Mid-Week Post

Your middle-of-the-week spit-take ...

A Ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme?

 

You decide:

The takeaway from Mark Carney’s announcement of a new Sovereign Wealth Fund for Canada might just be that big government is back. Of course, this being Canada, big government never really left.

Even under supposedly conservative governments, we see tax dollars being “invested” in the economy, picking winners and losers and doing what the private sector should but won’t do.

Carney’s announcement of the Canada Strong Fund, $25 billion to be invested over three years, joins a long list of other funds that are supposed to do the same. The one thing Canada is not lacking is a pool of government money designed to build infrastructure, boost the economy or find and develop the next generation of entrepreneurs.

“Canada’s new government is catalyzing a series of nation-building projects in energy, trade, critical minerals, transport, data, and beyond —

projects that will make Canada stronger, more resilient, and more independent,” Carney said in announcing the fund.

One might rightly ask how the Canada Strong Fund differs in purpose from the Canada Infrastructure Bank, the Canada Growth Fund, the Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative, which is now called the Venture and Growth Capital Catalyst Initiative, or the Strategic Innovation Fund. Of course, this is a short list and doesn’t include the various regional economic development agencies, the federal government’s various loan or business development groups or assorted slush funds.

At his news conference announcing the Canada Strong Fund on Monday, Prime Minister Carney said that the infrastructure bank provides loans while this new fund will take equity or ownership stakes in projects to make more money. Yet the reality is that the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which Carney just boosted from $35 billion in funds to $45 billion last November, also take ownership stakes in projects.

How many different bureaucracies do we need investing in Canadians businesses and trying to “unlock” or “crowd in” private-sector investment?

This is how the federal government describes the $15-billion Canada Growth Fund, “a financially prudent portfolio of investments that unlock private sector investment in Canadian businesses and projects to help grow Canada’s economy at speed and scale.”

What Carney is giving us isn’t a new or transformational idea, it’s another bureaucracy, something he’s fond of building. The Major Projects office he announced last summer hasn’t moved forward a single project that wasn’t already underway when it was referred to them and the Build Canada Homes organization was set up to build more homes when in fact, home building is declining.

The major problem with the Trudeau government was that the announcement was the policy, they didn’t think beyond the news release. The major problem with the Carney government appears to be that the only thing they think of beyond the announcement is how to build more bureaucracy.

We don’t need anymore!

In addition to the Canada Strong Fund, the Canada Infrastructure Bank, the Canada Growth Fund, the Venture and Growth Capital Catalyst Initiative and the Strategic Innovation Fund we have as whole series of other groups designed to attract investment, pull in the private sector and build Canada strong. Those would include the Canada Development Investment Corporation, Invest in Canada, the Canada Indigenous Loan Guarantee Corporation, the Indigenous Equity Initiative, the Business Development Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada and more than half a dozen regional development agencies.

Here’s a radical idea.

Instead of putting billions of dollars we don’t have into a Sovereign Wealth Fund which is really a Sovereign Debt Fund, we could improve the investment climate to attract more private-sector funding. We could eliminate capital gains for anyone who reinvests in a Canadian company, lower personal and corporate income taxes to make Canada more competitive, reduce red tape in getting projects approved and expand full expensing of capital costs to encourage investment.

None of this would cost $25 billion, and the returns would be substantial.

It also wouldn’t allow government to take credit for the projects that go forward and that is the real issue.

**

The Canada Sovereign Wealth Fund provides a guaranteed -8.8% annual return, a 2% fee to cover French language training for 8000 full-time fund managers, and no withdrawals can occur without a land acknowledgement that begins by noting that money is a colonial construct. https://t.co/T9CDFk2nQj

— CedarGroveWeatherHub (@CGWeatherHub) April 28, 2026

 **

But here’s the rub: this year’s budget predicts a $78.3-billion deficit, meaning the $8.3 billion a year Ottawa is planning to invest in the fund is all borrowed money. So when Carney says that it “will give all Canadians a direct stake in building Canada strong,” he doesn’t mean you’ll ever see any returns on your forced investment, but that your kids and grandkids might get a little help paying off the nearly $800-billion debt the Liberals have racked up since 2015.

**

And when tabling his mini-budget in the House, he braggedthat his government has reduced “our projected deficit for 2025-26 by more than$11 billion.”

This is the talking point that was regurgitated by much of the media. But it’s misleading, at best.

It’s true that, thanks to increased tax revenue and an economy that’s performing better than expected, the $78.3-billion deficit predicted in budget 2025 was reduced to $60.6 billion.

That’s still far higher than the deficits former prime minister Justin Trudeau was running at the end of his tenure, but it’s also lower than it would have been if Carney was capable of showing even a modicum of fiscal restraint.

Rather than taking the slightly reduced deficit figure as a win, the government announced $37.5 billion in new spending over the next six years on Tuesday, meaning that the 2025-26 deficit will clock in at around $66.9 billion, rather than $60.6 billion.

For those keeping track, Ottawa has now announced $54 billion in new spending over the next six years since last year’s budget was tabled in November.

Nor does the government plan to return to balance in the foreseeable future: the spring economic statement predicts that Ottawa will still be running a $56-billion deficit by the end of the decade, up from an estimated $20 billion in budget 2024.

 

Canada is a country in which a reasonable cost of living is considered obscene:

When the first Index was first released in fall 2024,Canadians were in the thick of a food inflation crisis. At the time, 40.3% of respondents believed food prices had risen by more than 10%, and anxiety was widespread. Food had already emerged as the dominant household concern, with 84.1% of Canadians identifying it as the expense that had increased the most, a staggering figure that set the tone for everything that followed.

Then came a political shift. In March 2025, Mark Carney became Prime Minister, inheriting an economy already under strain, with food affordability at the center of the national conversation. Nearly a year later, Canadians might reasonably ask: are things actually better?

The answer depends on what you measure.

If we look at perceptions of inflation, the situation has improved. By spring 2026, the share of Canadians who believe food prices rose by more than 10% has dropped to 29.7%, while expectations have stabilized. Today, 30.7% of Canadians expect food inflation to fall between 5% and 7%, and only 18.6% anticipate increases above 10%, down significantly from the previous year.

In that narrow sense, Canadians feel less alarmed.

But feeling less alarmed is not the same as feeling better.

Food remains the top financial concern for Canadians, with 81.1% still identifying it as the expense that has increased the most, only slightly down from 84.1% in 2024. No other category comes close. This persistence tells us something critical: while inflation is moderating, affordability has not improved in any meaningful way.

That reality is reflected in household budgets. Canadians are now spending more on food than they were a year ago, despite all efforts to cut back. Average monthly spending on food at home has climbed to just over $412, up from $396 the year before — an increase of $22.96 per month, or 4.6% year-over-year. At the same time, the share of households spending more than $600 per month on groceries has risen to 20.6%, reinforcing the steady upward drift in food costs.

Yet Canadians are not offsetting these increases by spending more elsewhere. Dining out remains constrained, with the largest share of households still spending $50 or less per month on restaurants and takeout. Households are prioritizing food at home, often at the expense of discretionary spending.

To cope, Canadians have fundamentally changed how they shop.

In Fall 2024, cost-cutting behaviours surged as households scrambled to respond to rising prices. Today, those behaviours have become normalized. According to the Index, 44.4% of Canadians actively seek sales and discounts, while roughly 23% use coupons, 23% shop at cheaper stores, and about 20% cut back on premium foods such as meat or fresh produce. Even alternative strategies are emerging, with 8.5% of Canadians now using food-rescue or surplus apps.

This is no longer crisis behaviour — it is routine behaviour.

And yet, despite all these adjustments, financial strain remains widespread. In Fall 2024, about 34% of Canadians reported drawing from savings or borrowing money to pay for food. That number dipped slightly in 2025, offering a brief sense of relief. But by Spring 2026, it has returned to 34%, unchanged from the peak.

One in three Canadians is still struggling to afford food.

**

The printing press is on fire. 🖨️🔥

Canada’s money printing surged 32% YoY:

•This year: $25.5B
•Last year: $19.3B

More "money" = less value. That’s why your cost of living is in a death spiral. 🇨🇦📉 pic.twitter.com/SsGb2G8fY8

— Market Mania 🏴‍☠️ (@MarketManiaCa) April 27, 2026

 

 

The effect of one of Canada's never-ending problems:

 

A 2025 report from the Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the Conference Board of Canada—aptly titled “The Leaky Bucket”—draws on 40 years of data to find that one in five immigrants leaves Canada within 25 years, with departures peaking around the five-year mark. Onward migration among recent cohorts has been rising.

The Institute put it bluntly: “Canada’s immigration system is doing a good job of attracting talent, but not keeping it.”

What makes this more than a retention statistic is who is leaving. Highly educated and highly skilled immigrants leave at twice the rate of those with less education and lower skills. Doctorate holders are nearly twice as likely to leave as those with a bachelor’s degree. And the occupations with the greatest labour needs face the weakest retention: ICT professionals, engineers, business and finance managers, and architecture managers show the highest departure rates. Canada is losing people with the skills and experience it most needs to keep.

The earnings finding is equally telling. Immigrants with stagnant or declining incomes are far more likely to leave. Among doctorate holders specifically, those whose earnings don’t grow are nearly three times more likely to depart than those with a bachelor’s degree.

Retention failure is not just a settlement program problem alone; it’s also a symptom of an economy that too often fails to deploy the talent it attracts at anywhere near its potential value. Canada recruits globally, but then too often underpays and underutilizes what it recruits. ...

The main event is what happened in the temporary stream. Each year, hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals are authorized to work in Canada on a temporary basis through both employer-driven and open permit programs, without the stringent points-based screening applied to permanent residents. The number of people in Canada on these temporary work authorizations grew from approximately 67,000 in 2000 to 1.5 million in 2024—a 22-fold increase in roughly two decades.

Yet the skill profile of this temporary workforce deteriorated sharply as it expanded. Bank of Canada research found that if the characteristics of temporary workers in 2023 and 2024 had simply matched those of their counterparts from 2006 to 2014, their wages would be 7.5 percent higher than they actually were—a measurable decline in human capital quality driven by shifts in education levels, region of origin, and occupation type.

The wage gap between temporary workers and Canadian-born workers more than doubled over the same period, from 9.5 percent to 22.6 percent. In aggregate, the Bank of Canada estimates this compositional deterioration reduced nominal wages across the Canadian economy by approximately 0.7 percent in 2023 and 2024. Put simply, the temporary worker surge added bodies to the labour force while subtracting from its average productivity. ...

Canada is losing its highest-earning, best-trained native-born citizens out one door. Out the other, a decade of policy drift expanded the immigration system’s volume dramatically while allowing its skill composition to deteriorate, and the skilled immigrants Canada does attract are leaving at twice the rate of less-skilled arrivals.

Neither trend alone tells the full story. Together, they describe a country that is mismanaging both ends of its human capital equation simultaneously.

The Carney government has signalled a new path on immigration: the 2026–2028 plan targets economic immigrants at 64 percent of all admissions by 2027 and 2028, described as the highest share in decades. This shift is being reinforced by a new government proposal, reported by The Globe and Mail this week, to overhaul Express Entry by consolidating programs into a single high-skilled stream and recalibrating points to prioritize high-wage occupations—a clear attempt to shutter the “side door” that has diluted the talent pool. That’s an acknowledgement that something went wrong on the intake side.

But restoring the skill composition of inflows addresses only half the problem. The tax environment, credential recognition barriers, and cost of living that make leaving Canada attractive—to both native-born Canadians and the skilled immigrants Canada recruits—remain largely unaddressed and warrant attention.

 

Also - what can go right?:

WOW!

A LEAKED INTERNAL Canadian Armed Forces report reveals a platoon in Quebec was 83% non citizens.

Many had been in Canada for less than 3 months.

LESS THAN HALF GRADUATED.

The platoon broke into ethnic infighting between African factions.

The report flagged “lack of… https://t.co/uPw7MQ76Jg

— Mario Zelaya (@mario4thenorth) April 28, 2026

 

 

No country for anyone:

Ottawa has been particularly critical of Israel recently, often moving in lockstep with European allies as the Trump administration’s relationship with the Netanyahu government deepens.

Last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney warned Israel against launching a “significant” ground offensive in Lebanon in a joint statement alongside European leaders. Just a few weeks later, he condemned the very military invasion he and Canada’s allies said should have been averted.

Around the same time, Mr. Carney joined European leaders in criticizing Israeli police for preventing the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from celebrating Palm Sunday at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. And Canada echoed European countries in voicing opposition to the Israeli parliament’s passing of a law that stipulates death by hanging as the sentence for Palestinians convicted in military courts of deadly attacks.

Mr. Carney’s government has also sanctioned Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. According to Global Affairs Canada, Ottawa sanctioned two people on June 10, 2025, because their actions undermined security in Israel and the Occupied Territories by “supporting, facilitating, and contributing to Israeli extremist settler violence against Palestinian civilians or their property.”

While Mr. Carney’s rhetoric is not all that different from that of his predecessor’s on this issue, analysts say that at a time when America’s relationship with Israel is especially strong, Canada is moving increasingly in tandem with its European allies. Signing on to joint statements, or coming out independently but echoing European allies, provides Canada some “cover,” said Fen Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University.

“It’s not as if we’ve been out on a limb,” Prof. Hampson said of Mr. Carney’s recent criticism of Israel. “We’ve moved with the Europeans on this one. … But it has put us offside with the Americans, and it obviously has not gone unnoticed in the Oval Office.”

“We used to be in sync with the Americans. We’re definitely no longer in sync with the Americans, certainly when it comes to our policies toward Israel. Now, the other question is: Does it matter? Does it make a difference in terms of our impact? And we should not delude ourselves that we have any influence of any substance in the region.”

 Mr. Carney announced Canada’s intention to recognize a Palestinian state last July, after similar announcements from countries such as France and Britain. That month Canada and 24 other countries also signed a letter urging Israel to end its war in Gaza.

**

In a report attempting to diagnose skyrocketing attacks on Canadian Jews, the Senate of Canada didn’t once mention the role of Islamic extremism.

Fifteen Senators spent more than 17 months interviewing 44 witnesses as to why Canadian incidents of Jew hate have spiked to all-time highs in the wake of the Hamas-orchestrated terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.

The period being studied by the Senate has seen security services foil multiple Islamist plots to kill Jews. This includes a Toronto-based Pakistani national who just pled guilty to plotting a mass shooting at a Brooklyn Jewish centre and a father-son pair accused of plotting a deadly terrorist attack on Jewish sites in Toronto.

In fact, the same week the Senate report was published, an Ontario court convicted an Ottawa youth of plotting an Islamic State-inspired attack to “murder as many Jewish persons as possible.”

But across the entirety of the Senate report’s 73 pages, its only mentions of the words “Muslim” or “Islam” are in citing Canadian Islamic communities as being comparable recipients of hate.

As an executive summary reads, “the committee is keenly aware of the similarities between antisemitism, sexism, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate, as well as the ways in which individuals can face intersectional discrimination.” 

 

So, a bland, generic report that brushes over the Liberals' former favourite voters block.

Got it.

**

A failed Palestinian suicide bomber released as part of an October 7 massacre hostage ransom spoke remotely to University of California, Berkeley students on Monday at an event held in one of the university’s classrooms, according to social media posts by the organizing student groups.

**

On April 14, the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, together with Hillel — a Jewish students’ association — hosted an event featuring Omer Shem Tov, a 23-year-old who was abducted by terrorists from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, and held captive by Hamas for 505 days. 

One week later, the Undergraduate Students Association Council released a statement condemning the event on the grounds that it “advance[d] incomplete and harmful representations of ongoing violence.”

 

Also:

"They want everyone to learn Islam, and... there are those who refuse, and they get killed." — A survivor, persecution.org, January 22, 2026, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

 "How can we understand that fighters have been operating freely for over two weeks in the same area, attacking village after village, without any effective response from the security forces?... The population feels abandoned to its fate, exposed to massacres while official speeches multiply without any visible action on the ground." — barnabasaid.org, January 27, 2026, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

 "The night I was abducted, they killed my mother and kidnapped my older sister and me. The slightest mistakes are severely punished. For women, they kill their children and throw them into a hole. They would send me to kill people on my own, and when I refused, I was whipped all over my body." — persecution.org, January 22, 2026, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

 "I was raped by four men successively. I couldn't handle the pain of four men abusing me successively. I was wounded terribly, my body was deformed." — Esther, age 11, persecution.org, January 22, 2026, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

ADF uses abduction, forced conversion to Islam, gang rape, and child soldier recruitment as a deliberate strategy to terrorize and reduce the Christian population in eastern Congo. — persecution.org, January 22, 2026, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

 "Those victims did not pursue legal action, which appears to have emboldened him. He showed no hesitation before attempting to burn Morris alive." — Rakha, morningstarnews.org, January 29, 2026, Pakistan.

 "The girl was forced to record a statement claiming she had willingly converted to Islam and married Ahmad. She also falsely stated that she was an adult, despite official documentary evidence proving that she is a minor [13] and below the legal age of marriage under provincial child marriage laws, which prohibit the marriage of girls under 16." — Rana Abdul Hameed, lawyer for the family of Maria Shahbaz, morningstarnews.org, January 15, 2016, Pakistan.

 On Jan. 1, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) "released an image of one of the Christian villages in Adamawa State burning, alongside a statement saying that all Christians in Nigeria are legitimate targets, and they have an opportunity to 'spare their blood' by converting to Islam or paying the jizyah tax to ISWAP." — dailypost.ng, January 1, 2026, Nigeria.

 "Iran has an open secret. Persecuting Christians is a booming business in the Muslim-majority nation, and the country is earning large sums of money from arresting Christ followers." — persecution.org, January 22, 2026.

 There were many other attacks on churches throughout Italy in the month of January—including fecal smearing and statue beheadings. 

 

 

Canada the cruel:

An expert on Canada’s assisted dying laws says a parliamentary committee studying MAID in cases of mental illness is not focused on its mandate and has not been balanced in its approach.

Jocelyn Downie is a professor emeritus of law at Dalhousie University who has studied assisted dying laws for decades.

She was a witness at the first meeting last month of senators and MPs studying whether Canada is ready to extend assisted dying to people whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness.

By law, that extension is set to happen in March of next year.

Downie says the committee’s co-chairs are both openly opposed to the extension, as are most of the witnesses the committee has called so far.

She’s also warning the committee is not focused on its mandate, which is limited to whether the country is ready for next year’s extension, and is instead hearing testimony from people opposed to assisted dying in general.

**

Canada's bishops are calling on Catholics to contact their Members of Parliament before March 2027, when the country's assisted suicide program is set to expand yet again, to cover mental illness as a sole qualifying condition.

The program, “Medical Aid in Dying” (MAiD), has drawn criticism from human rights advocates across the world. Since its legalization 10 years ago, over 60,000 Canadians have died by MAiD — including more than 5% of all Canadian deaths in 2024 alone. 

Now Canada’s Catholic bishops are urging Canadians to speak up and contact their Members of Parliament (MPs) to prevent a serious escalation of MAiD criteria. Up to this point, the criteria to be eligible for MAiD had to include a physical health condition, such as illness or disability. But beginning in March 2027, Canada is planning an expansion that would allow MAiD for mental illness as a sole condition. 

The planned expansion raises grave concerns about repercussions on vulnerable people, even among MAiD's supporters. What will be the effect on those lacking social or financial support? How can this expansion not run directly counter to suicide prevention efforts? 

Bill C-218, a private members’ bill currently before Parliament, would amend the Criminal Code to prevent MAiD from being provided when mental illness is the sole underlying condition. Without this change, MAiD will be available for those suffering from mental illness alone beginning in March 2027.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) is calling on Canadians to speak up in support of Bill C-218 as part of the Help Not Harm campaign currently underway in the Archdiocese of Toronto and throughout Canada. 

Catholics are asked to contact their Member of Parliament through the Help Not Harm portal and ask them to support Bill C-218. The process takes less than three minutes. A vote on the legislation is expected by late May or early June 2026.

It's worth noting that Catholics represent roughly 30% of Canada's population — a significant voice in any political issue. 

**

Medical assistance in dying now accounts for roughly one in 20 deaths in Canada, according to the latest government data. That makes it the country’s fifth-leading cause of death.

For patients facing severe illness and suffering, the option is framed as an act of compassion. But its rapid expansion raises uncomfortable questions about how government-run health systems respond to the reality of scarce public resources.

Caring for patients with complex, chronic or terminal conditions is among the most expensive obligations in any health system. That creates an inherent tension in systems where the government both finances care—and decides what care is worth covering.

Those tensions deserve attention in the United States, where government already finances roughly half of all health spending—and where calls for Canadian-style single-payer health care are growing louder.

 

I was assured that this sort of thing would work:

 

 

What do you have to do to be kicked out of this country?:

Days from being deported, an 11th-hour decision by a Federal Court justice on Friday means that Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, who was found responsible for the fatal Humboldt Broncos bus crash in 2018, can stay in Canada for a little while longer.

Sidhu was behind the wheel of the semi-truck that blew through an oversized stop sign with a flashing yellow light, right into the path of the Saskatchewan junior hockey team’s bus, on April 6, 2018. The collision killed 16 players and staff and injured 13 others.

He was scheduled to be deported and board a plane for India early Monday morning.

However, in a decision after a hearing on Friday, Federal Court Justice Jocelyne Gagné granted a temporary deferral pending the outcome of an earlier Federal Court case, which challenged the Canada Border Services Agency's (CBSA) decision not to delay Sidhu's deportation while he waits for a ruling on an application to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

His lawyers say it could be several months before a decision is made.

Sidhu pleaded guilty in January 2019 to 16 counts of dangerous driving causing death and 13 counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm, and on March 22 of that year he was sentenced to eight years in prison — the longest sentence in Canadian history for that crime that didn’t involve alcohol, drugs or purposeful behaviour.

Sidhu was granted full parole in 2023. One year later, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada removed his permanent resident status and ordered his deportation.

 

Priorities:

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired.

The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass.

A champagne flute hit the… pic.twitter.com/Y8rEAdqROZ

— Peter Girnus 🦅 (@gothburz) April 27, 2026