Mid-Week Post

 

Why doesn't anyone talk about Canada's military achievements during both world wars?

It cannot be humility. Our reticence is drowned out by international accounts of the wars, the achievements, the objectives and the sacrifices.

We do not hesitate to signal our virtue and spew empty platitudes but we will not relate our own history which would require not just the knowledge of it but its comprehension.

We are empty. We have aimed for mediocrity and then failure.

We have forgotten that rough men did rough violence because an important job needed to be done and there was no morally or politically wrangling one's way out of it.

Had one told the boys on Juno Beach that we would one day applaud a Ukrainian Nazi in the House of Commons and that our government would kill the veterans and grandmothers who shaped the post-war world, they would have dropped their guns and gone home.

What would it all be for?

Your government hates you:

Sahir Khan, exec VP at the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy on CBC: “10 cents of every dollar that taxpayers pay goes to paying the interest on that debt and it’s only going to get bigger.” Accurate. Debt charges are already ~11% of revenue and projected to hit 13.6% by 2030–31—the fastest-growing major expense, more than doubling since 2021–22 and recently equaling ~90% of the headline deficit But then softens it: “There’s nothing that tells us that we’re in any kind of danger zone. And particularly when you look at us compared to the other G7 countries, Canada’s doing quite well.” This rests on low net debt. On gross debt Canada has seen one of the largest increases in the G7 since 2014; the federal debt stock keeps rising past $1.3 trillion. Interest is paid on the marketable debt, not the net figure On the books: “Even though the operating budget is getting balanced and likely a year earlier, we are borrowing for all that capital. So it doesn’t show up in that operating budget balance, but it shows up when you’re issuing bonds…” The operating/capital split is accounting trickery. The PBO has called the definition overly expansive and inconsistent—it reclassifies tax credits and subsidies as “capital,” improving the operating balance on paper without cutting total borrowing or the debt path Khan is right that growth won’t jump from 1% to 2% overnight. The problem is the reassurance. “Not a danger zone,” with selective G7 comparisons, and acceptance of an operating surplus that depends on accounting reclassification understate a trajectory in which interest is already taking 11 cents of every revenue dollar and is projected to keep rising to 14 cents Serious analysis requires serious accounting

— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) November 5, 2026

**

Cabinet will add $182.4 billion in new borrowing over the next three years under a budget plan tabled yesterday. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne justified ongoing deficit spending as reasonable: “I stand by our projections.”

**

Changes to the federal government's much-maligned Temporary Foreign Worker Program could beef up lower-wage employees from outside the country.

On Friday, Patty Hajdu, Minister of Jobs and Families, said the changes will "strengthen" the program, created to address labour shortages in critical sectors where there are not enough Canadian workers to fill the gaps.

The government said, as of Nov. 6, changes to the low-wage stream of the program include allowing foreign workers to be employed with the same company for a maximum two-year duration, up from one year.

In addition, early childhood educators have been added to the healthcare, construction, and food processing exceptions as priority sectors for metropolitan areas with an unemployment rate of 6% or higher.

Under the program, a job is deemed low wage if the employer pays workers less than 120% of the regional median wage, according to the federal government's Job Bank.

**

Cabinet will grant permanent residency to nearly a quarter million foreigners in Canada on temporary permits, according to a budget document yesterday. The Department of Finance did not specify whether it would include amnesty for illegal immigrants subject to deportation: “Up to 200,000 temporary residents already in Canada would have the opportunity to become permanent residents.”

**

Canada’s existing ban on foreign ownership is set to expire in just under two months. Despite quietly inserting exemptions in the ban just 86 days after the law took effect, policymakers say they’ll renew the policy. Sort of. 

“[Canada will] extend the ban on foreign purchases of existing residential properties for two years, to January 1, 2029, while exempting new residential properties,” reads Budget 2026. 

That’s right. Policymakers plan to reopen foreign buying of new homes, the segment that sparked the ban in the first place. The doublespeak doesn’t end there. 

“This would help protect housing affordability by keeping the vast majority of the market available for Canadians, while unlocking additional investment in new housing supply,” explains Budget 2026.  

**

Over a recent five-year period, the United States added 7.6 private-sector jobs per 1,000 working-aged people, but Canada added none, according to a new study published by the Fraser Institute, an independent non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

**

A House of Commons committee will not study vandalism, arson, and other criminal attacks against places of worship in Canada after its chair ruled that a proposed study fell outside the committee’s mandate.

Conservative MP Andrew Lawton challenged the ruling, but committee members voted 7-4 to uphold it.

Lawton introduced a motion on Oct. 29 calling on the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to examine vandalism, arson, shootings, and other criminal attacks against churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship across the country.

Committee chair Lisa Hepfner ruled the motion inadmissible, saying it dealt primarily with matters related to the Criminal Code rather than heritage or identity. She suggested Lawton bring the proposal to the justice or public safety committees instead.

**

In its account of the deadly fire at CFB Wainwright, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) describes an extraordinary chain of events on Oct. 17.

The base, it says, was monitoring a common grass fire that erupted in "uncommonly strong winds," with flames soon devouring a kilometre in just 30 to 60 seconds.

The military called the event "entirely anomalous."

A Global News analysis of satellite imagery and weather records, reviewed by seven Canadian wildfire experts, paints a different picture.

As soldiers continued their training on that day, satellites showed the fire had already spread. But the day before, Environment Canada forecast a cold front bringing powerful winds and later issued wind warnings for the area.

And experts say the flames were unlikely to travel at the speed the military suggests, although estimates made during a traumatic event may understandably be imprecise.

More importantly, however, experts say base leadership should have known the dangers posed by the incoming weather, even if they couldn't predict the precise timing or consequences.

"This was not unexpected given the forecast cold front, the actively spreading fire and the wind warnings that were issued earlier in the day," says Jen Beverly, an associate professor of wildland fire at the University of Alberta.

According to the military, four soldiers were killed and 39 injured, including 19 critically, when the fire swept through the military training grounds.

It said the fire rapidly intensified and overran soldiers around 4 p.m.

But satellite imagery and weather records show a two-kilometre stretch of fire at noon was likely spreading as winds picked up and a violent cold front approached.

Nearly two weeks after the disaster, crucial questions remain unanswered: What did commanders know about the growing fire and approaching weather? What warnings were passed on? And why were soldiers still training nearby?

The military says its Board of Inquiry, which will answer those questions, could take more than a year.

**

U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin purchased Ultra Maritime,the Dartmouth, N.S. company founded in 1947. Ultra plays a key role in the development of sonar and other undersea warfare systems. It’s equipment is on board the Royal Canadian Navy’s Halifax-class frigates and will be installed on Canada’s new River-class warships. Lockheed Martin purchased the firm for more than $3.4 billion.

The deal follows the purchase of a Canadian underwater drone manufacturer by an Israel firm. Elbit Systems announced that it had completed the purchase of International Submarine Engineering, an autonomous underwater vehicle company based in Port Coquitlam, B.C., the National Post reported on Oct. 29.

Critics have raised concerns that the deals fly in the face of Carney’s initiative to ensure Canada has a domestically controlled defence industry. The prime minister, whose government is spending tens of billions of dollars on new military equipment, has repeatedly warned about Canada’s over-reliance on military equipment from foreign-owned companies. He has particularly focused on American.-owned firms in the wake of threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to economically cripple Canada and suggest it could be annexed to be the 51st state.

In addition, media reports revealed in late September that another Canadian drone firm, awarded a significant contract from the Canadian military, had just received a $10-million investment from a company associated with Donald Trump Jr.

Some People Are "Important"

But don't take my word for it:

Cabinet says it was never told who gave a custom sculpture of Chief Justice Richard Wagner to the Supreme Court of Canada for display in its Grand Entrance Hall. The Court’s Registrar yesterday said it was “reviewing the relevant information.”

 

This Richard Wagner:

In his interview with Le Devoir, Wagner characterized the protest on Wellington Street, where Parliament and the Supreme Court are located, as “the beginning of anarchy where some people have decided to take other citizens hostage.” The article reports Wagner as having declared that “forced blows against the state, justice and democratic institutions like the one delivered by protesters … should be denounced with force by all figures of power in the country.”

 

 

Strange

Pierre Trudeau was never arrested:

Newly-declassified records show the RCMP from the close of the Second World War spied on the Royal Canadian Legion in a hunt for Communists. The Mounties in one confidential 1947 memo named dozens of Legion members as subversive: “The menace of Communist infiltration and disruption was brought to the attention of the Dominion President.”

 

"Canadian" Woman Convicted of ISIS Terrorism

Window-dressing, I'm sure:

A Canadian woman who spent four years with ISIS and married two of its fighters is guilty of terrorism, a jury in Brampton, Ont. ruled on Tuesday.

Ammara Amjad, 32, was the first woman to go on trial in Canada for her role in the Islamic State in Syria as it committed widespread atrocities.

The case was a test of whether Canada could bring to justice the women who played support roles in ISIS as wives and mothers but were not armed fighters.

The jury began deliberations on Monday and returned after one day to find Amjad guilty of participating in, or contributing to, the activities of a terrorist group.

A former York University student and Walmart employee, Amjad was living a life of “comfort” in Ontario when ISIS summoned women to Syria, according to the Crown.

The Pakistan-born Canadian flew to Turkey in March 2015, crossed into ISIS territory and remained with the terror group until she was captured four years later.

“She answered ISIS’s call,” the Crown argued in its closing arguments on Friday, as the two week trial came to an end in a courtroom north of Toronto.

Amjad faces a possible sentence of ten years in prison. She was not detained during the trial, having been released on bail after she was charged in 2023.

She did not testify in her defence and her lawyer did not present any evidence, instead arguing the Crown had not proved what Amjad did in Syria.

 

 

It's Just An Entire Economy

The Liberals will still have their perks:

.@OurCommons places order for 6,000 bottles of fine wine to “maintain expected standards of hospitality” in Parliamentary Dining Room. Stocking of wine cellar came 4 days after #Budget2026 lamented plight of “hardworking Canadians struggling to get by.” https://t.co/QR5fmOEXOb @MarkJCarney @FPChampagne #cdnpoli

— Holly Doan (@hollyanndoan) November 10, 2026

**

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada says the federal government wrote off billions of dollars last year in COVID-19 benefits that it no longer expects to see repaid.

The federal government is trying to recoup payments made to Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic in cases where it determines someone was overpaid or was ineligible for the benefit.

But when the government expects not to be paid back, it writes off the debt and strikes it from its ledgers.

Audits of the government’s consolidated financial statements for the last fiscal year show Ottawa wrote off $4.5 billion tied to COVID-19 benefits — up sharply from $26 million the previous year.

The government’s financial statements for 2025-26 were published on Friday — a day after Ottawa tabled its 2026 federal budget — as part of its annual public accounts.

Auditor General Karen Hogan’s office also released its commentary that day on the government’s previous fiscal year.

Hogan warned that Ottawa is also expecting a larger portion of business loans from the pandemic will not be repaid.

** 

If Canada becomes an associate member of Erasmus+, it could end up paying a hefty sum of our tax dollars into a pool of funds so that the European Union can manage international exchanges involving our students, professors, workers and athletes.

Canada is capable of managing its own exchange programs. More importantly, a review of Erasmus+ documents reveals that these exchanges benefit few select applicants, while the program appears more obsessed with the EU's relevance on the world stage than any measurable improvements in the quality of education for member nations.

The program's name is a clue to its elite nature. Erasmus lived in Rotterdam in the Netherlands during the Renaissance and was a "leading scholar and inspiring lecturer" who "travelled extensively in Europe to teach and study at a number of universities."

Canada has participated in Erasmus to varying degrees since 2004, beginning with its Mundus master's course, which has allowed students to travel around Europe and attend several different universities, with its stated goal being to "improve the quality of higher education in Europe," and, "at the same time have an impact on the visibility and perception of the European Union around the world as well as building a capital of goodwill among those who have participated in the program."

** 

Ottawa plans to hold immigration levels mostly steady over the next three years, according to Budget 2026. The Liberals claim the updated immigration plan aims to strike “a balance” that favours the needs of the economy, housing, healthcare, and social services. Such claims have not been true in the past and are unlikely to be true going forward.

The mythmakers say the “Levels Plan” will continue to balance the needs of Canada’s employers, industries, and communities with Canada’s ability to meet the needs of newcomers, while avoiding undue pressure on housing, healthcare, and social services. Evidence shows past claims have been unreliable, and the new “Liberal speak” will be just as ephemeral.

The new federal immigration targets were revealed on November 5. They will maintain temporary resident arrivals at 370,000 per year in each of 2027, 2028, and 2029, while the target for permanent resident admissions will stay at the current level of 380,000 in each of those years. The announcement is socially irresponsible and even hurtful.

What is the Liberal immigration policy all about? Are the Liberals playing a long game to bake into society a biased pro-Liberal voting bloc among immigrants? It is hard to measure, but Liberals keep doing it despite considerable political pushback. So, they clearly see it as worth the political risk and believe it will pay off. Liberals also have a historical advantage among more recent immigrant-origin voters.

A 2019 Canadian Election Study analysis published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science found that the Liberals had an advantage among immigrant-origin electors. Potential citizens who were permanent residents were particularly favourable toward the Liberals.

Many factors influence their voting preferences, including country of origin, length of time in Canada, income and occupation, religion and social values, age and education, views on taxation, housing, and public services, and their assessment of individual political parties. Permanent residents cannot vote in federal elections, but some cheat and do anyway. They must first become Canadian citizens and meet the applicable voting requirements.

Immigration clearly changes the electoral landscape; that is a demographic reality. Every person who eventually becomes a Canadian citizen and registers to vote becomes part of the electorate. Over time, immigration changes the composition of Canada’s social fabric. If certain immigrant-origin communities have historically favoured one party, their growing representation would affect electoral outcomes. Parties choose candidates to reflect local ethnic and social character.

System defenders respond that there is a difference between a policy having an electoral benefit from immigration and a policy being deliberately designed for that benefit. Liberals deny ulterior motives.

Voters can scrutinize political incentives, campaign strategies, constituency demographics, and government decisions as a test of motives. However, without better documentary evidence, internal communications or credible testimony establishing intent, it is only a likely possibility to say the government is deliberately importing voters.

However, immigrants are not necessarily lifelong Liberal supporters. Their political preferences can change with their economic circumstances, experiences, and integration into Canadian society.

Canadians need to demand measurable accountability rather than simply arguing about whether immigration numbers are too high. Key problem areas are housing, healthcare, labour markets, infrastructure, immigration transparency, and democratic accountability.

Immigration targets should be assessed against actual housing completions, rental vacancies, and household formation, and not just bold Liberal bragging.

Publish provincial and regional assessments of the additional doctors, nurses, hospital beds, and healthcare funding required. These statistics don’t look good for the Liberals.

Demonstrate that temporary foreign worker programs are addressing genuine shortages rather than allowing employers to avoid improving wages and working conditions. Tim Hortons, the subject of media controversy over foreign worker abuse, is one example. Although based in Canada, its parent company, Restaurant Brands International, has 3G Capital, a Brazilian-linked investment firm, as its largest shareholder.

Ensure municipalities receive adequate funding for population growth, including transit, water, sewage, and schools. Federal practice can unreasonably download responsibilities onto local governance.

Publish the actual number of new arrivals, departures, extensions, overstays, and transitions from temporary to permanent status. The federal bureaucracy either hides the data or deliberately does not record it.

Publish transparent assessments of immigration policy, including its economic, social, and demographic effects, without treating criticism of immigration levels as hostility towards immigrants. This is a public-service shortcoming.

The bottom line — are the announced levels socially acceptable and financially doable? They are financially manageable in theory, as Canada will suffer but muddle through regardless. However, the targets alone do not establish social and infrastructure sustainability.

 

 

 

 

[Title Redacted]

Does anyone know or care that the Liberals will pass yet another censorship bill, one that allows the government to spy on its citizens?:

This past week the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs heard from Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree and Justice Minister Sean Fraser as the Senate continues its study on Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act.

Neither minister seemed to have assuaged any concerns, as cybersecurity experts, cryptographers, the tech industry, and civil liberties groups all continue to press the government for amendments, warning that the bill as written would severely compromise Canadians’ privacy and cybersecurity.

Currently, the bill would require electronic service providers — companies that provide cloud services, messaging apps, social media platforms, email providers, companies that provide internet services, video game platforms, AI systems, as well as smartphones and smartwatches — to build surveillance capabilities into their systems meant to be used by law enforcement and national security agencies. The bill would also compel service providers to retain the metadata of its users for six months.

The Carney government has maintained that Bill C-22 is just regular, run-of-the-mill legislation that already exists in comparable jurisdictions, and that Canada needs to pass this bill because we are currently lagging our partners in the Five Eyes security alliance. However, a quick look at the lawful access regimes of our Five Eyes Partners easily disproves this government talking point.

As pointed out by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, while the U.K. and Australia do have regimes resembling Bill C-22, the U.K.’s is currently being challenged constitutionally and has resulted in Apple removing Advanced Data Protection (an encryption tool for iCloud) from all Apple devices connecting from the United Kingdom. Which is precisely what Apple is telling us will happen in Canada should C-22 be passed as written. For its part, the Australian lawful access regime resulted in a Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights concluding that Australia’s lawful access set up was “incompatible” with human rights such as privacy and freedom of expression.

In a head-to-head comparison with the United States’ Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), Canada’s Bill C-22 comes across as overly broad. CALEA is narrowly targeted to apply to telecom carriers and internet providers, while it explicitly exempts “information services,” which means unlike C-22, CALEA does not apply to cloud providers, social media platforms, email, messaging apps, or AI services.

Yet even with CALEA’s much more narrow scope, we have seen devastating breaches in cybersecurity. Two years ago, a Chinese backed hacking group known as Salt Typhoon used the lawful access infrastructure (that cell phone companies like AT&T and Verizon were required to build into their systems for the FBI) in order to steal the metadata of over a million Americans as well as read text messages and listen in on the calls of senior political figures. Given that C-22 is much more expansive, the opportunities for hackers could be much greater. …

The Carney government is about to take a massive step in violating the privacy rights and cybersecurity of every single Canadian. That in and of itself is bad enough. But what’s worse is that aside from a few law professors and concerned civil society members, the political chattering classes and the wider political commentariat have been utterly silent on a piece of legislation that not only undermines privacy and cybersecurity, but also runs the risk of interfering in the operations of the now taxpayer-backed Cohere.

The Carney government has benefitted from an extreme amount of goodwill from everyday Canadians in light of the unprecedented nature of our ruptured relationship with America. Canadians might want to start paying attention to the details in Bill C-22 to see if it continues to deserve that goodwill.

** 

The true extent of Canada’s controversial C-22 surveillance bill has been revealed during a Senate hearing, when officials were forced to answer questions from senators.

The questioning revealed that the bill is designed to be very broad in its scope – a point that was conceded by the minister.

“The term electronic service provider is deliberately broad,” Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree told the senators on November 2, as he was trying to defend the proposal that has been criticized as overreaching and poorly defined.

Senator Pierre Dalphond raised daycares, and Justice counsel Anne-Marie Lebel replied that an order “could be made to any service provider, a person who provides services to the public. It could be a daycare in some cases.”

Senator Hassan Yussuff asked if a VPN (Virtual Private Network) would qualify as an electronic service provider, and the minister replied, “the expansion to other platforms is not what is immediately envisioned, although, as technology develops, we want the ability to do that.”

The minister also said that “a world in which AI will be able to generate its own electronic service and sell it to Canadians” is “something the regulation and definition could capture.”

Assistant Deputy Minister Richard Bilodeau said that whether AI services end up as core providers is a question on which “time will tell.”

Shannon Hiegel of Public Safety Canada explained that the broad definition of an electronic service provider is “probably where we’re leaning the most forward when we look at the comparisons across all of the countries that we’ve taken a look at.”

The bill’s definition of an electronic service provider is anyone who provides an electronic service to people in Canada, and the minister can make orders that apply to any such provider.

Hiegel said that this would include “gaming platforms where communication isn’t the primary purpose of that service, but yet there is a predominant chat room and chat function that goes on.”

It also emerged during the hearing that the bill’s provisions could reach far beyond telecommunications and internet companies, and that its broad wording could allow it to be used to obtain sensitive information from health care providers, lawyers, and financial institutions, as well as dating apps.

This is according to Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne, who said that the subscriber information rules in the bill could apply to services “which could include health-care providers, lawyers, financial institutions and dating apps,” and that “such information could reasonably attract a heightened expectation of privacy due to its sensitivity.”

The production order, which would force these providers to hand over data, requires a judge’s approval, but the bar is set very low, at “reasonable grounds to suspect.”

The privacy commissioner wants to see a finite list of what counts as subscriber information, a carve-out for medical or privileged information, and a limitation of the order to telecommunications providers.

Another problem is that the bill does not define what is meant by “publicly available” information – something that Dufresne said was undefined.

“An individual does not automatically forfeit any reasonable expectation of privacy in information that has become public,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Intelligence Commissioner Simon Noël spoke about secret ministerial orders that would force companies to build surveillance capabilities, and said that “a clear proportionality factor that includes reasonable alternatives would ensure the minister explains the needs.”

The bill’s explicit protection of medical and solicitor-client information only applies when police make a warrantless demand for confirmation of service – but not to the production order.

Despite these and other criticisms, the government is trying to defend its bill. A spokesperson for the minister, Simon Lafortune, said, “Bill C-22 does not authorize indiscriminate surveillance and does not permit or compel companies to introduce systemic vulnerabilities or so-called ‘backdoors’.”

However, four cryptography and privacy academics who submitted a brief to the committee said that the bill risks “serious harm to Canadian citizens, companies, and government agencies” and could “open up attack vectors for the least trusted countries and bad actors in the world.”

One of the co-authors of the brief, Peter Swire, said, “If local protocols are broken, users in Canada can decide to use open-source models or use services that are hosted in other countries where the Canadian law can’t require broken encryption.”