Wednesday, May 06, 2026

Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week surprise ...



"Buy Canadian" is a farcical, near-impossible drive to drum up jingoism against the Orange Man.

It's not working:

Companies 100 percent foreign owned still qualify as “Canadian” under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Buy Canadian Policy, says the Department of Public Works. The definition of “Canadian” is so broad it would apply to foreign-owned corporations with storefront branches here like the Bank of China, records show: “We need to go back to what the Prime Minister said.”

Trust a failed banker and his utter disregard for anyone's prosperity but his.

Carney is happy to sabotage any talks with the Americans but his goal is to move Canadians from the American sphere of influence.

Any talk of joining Europe is just that.

It would qualify as a pipe-dream at best.

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There are more trustworthy voters:

In the wake of the federal government’s spring mini-budget boasting about the resilience of the economy, a new study finds youth unemployment in Canada increased from 10% in 2022 to 13.8% in 2025, the largest three-year increase on record when the economy was not in a recession.

The report by the Fraser Institute says that last year, 437,000 young people between 15 and 24 years of age looked for a job but could not find one, up 57% from 290,000 in 2022.


Also:

A Brampton, Ont., man who abducted a nine-year-old boy has failed to convince a judge it was a “cultural misunderstanding.”

Manoj Govindbalunikam, an Indian citizen who is a permanent resident of Canada, was sentenced earlier this month in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice to 18 months in jail and three years of probation for the August 2023 abduction.

**

Canada’s experiment in recruiting non-citizens to the military while lowering entrance standards has been wrought with problems, if a January internal report is anything to go by.

Recruits have been failing at greater rates since changes to recruitment practices were made in late 2024, according to the document, which was obtained by the Post last weekend. Instructors are also having to deal with cultural clashes, illiteracy problems, and a lack of respect for female officers, among other problems.

The document, first covered by Juno News, is under the letterhead of the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School (CFLRS), which is one of the country’s centres for basic military training. On Wednesday, Department of National Defence spokesperson Commodore Pascal Belhumeur did not confirm that the Post’s copy was the same as his own version, but the contents of his copy were consistent with what was before the Post, based on our discussion.

The report, authored by Lieutenant-Colonel Marc Kieley, describes the effects of new changes to the Canadian Armed Forces recruitment process: restrictions on candidates with certain health and mental health issues were lifted, more permanent residents were permitted to join, security screening was reduced, and the old aptitude test was dropped.

“As a result of these changes, CFLRS is experiencing significant changes in candidates’ basic capabilities and increasing pressures on staff and instructors,” it reads.

Permanent residents were permitted to join the armed forces in 2022, but with tight restrictions; these were loosened in 2024, yielding nearly 800 recruits in the months that followed the change. Belhumeur said that last year, 1,400 permanent residents were recruited.

The report states that among permanent resident candidates, instructors have observed poor English and French skills, and problems getting along with women: “For many candidates it is the first time that they have lived with members of a different sex, and for some it is also the first time they have been expected to treat women as their peers.”

“Older candidates from certain cultural backgrounds are also more likely to experience friction when responding to younger CFLRS instructors due to cultural hierarchies based on age.”

Surveys of people in basic training included complaints of “inter-candidate cultural frustrations,” with a lack of respect for women being the leading concern.

Belhumeur said that “that sort of behaviour is absolutely not tolerated in the Canadian Armed Forces” and that members who engage in such behaviour are removed “if it comes up.” He pointed to the higher attrition rate as a marker that these mechanisms are working properly. Language requirements have also been raised, he said.

The overall rate of completion for basic training dropped from around 85 per cent to 77 per cent in the first three quarters of 2025, said the report. More candidates are also being ordered to repeat a course: between the fiscal years of 2018 and 2024, this was always in the single digits, ranging between four and eight per cent. In 2025, it was 15 per cent, nearly double the year prior.

The dominant reason for re-taking courses also changed. In 2023, according to the report, 62 per cent of candidates re-taking a course did so for medical reasons; another 15 per cent had to re-take for failing practical evaluations (drills, weapons and fitness, for example), and another two per cent had to re-take for failing academic evaluations (on topics from sexual misconduct to navigation theory).

In the 2025 fiscal year, per the report, only 45 per cent of candidates retaking courses did so for medical reasons, with 27 per cent doing so for failing practical evaluations, and seven per cent re-taking courses for academic failures.

Some candidates “have been unable to learn basic practical skills such as drill and weapons, as well as several candidates who have been unable to read without assistance,” said the report.

These damning numbers aren’t solely due to the non-citizen recruitment policy — the report also mentions problems with a higher number of mentally unwell recruits who signed in light of the lowered bar to entry — but it’s clearly a contributor. According to the report, 15 per cent of permanent resident candidates failed the initial fitness test; among citizen candidates (which includes freshly naturalized citizens), that number was only eight per cent.

Among officer candidates, the report states that the basic training success rate for citizens is 85 per cent, while for permanent residents it’s 88 per cent. But other numbers should invite concern: the report stated that one early French officer platoon was 83 per cent comprised of permanent residents (Belhumeur noted that this figure actually referred to the proportion of foreign-born recruits, and that permanent residents accounted for 47 per cent).

The report also said that non-citizen enrolment in the average French officer course is 57 per cent; among English officer platoons, permanent residents typically make up about 30 per cent, and comprise about 25 per cent of course enrolment on average.

Another figure of concern? Some of these candidates had only been in Canada for three months, according to the report. This was corrected in February, said Belhumeur, with the imposition of a three-year residency requirement for all candidates.

These problems seem to be worse on the French side of the military: nearly half of French permanent resident officer candidates are over age 35 (compared to 33 per cent on the English side), the report notes. In addition, an early foreign-origin-heavy French platoon was “plagued by allegations of racism from candidates against staff but equally candidates against other candidates) and constant infighting between cultural blocks within the platoon (i.e. Cameroonian candidates against those from Côte D’Ivoire).” On the English side, platoons with heavy permanent resident membership “suffered from low fitness levels.”

It should be noted that in recent years, Canada has been bringing in French-speaking permanent residents with abysmally low scores, and that Francophone immigration initiatives have disproportionately benefited Cameroonians.

Belhumeur said that the military is currently working on an “onboarding tool” to explain the institution’s ethos and culture to candidates.

The report indicates that French instructors are struggling to come to terms with the changes: “On French (officer) platoons, where permanent residents have made up 50-80% of all candidates, there have been more emotional responses, with Francophone staff openly raising the question of whether it is appropriate for officer commissions to be granted to non-Canadian citizens.”

It’s not just the French basic training instructors who should be asking this — it’s all of Canada. Keep in mind that lawful civilian gun owners are currently experiencing the largest firearms confiscation the country’s ever seen; at the same time, we’re handing military authority over to people who aren’t even citizens of Canada. It’s as if the institution whose job is to carry out the primary duty of the state — the protection of the nation — has completely forgotten a core part of its being.

From the military’s perspective, increasing the share of foreign-born recruits is simply the right way to respond to years of sky-high immigration.

“I think the Canadian Armed Forces that we are recruiting is a representation of Canadian society now,” Belhumeur said.

(Sidebar: are you sure you want that?) 

“If you look at the number of Canadians that are foreign-born and the number of people who we’re bringing into the Canadian Armed Forces, I think we are representative of the Canadian demographic.”

Belhumeur added that this isn’t a numbers game, that recruitment is competitive — and that the military is “proud to reflect the diversity of Canadian society.”

Between the higher attrition rate among candidates, and the apparent increase in cultural and competency problems, the new recruitment standards have still had a net-positive impact in the eyes of the military, mainly because overall recruitment is up.

“It’s absolutely worth it,” Belhumeur said.

“We went from 63,000 to over 68,000 people in uniform because of the change that we’ve done, and we’ve done this in a way without dropping the training standard.”

We may have more bodies in the barracks, but the Canadian Armed Forces are less Canadian than they were five years ago. There will be consequences.


 

At least someone cares about whether Canadians make some cash:

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an order authorizing a proposed project to transport Canadian oil across the border as part of an effort to revive parts of the cancelled Keystone XL pipeline.

South Bow, the Canadian pipeline company behind the cancelled Keystone XL pipeline, is partnering with U.S. company Bridger Pipeline on the proposed project.

South Bow is considering reviving some of the already built line in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Bridger Pipeline is pursuing construction of a potential 1,038-kilometre pipeline beginning near the U.S.-Canada border in Phillips County, Mont., and transiting to Guernsey, Wyo.

As Trump signed the order, White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf told the president, "This is a trans-border pipeline similar to the old Keystone XL pipeline."

Trump responded: "A lot of jobs, too. A lot of jobs. OK, very good."



If we were to dispense with the office of governor-general, sad, old, useless ladies would have to buy their own clothes:

Prime Minister Mark Carney says he will look into an expense program under which former governors general billed the government more than half a million dollars last year.

The program, which launched in 1979 and has been shrouded in secrecy, allows each former governor general to bill up to $206,040 per year, on top of their pensions.

The government paid out $554,000 including taxes in reimbursements in the 2024-25 fiscal year to support five former governors general, Rideau Hall told CBC News.

The Governor General's office will not say who was reimbursed or what the money was spent on. Rideau Hall would only say that there are five living former governors general who can access the program.

Asked by CBC News about the program and if he would commit to more detailed public financial reporting like a past report urged, Carney said he was unaware of the details.

"I'll look into it, ensure that ... there's adequate transparency around the expenses,” Carney said during at a news conference announcing Canada's next governor general, Louise Arbour.



From the most transparent government in the country's history:

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Liberal MP Doug Eyolfson moved to adjourn a health committee meeting on Tuesday, without agreeing to a motion to bring Health Minister Marjorie Michel to testify on the failed federal e-prescribing program PrescribeIT.

Bloc Québécois MP Maxime Blanchette-Joncas moved a motion to have Michel appear before the House of Commons rises for the summer break. Liberal members took issue with the timeline and after some debate, ended the meeting through a vote. 

There is still no clarity on what happened to $200 million of taxpayer funds that was earmarked for the e-prescribing service, which began back in 2017 with an initial budget of $40 million.

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House of Commons officials are keeping detailed internal records on what Canadians say about their elected representatives online, including comments posted to social media, according to testimony at a parliamentary committee.

Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Mellon told MPs the Commons maintains what he described as a “very robust records management system” that catalogues incidents involving members of Parliament, including online remarks that may be critical or offensive.

Blacklock's Reporter said the system allows officials to sort and analyze posts, including those deemed misogynistic or otherwise abusive.

Mellon offered few details on why the records are kept or how they are used, but said the database tracks “every single incident” and can break down complaints by category, including gender-based harassment.

His comments came as MPs raised concerns about the tone of online discourse, with Liberal MP Anita Vandenbeld asking whether officials track threats differently based on gender or identity.


(Sidebar: this b!#ch.)

**

Cabinet has jurisdiction to regulate the internet, Heritage Minister Marc Miller said yesterday. Canada had fallen “a couple of years behind” European countries in monitoring legal content, he said: “We’re working on it.”



Iran was a train-wreck forty-seven years in the making.

A now-three month long conflict might undo any will on the ground for a more pro-West government.

Its economy is at stake.

Unless this conflict is wrapped up quickly, that may be the case:

When President Donald Trump triggered the current war against Iran more than 60 days ago, the assumption mostly promoted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the junior partner in the enterprise, was that the whole thing would be wrapped up within weeks by Tehran implicitly admitting defeat, as it did in an earlier episode known as the 12-day War.

That was why the force deployed and the war plans provided for a short and sharp campaign with boots on the ground not considered even as a theoretical necessity.

Though now proven illusory, that assumption sounded plausible at the time.

What Trump didn't take into account was the fact that the only person who could have admitted defeat without risking his own life was no longer there. Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei had been assassinated in an Israeli air strike.

Trump's second illusion was inspired by America's overwhelming military superiority. The respected American historian, Victor Davis Hanson, a source of emulation for Trump's military advisers, beat that drum in a number of video clips.

What VDH ignored was the fact that the Islamic Republic isn't a normal regime and thus wouldn't abide by Sun Tzu's advice not to remain in a war in which you have less than a 50 percent chance of winning.

The Iran-Iraq War could have ended after a year but lasted eight years because Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini regarded war as a "blessing from God." He accepted ending it only when he felt that his regime's survival was at stake.

The destruction that the current war has caused in Iran isn't yet fully documented. But information already in hand shows that Iran has suffered the biggest damage to its state structures, industry, economy and cultural monuments seen in its multi-millennial history.

However, assured by Trump that he isn't after regime change, those fighting over power in Tehran feel no need to surrender in order to survive.

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Not a Canadian:



Was Pierre Trudeau one of them?:

 The Privy Council in a newly-declassified 1968 memo estimated Soviet sympathizers and Cold War subversives in Canada far outnumbered actual Communist Party members. The memo named one university, five unions and the United Church as key targets for subversion: “The Communist movement in Canada consists of some 20,000 persons.”



Fitting right in:






Immigration Minister Lena Diab yesterday said she was unsure what became of 800 foreign students identified as fraudsters in a federal audit weeks ago. MPs on the Commons immigration committee protested the slow response: “You don’t know?”

This is the calibre of one's elected officials.





Statistics Canada sold a confidential copy of a hate crimes report to Heritage Minister Marc Miller’s department for “feedback” but denies there was any political interference. The report downplayed anti-Semitism though Jews are the leading target of hate crimes in Canada: “The purpose of this peer review will be for Canadian Heritage to provide feedback in terms of fact or presentation.”



Statistics Canada yesterday denied downplaying anti-Semitic incidents in a national hate crimes report. Access To Information records showed the agency provided a confidential advance copy of its “highly anticipated” report to Heritage Minister Marc Miller’s department before it was published: “The department will get to review work in progress.”


Also:

The Department of Canadian Heritage is attempting to claw back $99,500 in funding from a Palestinian group over social media posts. The department cited Instagram messages depicting Israelis as homicidal slave masters and a symbol it associated with Hamas terrorists: “Long live the triangle.”




We don't have to trade with China:

Chinese consular officials met with a Vancouver city hall employee last month and urged her to cancel an arts event that highlighted communist party repression, sources told Global News.

At the meeting, representatives of China’s consulate told a staff member of the city’s civic theatres branch that they wanted a series of performances by the Shen Yun dance group to be stopped, the sources said.

The event, a celebration of Chinese cultural traditions lost under Communist rule, also received bomb threats, but went ahead anyway April 8-12 at the city-owned Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

Mayor Ken Sim’s office confirmed on Tuesday that the meeting had occurred and that the Shen Yun event was discussed, but denied the Vancouver Civic Theatres (VCT) employee in question was pressured.

“After investigating this allegation, city staff have confirmed that a meeting between VCT staff and Chinese consulate officials did indeed happen,” said the mayor’s chief of staff, Trevor Ford.

“However, this was not a breach of protocol, nor was there any pressure by conselor officials to cancel the event.”

The Chinese consulate requested the meeting, and it was attended by the consul and vice-consul, said Ford, who described it as “cordial” and touching on “a range of cultural topics.”

“Staff discussed the meeting with Global Affairs Canada and confirmed that the meeting falls within the bounds of a normal diplomatic interaction with China,” he added.

But the incident suggests that China continues to use its diplomatic missions to silence dissent in Canada, even as Prime Minister Mark Carney pursues a detente with Beijing.

Canada’s intelligence agencies have alleged that China uses both diplomatic and foreign interference tactics, such as threats and harassment, to advance its interests overseas.

According to Public Safety Canada guidelines, “targeting any level of government to influence public policy or decision-making in a way that is clandestine, deceptive or threatening, and is contrary to Canadian interests” constitutes foreign interference.

**

China remains a leading perpetrator of espionage and foreign interference including cultivation of “relationships” with unnamed politicians, says a security report to Parliament. It follows Foreign Minister Anita Anand’s announcement of a “new foreign policy” emphasizing cooperation with the People’s Republic: ‘Threat actors’ goal is to influence Canadian decision makers to align with positions, narratives and policies that promote a positive image of their country.’
**

Since the details can’t be disclosed without China’s permission, all we know about it is the brief description the Prime Minister’s Office released when Carney announced his EV-canola deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in January.

This after Carney called China the greatest security threat facing Canada last April during the federal election.

According to the deal agreed to by Carney and Xi:

“Canada and China will … pursue pragmatic and constructive engagement in public safety and security. Our law enforcement agencies will increase co-operation to better combat narcotics trafficking, transnational and cybercrime, synthetic drugs and money laundering – and create safer communities for people in both our countries.”

In testimony before the Senate Committee on National Finance last month, first reported by Blackcock’s Reporter, Senior Deputy RCMP Commissioner Bryan Larkin, referring to China as “our partner,” described the new memorandum of understanding between the two countries as a “re-enhancement” of prior agreements in 2010, 2014 and 2018.

He testified it is similar to agreements Canada has with American policing agencies such as the FBI, DEA and CIA regarding information sharing, how joint investigations are conducted and cost-sharing, with specific sections on issues such as combatting fentanyl smuggling.

Of course, the difference from co-operating with American law enforcement and Chinese authorities is that the final report of Canada’s foreign interference inquiry last year identified China as “the most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canada’s democratic institutions” with China viewing Canada “as a high-priority target.”

The inquiry and previous government reports have cited China’s attempts to intimidate or otherwise co-opt Canadian politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of government, its ongoing campaigns of industrial espionage and intellectual property theft, and its transnational repression of Canadians of Chinese origin who oppose the Beijing regime.

**


Cabinet granted Chinese state-backed automakers unprecedented access to the Canadian market because “they are very popular across the country,” Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said yesterday. Joly would not answer directly when asked if they used slave labour: “We’re all in favour of affordability.”
**


Melanie Joly testified Monday before a parliamentary committee about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s policies toward electric vehicles, which Conservative MPs used to press the minister on the deal Canada struck with China earlier this year to allow a portion of Chinese-made electric vehicles to enter the market in exchange for Beijing reducing tariffs on products like canola seed.



A newly released report from the United Nations’ International Labor Organization states that authorities in China are not only using "vocational skills training and education centers" for forced labor in Xinjiang and Tibet, but also the large-scale transfer of "surplus" rural workers to state-led labor programs across the country.

So there's that.



“A woman,” he said, finally. “Is already sold from the moment she’s born.”

Tenancingo sits in the small, impoverished state of Tlaxcala, 60 miles east of Mexico City. Men from the town travel the country hunting for poor and vulnerable girls as young as 11, up to young women in their early twenties. They dazzle them with attention, lavish them and their parents with money and promise them a better life.

They take them away. Then they turn on them and force them into prostitution, where they are raped by up to ten men a day. The girls, who often start off being infatuated with their captors, cannot escape. Some are smuggled to the US where they can earn their pimps thousands of dollars a day.





Cultural Marxism has ruined the West.

Hubris, hedonism, self-centredness - all were encouraged and elevated to norms, even social goods.

Now that the untenable social programs run the risk of having future taxpayers to fund them, babies are incredibly important.


The majority of Canadian and American women under age 40 do not yet have children, signalling a broad shift in when and whether people are choosing to have families.

Both countries now face a deepening fertility crisis. For Canada, it’s stark, with the country hitting a record-low fertility rate of 1.25 children per woman in 2024, putting it on the ultra-low fertility list — below 1.30 — alongside Japan, Singapore and Spain.

The American fertility rate isn’t as low, but it just dipped to a new record: 1.6 children per woman.

“The biggest decline we see in fertility is actually not of third births or second births,” says Lyman Stone, a demographer with the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies. “It’s the first births.”

Canada and the U.S. are far from alone — most wealthy Western countries have seen fertility rates decline since the 1970s. But it does mean the West is not producing children near the replacement level for a modern society, which relies on young workers to cover the costs of older generations.

Researchers point to various causes, and some disagree about policy solutions, but they all agree that while the U.S. and Canada want more babies, neither government is doing what needs to be done to boost fertility.

“Canada’s housing situation is among the worst in the world,” said Stone, referring to the lack of family-friendly units. 

The average Canadian single-family home sold for $738,800 in March — over 50 per cent higher than 10 years ago. 

“The cost of housing and rent, which went up quite noticeably over the last number of years,” said Don Kerr, a demographer from King’s University College at Western University, “is certainly going to have an impact on young folks trying to decide whether they want to establish a family.”

Rachel Margolis, a sociology professor at Western University, called housing the “biggest cost of having kids.”

But it’s by no means the only one. High child care fees and the overall cost of living are also key deterrents.

“Child care costs that are very expensive in the U.S. are also impacting people’s decision-making,” said Laura Drew, lecturer at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health. 

Demographers also point to changing cultural norms, with women working more and delaying reproduction.



Canada the cruel:

A Canadian Catholic priest says that he was twice offered euthanasia while recovering in hospital from a hip fracture, noting that he was “very shocked” that he was asked about the procedure, which has become rampant in Canada.

Seventy-nine-year-old Father Larry Holland, from the Archdiocese of Vancouver, recalled in a recent interview posted by the diocese’s publication, the B.C. Catholic, that he was twice offered an option to, in essence, take his own life with the help of medical staff.

“There are some things you just don’t talk about to some people,” he said, adding, “I think I was very shocked.”

Holland said that euthanasia is “such a sensitive subject” after a doctor told him about so-called “Medical Assistance in Dying” (“MAiD”), as it’s known, as an option should his recovery go downhill.

Holland broke his hip after falling in the bathroom on Christmas Day. He noted that he is not currently dying, despite being in the hospital, was not dying right after he broke his hip. He is now recovering at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH).

The priest recalled how he could not believe that he was asked about assisted suicide despite staff at VGH knowing that he is a Catholic priest. He said he fell “kind of silent” after being asked by the doctor, who said that assisted suicide is “something they have to discuss with someone who’s been given a terminal diagnosis.”

Holland told the doctor that he was morally opposed to assisted suicide, but the doctor kept pressing it as an option.

After a few weeks, a nurse offered it to him again, claiming that it was a form of “compassion.”

The priest noted that, in reality, euthanasia is “a false compassion, really.”






Canada’s psychiatrists are being encouraged to screen people for “high-risk human-AI engagement,” including “chatbot psychosis” and other AI-amplified delusions.

The new guidance for identifying patients, particularly teens and young adults, at risk of developing troublesome attachments to AI companion bots comes amid rising wrongful death allegations against AI companies, including a lawsuit filed last week by the families of Tumbler Ridge shooting victims against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman.



It was never about a virus:

Canada’s new Chief Public Health Officer yesterday called the pandemic “a very difficult time for everyone” but would not discuss which specific errors contributed to public distrust. “Trust in health and institutions has been strained,” Dr. Joss Reimer of Winnipeg told the Commons health committee: “Whether those were the right or wrong decisions, we know there were many difficult things.”

**
The Biden administration threw its weight and reportedly more than $12 billion in taxpayer money behind Pfizer's Paxlovid despite the COVID-19 antiviral's penchant for rebound infections – including in the First Couple and then-directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

A long-awaited study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests the nirmatrelvir-ritonavir combination marketed as Paxlovid, with nearly 24 million courses federally purchased at $530 each, is no better at protecting vaccinated adults at elevated risk than it is at mitigating so-called long COVID, as Pfizer's own research found two years ago.

The "two open-label platform trials," known as PANORAMIC in the U.K. and CanTreatCOVID in Canada, found Paxlovid "did not reduce the incidence of hospitalization or death among vaccinated higher-risk participants" – 50 and older and 18-50 with "coexisting conditions" – who tested positive for COVID and "had been unwell for 5 days or less."

"We found no evidence that early treatment" reduced their "already-low incidence of hospitalization or death in either trial and were unable to identify any prespecified subgroup with compelling evidence of treatment effect," the authors said.

It's just the latest black eye for Pfizer, which canceled a trial for its new COVID vaccine for healthy 50-64 year-olds this month due to lack of interest and did not answer a Just the News query for its response to the peer-reviewed study. The Canada Paxlovid trial similarly ended early "because of slow recruitment" and its supply being discontinued, the study said.





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Tuesday, May 05, 2026

It's Only Money

No need to panic.

Someone, somewhere, has their hand on the rudder:

Given that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, the fact that Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne reported a drop in last year’s projected deficit from $78.3 billion to $66.9 billion — a decrease of $11.4 billion — in Tuesday’s spring economic statement should surprise no one.

It’s an old trick used by finance ministers for decades, regardless of political stripe, but perfected by the Jean Chretien Liberal government from 1993 to 2003.

During that time, the average annual budget balance came in $10.7 billion better than initially predicted, year after year.

This results from a deliberate policy of underestimating government revenues and overestimating expenditures at the start of the fiscal year, so that when the actual numbers come in, the government can boast about its sound fiscal management.

In other words, if you want to downplay the seriousness of a $66.9 billion deficit in the spring 2026 economic statement for the just-completed fiscal year of 2025-26, predict it was going to be $78.3 billion in the November 2025 budget.

Then, when the revised number comes in $11.4 billion less than predicted, Prime Minister Mark Carney and his finance minister looks like geniuses.

Of course, it could also mean they are terrible budgeters.

**

In November, Carney released his budget and said he would spend $588 billion this year.

He’s repeatedly promised to reduce spending.

“We are going to spend less to invest more,” Carney proclaimed in the House of Commons.

The budget outlined all the so-called investments. What about “spending less?”

Carney just released his budget update and now he’s going to spend $594 billion.

After only six months, Carney is on track to spend $6 billion over budget.

Why is Carney spending $6 billion over budget halfway through the budget year?

It’s not because of U.S. President Donald Trump, because he was also in the White House six months ago.

It’s not because of what’s happening in the Middle East. The budget update acknowledges that the conflict in the Middle East could “initially improve” the government’s budget because of higher revenues. In fact, federal revenues are now $6 billion higher than forecasted in November’s budget.

It’s not outside pressure that forced Carney to overspend. An extra $6 billion fell into his lap and, instead of using that money to cut the debt, he decided to blow the extra cash.

Carney is continuing former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s legacy of out-of-control borrowing.

The federal government will borrow $65 billion this year. Carney has no plan to balance the budget and stop borrowing money. The best Carney is willing to do is bring the deficit down to $53 billion in 2030.

This borrowing means more of the money the government takes from taxpayers will be given to bond fund managers.

The federal government will waste $59 billion paying interest on the debt this year.

That means the government is taking $1,400 from each Canadian and, instead of using that money to hire nurses, fix potholes or lower taxes, it’s wasting that money on interest payments.

To put things into perspective, the federal government will waste more money paying interest on the debt than it sends to the provinces in health transfers or takes in through its sales tax.

Let that sink in for a second. Then think about what we could do if it weren’t for the federal debt. We could double federal health spending. Or we could eliminate the federal sales tax.

**

Canada is not in a mild economic slowdown.

It is in a self-inflicted investment crisis — and the numbers are no longer debatable.

Over the past decade, Canada has foregone or driven away the equivalent of $1 trillion in capital investment — a scale of economic underperformance unprecedented in modern Canadian history. This was not caused by a single crisis or external shock. It was the cumulative result of policy decisions, regulatory design, and political priorities that made Canada a harder place to invest.

Not theoretical wealth. Not paper losses. Real investment that chose not to build factories, pipelines, technologies, infrastructure, or businesses in this country.

And capital responded exactly as it always does: it left, or never came.

And the consequences are staggering.

Using conservative assumptions, the missing investment has cost Canada $1.5 to $2 trillion in GDP over the past ten years, with a forward impact that could reach $3 to $5 trillion over the next two decades. This is not theoretical modelling. It is the compounding effect of factories not built, projects not approved, and technologies not scaled.

That is not a gap. That is an economic failure.

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The Canada Strong Fund announced Monday by Prime Minister Mark Carney would thus appear to have potential. It would have even more potential if we had any money for it. But we don’t: the spring economic update Tuesday revealed we’ll be $67 billion short of balance this year. So it appears we’ll be borrowing the money to become strong. That’s a problem right there folks.

As any bankrupt can tell you, spending more than you make, consistently, for years on end, usually comes to a bad ending. Imagine a homeowner announcing a personal Mortgage Strong Fund, involving a housing loan that never gets paid, grows larger with each passing year, is dependent on whatever interest rates lenders choose to charge, which declares itself open to “investors” willing to kick in money to help meet the next payment, the return being that the guy owning the house doesn’t go broke.

Wouldn’t be much of a waiting list of opened wallets, I’m inclined to think.

Those factors may be the reason the government’s introduction of the fund … which isn’t really a plan yet but more a pledge to work up a plan… was met with some doubts.

“Normally, a country sets up a sovereign wealth fund with excess money they have, but Canada has debt, rather than extra money,” the CBC perspicaciously noted, and wasn’t alone in doing so.

“I don’t think anyone is interested in a government slush fund, but they are interested in a properly independently minded wealth fund free from political influence,” noted John Ruffalo, managing partner of Maverix Private Equity fund.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board suggested the fund could possibly work as planned, “depending on its final design.” Bank of Nova Scotia economist Derek Holt agreed that the devil, as always, “will be in the details,” a shortage of which was notable. “The way this new fund should be structured very much depends on its mandate,” said Sebastien Betermier of McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management. “So it will be critical to get the governance right.”

Media people did their best to explain how the fund would work, a difficult task given no one really seems to know. It would start with $25 billion from the government, over three years. Outside investors would be welcome to contribute if they spotted anything worth investing in. The money — plus any profits, presumably — would be spent making Canada stronger, though just what that might mean was also not clear.

“The Fund will strategically invest, alongside the private sector, in Canadian projects and companies driving our economic transformation,” explained the official government announcement. “This includes projects in clean and conventional energy, critical minerals, agriculture, and infrastructure.”

Fine, but, like, how? Building bridges? Expanding airports? Adding pipelines? Funding Canadian tech-bro start-ups? Buying stocks? Carney indicated the opportunity for ordinary Canadians would be “something consistent with buying a government bond,” though you can already do that.

The “returns” … assuming there are some … would be reinvested “to grow the fund.” And presumably also be shared with investors, so would have to be substantial enough to satisfy both. To win the confidence necessary to produce that level of success, emphasized former Teachers Pension Plan boss Jim Leech, the fund would have to operate 100 per cent free of political meddling.

“Government would have to be totally passive.”

That’s a requirement that underlies much of the outside apprehension. As many a doubter noted , Ottawa already has a collection of supposed investment vehicles tasked with attracting, distributing or creating extra cash for the government to “invest,” a term which, under the Trudeau government, became synonymous with “spend.” If any of them had done a great job, would this new one be needed?

As was also pointed out, a number of provinces and territories already have wealth funds of one sort or another, best known among them being the ever-disappointing Alberta Heritage Fund , whose initial promise in 1976 was whittled away by regular government fiddling. If a conservative-minded province with a gushing oil industry can’t manage to save enough to stay away from deficits, how’s a federal government with a history of fiscal blundering supposed to do better?

There’s the rub. For very good reasons — history and experience for starters — Canadians’ faith in the competence of its governments and the institutions they operate has been drastically reduced. It certainly suffered severe damage over the nine years of Justin Trudeau and his ever-escalating spending binges, during which a pledge of temporary “modest” deficits somehow managed to double a national debt that had taken almost 150 years to compile. Public debt charges on federal borrowing are expected to hit $59 billion this year.

Carney’s people appear to realize there is a degree of skepticism amongst the people, emphasizing that the fund will be “focused on performance” with “consistent expert management.” It will operate “at arm’s length” as part of what it calls its “federal ecosystem of Crown corporations.” Such reassuring terminology might carry greater weight if another member of that ecosystem, Canada Post, hadn’t just revealed it lost another $1.57 billion last year, up almost 87 per cent from the already-chokeworthy losses of the year before.

Of course the post office is a dying operation struggling against declining demand with an expensive workforce resistant to change. But it’s been haemorrhaging money for years and all the brave press releases and determined statements in the world haven’t managed to introduce a jot of improvement.

We can pretty much guarantee the new fund won’t be shovelling money into Canada Post — and if it tries you’ll need a new nation-building high-speed rail project to handle the fleeing investors. But that’s just the point: a Liberal prime minister — though not the current one — announced just such a project: the “transformative” Alto rail link joining Quebec City and Toronto, which would “turbocharge the Canadian economy” at a cost of $60-billion to $90-billion, starting around 2029 or so.

**

The macro context in which Carney is announcing this is not flattering. Nearly 12 months since his election, Canada has managed only modest net job gains while shedding over 100,000 full-time jobs in the downturn of early 2026. The sharpest monthly drop in more than four years, 84,000 jobs lost in February 2026 alone, was concentrated in private-sector industries like manufacturing, retail, and resources. Canada also became the only G7 economy to contract in the most recent quarter, underpinned by continued weakness in business investment and productivity, and one of the highest unemployment rates in the group.

The specifics of this remarkably light-on-details proposal deserve some attention.

 Typically, a sovereign wealth fund is employed when a country has a surplus and wants to avoid frivolous spending. Sovereign wealth funds are like endowments: take a chunk of excess wealth, invest in profitable ventures to generate return, reinvest a portion, and spend a portion. More precisely, they fall into a few categories: stabilization funds, savings funds like Norway’s GPFG, and strategic investment vehicles like Singapore’s Temasek. On the limited details available, the Canada Strong Fund looks closest to the third type, which is most prone to political direction of capital toward favoured ends.

Real sovereign wealth funds are typically drawn from resource royalties where the wealth-generating asset is owned by the state running the fund. Ottawa doesn’t own that asset. Control of resources belong to the provinces under Section 92A of the Constitution, so what’s being borrowed against is future federal tax revenue.

Ottawa does have a habit of forgetting about Alberta, except for when there’s money to be milked or vaguely-defined corporate villains to be ritually flayed on the altar of climate action.

Even setting the constitutional problem aside, wagering borrowed capital is inherently costlier and riskier. A debt-funded vehicle is a leveraged bet by the Crown, and one that is worse than not running the fund at all if it underperforms its cost of capital, because the liability persists either way. And it joins a crowded field of state-directed capital vehicles — the Canada Infrastructure Bank, the Business Development Bank, Export Development Canada, the Canada Growth Fund — whose mandates the government has now promised to “review” in lieu of explaining what gap this one fills.

Not only does Canada lack a healthy surplus, the country is actually buried so deep in the debt pit that the surface is a dim and distant glimmer.

The smarter move would be to generate that wealth in the first place by getting government out of the way. With sound fundamentals, a competitive private sector can carry the risk and deliver wins for the public purse.

Our broader productivity gaps come from regulatory drag, an uncompetitive tax structure, and weak domestic competition. To boot, much of Canada’s headline GDP growth this past decade came not from productivity, but now-slowing population growth.

Adding $25 billion in federal debt, even if somewhat offset by federal asset sales, only worsens the burden of public-debt-per-capita.

These factors require a bit more work to resolve than more borrowing and spending.


Also:

Canada’s high youth unemployment rate flies in the face of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s boast about the “resilience” of the economy in the government’s spring economic update this week.

While high unemployment is a concern across all age groups, Statistics Canada’s most recent labour force survey reported that the youth unemployment rate of 13.8% in March was more than double the national average of 6.7%.

A study by the Fraser Institute released Thursday by Philip Cross, former chief economic analyst for Statistics Canada, reported that last year, 437,000 young people between 15 and 24 years of age looked for a job but could not find one, up a staggering 57% from 290,000 in 2022.

Over the last three years, youth unemployment increased from 10% in 2022 to 13.8% in 2025, the largest three-year increase on record when the economy was not in a recession, the report noted.

“Canada’s youth unemployment is a crisis and will have serious consequences in later years when youths today who are unable to secure work try to find steady employment as adults,” Cross warned, describing the recent increases in youth unemployment as “extraordinary.”

The dismal state of youth unemployment was also reflected in a survey released by the Angus Reid Institute this week that found rising concerns over jobs and unemployment among those aged 18 to 24, with 38% in that demographic choosing it as a top issue, more than double the 18% who said this at the beginning of 2025.

Cross noted the previous Justin Trudeau government’s high immigration polices, which dramatically increased the supply of young workers without the necessary economic growth to absorb them, is one of the main reasons for high youth unemployment today.

Another factor, he said, were the simultaneous hikes to the minimum wage in many provinces.

While increasing minimum wages is popular among politicians because it puts the onus on the private sector to pay for a policy politicians then take credit for, its practical impact in a struggling economy is to reduce the demand for young workers because of the increased costs imposed on businesses.

“The extraordinary surge in youth unemployment in Canada is a homegrown problem, and policymakers in Ottawa and in provincial legislatures should review the policies that are making it worse,” Cross said. 


 

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