monday night’s cliffhanger already exposed the underlying truth: this minority is held together by accident, fatigue, and fear. The Liberals won by two votes — 170 to 168 — saved only by a last-minute switch from the Greens and four abstentions: two Conservatives who didn’t show up, and two NDP MPs torn between their communities’ needs and their party’s collapsing discipline. That isn’t confidence. That’s survival instinct.
The Bloc’s Yves-François Blanchet said it plainly: this method of governing is “not sustainable.” He’s right. The Liberals are governing as though they have a majority, negotiating like a government that doesn’t need partners, and relying on a voting app error and Christmas travel plans to hold power. You cannot run a country on procedural luck and hope that your opponents stay home or your allies don’t rebel.
And yet Carney spins it as triumph. “I salute the 170 members who supported it,” he said — as if a near-death experience counts as parliamentary consensus. Champagne promises “constructive engagement,” even as every opposition party complains they were ignored. MacKinnon insists “the minority Parliament is working,” which is like declaring a hospital patient healthy because they still have a pulse.
What’s really happening is simpler: a government with no mandate, no majority, and no partners is clinging to power through opacity and exhaustion. The budget is already falling apart, the fiscal math doesn’t work, and the political coalition that held Trudeau upright for years is fracturing under Carney’s technocratic confidence.
This is not stability.
This is a countdown — delayed by weather, holidays, and procedural blur.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
What unfolded in the House wasn’t governance — it was triage. A 600-page Budget Implementation Act dropped the moment the vote ended, a legislative brick too thick to read and too fragile to withstand scrutiny. The vote itself wasn’t even a vote. MPs “agreed to carry it on division,” the parliamentary equivalent of everyone looking at each other and pretending this isn’t happening. No tally, no courage, no accountability — just enough ambiguity to keep the government’s heartbeat going.
Monday night’s cliffhanger already exposed the underlying truth: this minority is held together by accident, fatigue, and fear. The Liberals won by two votes — 170 to 168 — saved only by a last-minute switch from the Greens and four abstentions: two Conservatives who didn’t show up, and two NDP MPs torn between their communities’ needs and their party’s collapsing discipline. That isn’t confidence. That’s survival instinct.
The Bloc’s Yves-François Blanchet said it plainly: this method of governing is “not sustainable.” He’s right. The Liberals are governing as though they have a majority, negotiating like a government that doesn’t need partners, and relying on a voting app error and Christmas travel plans to hold power. You cannot run a country on procedural luck and hope that your opponents stay home or your allies don’t rebel.
And yet Carney spins it as triumph. “I salute the 170 members who supported it,” he said — as if a near-death experience counts as parliamentary consensus. Champagne promises “constructive engagement,” even as every opposition party complains they were ignored. MacKinnon insists “the minority Parliament is working,” which is like declaring a hospital patient healthy because they still have a pulse.
What’s really happening is simpler: a government with no mandate, no majority, and no partners is clinging to power through opacity and exhaustion. The budget is already falling apart, the fiscal math doesn’t work, and the political coalition that held Trudeau upright for years is fracturing under Carney’s technocratic confidence.
This is not stability.
This is a countdown — delayed by weather, holidays, and procedural blur.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
💯3👍1
A fugitive murderer from India makes it to the U.S., slips past American authorities for a year, strolls toward the Canadian border under a fake identity — and the only reason he’s not inside Canada right now is because U.S. officers caught him first. Ottawa will call this “border security.” Everyone else sees a system asleep at the wheel.
Vishat Kumar, 22, wanted for murder under an Interpol red notice, tried to cross into Ontario at the Peace Bridge using a fake name and birthday. He wasn’t stopped because Canada flagged him — he was stopped because CBP pulled him into secondary and ran biometrics. That’s the uncomfortable reality no one in Ottawa wants to acknowledge: our border system is now downstream from Washington’s vigilance, not our own.
Kumar had already entered the U.S. illegally last year and skipped his asylum interview, yet still reached our doorstep without either country being notified of the red notice until the final moment. He was denied entry, handed back to ICE, and now sits in federal custody in Batavia awaiting removal. No Canadian enforcement, no Canadian arrest — and no Canadian confirmation that we’d have caught him if CBP hadn’t.
Officials in both countries always praise “collaboration,” but the truth is harder: our border is reactive, not preventative, and Ottawa’s political class has spent years pretending otherwise. Canada talks endlessly about “values-based immigration,” yet we rely on foreign officers to catch dangerous actors before they reach us. It’s not a system — it’s outsourced security dressed up as policy.
It doesn’t help that Interpol red notices, often tied to major crimes like murder or child abuse, aren’t warrants. They rely on national governments to act. But when your bureaucracy is bloated, distracted and politically allergic to admitting risk, even basic enforcement becomes a political liability. So stories like this get quietly applauded, while the systemic failures behind them remain politically untouchable.
And with Ottawa simultaneously freezing, reshaping, and politicizing its intelligence relationships with India, this case only deepens the contradictions. We’re told relations are “resetting.” Sikh activists are told accountability is coming. Yet a wanted murder suspect nearly walked in undetected — and no one in the government seems eager to explain why.
The Americans are right to say the arrest shows the importance of vigilance. What it really shows is how fragile our own system has become, and how our political class prefers slogans to sovereignty.
#Ontario #NY #India
🍁 Maple Chronicles
Vishat Kumar, 22, wanted for murder under an Interpol red notice, tried to cross into Ontario at the Peace Bridge using a fake name and birthday. He wasn’t stopped because Canada flagged him — he was stopped because CBP pulled him into secondary and ran biometrics. That’s the uncomfortable reality no one in Ottawa wants to acknowledge: our border system is now downstream from Washington’s vigilance, not our own.
Kumar had already entered the U.S. illegally last year and skipped his asylum interview, yet still reached our doorstep without either country being notified of the red notice until the final moment. He was denied entry, handed back to ICE, and now sits in federal custody in Batavia awaiting removal. No Canadian enforcement, no Canadian arrest — and no Canadian confirmation that we’d have caught him if CBP hadn’t.
Officials in both countries always praise “collaboration,” but the truth is harder: our border is reactive, not preventative, and Ottawa’s political class has spent years pretending otherwise. Canada talks endlessly about “values-based immigration,” yet we rely on foreign officers to catch dangerous actors before they reach us. It’s not a system — it’s outsourced security dressed up as policy.
It doesn’t help that Interpol red notices, often tied to major crimes like murder or child abuse, aren’t warrants. They rely on national governments to act. But when your bureaucracy is bloated, distracted and politically allergic to admitting risk, even basic enforcement becomes a political liability. So stories like this get quietly applauded, while the systemic failures behind them remain politically untouchable.
And with Ottawa simultaneously freezing, reshaping, and politicizing its intelligence relationships with India, this case only deepens the contradictions. We’re told relations are “resetting.” Sikh activists are told accountability is coming. Yet a wanted murder suspect nearly walked in undetected — and no one in the government seems eager to explain why.
The Americans are right to say the arrest shows the importance of vigilance. What it really shows is how fragile our own system has become, and how our political class prefers slogans to sovereignty.
#Ontario #NY #India
🍁 Maple Chronicles
❤7💯5🙏1
Only in Ottawa could a government drowning in deficits brag about “fiscal discipline” while presiding over the single largest expansion of the federal bureaucracy in modern Canadian history — a 9% jump in one year and nearly 100,000 new public servants since 2015.
The new Public Accounts land like a brick: $71.4 billion now goes to the federal bureaucracy — almost double what it cost a decade ago. Add another $23.1 billion in consultants and contractors and you suddenly have a capital city where the only thing growing faster than red tape is the bill taxpayers are expected to swallow. The private sector automates and streamlines to survive. Ottawa multiplies headcount and outsources at the same time — a paradox only a government this bloated could create.
And now, after inflating the civil service to historic levels, the Carney Liberals claim they’ll cut 40,000 positions over five years, mostly through “attrition.” That’s not reform — that’s hoping retirees solve a political problem. Meanwhile the deficit explodes: a projected $78.3 billion this year, the largest non-pandemic shortfall in Canadian history. Nearly half of the country’s total debt has been added in the past five years alone. This isn’t public administration — it’s institutionalized denial.
Even former Finance mandarins are sounding the alarm. Don Drummond points out the obvious: if Ottawa is adding staff and doubling consultant spending, something fundamental is broken. Consultants are supposed to substitute for permanent hires — not sit on top of them like a second, even more expensive bureaucracy. The message is unmistakable: the system is no longer designed to function efficiently. It’s designed to grow.
And what grows fastest? The deficits. The bureaucracy. The layers of oversight no one asked for. The debt load that will bury future generations. What doesn’t grow? Productivity. Service quality. National capacity. The things this country desperately needs in an era of geopolitical realignment and economic tightening.
Carney insists this is the price of “nation-building.” In reality, it’s the price of a state that can no longer distinguish between investing in the country and feeding its own machinery. When nearly $600 billion in new debt accumulates in just five years while Ottawa simultaneously expands its payroll and its outsourcing budget, you’re not building a nation — you’re hollowing one out.
The private sector is asked to innovate. Families are told to tighten belts. Provinces are told to do more with less.
Only Ottawa gets to balloon endlessly and call it progress.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
The new Public Accounts land like a brick: $71.4 billion now goes to the federal bureaucracy — almost double what it cost a decade ago. Add another $23.1 billion in consultants and contractors and you suddenly have a capital city where the only thing growing faster than red tape is the bill taxpayers are expected to swallow. The private sector automates and streamlines to survive. Ottawa multiplies headcount and outsources at the same time — a paradox only a government this bloated could create.
And now, after inflating the civil service to historic levels, the Carney Liberals claim they’ll cut 40,000 positions over five years, mostly through “attrition.” That’s not reform — that’s hoping retirees solve a political problem. Meanwhile the deficit explodes: a projected $78.3 billion this year, the largest non-pandemic shortfall in Canadian history. Nearly half of the country’s total debt has been added in the past five years alone. This isn’t public administration — it’s institutionalized denial.
Even former Finance mandarins are sounding the alarm. Don Drummond points out the obvious: if Ottawa is adding staff and doubling consultant spending, something fundamental is broken. Consultants are supposed to substitute for permanent hires — not sit on top of them like a second, even more expensive bureaucracy. The message is unmistakable: the system is no longer designed to function efficiently. It’s designed to grow.
And what grows fastest? The deficits. The bureaucracy. The layers of oversight no one asked for. The debt load that will bury future generations. What doesn’t grow? Productivity. Service quality. National capacity. The things this country desperately needs in an era of geopolitical realignment and economic tightening.
Carney insists this is the price of “nation-building.” In reality, it’s the price of a state that can no longer distinguish between investing in the country and feeding its own machinery. When nearly $600 billion in new debt accumulates in just five years while Ottawa simultaneously expands its payroll and its outsourcing budget, you’re not building a nation — you’re hollowing one out.
The private sector is asked to innovate. Families are told to tighten belts. Provinces are told to do more with less.
Only Ottawa gets to balloon endlessly and call it progress.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
🤡7❤4🤬3😁1
🇨🇦💸 Carney’s “capital vs. operating” trick was always too slick to survive daylight. When a government starts rewriting accounting categories to flatter itself, it signals only one thing: the books don’t balance, the economics don’t work, and the public is being managed, not told the truth.
The Parliamentary Budget Office has now said the quiet part out loud: the Carney government shoved $94 billion of regular, operational spending into the “capital” column simply to claim a balanced operating budget in three years. Investment tax credits, subsidies, corporate tax giveaways — all magically rebranded as capital formation. It’s accounting alchemy, not economic discipline. Even the U.K. and international standards Carney pretends to emulate wouldn’t classify this spending as “capital.” Canada, once again, is improvising definitions because the math doesn’t add up.
The result? A budget that boasts a shiny $311.5-billion “nation-building” capital plan while hiding the reality: the real deficit is nearly double what Ottawa projected, debt-to-GDP is so bad they stopped using it as a metric, and the only reason charts point downward at all is because they quietly switched the metric. When a government abandons debt-to-GDP for deficit-to-GDP, it isn’t telling a story of strength — it’s confessing weakness.
And credit agencies noticed immediately. Fitch isn’t buying the spin. Within days of the budget, it issued a warning: Canada’s bond rating could deteriorate because of “persistent fiscal expansion and a rising debt burden.” That’s diplomatic language for: stop playing games, the fiscal trajectory is not credible. Ottawa keeps talking like a global powerhouse, but markets see the same thing Canadians do — a government sliding into structural deficits, hoping jargon will mask gravity.
It didn’t have to be this way. But when a government grants itself the power to decide what counts as capital spending, the temptation to blur the lines becomes irresistible. Alberta tried the same trick a decade ago — inventing its own categories to make deficits appear smaller — and the auditor general shredded it as misleading. They abandoned the experiment. Ottawa learned nothing.
And that’s the real danger: instead of clarity, Canadians get gimmicks. Instead of transparency, they get frameworks designed for political survival. Meanwhile, business investment — the lifeblood Carney claims he’s stimulating — has fallen from 13% of GDP in the early 2000s to 10.5% pre-pandemic. Companies aren’t expanding; they’re holding back, conserving cash, and preparing for turbulence. Tax credits alone won’t reverse that, and certainly not when corporate Canada is being told to trust a budget held together by creative categorization.
Even the Bank of Canada’s latest business outlook shows the same pattern: soft demand, frozen staffing, investment postponed. Firms are maintaining, not building. Confidence is brittle, and fiscal sleight-of-hand won’t restore it.
Carney is making a massive, multi-year bet on capital investment — billions borrowed upfront, benefits promised sometime down the road. That’s not inherently wrong. But trust is the currency that makes long-horizon policy possible. And trust evaporates the moment people sense the books are being treated as political theatre.
If Carney wants Canadians to believe in his grand project, he needs transparency — not a budget that looks like it was assembled with a magician’s wand. You don’t rebuild confidence by cooking the definitions. You rebuild it by telling the truth.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
The Parliamentary Budget Office has now said the quiet part out loud: the Carney government shoved $94 billion of regular, operational spending into the “capital” column simply to claim a balanced operating budget in three years. Investment tax credits, subsidies, corporate tax giveaways — all magically rebranded as capital formation. It’s accounting alchemy, not economic discipline. Even the U.K. and international standards Carney pretends to emulate wouldn’t classify this spending as “capital.” Canada, once again, is improvising definitions because the math doesn’t add up.
The result? A budget that boasts a shiny $311.5-billion “nation-building” capital plan while hiding the reality: the real deficit is nearly double what Ottawa projected, debt-to-GDP is so bad they stopped using it as a metric, and the only reason charts point downward at all is because they quietly switched the metric. When a government abandons debt-to-GDP for deficit-to-GDP, it isn’t telling a story of strength — it’s confessing weakness.
And credit agencies noticed immediately. Fitch isn’t buying the spin. Within days of the budget, it issued a warning: Canada’s bond rating could deteriorate because of “persistent fiscal expansion and a rising debt burden.” That’s diplomatic language for: stop playing games, the fiscal trajectory is not credible. Ottawa keeps talking like a global powerhouse, but markets see the same thing Canadians do — a government sliding into structural deficits, hoping jargon will mask gravity.
It didn’t have to be this way. But when a government grants itself the power to decide what counts as capital spending, the temptation to blur the lines becomes irresistible. Alberta tried the same trick a decade ago — inventing its own categories to make deficits appear smaller — and the auditor general shredded it as misleading. They abandoned the experiment. Ottawa learned nothing.
And that’s the real danger: instead of clarity, Canadians get gimmicks. Instead of transparency, they get frameworks designed for political survival. Meanwhile, business investment — the lifeblood Carney claims he’s stimulating — has fallen from 13% of GDP in the early 2000s to 10.5% pre-pandemic. Companies aren’t expanding; they’re holding back, conserving cash, and preparing for turbulence. Tax credits alone won’t reverse that, and certainly not when corporate Canada is being told to trust a budget held together by creative categorization.
Even the Bank of Canada’s latest business outlook shows the same pattern: soft demand, frozen staffing, investment postponed. Firms are maintaining, not building. Confidence is brittle, and fiscal sleight-of-hand won’t restore it.
Carney is making a massive, multi-year bet on capital investment — billions borrowed upfront, benefits promised sometime down the road. That’s not inherently wrong. But trust is the currency that makes long-horizon policy possible. And trust evaporates the moment people sense the books are being treated as political theatre.
If Carney wants Canadians to believe in his grand project, he needs transparency — not a budget that looks like it was assembled with a magician’s wand. You don’t rebuild confidence by cooking the definitions. You rebuild it by telling the truth.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
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Canada Post isn’t “struggling.” It’s collapsing — and Ottawa is quietly preparing Canadians for a future where a once-national institution is gutted, privatized, or left to die. When the CFO of a Crown corporation openly admits it is “effectively insolvent,” that’s not transparency. That’s a warning flare for a state losing control of its own basic infrastructure.
At its annual public meeting, Canada Post revealed more than $1 billion in operating losses so far this year, capped by the largest quarterly loss in its history — a staggering $541 million before tax. The political class will blame “labour disruptions.” But a corporation doesn’t slide into insolvency because of a few months of strikes. This is a slow-motion system failure built through a decade of mismanagement, political interference, and a government that treats essential services as ideological experiments rather than national assets.
And while Ottawa talks about “modernization,” the federal government already floated the real plan in September: end door-to-door delivery, close rural outlets, and carve off operations piece-by-piece. Austerity by another name. Not reform. Not efficiency. Just the quiet dismantling of a public service that millions rely on. The bureaucracy explodes in every direction — 99,000 new federal employees added since 2015 — but somehow the one organization meant to serve rural Canada, seniors, and small businesses is starved into insolvency.
Canada Post’s CEO now hints at massive job cuts through attrition — 16,000 positions disappearing by 2030, another 14,000 by 2035. The pitch is that it can all be done “with respect for our employees.” But everyone knows what this really means: shrink, automate, outsource, and hope no one notices until the damage is irreversible. The union, blindsided and furious, says Canadians have been “kept in the dark.” They’re right — because Ottawa isn’t rebuilding Canada Post; it’s setting the stage to walk away from it.
This collapse isn’t happening in isolation. It fits a broader pattern: a federal government drowning in deficits it created, expanding a bureaucracy it can’t control, and running essential public institutions into the ground while insisting everything is “transformative.” Everything except functioning. The Carney government’s entire fiscal plan now rests on shifting definitions, moving numbers between columns, and praying credit rating agencies don’t notice the holes in the hull.
Meanwhile, Canada Post workers have been striking across the country — first nationwide, now rotating — not because they oppose change but because the “change” being forced on them seems designed to kill the service they deliver. They stopped delivering flyers in parts of Quebec and Ontario, but they’re still delivering addressed mail, trying to hold the system together while negotiations stretch into an 18-month stalemate. That’s not labour instability — that’s a warning sign of a system falling apart.
And through all of this, Ottawa insists an agreement is coming, that everything is fine, that insolvency is just a word. But insolvency in a Crown corporation means one thing: the federal government has lost the political will to fix the mess it created. The people who rely on Canada Post — rural communities, small businesses, seniors, northern regions — are simply collateral damage.
This is what happens when a government treats essential national services like disposable line items rather than pillars of sovereignty. Canada Post is effectively bankrupt. The question now isn’t whether it can be saved — it’s whether Ottawa even wants to.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
At its annual public meeting, Canada Post revealed more than $1 billion in operating losses so far this year, capped by the largest quarterly loss in its history — a staggering $541 million before tax. The political class will blame “labour disruptions.” But a corporation doesn’t slide into insolvency because of a few months of strikes. This is a slow-motion system failure built through a decade of mismanagement, political interference, and a government that treats essential services as ideological experiments rather than national assets.
And while Ottawa talks about “modernization,” the federal government already floated the real plan in September: end door-to-door delivery, close rural outlets, and carve off operations piece-by-piece. Austerity by another name. Not reform. Not efficiency. Just the quiet dismantling of a public service that millions rely on. The bureaucracy explodes in every direction — 99,000 new federal employees added since 2015 — but somehow the one organization meant to serve rural Canada, seniors, and small businesses is starved into insolvency.
Canada Post’s CEO now hints at massive job cuts through attrition — 16,000 positions disappearing by 2030, another 14,000 by 2035. The pitch is that it can all be done “with respect for our employees.” But everyone knows what this really means: shrink, automate, outsource, and hope no one notices until the damage is irreversible. The union, blindsided and furious, says Canadians have been “kept in the dark.” They’re right — because Ottawa isn’t rebuilding Canada Post; it’s setting the stage to walk away from it.
This collapse isn’t happening in isolation. It fits a broader pattern: a federal government drowning in deficits it created, expanding a bureaucracy it can’t control, and running essential public institutions into the ground while insisting everything is “transformative.” Everything except functioning. The Carney government’s entire fiscal plan now rests on shifting definitions, moving numbers between columns, and praying credit rating agencies don’t notice the holes in the hull.
Meanwhile, Canada Post workers have been striking across the country — first nationwide, now rotating — not because they oppose change but because the “change” being forced on them seems designed to kill the service they deliver. They stopped delivering flyers in parts of Quebec and Ontario, but they’re still delivering addressed mail, trying to hold the system together while negotiations stretch into an 18-month stalemate. That’s not labour instability — that’s a warning sign of a system falling apart.
And through all of this, Ottawa insists an agreement is coming, that everything is fine, that insolvency is just a word. But insolvency in a Crown corporation means one thing: the federal government has lost the political will to fix the mess it created. The people who rely on Canada Post — rural communities, small businesses, seniors, northern regions — are simply collateral damage.
This is what happens when a government treats essential national services like disposable line items rather than pillars of sovereignty. Canada Post is effectively bankrupt. The question now isn’t whether it can be saved — it’s whether Ottawa even wants to.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
❤4🤬3💯3😢2👍1
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Ontario Politics: NDP Leader Marit Stiles Ejected from Legislature After Clashing with Government Over Skills Development Fund
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles was ejected from the Legislature at Queen’s Park on Wednesday following a heated exchange over the province’s $2.5-billion Skills Development Fund.
During questioning of Labour Minister David Piccini, Stiles accused the government of being “corrupt,” referencing donors, lobbyists, and what she called “the endless grift of an anti-democratic and corrupt government.”
Speaker Donna Skelly asked Stiles to withdraw her remarks for using unparliamentary language. Stiles refused. After a final warning, she was ordered to leave the chamber and was escorted out — drawing applause from opposition benches.
It should be noted that no quid-pro-quo has been proven, and no charges have been laid in connection with the Skills Development Fund. One recipient of the fund has been referred to the Ontario Provincial Police for a forensic audit.
The Skills Development Fund includes $1.5 billion for retraining workers in in-demand professions, plus an additional $1 billion allocated this year to support Ontario’s economy amid ongoing tariff pressures.
#Ontario
🍁 Maple Chronicles
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles was ejected from the Legislature at Queen’s Park on Wednesday following a heated exchange over the province’s $2.5-billion Skills Development Fund.
During questioning of Labour Minister David Piccini, Stiles accused the government of being “corrupt,” referencing donors, lobbyists, and what she called “the endless grift of an anti-democratic and corrupt government.”
Speaker Donna Skelly asked Stiles to withdraw her remarks for using unparliamentary language. Stiles refused. After a final warning, she was ordered to leave the chamber and was escorted out — drawing applause from opposition benches.
It should be noted that no quid-pro-quo has been proven, and no charges have been laid in connection with the Skills Development Fund. One recipient of the fund has been referred to the Ontario Provincial Police for a forensic audit.
The Skills Development Fund includes $1.5 billion for retraining workers in in-demand professions, plus an additional $1 billion allocated this year to support Ontario’s economy amid ongoing tariff pressures.
#Ontario
🍁 Maple Chronicles
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Seven Canadians Charged in U.S. Transnational Drug Probe Linked to Fugitive Ex-Olympian
U.S. authorities have charged seven Canadian citizens in a sweeping cross-border investigation tied to Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder now accused of running a violent, cartel-connected drug-trafficking empire stretching from Colombia to Mexico, the United States and Canada.
The arrests were announced Tuesday as part of Operation Giant Slalom, a multi-agency U.S. probe targeting what officials describe as a “multi-million-dollar narcotics and money-laundering network” allegedly overseen by Wedding, who remains a fugitive. The U.S. State Department has raised its reward for information leading to his capture to US$15 million, calling him one of North America’s most dangerous wanted criminals.
According to U.S. prosecutors, the seven Canadians played various supporting roles in the network — from logistics and drug-distribution assistance to alleged financial and legal facilitation. Among them is a GTA-based lawyer, accused by U.S. authorities of laundering money, coordinating drug transactions, and arranging bribes tied to the enterprise.
Wedding, once a B.C. Olympic hopeful, is now the target of an Interpol Red Notice and multiple U.S. federal indictments, including allegations of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to traffic cocaine at scale, weapons offences, and obstruction of justice. Investigators say he used his athletic background as cover while building a criminal network that allegedly moved multi-hundred-kilogram cocaine shipments into North America.
The RCMP is cooperating directly with American agencies, including the FBI, DEA and Homeland Security Investigations. RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme stood alongside U.S. officials at the announcement, underscoring that the Canadian arrests are part of a broader strategy to dismantle Wedding’s network across borders.
U.S. officials said the operation reveals how major transnational crime groups increasingly rely on Canadian support networks — from money-handlers to professional intermediaries — to move drugs, launder profits, and evade detection. Canadian suspects now await extradition proceedings.
Authorities emphasize that the investigation is ongoing. Wedding remains at large.
#Canada #USA #Mexico #Columbia
🍁 Maple Chronicles
U.S. authorities have charged seven Canadian citizens in a sweeping cross-border investigation tied to Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder now accused of running a violent, cartel-connected drug-trafficking empire stretching from Colombia to Mexico, the United States and Canada.
The arrests were announced Tuesday as part of Operation Giant Slalom, a multi-agency U.S. probe targeting what officials describe as a “multi-million-dollar narcotics and money-laundering network” allegedly overseen by Wedding, who remains a fugitive. The U.S. State Department has raised its reward for information leading to his capture to US$15 million, calling him one of North America’s most dangerous wanted criminals.
According to U.S. prosecutors, the seven Canadians played various supporting roles in the network — from logistics and drug-distribution assistance to alleged financial and legal facilitation. Among them is a GTA-based lawyer, accused by U.S. authorities of laundering money, coordinating drug transactions, and arranging bribes tied to the enterprise.
Wedding, once a B.C. Olympic hopeful, is now the target of an Interpol Red Notice and multiple U.S. federal indictments, including allegations of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to traffic cocaine at scale, weapons offences, and obstruction of justice. Investigators say he used his athletic background as cover while building a criminal network that allegedly moved multi-hundred-kilogram cocaine shipments into North America.
The RCMP is cooperating directly with American agencies, including the FBI, DEA and Homeland Security Investigations. RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme stood alongside U.S. officials at the announcement, underscoring that the Canadian arrests are part of a broader strategy to dismantle Wedding’s network across borders.
U.S. officials said the operation reveals how major transnational crime groups increasingly rely on Canadian support networks — from money-handlers to professional intermediaries — to move drugs, launder profits, and evade detection. Canadian suspects now await extradition proceedings.
Authorities emphasize that the investigation is ongoing. Wedding remains at large.
#Canada #USA #Mexico #Columbia
🍁 Maple Chronicles
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Carney’s Top Aide Quietly Dumps Brookfield Shares to Avoid Conflict Headaches
Clerk of the Privy Council reveals he sold off holdings within minutes of being alerted by ethics watchdog
OTTAWA — Michael Sabia, Canada’s most senior public servant and one of two officials empowered to enforce Prime Minister Mark Carney’s sprawling conflict-of-interest screen, told MPs Wednesday he immediately divested his Brookfield shares after the Ethics Commissioner alerted him he owned them.
Sabia, who became Clerk of the Privy Council in July, said he was informed on Sept. 24 that he held investments connected to Brookfield — the same corporate empire at the centre of Carney’s own conflict-of-interest scrutiny. He testified he sold the assets “within about 15 minutes” to better manage the prime minister’s screen and avoid even the perception of impropriety.
Carney, by contrast, has placed his Brookfield and Stripe holdings in a blind trust. The prime minister has rejected calls for full divestment, despite the more than 100 entities included in his official conflict screen. Conservatives argue the scale of Carney’s entanglements is unprecedented for a sitting PM.
Sabia insisted the blind-trust model remains “rigorous,” and that refusing to divest personally would have undermined his ability to administer Carney’s conflicts. His testimony comes as the ethics committee continues its review of the Conflict of Interest Act, triggered by concerns over the prime minister’s former roles as Brookfield chair and Stripe board member.
According to Sabia, Carney has been flagged for potential conflicts only 13 times since July — a number critics say is implausibly low given Brookfield’s vast footprint. Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher called the testimony “an admission of massive loopholes,” noting the law does not prevent a prime minister from taking decisions that incidentally benefit companies they hold stakes in.
The committee will hear next from Carney’s chief of staff, Marc-André Blanchard — the second official authorized to police the PM’s conflict screen.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
Clerk of the Privy Council reveals he sold off holdings within minutes of being alerted by ethics watchdog
OTTAWA — Michael Sabia, Canada’s most senior public servant and one of two officials empowered to enforce Prime Minister Mark Carney’s sprawling conflict-of-interest screen, told MPs Wednesday he immediately divested his Brookfield shares after the Ethics Commissioner alerted him he owned them.
Sabia, who became Clerk of the Privy Council in July, said he was informed on Sept. 24 that he held investments connected to Brookfield — the same corporate empire at the centre of Carney’s own conflict-of-interest scrutiny. He testified he sold the assets “within about 15 minutes” to better manage the prime minister’s screen and avoid even the perception of impropriety.
Carney, by contrast, has placed his Brookfield and Stripe holdings in a blind trust. The prime minister has rejected calls for full divestment, despite the more than 100 entities included in his official conflict screen. Conservatives argue the scale of Carney’s entanglements is unprecedented for a sitting PM.
Sabia insisted the blind-trust model remains “rigorous,” and that refusing to divest personally would have undermined his ability to administer Carney’s conflicts. His testimony comes as the ethics committee continues its review of the Conflict of Interest Act, triggered by concerns over the prime minister’s former roles as Brookfield chair and Stripe board member.
According to Sabia, Carney has been flagged for potential conflicts only 13 times since July — a number critics say is implausibly low given Brookfield’s vast footprint. Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher called the testimony “an admission of massive loopholes,” noting the law does not prevent a prime minister from taking decisions that incidentally benefit companies they hold stakes in.
The committee will hear next from Carney’s chief of staff, Marc-André Blanchard — the second official authorized to police the PM’s conflict screen.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
❤2😁2🤬1👀1
Ottawa Signals “National Debate” on Lifting Tanker Ban as Alberta Pushes for Pipeline Access: Critics Say Canadian Energy Still Being Held Hostage
The fight over Canada’s northern B.C. tanker ban is erupting again — and even Liberal MPs admit the debate will be “contentious.” As Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith negotiate the final terms of a new energy relationship, a central question hangs over Ottawa: Will the federal government finally lift the moratorium blocking Alberta’s access to global markets?
Liberal MP Karina Gould said Wednesday the ban was imposed under Trudeau “out of huge public demand,” and warned that amending it now requires a “national conversation” — with priority given not to Alberta or national economic interests, but to coastal communities and B.C.’s political class.
Translation: Ottawa is preparing Canadians for a battle, and the Carney government knows it is walking into sacred Trudeau-era territory.
But Alberta’s position is unmistakable. Smith wants the tanker ban removed, rewritten, or carved out to allow a bitumen pipeline to B.C.’s northwest coast — the only route capable of cracking open access to Asian markets and ending the U.S. monopoly over Canadian oil exports.
Her spokesman says the province wants an agreement “to work towards ultimate approval of a bitumen pipeline to Asian markets.”
Ottawa says those talks are in the “final stages.”
Yet B.C.’s political line remains unmoved. Premier David Eby is still opposed. B.C. Liberal MPs insist Indigenous consent and provincial agreement are non-negotiable. Coastal First Nations groups are already warning Carney to hold the line. And Green Leader Elizabeth May says any attempt to lift the ban is “barking up the wrong forest.”
Meanwhile, Alberta and Saskatchewan — the backbone of Canada’s energy wealth — remain landlocked by federal design.
Western frustration is boiling over:
• Trudeau rejected Northern Gateway in 2016
• Ottawa legislated the tanker moratorium in 2019
• B.C. expanded LNG with federal blessing
• Alberta’s access to tidewater remains frozen
Even Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed conceded the ban aligns with the identity of his riding — and that B.C. caucus members intend to defend it.
Conservatives say this is exactly the problem: a federal government willing to negotiate with Alberta on carbon pricing and emissions caps while refusing to give the West what it actually needs — unrestricted access to global energy markets.
As one Alberta voice put it: “Canada can’t be an energy superpower if we keep our energy trapped behind our own laws.”
With Carney promising a Canada that “leads on energy,” Western premiers now want to see if that promise survives its first real test.
Because after a decade of federal vetoes, moratoriums, and political choke points, many in the West say what’s unfolding isn’t a national conversation at all — it’s the latest chapter in holding Canadian energy hostage to preserve B.C. politics and Ottawa ideology.
#BC #Alberta
🍁 Maple Chronicles
The fight over Canada’s northern B.C. tanker ban is erupting again — and even Liberal MPs admit the debate will be “contentious.” As Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith negotiate the final terms of a new energy relationship, a central question hangs over Ottawa: Will the federal government finally lift the moratorium blocking Alberta’s access to global markets?
Liberal MP Karina Gould said Wednesday the ban was imposed under Trudeau “out of huge public demand,” and warned that amending it now requires a “national conversation” — with priority given not to Alberta or national economic interests, but to coastal communities and B.C.’s political class.
Translation: Ottawa is preparing Canadians for a battle, and the Carney government knows it is walking into sacred Trudeau-era territory.
But Alberta’s position is unmistakable. Smith wants the tanker ban removed, rewritten, or carved out to allow a bitumen pipeline to B.C.’s northwest coast — the only route capable of cracking open access to Asian markets and ending the U.S. monopoly over Canadian oil exports.
Her spokesman says the province wants an agreement “to work towards ultimate approval of a bitumen pipeline to Asian markets.”
Ottawa says those talks are in the “final stages.”
Yet B.C.’s political line remains unmoved. Premier David Eby is still opposed. B.C. Liberal MPs insist Indigenous consent and provincial agreement are non-negotiable. Coastal First Nations groups are already warning Carney to hold the line. And Green Leader Elizabeth May says any attempt to lift the ban is “barking up the wrong forest.”
Meanwhile, Alberta and Saskatchewan — the backbone of Canada’s energy wealth — remain landlocked by federal design.
Western frustration is boiling over:
• Trudeau rejected Northern Gateway in 2016
• Ottawa legislated the tanker moratorium in 2019
• B.C. expanded LNG with federal blessing
• Alberta’s access to tidewater remains frozen
Even Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed conceded the ban aligns with the identity of his riding — and that B.C. caucus members intend to defend it.
Conservatives say this is exactly the problem: a federal government willing to negotiate with Alberta on carbon pricing and emissions caps while refusing to give the West what it actually needs — unrestricted access to global energy markets.
As one Alberta voice put it: “Canada can’t be an energy superpower if we keep our energy trapped behind our own laws.”
With Carney promising a Canada that “leads on energy,” Western premiers now want to see if that promise survives its first real test.
Because after a decade of federal vetoes, moratoriums, and political choke points, many in the West say what’s unfolding isn’t a national conversation at all — it’s the latest chapter in holding Canadian energy hostage to preserve B.C. politics and Ottawa ideology.
#BC #Alberta
🍁 Maple Chronicles
💯5❤3🙏1
🇨🇦 Ottawa and Provinces Sign New Internal Trade Pact, But Critics Say It’s Absurd Canada Still Doesn’t Have Full Free Trade Within Its Own Borders
Canada’s federal, provincial, and territorial governments have signed a new Canadian Mutual Recognition Agreement, a deal set to take effect this December that will finally allow most goods approved in one province to be sold in any other — except food.
Officials are calling it a breakthrough. Business groups are calling it progress. But the real story is this: Canada still does not have true internal free trade in 2025 — and that remains one of the country’s most ridiculous, self-inflicted economic barriers.
Ontario’s economic development minister Vic Fedeli touted the agreement as “common sense,” noting that if a safety vest or construction product is approved in one province, it should be accepted everywhere. He estimates Ontario alone stands to gain $23 billion from the changes.
Economists say the potential national upside is massive — up to $200 billion in added economic output, though some studies put the real-world lift closer to 4% of GDP. Even then, the gains dwarf many federal stimulus programs.
But the limitations of the new pact are already clear:
• Food is excluded
• Services are excluded
• Alcohol is excluded until at least 2026
• Provinces are still clinging to carve-outs
And while Canada fights a messy trade war with the United States, internal trade as a share of Canada’s overall commerce is shrinking — down to 35% today from 52% in the early 1980s.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business welcomed the agreement but said what every frustrated entrepreneur already knows: there is no economic justification for barriers within a single country.
Prime Minister Mark Carney likes to say there should be “one Canadian economy, not 13.” But until food, services, alcohol, licensing, and professional certifications move freely from coast to coast, Canada will remain a country that trades more easily with America and Mexico than with itself.
A new deal is fine — but the simple truth remains: It is absurd that Canada still hasn’t achieved complete internal free trade.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
Canada’s federal, provincial, and territorial governments have signed a new Canadian Mutual Recognition Agreement, a deal set to take effect this December that will finally allow most goods approved in one province to be sold in any other — except food.
Officials are calling it a breakthrough. Business groups are calling it progress. But the real story is this: Canada still does not have true internal free trade in 2025 — and that remains one of the country’s most ridiculous, self-inflicted economic barriers.
Ontario’s economic development minister Vic Fedeli touted the agreement as “common sense,” noting that if a safety vest or construction product is approved in one province, it should be accepted everywhere. He estimates Ontario alone stands to gain $23 billion from the changes.
Economists say the potential national upside is massive — up to $200 billion in added economic output, though some studies put the real-world lift closer to 4% of GDP. Even then, the gains dwarf many federal stimulus programs.
But the limitations of the new pact are already clear:
• Food is excluded
• Services are excluded
• Alcohol is excluded until at least 2026
• Provinces are still clinging to carve-outs
And while Canada fights a messy trade war with the United States, internal trade as a share of Canada’s overall commerce is shrinking — down to 35% today from 52% in the early 1980s.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business welcomed the agreement but said what every frustrated entrepreneur already knows: there is no economic justification for barriers within a single country.
Prime Minister Mark Carney likes to say there should be “one Canadian economy, not 13.” But until food, services, alcohol, licensing, and professional certifications move freely from coast to coast, Canada will remain a country that trades more easily with America and Mexico than with itself.
A new deal is fine — but the simple truth remains: It is absurd that Canada still hasn’t achieved complete internal free trade.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
❤7💯3🤯2
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🇨🇦🤨 Canada Border Services agent says they allow refugees free entry due to staff shortage
'We're short-staffed, so we let them into the country without doing a security screening'
'Wait, hold on...'
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
'We're short-staffed, so we let them into the country without doing a security screening'
'Wait, hold on...'
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
🤡15🤬7😢7🤯4🤔1
🇨🇦 Carney’s Chief of Staff Sparks Backlash After Comparing PM’s Ethics Problems to Nigel Wright
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s sprawling conflict-of-interest screen — already one of the largest in Canadian history — set off a political firestorm today after his chief of staff, Marc-André Blanchard, compared Carney’s situation to that of Nigel Wright, Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff.
Blanchard made the remarks while testifying before the House of Commons ethics committee, where MPs are reviewing the Conflict of Interest Act. His defence of Carney’s entanglements came just a day after clerk of the Privy Council Michael Sabia revealed the PM’s ethics screen has already been triggered 13 times since July.
Blanchard argued that Canadians chose Carney because of his extensive private-sector background — including his years at Brookfield Asset Management, a global behemoth with over US$1 trillion in assets — and insisted the PM’s conflicts are no different from Wright’s when he entered Harper’s office.
Conservatives immediately pushed back.
MP Michael Barrett said the comparison was “absurd,” noting that Wright wasn’t the head of government, nor did he oversee files that could directly influence his former employer’s interests across dozens of sectors.
MP Shuv Majumdar added that Onex — the company tied to Wright — was far narrower in scope than Brookfield, a firm with tentacles in energy, infrastructure, real estate, finance, private equity, and clean tech. “This is a different standard entirely,” he said.
Sabia, meanwhile, defended the internal process. Of the 13 files flagged so far, six required applying the ethics screen — meaning Carney cannot be briefed on or participate in those decisions. Several remain active, and details cannot be disclosed without violating the screen itself.
But the committee zeroed in on a deeper issue:
Does the ethics screen even work when the prime minister’s former company holds positions in more than 100 entities across the economy?
Bloc MP Luc Thériault raised the example of new tax credits for small modular nuclear reactors — a technology dominated in Canada by Westinghouse, a company owned majority-stake by Brookfield. According to Blanchard, because the credit is of “general application,” the ethics screen didn’t need to be triggered.
That loophole — where massive corporate interests can still benefit from government policy so long as it’s framed as broadly applicable — is now drawing scrutiny.
Blanchard insisted Carney applies “strict ethical rules” to himself, including on informal communications such as late-night texts from U.S. President Donald Trump. But critics say the entire system relies on discretion rather than clear, enforceable divestment requirements.
As Democracy Watch warned earlier this month, the current rules allow politicians to participate in decisions from which they could indirectly benefit — a flaw the group says leaves “huge loopholes” in the law.
The ethics committee continues its hearings Thursday, with Blanchard back on the hot seat.
#Canada
🍁 Maple Chronicles
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s sprawling conflict-of-interest screen — already one of the largest in Canadian history — set off a political firestorm today after his chief of staff, Marc-André Blanchard, compared Carney’s situation to that of Nigel Wright, Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff.
Blanchard made the remarks while testifying before the House of Commons ethics committee, where MPs are reviewing the Conflict of Interest Act. His defence of Carney’s entanglements came just a day after clerk of the Privy Council Michael Sabia revealed the PM’s ethics screen has already been triggered 13 times since July.
Blanchard argued that Canadians chose Carney because of his extensive private-sector background — including his years at Brookfield Asset Management, a global behemoth with over US$1 trillion in assets — and insisted the PM’s conflicts are no different from Wright’s when he entered Harper’s office.
Conservatives immediately pushed back.
MP Michael Barrett said the comparison was “absurd,” noting that Wright wasn’t the head of government, nor did he oversee files that could directly influence his former employer’s interests across dozens of sectors.
MP Shuv Majumdar added that Onex — the company tied to Wright — was far narrower in scope than Brookfield, a firm with tentacles in energy, infrastructure, real estate, finance, private equity, and clean tech. “This is a different standard entirely,” he said.
Sabia, meanwhile, defended the internal process. Of the 13 files flagged so far, six required applying the ethics screen — meaning Carney cannot be briefed on or participate in those decisions. Several remain active, and details cannot be disclosed without violating the screen itself.
But the committee zeroed in on a deeper issue:
Does the ethics screen even work when the prime minister’s former company holds positions in more than 100 entities across the economy?
Bloc MP Luc Thériault raised the example of new tax credits for small modular nuclear reactors — a technology dominated in Canada by Westinghouse, a company owned majority-stake by Brookfield. According to Blanchard, because the credit is of “general application,” the ethics screen didn’t need to be triggered.
That loophole — where massive corporate interests can still benefit from government policy so long as it’s framed as broadly applicable — is now drawing scrutiny.
Blanchard insisted Carney applies “strict ethical rules” to himself, including on informal communications such as late-night texts from U.S. President Donald Trump. But critics say the entire system relies on discretion rather than clear, enforceable divestment requirements.
As Democracy Watch warned earlier this month, the current rules allow politicians to participate in decisions from which they could indirectly benefit — a flaw the group says leaves “huge loopholes” in the law.
The ethics committee continues its hearings Thursday, with Blanchard back on the hot seat.
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