‼️MAJOR BREAKING: Carney has sent 2,000 Canadian troops to the Russian border in Latvia! -Full Canadian-led NATO brigade mobilizing east from Ādaži base -This is first time EVER the entire formation moves to the eastern flank......~2,000 Canadian soldiers + 1,000 from 14 NATO nations -Troops have been ordered to build defensive positions near Rēzekne, ~35 km from Russia -Tanks, infantry, and engineers now fortifying NATO’s front line -Canada’s largest overseas deployment under Op REASSURANCE -He's digging in on sending us to war!
— Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@Tablesalt13) November 3, 2026
In the same week that the Bank of Canada raised interest rates citing the rise in energy costs, Canada’s economy disappointed, showing anemic growth for the month of August. Statistics Canada reported that real GDP was essentially unchanged for a second straight month, and its own early estimate already shows a 0.1 per cent decline in September. Analysts fear October will see the outlook turn negative too.
While some will quickly conclude our weakening economy is the product of a recent trade standoff between Canada and the U.S., affordability and productivity concerns have less to do with trade policy and everything to do with the policy direction the government has pursued over the last 11 years, and in particular, the pursuit of net zero.
To achieve this questionable objective, an energy-intensive nation began to impose restrictions and conditions on itself for the production and use of all carbon-emitting forms of energy, in the firm belief this would mitigate the effects of global variances in weather patterns. Caps on emissions, carbon taxes, tanker bans and rigorous permitting for pipeline and takeaway capacity, including a stringent impact assessment with no global equivalent, much less in a producing nation with some of the planet’s greatest proven reserves, effectively chased away critical capital and escalated energy prices to intolerable heights. They now threaten the purchasing power of every Canadian.
In the midst of an energy crisis marked by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, Canadians can no longer rely on the more than 40-year protection of the “Petro Loonie” to offset rising energy costs, which are priced in U.S. dollars.
The evidence is hard to miss. Benchmark Canada, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute project that measures Canada against its peers, tracked the loonie through the five most recent oil-supply shocks, from the 2019 attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq facility to this year’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. A month after each one, the dollar had moved somewhere between a 1.8 per cent loss and a 1.6 per cent gain. When Hormuz closed, disrupting about a fifth of the world’s oil, the loonie gained 0.4 per cent for a moment, then slid 3.6 per cent. Since January 2015 it has lost 13.2 per cent against the U.S. dollar. In September it averaged about 72 U.S. cents, a third below its 2007 peak of US$1.09.
Currency markets price what a country can deliver to world markets, not what it has in the ground. A producer that cannot get its oil to tidewater captures less of every price spike, and investors price its dollar accordingly. As a result, Canadians pay 38 cents a litre more for gasoline and 52 cents more on the fuel that is our economic workhorse, diesel and distillates.
Diesel moves the trucks that stock grocery shelves and runs the equipment in our mines, farms and forests. You do not need to own a car to pay for it. Statistics Canada’s September figures show where it ends up. Consumer prices rose 3.1 per cent from a year earlier, gasoline 27.8 per cent, and fuel oil and other fuels 57.8 per cent. Strip out gasoline and inflation was 2.2 per cent. The Bank of Canada now expects it to reach about 3.5 per cent by year-end.
And while Ottawa contents itself with having removed the consumer carbon tax, it holds fast to its second carbon tax, the Clean Fuel Regulations, which now add 15 cents to every litre of gasoline and 19 cents to every litre of diesel. All the while it makes a windfall in GST and HST revenue, which compounds the direct increase in fuel prices and its knock-on effect on the cost of everything else.
The Bank of Canada cannot build a pipeline. It has one main tool, and last week it used it, passing the cost of failed energy policy on to anyone carrying debt. Many households were already falling behind. Bank of Canada figures, built on TransUnion data, show that arrears of 90 days or more on auto loans, credit cards and instalment loans all hit series highs in the second quarter of this year. Instalment-loan arrears reached 2.95 per cent, more than three times their level at the end of 2015. Every one of those figures predates the rate hike.
After all the hubbub about it, the EU has backed away from giving Canada “associate membership.” Several governments balked at the phrase, and the draft Montreal summit statement now promises an “ever closer association” instead.
That must be embarrassing for the europhile Prime Minister Mark Carney, though he says the label doesn’t matter. And, really, he’s right. The words might be different, but the goal hasn’t changed. He wants to bring Canada into a much closer political and regulatory relationship with Brussels.
Defenders of the prime minister might say he has little choice. Canada is in rough economic shape. Statistics Canada reports we lost 68,000 jobs in September, following 42,000 in August. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has cut its 2026 growth forecast to 0.9%.
High energy prices are driving up the cost of everything. We pay more to fill our cars and heat our homes, but also for groceries, since energy is essential to growing, processing, and transporting food.
But why is it the prime minister’s priority to bind ourselves to a political body in even worse economic shape than we’re in? Germany, the EU’s largest economy, has lost nearly 500,000 industrial jobs since 2019. And across Europe, high energy costs have contributed to a prolonged struggle to maintain industrial competitiveness.
The cause isn’t mysterious. Europe has spent years pursuing a net-zero agenda familiar to Canadians: carbon tax, EV mandates, restrictions on conventional energy production, and a forced transition away from dependable, affordable energy. Energy-intensive industries are moving elsewhere, investment is fleeing, and households are paying the price.
Meanwhile, European politicians lecture citizens about their energy consumption — remember the freakout over air-conditioning use during the heat wave in France this past summer — even as households struggle to keep their homes livable. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni recently warned fellow EU leaders that if they don’t fix energy costs, “the citizens will chase us with pitchforks.”
Yet this is precisely the path Carney has spent much of his career promoting. He served as the UN’s Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance and launched the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), helping advance a financial system that redirects capital away from natural resource projects and toward “green” energy. It’s almost designed to make energy more expensive.
And look where that leads. Europe’s green agenda has made it more dependent on China, which dominates solar panel and electric vehicle supply chains while building new coal-fired power plants at home every year.
A Canada remade in Europe’s image would risk the same outcome. It could also weaken our relationship with the United States, our largest customer, while putting further pressure on Canada’s oil and gas industry, the golden goose that pays for so much of what Canadians take for granted.
Forty-five years later, Prime Minister Donald Tusk addressed the nation in a manner recalling General Wojciech Jaruzelski’s infamous 1981 martial-law speech and told his audience, “I would very much like us never to have to witness such scenes in Poland again.”He was referring to Friday’s dramatic raid on the Constitutional Tribunal, an object of much political wrangling over the last decade. On Friday evening, an unconfirmed Tusk-appointed judge asserted for herself powers of “substitute” to the sitting Tribunal president and proclaimed a “suspension” of sitting judges. Police were deployed around the building and barred the sitting Tribunal president, vice president, Tribunal Guard, and staff from entering. Opposition figures have called it a coup.
President Karol Nawrocki, a conservative elected separately from Tusk’s liberal-leftist-centrist coalition, was en route to Senegal for a state visit but returned to Warsaw. Journalist Stanisław Janecki reported that the army personnel responsible for the military wing of Warsaw’s Okęcie Airport ignored instructions to refuse landing to the presidential plane and divert it to another Polish airport. Readers should note that this is unconfirmed at the time of writing, and various officials have denied this reporting.
Nawrocki rushed to the Tribunal building and forced his way through a police cordon, an image that circulated worldwide via social media. He attempted to broker a compromise throughout the weekend, but these efforts were, at least initially, unsuccessful.
“Last night, the constitutional order of the Republic of Poland was violated and a constitutional state body was taken over by force,” wrote President Nawrocki on Saturday. “In view of the threat to the internal security of the Republic of Poland, I am convening urgent consultations today with representatives of the parliamentary groupings, aimed at stabilising the political situation and restoring the constitutional order.”
Ford is increasing the budget "deficit" from $13.8 billion to $16.9 billion. But the headline deficit number hides how much the government is truly borrowing because it only includes the government's operating budget and doesn't include the government's infrastructure budget.
The Ford government now plans to borrow $28.8 billion this year, driving total government debt to $483.8 billion.
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