Let the roots of a tree wither and it still looks like a tree for a while. The leaves stay green while the fruit hangs on. Then one season it doesn't, and everyone acts surprised.

That’s the image Chad O. Jackson and I kept circling in this conversation. The West was built on three pillars: Greek philosophy, which taught us how to reason; Roman law, which taught us what a citizen and a court are; and Christian theology, which told us right from wrong and why any of it matters. The Enlightenment thinkers pulled a clever trick. They wanted to keep the fruit — human dignity, individual worth, equality before the law — while throwing out the doctrine that grew it. Chad calls that wanting God’s stuff without wanting God.

The people running the West today aren’t really secular. Watch how they behave and you find a whole religion underneath. Sacred texts you can’t question. A priest class of experts who alone may interpret them. Sin, heresy, apostasy, and a cancel-culture machine built to hunt all three. The climate movement carries the old anticipation of apocalypse. Gender identity carries the old search for a soul that lives outside the body. We didn’t leave religion behind. We swapped a coherent one for a shabby one and told ourselves we’d grown up.

The Roman pillar is cracking in plain sight. Trudeau, asked what a Canadian is, answered that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. That circle is the whole ideology in one breath: citizenship is nothing but paperwork, and paperwork is whatever the state decides. Chad pushed back hard on that. A citizen is someone domiciled in a nation, owing it allegiance and receiving its protection in return. Break that reciprocity and you get people who want the protection with none of the loyalty, and a governing class happy to oblige. He walked through the Supreme Court’s birthright ruling, where Clarence Thomas wrote a lawful, cited dissent and Ketanji Brown Jackson answered with the language of a hashtag. When the high court appeals to vibes instead of law, the pillar isn’t cracked but crumbling.

Underneath the migration numbers sits a colder logic. The elite and the Marxist agitator share one enemy: the middle class. The elite fear it because merit lets outsiders break into old money. The Marxist needs it gone because a comfortable middle has no appetite for revolution. Universal suffrage, mass migration, birthright citizenship — read them as tools for diluting the one class with a stake in preserving the country, and the pieces click together.

We closed on governance itself. Aristotle’s rule by the one, the few, and the many. R.C. Sproul’s claim that a monarchy runs on honor, a dictatorship on fear, and a republic on virtue — and that a republic that loses its virtue doesn’t drift back to monarchy, it falls into strongman rule. That’s the road Chad sees us on. Neither of us thinks politics is the cure. Politics is downstream. The pillars are the thing, and the answer isn’t to argue for them. It’s to embody them.

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The story of Spider-Man will forever be remembered for a single line, delivered to Peter as the dying words of Uncle Ben: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

He did not say that only because the statement is true. He said it because, by our very nature, power corrupts us.

That is why, in our Westminster system, we divide power in many ways. We separate the courts from the legislature, then split those powers even further between judges, ministers, and Parliament itself. We cannot allow power to be concentrated in one place. That road leads, almost without fail, to corruption.

The current Liberal government does not seem to be heeding Uncle Ben’s warning.

In the spring sitting of 2025, the government passed a total of five bills. This spring sitting, it passed 24. Of those, 21 were introduced by the ruling party–and 19 were passed into law.

As a matter of fact, all of these bills were passed after the government already had a majority. The spring sitting began on February 2, and by April 13, the government had formed its majority through multiple floor crossings. Since then, it has forced through several laws, many of them controversial.

In this case, many of the bills were contested by other parties because they bordered on authoritarianism: laws that could erode Canadians’ privacy, security, and basic rights. It is important to note these laws and assess how they could change Canada.

These are the bills I believe will shape Canada the most:

Bill C-9, for the first time in Canadian law, defines “hatred” and makes it a criminal offense to willfully promote hate through the use of symbols, including those tied to terrorist entities. That means the list of symbols deemed unacceptable will almost certainly grow.

This bill received serious scrutiny when the Bloc agreed to support it only if the Liberals removed the religious exemption. The law also makes it illegal to block access to places of worship, which has led many to ask whether protesting near places of worship could be treated as unlawful.

Josh Dehaas, a Toronto lawyer, recently joined David Leis on Leaders on the Frontier and criticized bill C-9 saying, “we already have intimidation laws on the books” and “these laws are not being enforced.”

The government seems to be unnecessarily expanding powers and pushing for laws using lack of enforcement as an excuse.

Bill C-22, the “lawful access” bill, has already drawn warnings from VPN services, including NordVPN and Windscribe VPN, which have said they may leave Canada if the bill becomes law.

This is one of the biggest expansions of government surveillance power Canada has seen in years. It would allow police and other public officers to demand subscriber information and request data from telecommunications and online service providers, including some based outside Canada that serve Canadians. It would also allow secrecy requirements in some cases. Meaning people will have no idea if the government is looking through their personal data.

Critics warn it could sharply weaken digital privacy, expand government access to personal data, and push privacy-focused companies out of Canada.

Supporters argue that giving law enforcement this power creates less friction when they are investigating serious and time-sensitive crimes. That may be true–but giving the state this kind of power will also erode privacy for Canadians.

So the question is simple: is mass surveillance a decent trade-off for online safety?

Bill C-20, the Build Canada Homes Act, would turn the federal affordable housing agency into a Crown corporation.

The bill gives the agency the power to own, develop, transfer, and finance property for development. On its face, that may not sound very controversial. However, in practice, the government has already used this kind of thinking to justify buying condos from Canadian developers who are unable to sell them.

Many are calling out the move, arguing that it is little more than a bailout for developers who should be left to take the loss in the free market.

The bigger question is whether the Liberals can use this as a long-term strategy to stop Canadians from taking a loss on inflated property values. If so, taxpayers could be forced to cover the difference when property owners cannot sell at the prices they expected.

In 2024, Canada was ranked second highest in the world for house-price-to-income ratios. Nine in ten Canadians say they are concerned about the current state of housing. Three in five Canadians are worried about their ability to pay rent or their mortgage, and three in five are worried about losing their home or rental unit.

With Canada’s housing situation getting worse, Canadians may be tempted to support more government housing, but they will also be forced to pay the bill for it.

Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, makes broad changes to Canada’s criminal justice system. It creates new offences for coercive control in intimate relationships, strengthens laws against child sexual exploitation and online abuse, expands protections for victims, and changes sentencing rules.

Supporters say it modernizes the Criminal Code and better protects victims. Critics argue that parts of the bill could weaken sentencing by giving judges more discretion instead of keeping mandatory minimum penalties for certain offences.

There is also concern that some reforms could end up putting the rights of offenders ahead of deterrence and public safety. Lately, judges have already been leaning toward lighter sentences and bail decisions. In too many cases, that has ended tragically. We see it written into law for some minority groups as well, like Gladue Reports for Indigenous people, for example. They can receive lighter sentences simply for their background. Equal under the law no longer seems to be a tenant in the Canadian courtrooms.

The Liberals no longer have anyone who can truly hold them accountable, thanks to their majority. The Senate is filled with senators recommended by Justin Trudeau. The circumstances now allow the government to move quickly and carry out its agenda with little meaningful resistance.

Hate has now been defined by law, turning a subjective feeling into something that can be weighed through circumstantial evidence and left largely to the judgment of a court. Churches are worried about how Bill C-9 could affect religious speech and their ability to preach Scripture in public.

With that in mind, the government will also have the ability to seek personal data from users on social media. An investigation into a hate crime would almost certainly be enough for an officer to justify such a request.

We also have bills coming that would force Canadians to use ID verification to access social media, framed as laws meant to protect children. In practice, that will likely mean some form of biometric scan or digital identity check just to use major online platforms.

Power is being gathered. Speech is being defined. Privacy is being weakened. Housing is being pulled deeper into the hands of the state. Criminal law is being reshaped.

And all of it is happening under a government that gained the power to move quickly, then wasted no time using it.

That is exactly why power must be divided, checked, and watched closely.

Uncle Ben was right.

The Trust Collapse

The crisis in the West is not that people stopped trusting institutions. It’s that the institutions continually give us reasons to stop.

According to a recent access to information memo, the federal government of Canada is now contemplating “legal action” against users on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites suspected of spreading “false and misleading information.” The censored 35-page document said, “This strategy seeks to uphold the integrity of—and public trust in—government information.”

So let’s be clear: a federal department was discreetly exploring legal action against Canadian citizens over online speech THEY deem false or misleading (making them the arbiters of truth) while hiding the details behind redactions and pretending this was about protecting public trust.

Across much of the democratic world, governments have spent years misleading the public, managing narratives, and burying mistakes. Then, when people speak up, they call it “misinformation,” like the public suddenly became irrational. And before anyone tries to tell you this is just partisan rhetoric, just look at the numbers, recent events, and the laws they passed because people stopped believing them.

Edelman’s Trust Barometer found that 69% of people globally worry that government officials, businesses, and journalists deliberately mislead them. Reuters found global trust in news at all time low of just 37%. With Canada sitting directly on this mark. Furthermore, Freedom House says global internet freedom declined for the 15th straight year in 2025.

Clearly, the public did not become irrational, it became experienced. People watched the same pattern repeat across COVID, inflation, housing, immigration, foreign interference, media subsidies, online speech laws, emergency powers, and economic decline.

The Control Response

So what did governments do in response? They reached for more control.

Canada is policing speech through several policy channels, but the Online Harms Act really takes the cake. It proposed new online-harm bureaucracies, financially motivated human-rights complaints, and criminal-law changes that attach life-imprisonment maximums to certain hate-related offences.

The U.K.’s Online Safety Act gives Ofcom power over social platforms and search engines, backed by fines up to £18 million or 10% of global revenue.

The EU’s Digital Services Act gives regulators power over the largest platforms, algorithms, content systems, advertising transparency, and “systemic risks,” with fines that reach into the billions.

Germany forces large platforms to remove content within 24 hours or face fines up to €50 million.

Ireland’s online-safety regime gives its media regulator power over online content, binding safety codes, investigations, and fines that can reach €20 million or 10% of turnover.

Australia banned social media for kids under 16, then moved to double fines for platforms that fail to enforce it to nearly $100 million.

The vocabulary is always soft: safety, trust, integrity, harm reduction, democracy, public health, child protection. But the machinery is hard: fines, investigations, takedown rules, platform pressure, speech codes, age checks, regulatory discretion, and state-approved categories of truth and harm.

Some of the goals may be legitimate. But the direction is unmistakable. The public is losing trust in the institutions that claim to protect truth, while those same institutions demand more power to control what people can say.

Now why would they do that? Well, here are a few reasons…

The Failures They Don’t Want to Own

They misplayed COVID worse than Bill Buckner in ’86.

For years, people who questioned the official COVID narrative were mocked, censored, deplatformed, smeared, suspended, or treated like threats to public safety. The lab-leak theory was treated like fringe nonsense until major U.S. agencies later assessed it as plausible. Social media companies restricted discussion of claims that later became legitimate debate. Mark Zuckerberg has since said the Biden White House pressured Facebook to censor COVID content, including humour and satire, and that he regrets how Meta handled that pressure.

Now Tulsi Gabbard has released declassified intelligence material accusing Fauci of helping fund dangerous gain-of-function research tied to Wuhan—the exact line of inquiry institutions spent years trying to bury.

The point is not that every COVID skeptic was right. The point is that the institutions were wrong enough, often enough, while acting far too certain.

They overstated. They reversed. They smeared. They suppressed. Then they walked away from the wreckage and expected the public to forget.

They also normalized emergency power.

In Canada, the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act against the Freedom Convoy for the first time in the law’s history. Bank accounts were frozen. Financial information was shared. Protest activity was treated not simply as a public-order problem, but as a national emergency.

Years later, the Federal Court of Appeal confirmed the invocation was unreasonable, beyond the government’s authority, and infringed Charter protections for expression and against unreasonable search.

Let’s think about that… The government used extraordinary powers against citizens protesting government policy. The courts later said it exceeded its authority. And yet the lesson the political class appears to have learned is not restraint. It is better control.

They downplayed the failing economy.

Canada entered a recession after two consecutive quarters of contraction. The Bank of Canada cautioned people not to put too much weight on the GDP data. The political response was not humility. It was reframing.

At the same time, the USMCA—the foundation of Canada’s trade relationship with the United States and Mexico—has been pushed into uncertainty after the U.S. declined to extend the agreement in its current form.

So Canadians are watching the economy weaken, trade stability deteriorate, investment nosedive, and the cost of life explode, while officials tell them not to overreact to the numbers.

That is not leadership. That is narrative management.

The Policy Failures They Moralized

They ignored housing pressure.

For years, governments treated housing like a talking point instead of a system under strain. They pumped population growth, failed to build at the required pace, tolerated speculation, added costs, delayed approvals, and then acted shocked when homes became unreachable for ordinary families.

Then came the proposed $1.45-billion B.C. condo plan.

The idea was to convert unsold condo units into rent-to-own housing, with public money involved in a market where developers built too much of the wrong product at prices people could not afford.

Carney defended it as affordability, not a bailout. But ordinary people can see exactly what is happening. When families are drowning, they are told to show discipline. When developers are sitting on unsold inventory, the government shows up with financing, subsidies, and a softer name for a bailout.

That is not a free market. It’s simply protection for the connected.

They denied election interference.

Canada spent years downplaying concerns about foreign interference until leaks, pressure, and public outrage forced the issue into the open. CSIS concluded China interfered in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. The Hogue inquiry later found the interference did not change who formed government, but it also found Canada responded slowly and should have communicated more clearly with the public.

They moralized immigration concerns.

To be clear, immigration is not always bad. Just like rain is not always bad. But when too much rain falls too fast, cities flood.

Across the West, governments pushed migration beyond what housing, health care, schools, wages, infrastructure, and social trust could absorb. Then, when people objected, they were called racist, xenophobic, cruel, or extreme. But now those same governments are reversing course.

Canada is trying to reduce temporary residents to less than 5% of the population. The EU has moved toward tougher asylum rules and faster returns. The U.K. says foreign national offenders make up roughly 12% of the prison population in England and Wales and has moved to tighten deportation rules. However, for many of these countries, I feel the correction may already be a day late and a dollar short.

So the public was not crazy, the public was correct, and that is what the institutional class hates most.

The Narrative Machine

They protected legacy media.

Canada continues to pour public money into the media ecosystem while acting shocked that Canadians question whether the press is independent. CBC receives $1.4 billion in annual federal funding. The Canadian journalism labour tax credit was increased from 25% to 35%. Ottawa is now consulting on extending that credit to audio and audiovisual news production.

All in, the federal government spends more than $2 billion a year in taxpayer money propping up its legacy media machine, then acts shocked when people question whether the press is independent.

Of course people question it…

The industry depends on government funding, government tax credits, government-approved eligibility, regulatory protection, and government policy to survive. So effectively, the government funds the media, the media defends the narrative, the narrative protects the government, and anyone who notices is accused of spreading misinformation.

The trust collapse is not caused by bad information. It is caused by an abuse of authority.

People watched officials overstate certainty, bury mistakes, reverse positions, protect their own, and use emergency language or measures to justify overreaching power.

And the pattern is always the same.

The institution fails. It denies the failure. It attacks the people who notice. Then it passes punitive policy to control the backlash, giving more authority to the very institutions people no longer trust.

But you cannot censor your way back to legitimacy, you cannot punish people into believing you, and you cannot fix this problem by giving more power to the people who created it.

You can only fix it by taking power away from them.

When WPATH set out to write Standards of Care 8, the document that governs pediatric gender medicine across the Western world, it commissioned independent systematic reviews from Johns Hopkins. The reviews came back showing no sound evidence that these treatments help young people. So WPATH buried them, forbade Johns Hopkins from publishing, and wrote into the final guidelines that a systematic review was not possible at this time. They had the reviews in hand. Canada follows those guidelines coast to coast.

That is the heart of my conversation with Mia Hughes, author of the WPATH Files, the report built from leaked internal communications of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Hughes did not come to this work as an activist. She was a left-leaning stay-at-home mother of three who, by her own telling, went along with everything her friends believed. Then JK Rowling tweeted in December 2019, Hughes read the replies, and the worldview started to fall apart. Within days she found the teenage girls on TikTok showing off mastectomy scars, and the fixation that became her career took hold.

What she found inside the leaked files is worse than what Hannah Barnes documented at the Tavistock. The example that sticks is Dr. Daniel Metzger, the pediatric endocrinologist at BC Children’s Hospital who brought puberty blockers to British Columbia. In a recorded WPATH panel, Metzger admits that explaining fertility loss to a 13-year-old is like talking to a blank wall. The kids say babies are gross, they will adopt, they will be happy with a dog. In nearly the same breath he cites the Dutch data showing significant regret over lost fertility and says it matches what he sees in his own patients, young adults who come back in their twenties wanting children they can no longer have. He sees what we see. Yet, the treatment pathway rolls on.

Hughes frames this as the oldest pattern in medical scandal: red flags ignored at every step because the doctors are swept up in the thrill of the experiment. Endocrinology carries a long record here, from hormone treatments to correct the height of healthy children to growth hormone harvested from cadaver pituitary glands that seeded a fatal brain disease. The gender clinics knew most of their young patients were same-sex attracted. The Tavistock staff joked that soon there would be no gay people left. The literature flagged the autism rates from the start. None of it slowed anything down.

The unraveling has begun. When activist groups sued to overturn Alabama’s ban, the Attorney General demanded discovery on how Standards of Care 8 was made. WPATH surrendered millions of emails. The fraud is now court record, the FTC and four states are suing, and Hughes is on record saying the crime deserves a Nuremberg. Whether that reckoning arrives or not, one country stands apart for refusing to look. Other nations are changing course. Canada answered by handing its Pediatric Society to one of the most committed ideologues in the field.

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On the morning of June 22nd, a man in military camouflage set a rifle on a tripod in a room at the Hilton Garden Inn and aimed it across the street at the sixth floor — the headquarters of the company that owns Pornhub. By the time the shelter-in-place order lifted, three people were dead: a civilian, the shooter, and a Montreal police officer, the first killed in the line of duty in over twenty years. The gunman left behind 104 pages explaining himself.

The press did what the press does. Left-leaning outlets fixed on the incel language and the biological determinism. Right-leaning ones pointed at the Marxism. Pro-Israel outlets seized on the anti-Zionism. Each one found the piece that served its movement and held it up to the camera. The strange part is that all of them were right. This man checked every box. He tried on incel theory, Marxist class analysis, and the rest, and he decided that all of it fit.

That is the thing the coverage keeps missing. Ideology is rarely the cause but the justification. Nietzsche had a word for what came first: ressentiment. Once a person accepts that he is powerless, that he is a permanent victim with no hand in his own life, that spirit of helplessness goes looking for a philosophy to justify itself. Corrupted people seek out ideas that excuse the emotion they already carry. The violence is the end, while the ideology is only the means. So you don’t beat this by arguing one creed. You’re up against the spirit that spawns them all.

Carl Jung believed that even in good times only about forty percent of people are genuinely well-integrated and sound. For every visibly unstable person on the street, he figured, ten more carry a latent version, wearing every appearance of normality until one bad day tips them. We’ve spent a decade moving the line for what counts as normal — first refusing to name unstable behaviour as a problem, then insisting we celebrate it. So we lost the instrument that used to flag the warning.

So what do you actually do? Not much at the level of policy, at least not fast. The economy, the loneliness, the purpose crisis, the universities nursing victimhood instead of curing it — none of that turns on a dime, and the people most hurt by the fixes are the first to fight them. The honest answer points downward and backward, to how we raise children. Stop shielding them from every hardship. Stop repressing a boy’s aggression instead of teaching him to carry it. Adversity is what builds a person, and we keep trying to engineer it out. You don’t repair this in HR but in kindergarten, at the source, and then you wait the twenty or thirty years it takes to undo twenty or thirty years of damage. The saying, often attributed to Mother Teresa rings true: if you want to change the world, go home and love your family.

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The most credentialed Americans are now about twice as likely to support political violence as the least credentialed. We've been told higher education makes people wiser and more intelligent. The university was supposed to push the boundaries of human thought and understanding. Except now it's doing the opposite, and it's doing it on purpose.

Just look at the staffing. Between 1975 and 2005, administrators grew by 240 percent while faculty grew by roughly 50. There are now significantly more managers than teachers. However, those teacher positions are becoming increasingly ideological. A survey of five thousand professors found communications and anthropology faculty sitting at 100 percent Democrat. Religion at 98.8, which is its own joke, atheists running the religion department. Even engineering, the most “balanced” field, was 61 percent left leaning.

The problem isn’t that students hear left-wing ideas. They always have, and always will. The problem is that the leftist worldview now gets presented as objective morality while disagreements are considered cruelty. The intolerance towards centrist or right-wing ideas is not some quirk, it is a strategy. A darling intellectual of the Left conceptualized Repressive Tolerance. The idea was that real freedom means tolerating the left and refusing to tolerate the right. That program has been running on campuses for fifty years. Leading to a climate where 25 percent of sociology faculty openly call themselves Marxists and no one flinches.

Then watch what the worldview does to the students it shapes. When you teach people to see everything through oppressor and oppressed, they go looking for their own seat in the oppressed column, even the ones who have everything. Rob Henderson wrote an excellent essay titled America’s Future Leaders Are Learning to Become Grifters. In it, he brings forth concerning data. Large shares of students at prestigious universities are lying about disability status to secure extra time for work and priority housing. At Stanford, forty percent reported having a disability. Contrast this to three or four percent at community colleges. Yet, the elite preaches that the working class is the privileged one.

Peter Turchin had an interesting explanation of this phenomenon. He called it Elite Overproduction. When a society creates far more credentialed people than it has real positions for, those people then realize they were sold a false promise, and the disappointment turns into grievance against the system and victimhood identity.

In this episode, we discuss whether parallel education options will become viable in the near future, what will happen if we continue to run a diploma factory model for higher education, and the dangers of creating a managerial class that believes themselves to be perpetual victims of an oppressive system.

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There’s a quiet trend happening in Canada that almost nobody in official circles wants to talk about. And it’s not immigration coming in. It’s Canadians — ambitious Canadians — looking at the country they grew up in, and getting out.

This includes young professionals, entrepreneurs, builders, and high earners.

A Bank of Canada staff working paper found that roughly 40% of Canadians who would rank in the top 1% of earners have already emigrated to the U.S., along with 30 to 50% of the next nine income percentiles. The same research finds these top earners account for roughly three-quarters of the Canada–U.S. GDP-per-adult gap.

In 2025, total Canadian emigration hit a record high of over 120,000 departures — the largest outflow in Canadian history. Emigration has nearly doubled over the past decade, surging 76.7% back in 2017 (from 67,893 to 119,964) and not surpassed until last year.

See, it used to be that leaving Canada was seen as risky. You left opportunity behind. You gave something up. But now, for a growing number of Canadians, staying feels like the risky decision.

The Math Stopped Working

In 1980, the average Canadian home cost about 2.8 years of household income. Today the price-to-income ratio is 8.4 times income. In cities like Toronto and Vancouver, it’s often well over ten years of income.

In 2025, Canada recorded 140,457 consumer insolvencies — the second-highest annual total ever recorded, behind only the aftermath of the 2009 financial crisis. That’s roughly 385 Canadians filing every day.

The Bank of Canada has noted that productivity growth has fallen from roughly 3% annually decades ago to below 0.5% today. In simple terms, productivity is how much economic value each worker creates.

If productivity grows: wages rise, businesses expand, and living standards improve. If productivity stagnates, wages stagnate, governments collect less revenue, and affordability gets worse.

As of 2024, business investment per worker in Canada was down 15% from what it was in 2014. Over the same period, the United States increased by 21% while the OECD average increased by 11%.

According to the Fraser Institute, the average Canadian family spends 42.3% of its income on taxes. Meanwhile, housing, food, and clothing combined account for 35.5% of income.

Federal government spending in 2025 reached approximately $547.3 billion — compared to $280 billion a decade ago. That’s roughly double, for anyone keeping score.

A G20 Outlier

Canada’s economy has now posted two consecutive quarters of contraction, which means we’re in a recession — the only country in the G20 currently in one. No other major economy in the world is.

As a result, Canadian investment abroad is closing in on $2.5 trillion — up nearly $700 billion in four years. Meanwhile, foreign direct investment in Canada has fallen to $1.60 trillion, creating a near $1 trillion gap. Canadians are now more invested in the rest of the world than the rest of the world is in Canada.

If that’s not enough, Canada’s Crime Severity Index rose from 66.9 in 2014 to 77.9 in 2024, with violent crime specifically rising from 70.7 to 99.9 over the same period. And roughly 6.5 million Canadians can’t find a family doctor, with about 15,000 dying annually on wait lists.

From Comfort to Feasibility

So Canadians aren’t just thinking about comfort anymore. They’re thinking about feasibility.

They’re asking whether the basic building blocks of life — a home, stability, maybe a family — are even realistic anymore. That changes how people think about a country.

And that’s the story here. Canada may still feel okay day-to-day, but more and more people are starting to feel like it’s becoming a harder place to build anything meaningful. A business, career, and future. Effectively, a life.

Meanwhile, you look at places like Texas or Florida, or even Dubai, and whether you love them or not, the signal is the same: faster growth, lower friction, and a stronger link between effort and outcome. That’s what people are really reacting to.

And here’s the bigger problem, Canada: once ambition starts flowing out of a country, it doesn’t come back anytime soon.

At least fourteen countries are implementing the same policy within months of each other. France approved a bill barring children under fifteen from social media. The United Kingdom announced a ban on under-sixteens. Canada introduced a digital safety bill to do the same. Behind them, Denmark, Greece, Germany, Malaysia, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, and Austria have their own versions in motion. All of them following Australia, which led the charge with a world-first ban in December 2025.

Fourteen countries. Fourteen governments, legal systems, constitutions, and sets of voters, each with its own history and its own concerns. One policy, arriving in near unison.

This is not a commentary on the policy itself, and the policy is not the interesting part. Set the merits aside completely. Assume the ban is wise. The troubling question remains: why does it look the same everywhere at once? If these governments act on behalf of their own distinct peoples, how do they all reach for the identical policy at the identical moment?

What Self-Rule Should Produce

We are told these governments belong to their peoples. Ottawa answers to Canadians, Westminster to Britons, Paris to the French. Each nation, the story goes, has its own priorities and its own problems, and the people it elects are the instrument through which it governs itself. That is the premise of sovereignty. It is what we teach our schoolchildren was worth fighting for.

So stress test the premise. Suppose every one of these countries genuinely, on its own, decided that youth and the screen had become a problem worth solving. What would you expect to see?

Diversity of approach, for one. France, worried about screen time and a wave of school violence, might start by pulling phones out of classrooms. Britain, with its complex history around speech and the state, might lean on platform liability and leave the age question alone. Canada might reach for parental tools, or age checks, or another five years of studying the matter while a committee files reports. Different countries should produce different solutions, on their own timelines. Some bold, some timid, some doing nothing at all.

That is what self-rule produces. It is messy, slow, and local. And it is the mark of a people actually guiding its own affairs.

What Actually Happened

That is not what happened.

What unfolded instead: Australia passed a ban, and almost immediately France, Britain, and Canada were all reaching for the same one. The same age line, give or take a year. The same enforcement mechanism. The same framing about protecting children from harm. Then the smaller states fell in behind. It did not spread the way independent nations stumble toward a shared worry, each in its own way. It spread like a memo through a head office.

Some readers will rightly push back: the bans are not identical. France drew its line at fifteen, Australia and Britain at sixteen. Canada wrote in exemptions for platforms that can prove they meet certain government-set standards. Fair enough.

But these are the tweaks you’d expect a head office to let each branch make for the local market while selling the same product. The skeleton underneath is identical, however the face changes: an age threshold, mandatory verification through digital ID, and a phase-in sorted by the size of the platform. That is seems less like a coincidence of national priorities and more like one law, lightly localized, dropped into one country after another.

The Blueprint Carries Its Own Politics

The phase-in by size deserves more attention.

Sorting the ban by platform size sounds neutral. But every choice has consequences. Freeze the rules around the current giants, and the platforms below the line are left standing — and those platforms are not a random sample.

You can watch this unfold in Britain, in a question the ruling class will not answer: where does BlueSky land? Some outlets reported the platform looks set to escape the rules. Others listed it among those likely to be covered. The problem is not the speculation but that the government has not published its final list. Imagine passing a major tax and refusing to say who it applies to.

I am not asserting that left-leaning platforms like BlueSky will be exempt. We do not know — and the not knowing is itself the problem. But if such a platform falls outside the ban on account of its smaller size, follow the effect through. Clear out its larger competition and its growth is guaranteed. Every curious teenager left online gets funnelled toward a narrower slice of the world.

The point is that the same sorting rule has been copied from one country to the next, and nobody paused to ask who it favours. The trouble is not merely that these governments are all pushing a social-media ban. It is that they are reaching for identical machinery — only years after we watched a coordinated censorship campaign cross national lines in the name of curbing COVID misinformation. And it is worth remembering what those same authorities once classified as settled, unquestionable truth turned out, in the end, to be largely false.

How a Memo Becomes a Law

None of this requires a smoking room or a secret signature. It is duller and more troubling than that.

One progressive think tank writes the model law. It becomes the reference everyone cites at the global conference and in the white paper. The media defends it. The ministers nod along at the summit. “International best practice” becomes a thing you adopt rather than a thing you debate, and the national legislature is handed a draft to ratify rather than a problem to solve.

Listen to how the French president frames it. He has said he wants the rule pushed up to the level of the entire European Union — one standard for everyone, all at once. That is not the language of a man tailoring policy to France and its particular children. That is the language of a man rolling out a product line and looking for the widest distribution he can get. In that sentence the nation stops being the customer the policy is meant to serve. The nation becomes the channel through which the policy is shipped.

Represented, or Administered

We need to stop arguing about the worth of any single policy and start asking where all of them are coming from.

A country whose laws are written for its own people, by people loyal to that nation first, does not move in lockstep with thirteen others on the same question, at the same time, with the same strategy. The lockstep is the concerning part. It tells you the decisions are being made far from where your vote is cast.

No rational person would call that representation. It is much closer to administration. The official you thought you elected to serve your interests looks more and more like a branch manager implementing a rollout that was drawn up outside your border.

Your “leaders” are better understood as middle managers. They implement the policy hoping to climb the ladder, to inch closer to the halls of global governance — confident that if they serve upper management well enough, they will be promoted to head office before anyone downstairs works out what was done to them.

Canada's fertility rate just hit 1.25 births per woman, the lowest number ever recorded in this country. That puts us in the ultra-low club with Japan and South Korea. Spain sits at 1.2, its worst showing since 1941. Italy declared a national emergency at 1.1, and the EU's population peaked this year and tipped into decline. Put in plainer terms: for every 100 Canadians alive today, roughly 60 children are being born to replace them. We are watching a crisis unfold.

Governments have noticed. More than 60 percent of countries below replacement have rolled out baby bonuses, parental leave, and tax breaks, and almost none of it has worked. Hungary spent big, climbed, then slid back down. Poland’s flagship family program went nowhere. The one Western nation still above replacement is Israel, and the reason is not a clever subsidy. It is faith, family, and a culture that treats children as the point of life rather than a cost on a spreadsheet.

The economic case is real, and on this week’s episode Jonathan laid it out. The average Canadian family of four, paying today’s averages across the board, loses ten to twelve thousand dollars a year. We spend 35 percent of our money on food, clothing, and shelter, and 42 percent on taxes. Raising one child to seventeen runs somewhere between $230,000 and $310,000. We built an economy that demands two full-time incomes and then act surprised when nobody has time or money for a third kid.

But the money is a symptom. Abraham Lincoln buried three of his four sons, and nobody in his century asked whether children were worth it. People far poorer than us kept having kids because their faith and their culture told them life was worth handing on. What changed is the story we tell. Simone de Beauvoir said in 1975 that no woman should be authorized to stay home and raise her children, because given the choice, too many women would take it. That thinking now runs the universities. Girls are taught from fifteen that a career is the most meaningful thing they will ever hold, and that wanting more makes something wrong with them.

Underneath all of it sit two worldviews: life is a blessing, or life is a burden? Every policy, every excuse, every empty crib flows downstream from that. The fix will not come from Ottawa. It comes from the ground, from people who marry, have kids, and let the joy of it show. We are status-seeking creatures, so hand out status for the right things — praise the mothers, praise the fathers, and watch the behaviour spread through a friend group. None of this turns around by tomorrow. It is generational work, and that has never made it meaningless.

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Why are western governments flooding their countries with immigrants? Why are housing markets collapsing under population growth? Why are social programs becoming more expensive? Why are governments becoming increasingly desperate to find new taxpayers?

Most people assume these are separate problems, but they’re not. They may all stem from a single issue that almost nobody wants to talk about: fertility collapse.

The reason why speaking about fertility is so controversial is because many say it leads to telling women what to do with their bodies. Assigning traditional duties to women is often seen as oppressive. I say “traditional duties” specifically because the feminist movement has made it perfectly fine to burden women with economic obligations like getting an education or a job, however traditional duties like getting married and having children have been demonized.

However, the fertility crisis is one that the world should not ignore considering many problems stem from it. At this point it is becoming harder to ignore an uncomfortable pattern across Western countries like Canada, the US and the UK: almost every major political crisis we are dealing with today—mass immigration, strained public services, housing pressure, wage stagnation, and even cultural fragmentation—can be traced back to the collapse of fertility.

It is not just a small decline either, but a sustained fall below replacement level that has now lasted long enough to fundamentally reshape how Western states function, finance themselves, and justify their own policies.

Canada currently sits at roughly 1.25 children per woman, replacement is 2.1. That gap is a structural deficit in population reproduction that compounds every generation. Once you understand that most Western governments rely heavily on continuous economic expansion, tax intake growth, and a stable working-age population to sustain their systems, the consequences start to stack up quickly.

A modern welfare state does not run on ideals, it runs on contributors and the problem is that the contributor base is shrinking.

When you take a look at Canada’s current workforce you start to see the picture clearly. According to Stats Canada, there are a total of 21 million people employed in Canada currently. That means about half of the country is creating tax revenue to fuel the entire nation’s government spending. This alone is not ideal, especially since Canada has such a robust social state. However, when you remove part time workers the situation takes an even worse turn.

About 82% of Canada’s workers work a full time position. That is just over 17 million people working full time in a country of 41.5 million, which adds up to only 41.5% of people working a full time job in Canada.

With that we can conclude that more than half of Canadians are likely to be net beneficiaries when it comes to tax expenditures and it’s also likely that even many full time workers cost more than they contribute in terms of taxes.

When you include that Canada is losing high earners, capital and businesses then it starts to paint an even darker picture. So, it is not a stretch to say that most Canadians receive more in tax funded services than they pay.

As a matter of fact, a study done by the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario already concluded this for Ontario families. They found that 60% of Ontario families were net beneficiaries of provincial services, 20% were neutral and only 20% were net contributors. Now imagine that on a national scale, if only 20% of people put in more than they take out, how is that a sustainable system?

We have built a system where most people take out more than they put in and it is unsustainable. Then when you consider how much government spending is bolstering the economy this becomes a problem you cannot ignore.

In Canada, government activity—when you include direct spending, tax expenditures, and regulatory influence—accounts for a large share of economic output, about 44-64% according to a study done by MacDonald Laurier. Estimates vary depending on measurement, but the broader point remains consistent: the state is not a passive referee in the economy, it is one of the largest participants in it.

So what happens when that system loses its demographic fuel source?

Well, you import it.

That is where immigration enters the picture, not as an ideological choice, but as a mathematical response to workforce shortages and fiscal pressure. If you have a shrinking base of working-age citizens supporting an expanding cohort of retirees and dependents, you only have a few options: reduce benefits, raise taxes, increase productivity dramatically, or bring in more workers.

Most governments choose the path of least immediate resistance, but this creates its own downstream effects. Mass immigration does not occur in a vacuum—it interacts with housing supply, wage levels, infrastructure capacity, and cultural assimilation speed.

When the scale is large enough, it does not just “add people” to a system, it reshapes the system itself. After all, immigrants do not just bring economic activity to a nation, they bring their traditions, languages and culture. This is where the public reaction starts to split.

Some people see immigration as a solution to labour shortages and fiscal imbalance. Others see it as destabilizing cultural cohesion and accelerating social fragmentation. Both perspectives often miss the upstream cause that forced the policy choice in the first place, a shrinking domestic population.

So the question becomes: why is fertility collapsing so broadly across advanced economies?

There are competing explanations—cost of living, housing prices, cultural shifts, changing values—but one variable stands out in cross-country data patterns: the expansion of higher education, particularly among women, and its correlation with delayed family formation and reduced lifetime fertility.

A 2022 paper in the Economics of Education Review examined the relationship between female educational attainment and fertility outcomes. While it does not claim a single causal story, it reinforces a consistent finding in the literature: as educational participation increases, fertility tends to decline, often through delayed childbirth and reduced total number of children.

When you line up global maps of rising female higher education enrollment with global fertility decline over the same period, the directional pattern is difficult to ignore. They move in opposite directions across most developed regions over multiple decades.

This is what those charts look like when they overlap, demonstrating that fertility falls at almost the exact same rate of higher education for women increasing.

Now the key question is not whether education is “good” or “bad.” That framing misses the point entirely. The real question is what kind of society you get when your most educated cohorts systematically delay or reduce childbearing while the economic system still depends on continuous population renewal to sustain itself.

That mismatch does not resolve itself, it compounds and governments are left managing the gap in real time. Which brings us back to immigration again.

If domestic fertility does not recover—and there is little evidence across OECD countries that it is rebounding to replacement levels—then maintaining current welfare structures requires external population inflows. Not as a preference, but as a constraint.

At that point, immigration policy stops being purely about cultural openness or border philosophy and becomes a form of demographic and fiscal maintenance.

However, this creates a political contradiction. The same populations that rely on expanded social programs are often the most resistant to the economic and cultural adjustments required to sustain them. Therefore, governments operating under electoral pressure are incentivized to preserve both conditions at once: high service provision and high population inflow to fund it.

That tension is not stable long term. It produces a slow structural drift where policy becomes reactive rather than strategic, and where demographic substitution is used instead of demographic recovery.

So what are the actual long-term options? In theory, there are only a few:

One, fertility rebounds significantly enough to restore population balance domestically. Although, based on the data that would require women prioritizing having children over education and career.

Two, productivity growth accelerates enough to decouple economic output from population growth. However, with Canada’s aging population, and shrinking economy that would take a lot of reduction to red tape and incentives.

Three, social programs contract to match a smaller tax base. Though this is political suicide, campaigning on reducing social spending will almost certainly get any politician to lose the base in which social spending reduction effects.

Or lastly option four, immigration continues to compensate for the gap indefinitely. However, many Canadians will continue to be outraged by the demographic and cultural changes of the nation.

The uncomfortable reality is that many of the political conflicts we are seeing today are downstream symptoms of this demographic imbalance rather than independent phenomena. Immigration debates, housing crises, fiscal strain, even cultural polarization—they are all interacting with the same structural constraint.

A population that is no longer reproducing itself at replacement level.

Once that becomes the baseline condition, almost every other policy debate starts to orbit around it, whether explicitly acknowledged or not.

The question is no longer whether this is happening, it is how long current systems can continue to absorb the consequences without completely collapsing.

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This week on the Blendr Report, returning guest Brian Isted, an 11-year veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces who deployed to Iraq with Canadian Forces Intelligence Command, helps us make sense of the leaked confidential report explaining how Canada’s military is breaking down, the 300,000-soldier mobilization fantasy signed by Canada's Chief of Defence Staff, Jennie Carignan. The hybrid war Brian was monitoring as a cyber intelligence analyst in real time without realizing the enemy had already won. And Meta's overnight deletion of millions of bot accounts.

Each story arrives like a separate news cycle. Brian’s read is that they’re the same story.

Take recruitment. Canada lowered the threshold so far that the basic officer course, designed to pass people, is no longer passing them. Brian’s framing puts the problem on the brass, not on numbers. The same leadership that condemned its own barracks for mold and houses its troops in modular tents is now floating a plan to expand the supplementary reserve from 4,384 retired members to 300,000 ordinary Canadians and public servants. There’s no budget attached, no timeline, no plan for who would train these people. What it has is a paperwork structure that could be repurposed for conscription if the moment ever arrives.

Take fentanyl. Precursor chemicals ship from China. If a foreign nation killed 100,000 people a year with bullets, the country would call it war. Because it happens through black markets and supply chains, nobody calls it anything.

What ties the four stories together is a single question Brian keeps circling: what does it mean to defend a country whose institutions are already losing the non-kinetic war?

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Extended and Ad Free Version of Blendr Report EP165: Ex-Soldier Explains Why Canada’s Military is Collapsing From Within

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In Episode 164 of The Blendr Report, we examine four stories that reveal the fractures running through Canada's institutions. From the Armed Forces to policing, from economic policy to street protests.

The CAF Cohesion Crisis

A Canadian Armed Forces training platoon composed of 83% non-citizens reportedly devolved into ethnic infighting, exposing a fundamental problem with the military’s rapid diversification efforts. When the institution responsible for national defence can’t maintain cohesion in a training environment, what does that signal about operational readiness?

This isn’t just about recruitment numbers or meeting quotas. It’s about whether you can build a functional fighting force when the overwhelming majority of a unit doesn’t share citizenship, let alone common values or cultural frameworks. The military requires a level of trust and cohesion that transcends normal workplace dynamics — these are people who must be willing to risk their lives for one another.

The ethnic infighting reveals what happens when you prioritize demographic targets over operational effectiveness. As Jonathan observed, the military is supposed to be a family where everyone has each other’s back. When deep-rooted cultural differences create division instead of unity, you don’t have a team.

Carney’s $25 Billion Gambit

Mark Carney announced Canada’s first sovereign wealth fund with $25 billion in seed money, positioning it as an economic strategy to build national wealth. But the timing raises questions about whether this represents genuine long-term economic planning or pre-election political maneuvering.

We analyze whether a sovereign wealth fund makes sense for a country already running massive deficits, and whether the Carney government has the fiscal discipline to make this work or if it’s simply another vehicle for political spending dressed up as economic policy.

May Day Violence & Double Standards

Montreal’s annual May Day protest once again clashed with police, continuing a pattern of sanctioned left-wing protest violence that stands in stark contrast to how the Freedom Convoy was treated. While the convoy was characterized as a foreign-funded insurrection despite zero evidence, these annual labor protests — openly endorsed by communist organizations, Cuban government fronts, and foreign revolutionary groups — receive virtually no scrutiny.

Ontario labor unions are openly allied with the Consulate General of Cuba, the Bolshevik Tendency, and the Worker Communist Party of Iran. Yet somehow this doesn’t qualify as foreign influence, while a grassroots trucker protest becomes a national security threat.

The double standard isn’t accidental.

The Policing Collapse

In our paid subscriber segment, we examine the collapse of police clearance rates across Canada, where half of all violent crimes now go unsolved. This represents a fundamental breakdown in public safety and the social contract — when crimes don’t get solved, when criminals don’t face consequences, the entire justice system loses legitimacy.

These four stories aren’t separate issues. They’re symptoms of the same institutional decay: a military that can’t maintain cohesion, economic policy driven by political calculation, protests with obvious foreign backing ignored while grassroots movements are crushed, and a justice system that can’t clear half its violent crimes.

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Extended and Ad Free Version of Blendr Report EP164: Ethnic Rifts in Canada’s Military, Carney’s New Debt Fund & May Day Protests

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Many people believe Mark Carney appeared almost out of nowhere — that he was simply in the right place at the right time. Needed in a moment of panic, he stepped in to save Canada from Trump while saving the Liberal party from a complete collapse. That is the surface level version of what happened. It’s neat, flattering, believable and easy to sell. At least for those who haven’t been paying close attention.

For those that have, that story isn’t just false– it’s incomplete. The reality is Mark Carney didn’t suddenly emerge. He was being placed, prepared, and introduced years in advance. The Liberal majority we now find ourselves under was not some shocking turn of fortune, it was the result of careful positioning, long planning, and a political class using every opening the system gave them.

I’m not claiming there were any secret meetings in dark rooms or some grand conspiracy written on paper. Politics rarely works that way. More often, it works through networks, timing, soft introductions, institutional loyalty, media shaping, and people in power making sure the right doors open for the right person at the right time.

Based on what I’ve seen, Mark Carney’s rise looks less like an accident and more like an architect’s design.

The Myth of the Sudden Saviour

Every political era tries to produce its saviour. When governments become unpopular, or exhausted, they need renewal without surrender. They need a new face who can inherit the machine without being blamed for the destruction it leaves behind. They need a scapegoat and someone who feels fresh to protect its future.

That is where Carney fits perfectly. He wasn’t a long-serving cabinet minister tied to every Liberal mistake. He wasn’t a backbench MP carrying years of baggage. He wasn’t Trudeau. He was an “outsider”, or at least he was presented as one.

He had prestige, credentials, media polish, and enough distance from the government to seem clean, while remaining close enough to be trusted by those already in power.

That combination is rare. It is also politically valuable. So when people say Carney simply stepped up in a time of need, I think they miss the years that made that moment possible.

2020: Entry Through Crisis

Let’s Start in 2020. Canada came through COVID with deep economic damage. Businesses were shut down, spending exploded, inflation pressures grew, debt climbed, and public trust began to fray. Whether one supports the pandemic response or not, the country was weakened.

That is when Justin Trudeau brought in Mark Carney as an “informal” economic adviser.

Now ask a basic question: why Carney?

Because he carried a brand. Former Governor of the Bank of Canada. Former Governor of the Bank of England. International profile. Calm banker image. Crisis-manager reputation because of his role in the 2008 financial crisis.

To many Canadians, that resume sounds like competence before he says a word. During a time of a strong economic downturn, someone with an extensive “economic background” is exactly what Canadians were looking for. Officially, he was there to help guide recovery, but politics is rarely single-purposed. Bringing Carney close to the government did more than add advice. It reintroduced him to Canada. It put him near power. It let him study the landscape. It let the public grow used to seeing him linked with national leadership.

That matters. You don’t always launch a leader by declaring it. Sometimes you normalize them first.

The Soft Re-entry Into Canadian Politics

Remember, Carney had spent many years abroad. To much of the public, he was respected but distant. He needed re-entry. That process appears to begin here.

By attaching him to national recovery, the Liberals gave him relevance. By giving him an advisory role rather than a partisan title, they reduced backlash. By keeping him near Trudeau but not inside cabinet, they let him gain proximity without blame. That is clever politics.

He could influence policy, learn the mood of the country, reconnect with elite networks, and prepare for something larger — all while appearing above day-to-day politics.

If you were trying to build a future leader quietly, this is roughly how it would look.

2021: Introduction to the Liberal Base

Then came 2021. Carney delivered a keynote speech at the Liberal convention. This was not some accidental cameo. This was a formal presentation to the party faithful.

He spoke of his experience, his ideas, his vision, and the major challenges ahead. He promoted themes he returns to often: climate risk, economic change, technological disruption, the need for managed transition.

Some heard thoughtful leadership. I heard something else: branding.

This was the party meeting the “possible successor.” Politics often introduces future leaders long before admitting they are future leaders. A convention stage is where parties test reactions. They watch, applause, headlines, donor chatter, elite approval, and grassroots comfort. Carney was being shown to Liberal voters in a safe setting, wrapped in policy language and global credentials. Again: not an accident.

Crisis as Political Fuel

There is also a pattern in Carney’s messaging style. He is effective at framing issues as urgent turning points. Climate disaster. Economic upheaval. Democratic danger. Sovereignty threats. History at the door. Maybe he believes all of it sincerely. Maybe some of it is true. But politically, urgency is useful. When people feel calm, they compare details. When people feel fear, they look for managers. Carney’s public style creates moments where voters are told the stakes are existential and only serious experts can steer the ship.

That’s why the Trump angle later mattered so much. It fits an existing template: danger is here, normal politics is too small, trust the credentials. In a world growing towards trust in authority instead of competence and results, Carney wasn’t just a good fit, he was a perfect match.

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2022: The Maclean’s Prediction

Then there is 2022. Under a section for Mark Carney, A Maclean’s line described the challenge of saving the world from climate disaster and then added that perhaps an even greater challenge would be leading a “certain late-cycle governing political party in Canada.”

That phrase deserves attention.

Late-cycle means nearing the end of its run. Governing party meaning the party in power. In Canada at the time, that clearly pointed to the Liberals under Trudeau.

So what was being floated? That Carney might one day lead them.

Was it a prophecy? No. More likely it reflected what connected people were already discussing quietly. Elite magazines often do not predict from nowhere. They echo narratives already moving through political circles. Sometimes a “speculation” piece is simply an early public airing of a private conversation. If so, then by 2022 the idea of Carney replacing Trudeau was already established, and likely the Liberal party was in the process of making it happen.

2024: No Longer “Informal”

Fast forward to 2024. Carney is named chair of the Task Force on Economic Growth. Now he was not merely hovering nearby. He was tied directly to the Liberal economic future. Trudeau said Carney would play a vital role in shaping the next steps of the plan. Read that carefully: shaping the next steps.

That is not ceremonial language. That signals trust, influence, and succession energy.

At this stage, Carney’s path had moved through three phases:

1. Adviser in crisis

2. Introduced to the base

3. Given formal strategic role

That is a ladder. People only call careers accidental when they ignore the steps.

Trudeau’s Fall, Carney’s Opportunity

Meanwhile Trudeau was weakening. The cost of living pressure rose. Fatigue set in. The carbon tax became a major symbol of Liberal overreach in the eyes of many voters. Opposition attacks sharpened. The public wanted Trudeau gone. Then, Trudeau resigned. Personally, I believe all of this was theater and intentional. Meant to put the blame for all the bad policies and scandals on Trudeau and away from the Liberals as a party.

But Trudeau had already fulfilled his role in the plan. Not just what seemed like intentionally plunging Canada into an economic free fall, but packing the senate during his leadership.

The Senate reviews legislation and can slow, amend, or complicate government plans. While it is more nuanced than pure party obedience, appointments still matter. And Trudeau appointed 81 out of the 97 senators before he resigned.

That does not mean every senator becomes a puppet but it does mean the governing worldview of the appointing era can remain long after the appointing prime minister is gone.

So imagine you are handing power to a successor from your own side. Leaving behind a Senate filled largely under your watch is not meaningless. It lowers friction. It preserves continuity. It gives the next government friendlier terrain than starting from scratch.

Again, not illegal. Not secret. Just power used intelligently.

The Missing Piece: Majority Control

At this point the Liberals could have:

• A fresh leader with elite credentials

• Distance from Trudeau’s image

• Institutional continuity

• A favourable Senate environment

But one thing still matters most in parliamentary politics: numbers in the House of Commons. Without a majority, governing becomes negotiation. With a majority, governing becomes command. So how do you close a narrow gap? One answer is floor crossing.

Some people speak of the recent floor crossings as if it suddenly happened in response to fresh conditions, but evidence suggests courting MPs had been ongoing for years.

Mélanie Joly admitted efforts had been made to recruit Chris d’Entremont dating back to around 2020.

Think about that.

If you are trying to persuade opposition MPs years in advance, then this is not a random post-election movement. It is long-game politics. Relationships are built. Grievances are tracked. Ambitions are noticed. Doors are kept open. That is how serious political operators work.

“You Vote for the Person” — Mostly False

Whenever floor crossing angers voters, defenders repeat a line: you vote for the person, not the party. This is one of the most convenient myths in Canadian politics. When you vote, you vote in the party you want to rule, not the MP or the leader. After all, if a leader resigns it doesn’t trigger a general election. Just like how Mark Carney came to power, the leader is simply replaced while the ruling party stays the same. Even if theoretically MPs left the ruling party and crossed to another party, giving the other party more seats in the house of commons, the ruling party would stay in power despite having less seats in the house of commons. Also, Canadians do not vote based on the MP in their riding.

In reality, a Narrative Research survey suggests only 50% of Canadians say they know the names of the Candidates in their ridings that they voted for, and only 6% say they vote for the riding MP instead of the party. That doesn’t reinforce the narrative of a system of individual MPs that represent the voices of their riding. It’s evidence that most people will vote for any name that represents the broad values of the party.

What the data actually suggests is that most people blindly vote for the same political party every federal election, about 1 in 3. Second most vote based on the policies of the parties, and third votes based on the party leader. Not only do people not mainly vote based on the MP, it’s dead last in people’s considerations.

And MPs themselves reinforce this truth every day by voting almost always with party lines. A report from Canada Commons found that MPs vote with the party 99.6% of the time. They even urge MPs to be more independent. But when you consider the advantages you get from running under a party banner, it all makes sense. Using party branding, party messaging, party funds, party leaders, party whips, and party campaign machines. Not many would disagree with the claim that most MPs wouldn’t even win their seats without help from the party. If MPs act as party members nearly all the time, but suddenly become lone independent vessels the moment they cross the floor, people are right to be skeptical.

Voters Rightfully Feel Betrayed

If someone wins under one banner, using one team’s volunteers, donors, signs, message, and voters — then hands that seat to another party midstream, many people feel their vote was transferred without consent. That reaction is rational and many people would like to see the end of floorcrossing.

Even those who defend the legality of floor crossing often know it lacks moral legitimacy in many cases. That is why polling tends to show voters prefer alternatives such as:

• resigning and re-running

• sitting as an independent

• forcing a by-election

Why Reform Never Happens

Repeated efforts have been made to restrict or reform floor crossing and they all fail. Why? Because every major party imagines one day benefiting from it. There have been multiple bills tabled to address this issue that have been consistently voted down, by often the bigger parties. The Liberals may use it today. Conservatives may need it tomorrow. Smaller parties may rely on it later. Political classes often preserve tools they publicly condemn when in opposition. That is one of the oldest habits in politics: denounce the loophole until it helps you.

The Incentives Behind Crossing

Each floor crosser will give reasons: values, fit, changed circumstances, leadership concerns, national interest. Sometimes those reasons may be sincere. But incentives exist too:

• committee roles

• profile boosts

• access to ministers

• local funding leverage

• future nominations

• career survival

• relevance inside power

To pretend none of that matters is childish. Human beings respond to incentives. Politicians are human beings with microphones, no different than you and I.

The End Game

The final step of almost total control void of accountability came after the majority. The liberals packed committees, the last stand of parliamentary debate. Opposition still exists. Courts still exist. Elections still exist. So no, democracy is not literally dead.

But concentrated power is real. Majorities matter. They can move fast, shut down resistance, and define the national story.

The deeper problem is the system. This article isn’t really about one man. The sad truth is as much as Canadians don’t like what Carney is doing, everything he did is allowed in our system as it stands. Carney is simply the most polished recent example of a broader truth: Canada’s political system allows for parties to game it with recycled power through leader swaps, institutional appointments, media narratives, and seat transfers while claiming every outcome is pure democratic will.

Maybe sometimes voters choose, but as it is now, they’re managed toward a narrow set of outcomes already prepared for them. That distinction matters.

Maybe Mark Carney is exactly what Canada wanted. Maybe he is the right man at the right time. Or maybe he is what a governing machine spent years preparing as its greatest secret weapon. Maybe the machine has more control of the people and the system than many would like to believe. What I reject is the fairy tale that he just appeared, untouched by design, summoned by need.

Politics is rarely that innocent.

If Canadians want a better country they should strive for a better system. They should dedicate themselves to involvement in politics. In the west-minister system we have no leader. Party leaders are not the leaders of the country, they are leaders of the party. The party is led by the will of the people. Or so it should be.

If we don’t take our role seriously and lead this country, the narcissistic tyrants will lead, and the country will continue down the path of chaos.

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A man tried to kill the President of the United States for the third time in two years. Cole Thomas Allen, thirty-one, charged the security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents' Dinner with guns and knives, with an officer taking a round in his vest.

Two days before that, a federal grand jury in Alabama handed down an eleven-count indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center for paying neo-Nazis. Three million dollars routed through shell companies — Fox Photography, Rare Books Warehouse — into the bank accounts of men inside the KKK, the National Alliance, and the Aryan Nations. One informant pulled in over a million dollars across a decade while flying the swastika.

This is the closed loop. An NGO raises money to fight a threat. The threat is needed for the next round of fundraising. So the threat gets funded. The threat then gets named to the press. The press names you, and your neighbour, and the man at your church, as members of that same threat. And then a thirty-one-year-old kid from Torrance, California decides he is the hand of justice.

The machine sets the temperature.ans it has to keep finding new enemies. When the first batch is exhausted, the meaning of the word expands. Mao started with the nationalists, ran out, turned on landlords, then teachers, then his own. The category grows until it swallows you.

We’re watching the same engine run today. The secret police, the show trials, the cattle car — those uniforms have been retired. The same work now sits with the universities, the editorial boards, and the donation page.

What makes today’s version worse than the original Marxists is the lying. Marx at least had the spine to write that we ask for no compassion from you, and when our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. The men in his lineage today pull the trigger and then claim victimhood. They shoot you and tell the country your blood is oppressing them.

This is how sadism gets laundered into morality.

Hannah Arendt warned us. A totalitarian movement can’t stop. It has to keep moving, which me

You’re told the violence is defensive. You’re told the man you’ve been taught to hate is, in Hassan Piker’s words, guilty of “social murder.” You’re told he no longer counts as a person — he’s a cog, a stand-in, a category. Once the human being is gone, the killing becomes ethics.

The country doesn’t need more violence. It needs to stop handing these outfits one more dollar of trust. Stop nodding when the universities tell you who the enemy is. Stop pretending the SPLC, the New York Times, and their brothers in the racket get to set the moral temperature of the West.

The closed loop only stays closed if we keep paying for it.

Listen to The Blendr Report EP163 on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Rumble.

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Extended and Ad Free Version of Blendr Report EP163: Trump Assassination Attempt, Carney's Conflicts of Interest, and NGO Extremism

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At this point in western civilization it would be easier to answer why people are socialists than why they aren’t. The younger generation has grown up with their heads filled with dreams and their minds captured by Disney fairytales and happily ever afters. Our inflated sense of optimism for the future is fueled by the echoing voices of teachers and parents telling us to dream big and shoot for the stars.

Sadly the reality of life is a very different story. Assets inflated beyond our reach, prices rising while incomes stay flat, sending dozens of resumes after over a decade of school only to hear the silence of our phones and empty email inboxes. At the same time we have unlimited access to social media feeds flooded with videos of others seemingly living much better lives than our own. Even if those depictions of their lives aren’t genuine, the feeling of being inadequate fuels the anxiety of a generation.

With most young people experiencing some version of this reality it’s no wonder they are turning to an economic system which seems to care for the “underclass”. However, the reality of this system is a very different from what we’re told.

The Return of Socialism: Why It’s Happening—and What It Leads To

Socialism and communism are making a serious comeback. You can see it in the rise of figures like Mamdani in New York, and now in Canada, where the NDP has elevated Avi Lewis—a figure who openly embraces ideas that go well beyond mild social democracy.

He’s proposing free buses, free internet and phone services, and government-run grocery stores. For young people who feel disenfranchised and hopeless, these changes seem like a ticket to a better society.

Therefore, younger people across Western countries are not just tolerating these ideas—they’re welcoming them. Before getting into why that is, it’s worth grounding the situation.

Support for Socialism Is Broad—Not Just Young

It’s true that younger people show the highest support for socialism. But the gap across age groups isn’t as wide as people think. A study by the Fraser Institute called: Perspectives on Capitalism and Socialism, polled people from Canada, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. They found that of people aged 18–34, 46% support socialism as the ideal system. People aged 35–54 support it 43% and ages 55+ support it 38%.

So yes, support is strongest among the young—but nearly 4 in 10 older Canadians feel the same way. That’s not fringe, that’s almost half. Among ages 18–24, support reaches about 50%, one in two. That number may soften with age, but for now, it’s real. I believe there are 3 very strong reasons why so many people find socialism so attractive.

People don’t know what Socialism is

The Fraser Institute study asked people across Canada, the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. what they think socialism means. It offered three definitions.

1. State ownership of the means of production
   In plain terms: government control over industries and companies.
   This had the lowest support—around 40%.

2. Government providing more social services
   This drew the highest support—roughly 55–65%.

3. Guaranteed basic income (GBI)
   Also popular, landing around 45–57%.

What first stands out makes support for socialism apparent: the more the definition sounds like receiving free or subsidized lives, the more people endorse it. The more it sounds like the government exercising control, the less they support it.

These definitions may sound different, but ultimately all three point in the same direction—greater state involvement in the economy. You can’t run large-scale programs without control over how they’re delivered. You can’t fund a guaranteed basic income without higher taxation.

So while people disagree on wording, the underlying shift is the same, expansion of the state. What’s also interesting is the definition people enjoyed the least is the most accurate definition, government control over industries and companies. This is likely because the language is direct. Many socialist would rather say “we will open free grocery stores” then, “we will seize grocery stores from private individuals and take your money through taxation to pay for the food inside of them.” The key to socialism is the twisting of language to hide the actual intentions.

People Assume They Won’t Pay

The second reason people support socialism also rests on a quiet assumption—that someone else will foot the bill. When asked how to pay for expanded government programs, the most popular answers were, by taxing the top 1% (66–72% support) and taxing the top 10% (53–59%).

However, support drops sharply when taxes apply broadly, when a General income tax increase is proposed only 31–39% support it, if a 20% value-added tax is proposed then only 16–29% support it.

People favour socialism when they believe they won’t have to pay for it. That’s why phrases like “eat the rich” are so popular, people are separated into groups of oppressor or oppressed, proletariat or bourgeoisie, working class or ruling class. Those on the bottom of the economic hierarchy are empowered to take from those on the top.

Many people believe taxing the rich will be how this growth in government will be realized, but in practice large welfare states are often funded by broad taxation.

In Canada, the average person pays over 42% of their income in taxes when you combine income tax, sales tax, payroll deductions, and other levies. That’s more than what many spend on food, housing, and clothing combined. Beyond direct taxes, there’s the silent almost invisible taxation, inflation. Often driven by government spending and money creation. It’s a quieter tax, but it hits everyone. It is usually the rich that are insulated from it because they are largely the holders of assets that increase in value as inflation increases.

The Economy Feels Broken

The third reason is the strongest driver. Life is expensive. Housing is out of reach for many. Wages haven’t kept pace. In 2024, Canada was ranked 2nd worst globally for house price-to-income ratio. 2 major cities in Canada, namely Vancouver and Toronto were among the top 20 most expensive real estate markets in the world.

Abacus data conducted a national survey asking Canadians about their top concerns when it comes to the state of the country. 60% of Canadians cite cost of living as their number 1 concern, 41% point to housing affordability, Nearly 90% are worried about the current state of housing and that increases to 91% for Canadians 18-44.

3 in 5 Canadians are both worried about their ability to pay for their mortgage or rent and fear losing their homes or rental because of financial issues. Among non-homeowners, almost half believe they’ll never own a home. That’s not a small frustration—it’s a structural problem that destroys the foundation of western society. Home ownership isn’t just an investment for families, it’s a tie to their nation and proof of a stake in your country.

When people feel locked out, they stop participating and start looking for another option. Many attribute the fall in living standards to the growth of capitalism and compare their lives to those living a better one. It’s harder to understand the inner workings of a mixed economy and the economic results of government versus private decisions. It is much easier to place blame on strangers whose struggles you will never have to understand and a system that is seemingly oppressing you.

Many people believe the New Democratic Party has no legs to stand on after the last election where they couldn’t garner enough support to gain party status. However with the ever growing favour of socialism in western countries it would be wise to pay close attention to Avi Lewis’s platform, which contains the policies people want.

Despite their non-party status they’ve still continued to receive support from the government, they just got $670,000 in funding to carry out their parliamentary duties. The NDP were undeniably resourceful during the Trudeau era, their coalition allowed the Trudeau government to carry out their agenda. No good deed goes unpunished.

The NDP Platform

Canada’s grocery sector is concentrated. A handful of companies control a large share of the market essentially making them oligopolies. 5 companies control 65% of the grocery market share. With such a larger share of the market many Canadians are rightly concerned about price gauging. Avi Lewis correctly identifies the problem but, like many socialists, arrives at a destructive solutions. To account for these grocery giants advantage in the market he proposes to create yet another oligarch, that being the government. Suggesting that the government create, subsidize and run publicly owned grocery stores around the country.

The issue is that this doesn’t remove concentration—it shifts it. A state-backed competitor, funded by taxpayers, could easily dominate the market over time.

History offers caution here. Countries that nationalised food distribution—like Venezuela—saw shortages, long lines, and declining supply. Similar patterns appeared in Cuba and the Soviet Union. The intent was stability. The result was scarcity and loss of security. There are many stories of Venezuelans skipping work and keeping their kids home from school so they had time to line up at grocery stores for hours. We can learn from the past or suffer in the future.

Nationalised Telecommunications and Pharma

Lewis also proposes expanding public control into telecom and Vaccine production.

The concern here isn’t just efficiency—it’s control. When the state becomes the main provider, access can become political, not just economic. COVID was a demonstration of what could happen when you give the government too much power over these sectors.

The government gave false information about practices that could stop the spread of the virus. Then they forced people to take an untested vaccine and falsely advertised that it would reduce spread. They allowed classified documents from Canada’s highest security laboratory to be sent to China. What’s worse is the Liberal Government then fought the release of the documents outlining the incident. Then during the lockdowns, the government unlawfully shut off the bank accounts of truckers protesting—and even those supporting them. These are events we cannot dismiss when thinking of these policies.

Free Transit

Similar to Mamdani in New York, Lewis is proposing “free and reliable transit”, as if anything given away for free could sustain utmost reliability over time. This policy is also unrealistic and didn’t play out well in New York. After Mamdani won the mayoral race he received backlash following the increase in bus fares in New York.

Free public transit sounds appealing, but it still has to be paid for by somebody. Lewis also proposes large-scale electrification, rail expansion, and infrastructure upgrades that would cost tens or hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars. Never asking the question of how we will be able to pay for it. There’s a pattern in similar proposals: costs rise, and “free” becomes subsidised, then partially paid, then expensive again.

Ending Homelessness Through Public Housing

Another part of the plan includes building over a million public housing units within five years largely to reduce the rate of homelessness in the country. Other countries have tried large-scale social housing. As this likely will ease the rise of homelessness, not only will these homes never be owned by Canadians but there are many problems with this approach. The Netherlands, for example, has over 2.3 million of these units totaling 30% of their housing, but supply constraints and long wait times remain—often stretching years or even decades.

The average waiting time to get into a housing unit is now over 7 years, in some places that can increase to 12.5 or 19 years. At the same time, heavy public-sector involvement can shrink the private rental market, tightening supply further. The result is pressure on both systems. Social housing starts at helping the lower class but as it grows and the private housing shrinks middle income individuals become priced out of the rental market and are forced into social housing.

This creates a perpetual cycle of more reliance on government funded housing which puts a lot of stress on tax payers to fund. Eventually the private sector housing is set to disappear and be completely dominated by social housing.

Phasing Out Oil and Gas Expansion

Lewis proposes halting new fossil fuel projects and shifting toward renewables, this is a policy championed by the green movement. As we live in a petro society with the Iran war highlighting the delicacy of the market, it’s clear we need more energy, not less. The challenge is transition risk. Countries that reduced domestic energy production and refineries have faced supply issues and rising costs.

Germany’s recent experience is one example with a goal to phase out coal, they planned to close all 84 coal power plants. This led to an energy shortage because of the Iran war and has forced them to consider ramping up coal power to avoid an energy crisis.

Where This Leads

None of these ideas exist in isolation. They reflect a broader shift toward larger government, more central control, and greater reliance on public systems.

That shift is being driven by real problems—especially cost of living and housing.

But the proposed fixes carry their own risks:

• Reduced supply and longer wait times

• Higher taxes across the board

• Greater state control over key sectors

• Potential inefficiencies that compound over time

The rise of figures like Avi Lewis wasn’t random. It was predictable.

When people feel the system isn’t working, they look for something else.

The appeal of socialism today is rooted in frustration, not theory. That’s why it’s gaining ground. The question isn’t whether people want change—they clearly do. The question is whether these solutions fix the problems, or deepen them. If you’re concerned about where this is heading, the most useful thing you can do is understand the arguments—both for and against—and have the conversation clearly. Both sides agree on the problems we face, however the “solutions” proposed by one side will be devastating.

I suspect given this new Liberal majority and the rising sentiment that Mark Carney is a “center-right” Liberal, in the next election we will see a record rise in the support for Canada’s socialist party, the NDP. The perception of socialism and lack of historical context will undoubtedly drive Canada and many other western nations into the hands of socialists and communists, bringing us down the path of totalitarianism.

It seems to me that the ideologues wish to shift us from one system of overreach and control, to another. However, it is not for us to simply pass judgement. Bad ideas will only fall to better ones.

The Liberal government under Mark Carney has secured a majority through floor crossing, reaching 174 seats. Many Canadians are asking me whether there is even a point in voting. My response: only if your actions don’t stop there.

The idea of “two wings, one bird” is gaining ground across the West—the belief that all major parties are controlled by the same interests. Many people, trying to make sense of recent events, conclude that the game is rigged and the winners are chosen by an “elite.”

A study by the Media Ecosystem Observatory on social media–fuelled conspiracy theories noted a rise in several narratives, including media–elite collusion, election fraud, and the “deep state.” Trust is eroding because people feel they are playing a game they cannot win, controlled by forces beyond their reach.

When you look at the chain of events behind Mark Carney’s rise and his majority government, it becomes clear why many see it as a state manufactured with powerful backing.

Start with the leadership race. It was called after Justin Trudeau had, over ten years, severely damaged the Liberal brand. Abacus polling from January 19, 2025, showed Liberal support at a low point: Conservatives at 46%, Liberals at 20%, and the NDP at 19%, based on a sample of 1,500 Canadian adults.

At that moment, a Liberal victory seemed out of reach.

What followed was a shift in tone. Blame for policy failures was increasingly placed on Trudeau, and pressure mounted until he stepped down. Carney then entered the race against long-serving MPs and quickly became the frontrunner.

This is notable. He had spent over a decade outside Canada, serving as Governor of the Bank of England (2013–2020), later as a UN Special Envoy, and then as chair of Brookfield Asset Management (2020–2025). Despite this, he won the leadership race decisively.

That alone is unusual. Leadership winners are almost always long-time MPs with recent domestic political experience. Carney not only broke that pattern but also did so with record support, winning every one of the 343 ridings—including those of his opponents.

Then came the 2025 election. The Liberals secured 43.76% of the vote and 169 seats, just short of a majority. The Conservatives won 41.31% and 144 seats. Under proportional representation, the Liberals would have held about 148 seats and the Conservatives around 140—highlighting how first-past-the-post can distort outcomes depending on geography.

This result also marked a sharp reversal: a roughly 24-point swing from the 20% polling figure in January to nearly 44% in the election. Such a comeback is rare in Canadian politics.

After the election, the Liberals moved to secure a majority through floor crossings—another unheard-of outcome. Reports surfaced of efforts to recruit MPs from other parties. Five crossed the floor, four from the Conservatives.

Historically, large-scale floor crossing is rare. It has happened before—under John A. Macdonald and Jean Chrétien—but remains unusual. Overall, Liberal governments have benefited more from such moves, gaining 26 seats compared to 15 for Conservatives.

What stands out here is the profile of some who crossed. For example, Marilyn Gladu, known for positions at odds with current Liberal policy, switching sides raises questions that many find hard to reconcile.

She supported the truckers’ movement that happened during COVID, she’s supported legislation that would limit abortion, and she’s spoken in favor of conversion therapy.

There is also context worth noting. In 2011, Bill C-306 proposed requiring MPs who switch parties to trigger a by-election. It would have forced MPs to seek a fresh mandate before sitting under a new banner. The Conservatives voted against it—142 opposed. That decision now has consequences.

Given all this, some Canadians are turning cynical, concluding that their vote no longer matters. I take a different view. If anything, this is a reason to do more, not less.

If you believe important actions are happening behind the scenes—or in plain sight—and not being properly examined, then speak. Participation cannot end at the ballot box.

There are laws coming that, in my view, risk undermining freedom and security—what I have called “Liberal Trojan horse laws.” Whether one agrees with that label or not, the broader point stands: laws should be judged by their effect, not their framing. They definitely should stand up to scrutiny and not be pushed through forcefully like in the case of Bill C-9.

The irony of fast-tracking and ending discussion on legislation that will limit free speech and expression is almost laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.

Rights unused tend to weaken. If people disengage, the space for power widens.

Some are considering leaving the country. That may offer relief, but likely only in the short term. I encourage those who wish to leave to continue spreading the messages needed to end the erosion of rights and freedoms. Political and ideological trends do not stop at borders, especially in an age shaped by social media.

There is also a broader debate about ideology. Some argue that elements of modern policy draw from ideas that have been reshaped or repurposed over time. Take Milton Friedman’s “negative income tax,” often cited today in discussions of guaranteed basic income. What was proposed as a replacement for certain social programs is now, in practice, layered on top of existing systems—such as the GST credit, which provides income-based support.

Whether one sees this as adaptation or drift depends on perspective. But it shows how ideas can change as they move from theory to policy and become weaponized.

The Liberal government, like any government, uses language to frame its agenda. That is not new. It does, however, place a burden on citizens to look past wording and assess substance.

Eventually, silence is treated as consent, whether you like it or not.

*Paid subscribers can find the ad-free version of the episode at the bottom of this article.*

Mark Carney has his majority. Not through a general election or a mandate from the Canadian public. Through five floor crossings and three by-election wins in ridings the Liberals already held. That's the foundation this government now stands on.

Let’s start with the numbers. The two Toronto by-elections saw voter turnout between 31 and 33 percent. In University-Rosedale, the Liberal candidate took roughly 65 percent of that vote. Run the math and you land around one in five eligible voters in the riding. That’s your mandate. The Terrebonne result carried similar weight — a Supreme Court-ordered rerun of a riding the Liberals originally won by a single vote after Elections Canada misprinted addresses on mail-in ballots.

Then there are the floor crossings. Angus Reid polling shows 75 percent of Canadians believe some form of democratic accountability — whether a by-election, recall, or automatic trigger — should follow any floor crossing. A supermajority of the country opposes the mechanism that delivered this government its power. And yet here we are.

What makes this worse is what comes next. With a majority in the House and a Senate where over 90 percent of members were appointed through the Trudeau administration, there is no remaining check on legislative power. Bills that had been sitting in limbo are now headed straight through the pipeline: the Online Harms Act with its retroactive fines and life imprisonment provisions, the Strong Borders Act expanding warrantless surveillance, the Cybersecurity Act granting power to disconnect internet access, the Combating Hate Act redefining hate speech to include religious text, and the Lawful Access Act mandating backdoor infrastructure and blanket metadata retention.

Andrew Lobaczewski wrote in Political Ponerology about how totalitarian systems don’t need everyone on board. They just need to push out principled opposition and let the rest follow the herd. That pattern is playing out in real time across Canadian institutions. When 99.6 percent of MPs vote along party lines and most of them can’t even describe their own job — as the Samara Centre’s Tragedy in the Commons report revealed — you don’t have representative democracy.

The takeaway here is straightforward: competent, capable people need to build lives outside the reach of this machinery. That’s not defeatism. That’s the only rational response when the system no longer answers to the people it claims to represent.

If you’re interested in hearing the rationale behind this perspective, Listen to The Blendr Report EP162 on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Rumble.

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Ad Free Version of Blendr Report EP162: Carney’s Manufactured Majority and Canada’s Democracy Problem

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Lucy Biggers was not on the fringe of the climate movement. She was deep in it. Over a hundred million views on Facebook. Interviews with Greta Thunberg and AOC. She pushed the Green New Deal, got plastic straws banned, helped change her newsroom's language from "climate change" to "climate crisis." For five years of her twenties, this was her identity, purpose, and tribe.

Then COVID hit. The world shut down, plastic was everywhere and nobody cared, carbon emissions dropped by maybe five percent… and Lucy started doing the math.

If a global shutdown barely dents emissions, what exactly does net zero require? The answer, once you follow the thread, is the dismantling of modern life. And that was the first crack.

She picked up Michael Schellenberger’s Apocalypse Never and Steve Koonian’s Unsettled. Both written by people with credibility the movement couldn’t dismiss — a former green activist and an Obama appointee. What she found inside was that the science doesn’t say match the headlines. The UN reports don’t say what the summaries say. The summaries don’t say what the journalists say. And the journalists don’t say what the memes say. Seven layers of telephone between the data and the public. By the time it reaches your feed, the original finding is unrecognizable.

Lucy went quiet for five years. Took a behind-the-scenes role at the Free Press, had two kids, and slowly, piece by piece, rebuilt her own thinking from the ground up. She describes it as decolonizing her own mind. Not a political shift but a cognitive one. Relearning how to ask what she actually believed about each topic rather than downloading the approved answer from the group.

This conversation covers the full arc. How she got in. How the groupthink works at the newsroom level — the Slack channels, the social punishment, the purity tests with no redemption clause. How the climate movement maps onto religious psychology: a fallen world, a revolution, a purgatory, and a promised utopia on the other side. How the media frames weather data to imply danger that the underlying science doesn’t support. And how none of this requires a grand conspiracy to function. You push the first domino and human psychology does the rest.

We also get into the geopolitical angle. China as the world’s largest oil importer, manufacturing the solar panels and wind turbines the West is told it must buy, funding NGOs that push the narrative forward. The strategic logic is hard to argue with. Undermine your rival’s energy independence and sell them the replacement parts. It doesn’t need to be a tinfoil theory. It just needs to be good strategy.

The thing that sets Lucy apart from most people talking about this is that she has no interest in dunking on the people still inside. She was them. She knows what it feels like to carry climate guilt, to self-censor over a reality TV show, to believe you’re saving the world while never once checking the numbers. Her aim is simpler than combat. She wants to give young people the context they were never given and let them decide for themselves.

Deaths from natural disasters are down ninety-nine percent in a hundred years. The planet is greener than it was fifty years ago. We are safer, more prosperous, and more capable than any generation before us. Yet, we toy with the idea of throwing it all away.

If you’re interested in hearing the full conversation, you can listen to The Blendr Report EP161 on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Rumble.

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Today, Canada’s “democracy” operates as a procedural husk — a system that retains every formal structure of democratic governance being repurposed to serve the political class rather than the public it claims to represent.

Over the past five years, the governing party has called elections to bury active investigations into national security breaches and financial corruption. Parliament sat for just sixteen percent of the available days while MPs collected full salaries and per diems for the other eighty-four.

More than 121,000 ballots went uncounted in a single federal election. A riding was decided by one vote after an Elections Canada employee printed the wrong postal code on dozens of ballot envelopes — and the Supreme Court had to annul the result. A 298-vote Conservative lead in another riding disappeared overnight and surfaced as a 29-vote Liberal win, chalked up to “data entry errors.”

A foreign power interfered in two consecutive federal elections, funded at least eleven candidates, and faced no meaningful consequence. A sitting Liberal MP publicly encouraged people to collect a bounty placed by the Chinese Communist Party on a Conservative candidate. The current Prime Minister was initially installed by 131,674 Liberal Party members — roughly one-third of one percent of the Canadian population — and governs with a cabinet largely comprised of people who served the man that resigned in disgrace before him. And in the months since, five Members of Parliament elected under one banner have crossed the floor to hand that Prime Minister an impending majority no Canadian voter ever granted.

Not one of these events has triggered a constitutional crisis. The Governor General has not intervened, the courts have addressed only the most egregious case, and the media has covered each as an isolated story — a bad recount here, a questionable floor crossing there, a foreign interference inquiry that found “troubling” events but assured Canadians the overall outcome was not affected.

That is how a democracy dies. Through a slow and methodical dissolution of integrity, where each violation is absorbed, normalized, and filed away as an exception rather than recognized as part of a pattern.

This piece documents the pattern. Over the following sections, we trace a five-year arc of democratic erosion in Canada, from the Winnipeg Lab cover-up in 2021 through the manufactured majority likely to take hold next week. Every claim is sourced and every event is a matter of public record. Taken in isolation, any one of them could be dismissed as an anomaly. Taken together, they form a case that the country’s democratic institutions have not merely failed. They have been repurposed. While the husk may still remain, the substance is gone.

Elections as Escape Routes

There is a question Canadians ought to ask every time a federal election is called: what was Parliament about to find out?

In the summer of 2021, the House of Commons was closing in on one of the most serious national security breaches in Canadian history. Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng — both scientists at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada’s only Biosafety Level 4 facility — had been fired in January of that year after CSIS determined that Qiu had “intentionally” worked to benefit the People’s Republic of China. The scope of what she had done was staggering. Qiu transferred live Ebola and Henipah viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, collaborated with People’s Liberation Army Major-General Chen Wei on published research, allowed PLA-affiliated personnel access to Canada’s highest-security lab, and was listed as co-inventor on two Chinese government patents for innovations related to the Ebola and Marburg viruses — work that was the direct product of her position inside a Canadian government facility.

The House of Commons demanded answers. Opposition MPs passed a motion ordering the government to produce unredacted documents about the firings and the security breach. The Trudeau government refused. The House ordered it again. The government refused again. Over the course of months, four separate orders of Parliament were defied — a level of contempt for the legislative branch that has almost no precedent in Canadian history. When the Speaker of the House ruled that parliamentary privilege had been breached and prepared to enforce disclosure, the government did something extraordinary: it took the Speaker of the House of Commons to Federal Court to get a judge to block the release. The executive branch of government sued the legislative branch of government to prevent Canadians from learning what had happened inside their own national laboratory.

And then, before any of it could be resolved, Trudeau called a snap election in August 2021. The dissolution of Parliament killed all four House orders, ended the court challenge (which the government quietly withdrew during the campaign), and buried the investigation entirely. A Special Committee would eventually reconvene and produce a report with twelve recommendations — including adding the Wuhan Institute of Virology to Canada’s list of Named Research Organizations — but by then the political moment had passed. The documents were not produced during the election. The public moved on. The RCMP investigation into Qiu and Cheng remains open with no charges laid.

Three years later, the pattern repeated.

In June 2024, the Auditor General released a report on Sustainable Development Technology Canada — a federal foundation responsible for distributing hundreds of millions in public funds to clean-tech companies. The findings were damning. The AG found that SDTC had awarded $334 million across 186 cases in which board members held direct conflicts of interest, $59 million to ten projects that were entirely ineligible for funding, and an additional $58 million to projects where basic terms and conditions were never verified. Internal whistleblowers had secretly recorded a senior civil servant describing the mismanagement as “outright incompetence.” In total, roughly $390 million in taxpayer money was either misappropriated or awarded under conditions that should have disqualified it from the start.

The House of Commons passed a motion ordering the government to produce unredacted documents related to the scandal and to refer the matter to the RCMP for potential criminal investigation. The Liberals refused. The Speaker ruled that the government had “clearly not fully complied” with the order. The Conservatives seized the House with a privilege debate, and all legislative business ground to a halt on October 3, 2024. Rather than produce the documents, the government chose to let Parliament die. The House did not sit for a single productive day from that point until well into 2025 — a stretch of nearly eight months during which Canadians were governed without a functioning legislature.

The same playbook, twice in four years. An investigation reaches the point where disclosure becomes unavoidable, and the governing party reaches for the kill switch — dissolution in 2021, procedural paralysis in 2024. In neither case were the documents produced. In neither case did the public receive a full accounting. And in both cases, the mechanism that was supposed to hold the executive to account — Parliament itself — was neutralised by the very people it was meant to hold accountable.

The election is supposed to be the tool citizens use to enforce accountability on their government. In Canada, it has become the tool the government uses to escape it.

The Integrity of the Vote

Even if you set aside the corruption and the cover-ups — even if you accept the premise that Canadian elections are still called in good faith — the machinery of the vote itself is broken.

In the 2025 federal election, more than 121,000 special ballots went uncounted. Out of roughly 1.3 million mail-in ballots issued, nearly one in ten never made it into the tally. Elections Canada has not provided a clear breakdown of how many were misdirected, how many arrived late, and how many were simply never returned — a distinction that matters enormously when the integrity of an election depends on public confidence that every eligible vote was counted. CBC reported on the scale of the problem, but no satisfactory explanation has followed. The ballots were issued but not counted. And the country moved on as though that were normal.

In the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, it was worse than normal. Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste defeated Bloc Québécois candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné by a single vote — the narrowest margin in the country. The result might have stood had it not emerged that an Elections Canada employee had printed his own postal code on at least forty special ballot envelopes, causing them to be misdirected. One of those ballots belonged to a confirmed Bloc voter whose vote was rejected because it arrived at the wrong returning office. Quebec’s special ballot rejection rate ran between two and six times the national average. Over 800 ballots in British Columbia were never counted at all. The Bloc filed a legal challenge, and a Superior Court judge initially ruled against overturning the result. The Supreme Court of Canada disagreed, annulling the election and ordering a byelection for April 13, 2026. It took the highest court in the country to acknowledge what should have been obvious from the start: a riding decided by one vote, in an election where the administering body itself caused valid ballots to be rejected, is not a legitimate outcome.

Then there is Milton East–Halton Hills South, which may be the most troubling case of all. On election night, Conservative candidate Parm Gill led by 298 votes. It was not a razor-thin margin. It was a clear and comfortable win by any normal standard of Canadian electoral math. Then came the validation process. Elections Canada reported that Liberal candidate Kristina Tesser Derksen had in fact won the seat by 29 votes — a swing of 327 votes, all moving in the same direction, attributed entirely to “data entry and calculation errors.” A judicial recount overseen by Justice Leonard Ricchetti confirmed the Liberal win, narrowing the margin to 21 votes. Elections Canada issued a formal announcement and the result was certified.

What was never adequately explained is how a 298-vote lead transforms into a 29-vote deficit through clerical errors alone. Errors in vote tabulation are not uncommon — small discrepancies surface in virtually every recount — but they tend to distribute randomly across candidates. A uniform directional swing of 327 votes, every single one of which moves from one candidate to the other, is not a random distribution. It is a statistical pattern that demands a better explanation than the one Canadians received.

Three ridings. Three different failures. In Terrebonne, an employee’s mistake disenfranchised voters in a riding decided by the smallest possible margin. In Milton East, a candidate who won on election night lost his seat through a validation process that no one has convincingly explained. And across the country, 121,000 ballots were issued and never counted, with no public accounting of why.

The ballot is the most basic unit of democratic power. It is the one moment where every citizen is supposed to stand as an equal — one person, one vote, counted once. When that mechanism fails at scale, and when the failures consistently favour one party over another, the question is no longer whether Canadians trust their elections. The question is whether they should.

Foreign Interference — The CCP and Canadian Elections

The People’s Republic of China has been interfering in Canadian federal elections for years, and the Canadian government has known about it for just as long.

Classified intelligence documents, first reported by the Globe and Mail and later confirmed through the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference led by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, established that China’s Ministry of State Security and United Front Work Department ran covert operations during both the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. The operations were not subtle. Beijing deployed disinformation campaigns on Chinese-language social media platforms, arranged for international students to work on preferred candidates’ campaigns, and funnelled money through a network of proxy donors who received reimbursement for their contributions — a direct violation of the Canada Elections Act. CSIS warned the Prime Minister’s Office in 2023 that China had “clandestinely and deceptively” interfered in both elections, and internal intelligence identified a network of at least eleven federal candidates across multiple parties — seven Liberal, four Conservative — who received funding or operational support linked to CCP-affiliated organizations.

Trudeau was briefed, yet, chose not to act. When the intelligence leaks reached the press and public pressure mounted for a full inquiry, the government resisted for over a year before finally conceding. The Hogue Commission’s first report, released in May 2024, confirmed that Chinese state actors had engaged in foreign interference but concluded that the meddling had not altered which party ultimately formed government — a finding that offered just enough cover for the political class to treat the entire affair as a closed file. The final report, issued in January 2025, identified disinformation spread through social media as a major and growing threat to Canadian democracy, but by then the political conversation had moved on to leadership races and tariff wars.

What the Hogue Commission did not do — what no institution in Canada has done — is impose consequences. No candidate who received CCP-linked funding has been charged. No Liberal operative has been held accountable for ignoring the intelligence. No mechanism has been created to prevent the same interference from happening in the next election. CSIS confirmed that at least one former parliamentarian actively worked on behalf of a foreign government to influence proceedings inside Parliament itself, and even that revelation produced no criminal prosecution.

The interference extended beyond funding and disinformation into something far more direct. During the 2025 federal election campaign, Liberal MP Paul Chiang — the incumbent candidate for Markham–Unionville — stood before a Chinese-language media conference and told the room that they could claim a million-dollar bounty placed by Hong Kong authorities on Conservative candidate Joe Tay, a co-founder of HongKonger Station and a democracy advocate targeted by the CCP. “To everyone here,” Chiang said, “you can claim the one-million-dollar bounty if you bring him to Toronto’s Chinese consulate.” A sitting member of the Canadian Parliament publicly encouraged citizens to turn a political opponent over to agents of a foreign dictatorship for a cash reward. The RCMP opened a probe into whether Chiang had broken the law. Mark Carney, by then the Liberal leader, initially stood by him. Chiang issued a brief apology calling his own remarks “deplorable,” and withdrew from the race only after the RCMP investigation became public. He was not charged. He was not expelled from the party. He stepped aside quietly and the news cycle absorbed it within days.

Consider the full picture. A foreign government interferes in two consecutive Canadian elections. Intelligence agencies confirm it. The Prime Minister is briefed and does nothing. A public inquiry confirms the interference but assures Canadians the outcome was unaffected. A sitting MP promotes a foreign bounty on a domestic political opponent and faces no criminal consequence. And then the new Prime Minister — the one installed after all of this — flies to Beijing within months of taking office to forge a strategic partnership with the same regime.

The word for this is not diplomacy. When a foreign power interferes in your elections, places bounties on your candidates, collaborates with scientists inside your highest-security laboratory, and your government responds by deepening the relationship, the word is capture.

The Installation of Mark Carney

By January 2025, Justin Trudeau’s position had become untenable. His party was collapsing in the polls, his caucus was in open revolt, and a no-confidence vote was looming that his government almost certainly could not survive. The democratic resolution to this crisis was straightforward: face the confidence vote, lose, and let the Canadian public decide what came next in a general election. Trudeau chose a different path. On January 6, 2025, he prorogued Parliament — suspending the legislature entirely — and announced his resignation as Liberal leader, triggering an internal leadership race that would determine who governed the country without Canadians having any say in the matter.

The race itself was a formality. Mark Carney, the former Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, entered as the prohibitive favourite and won on March 9, 2025, with 85.9% of the vote. The official results show that 131,674 Liberal Party members cast ballots — out of 163,836 who had registered to vote. In a country of roughly forty million people, Canada’s next Prime Minister was chosen by one-third of one percent of the population. Candidates who did not align with the party establishment were blocked from competing. The outcome was never in doubt.

What followed was not a transition of power in any meaningful sense. Carney kept the same Trudeau-era cabinet ministers in their posts — the same faces who had presided over the Winnipeg Lab cover-up, the Green Slush Fund scandal, the parliamentary gridlock, and the refusal to act on foreign interference. The personnel did not change because the governing apparatus did not change. A new name sat at the top. Everything beneath it remained identical. Jagmeet Singh and the NDP immediately pledged to prop up the new government, ensuring that the confidence of the House — the one remaining democratic check — would not be tested.

Carney then called a general election for April 28, 2025, and won a minority government. That election is now the democratic mandate he points to. But what preceded it matters. The prorogation was not a neutral act — it was a tactical manoeuvre designed to prevent the House from expressing non-confidence in the Liberal government before a new leader could be installed and a campaign launched on favourable terms. Canadians did not choose between Trudeau’s government and the alternatives. They were presented with a rebranded version of the same government, under a new leader they had no role in selecting, running on a timeline the outgoing Prime Minister engineered specifically to avoid accountability.

Within months of taking office, Carney made his priorities clear. In January 2026, he became the first Canadian Prime Minister to visit Beijing since 2017, announcing a new “strategic partnership” with the People’s Republic of China focused on energy, agri-food, and trade. The agreement included tariff reductions on Canadian canola and commitments to expanded agricultural exports. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne travelled alongside representatives of Brookfield Asset Management — Carney’s former employer, which had already invested over $3 billion in China before Carney took the helm in 2020. The Bureau documented the depth of Carney’s financial entanglement with Chinese state-linked entities during his time at Brookfield, and the East Asia Forum noted that Canada’s turn toward Beijing, while framed as trade diversification away from Trump-era tariff pressure, carried significant strategic risks that the government appeared willing to absorb.

The sequence deserves to be stated plainly. A Prime Minister prorogues Parliament to avoid a confidence vote. A leadership race selects his replacement from within the party, chosen by fewer than 132,000 people. The new leader governs with the same cabinet, propped up by the same coalition partner, and calls an election on a timeline of his own choosing. He wins a minority. And his first major foreign policy act is to deepen Canada’s relationship with the authoritarian regime that his own intelligence agency confirmed had interfered in two consecutive Canadian elections, whose military collaborated with compromised scientists inside a Canadian government lab, and whose bounty a member of his own party promoted against a Canadian political candidate.

Mark Carney was installed as Prime Minister. 131,674 Liberal members elected him to lead their party, and a minority of Canadian voters gave that party the most seats in a general election that followed. Those are not the same thing, and the distinction matters — because every decision Carney has made since taking office flows from a mandate that was engineered, not earned.

Taxation Without Representation

The phrase is older than Confederation. It was the rallying cry of the American Revolution and a foundational grievance of every democratic movement that followed — the principle that a government which taxes its citizens without granting them a functioning legislature to oversee how that money is spent has forfeited its legitimacy. In Canada, between October 2024 and May 2025, that principle was not violated in theory. It was violated in fact.

When the House of Commons ground to a halt on October 3, 2024, over the Liberals’ refusal to produce documents related to the Green Slush Fund scandal, the conventional expectation was that the standoff would resolve within days or weeks. It did not. The privilege debate consumed the remainder of the fall sitting. Christmas recess arrived with no resolution. And then, on January 6, 2025, Trudeau prorogued Parliament entirely — not to break the deadlock, but to avoid a no-confidence vote his government could not survive. The House did not reconvene until March 24, 2025, and when it did, it sat only briefly before the election was called for April 28.

According to the Library of Parliament’s own records, the House of Commons sat for just 73 days out of 455 available days between October 2024 and December 2025 — a rate of sixteen percent. For eighty-four percent of the time, Canadians had no functioning legislature. No bills were debated. No committees met. No government spending was scrutinized. No questions were asked in Question Period, because there was no Question Period to attend. The executive branch governed unimpeded by the legislative branch for the better part of a year.

Throughout all of it, every Member of Parliament continued to collect their full salary. The base compensation for a Canadian MP is $194,600 per year, with additional allowances for housing, travel, and office expenses. Members received per diems for days they were nominally “in session” and continued to draw from taxpayer-funded budgets for constituency offices that had no parliamentary business to report on. The House of Commons sitting calendar tells the story: vast stretches of blank space where sittings should have been, interrupted by the occasional cluster of days that achieved nothing of substance before the next recess.

The cost of this arrangement was not abstract. During the months Parliament did not sit, the federal government continued to spend, regulate, and govern by Order in Council. Tax revenues continued to flow. Programs continued to disburse funds. Regulatory changes continued to be enacted. All of it happened without the oversight mechanism that exists specifically to ensure the executive does not spend public money without legislative approval. The entire premise of responsible government — the system Canada inherited from Westminster, in which the executive can only govern so long as it holds the confidence of the legislature — depends on the legislature actually sitting. When it does not, responsible government is a fiction. The government is responsible to no one.

What makes this period particularly corrosive is that Parliament did not shut down because of a crisis, a natural disaster, or a national emergency. It shut down because the governing party was caught in a corruption scandal and refused to comply with a lawful order of the House. The Liberals could have produced the Green Slush Fund documents, allowed the RCMP referral to proceed, and continued governing. They chose instead to let the legislature die rather than face accountability — and then used the resulting vacuum to engineer a leadership transition, install a new Prime Minister, and call an election on their own terms.

Canadians paid for every day of it. They paid the salaries of MPs who did not sit, the operating costs of a Parliament that did not function, and the price of a government that spent their money without anyone in the room to ask where it was going. The phrase “taxation without representation” is not a metaphor in this context. For nearly eight months, it was a literal description of how Canada was governed.

Manufacturing a Majority

Mark Carney won a minority government on April 28, 2025. Six months later, he began assembling the majority the electorate refused to give him.

On November 4, 2025, Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont — elected as a Conservative — crossed the floor to the Liberal caucus. On December 11, Toronto-area MP Michael Ma followed. On February 18, 2026, Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux became the third Conservative to cross. On March 10, NDP MP Lori Idlout, representing the vast riding of Nunavut, left the NDP to join the Liberals. And on April 8, four-term Sarnia–Lambton MP Marilyn Gladu became the fifth. Five crossings in five months, each one bringing the Liberals closer to the 172 seats required for a majority. With Gladu’s defection, they sit at 171 — one seat short, with three byelections scheduled for April 13 that could deliver the rest.

In every one of these ridings, voters cast their ballots for a specific party. The residents of Sarnia–Lambton elected a Conservative. The people of Nunavut elected a New Democrat. Those voters did not choose a Liberal representative, and no one has asked them whether they accept one. The ballot they marked and the member who now claims to represent them belong to two different political parties — and under Canadian law, there is nothing they can do about it until the next general election.

Gladu’s crossing is the most revealing. In January 2026 — three months before she herself crossed — Gladu publicly stated her position on the practice. “We elected you under this banner,” she said, “and if you don’t want to be under that banner, then we deserve a chance to have a redo.” She backed proposals that would require floor-crossing MPs to face an automatic byelection, giving voters the final say. The principle she articulated was clear and correct: the mandate belongs to the voter, not the member. By April, she had abandoned it entirely. The mayor of Sarnia and the president of the local Conservative riding association both called on her to resign and face a byelection. She has not done so. Carney has not asked her to.

The public’s view on this is not ambiguous. Angus Reid polling found that just one in four Canadians believe an MP who crosses the floor should be allowed to finish their term with the new party. Seventy-five percent believe some form of democratic accountability — a byelection, a recall mechanism, or an automatic trigger — should follow. The political class has ignored this consensus completely. There is no law requiring a byelection after a floor crossing, and no party in power has any incentive to create one, because the practice only benefits whichever party is doing the recruiting.

What makes this particular wave of crossings different from historical precedents is the arithmetic. CBC’s own analysis of floor-crossing history shows that it is rare for so many MPs to cross to the same party in such a compressed timeframe, and rarer still for those crossings to carry explicit strategic weight — each one narrowing the gap between a minority and a majority. This is not a handful of disaffected backbenchers following their conscience. This is a coordinated accumulation of seats that transforms the composition of Parliament without a single Canadian casting a vote.

The Hub framed the problem directly: Carney is “undemocratically winning a majority.” The word is precise. A majority government carries enormous power in the Westminster system — it controls the legislative agenda, dominates committees, and governs with near-impunity between elections. That power is supposed to be granted by the electorate. When it is assembled instead through backroom recruitment of individual MPs who switch their allegiance after the fact, the mandate is manufactured. The voters who created the minority Parliament on April 28, 2025, did not consent to the majority Parliament that is taking shape in April 2026.

Floor crossing is legal in Canada. It is also, in the plainest sense of the word, undemocratic. The voter chose one thing. The system delivered another. And no one with the power to change it has any reason to try.

The Husk Holds

On April 13, 2026, three federal byelections will determine whether the Carney government crosses the threshold from minority to majority. If the Liberals win even one of them (which they almost certainly will), they’ll hold 172 seats and command the House of Commons without needing the NDP, the Bloc, or anyone else. A government that was never supposed to have a majority will have obtained one through a combination of floor crossings no voter consented to and byelections triggered by the very scandals documented in this piece.

And waiting on the other side of that majority is a legislative agenda that should concern every Canadian who still believes the state answers to the citizen rather than the other way around.

Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, passed third reading in the House of Commons and is now before the Senate. The bill creates new criminal offences for the “wilful promotion of hatred,” expands the definition of hate crimes, and — most critically — removes a long-standing religious-expression exemption from Section 319(3) of the Criminal Code that protected Canadians who spoke in good faith on the basis of religious texts. The exemption had never once been successfully invoked to defend hateful speech. It was removed anyway. The bill also eliminates the requirement that the Attorney General approve hate-propaganda charges before they proceed, stripping away a prosecutorial safeguard that existed specifically to prevent politically motivated charges. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association warned that the bill’s vague language could be used to criminalise peaceful protest and silence unpopular expression. The Canadian Labour Congress raised concerns about its potential to infringe on freedom of association. The Canadian Constitution Foundation called it a direct threat to the Charter right to freedom of expression.

Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, was tabled in March 2026 and would compel telecommunications providers to retain Canadians’ metadata for up to one year and grant police and CSIS expanded powers to access it. The bill originally appeared as part of Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act, which was so sweeping in its surveillance provisions that the government was forced to split it into separate legislation after public backlash. Digital law professor Michael Geist warned that dangerous backdoor surveillance risks remain even in the revised version, and the government has not disclosed what the mass metadata retention regime will cost — either to taxpayers or to the telecommunications companies who will be forced to build the infrastructure.

The Online Harms Act — the previous incarnation of which died on the order paper when Trudeau prorogued Parliament — is being prepared for reintroduction. The original Bill C-63 proposed the creation of a Digital Safety Commission with regulatory power over online speech, provisions that critics including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association said amounted to government censorship of lawful content, and penalties that included the possibility of house arrest before an offence had been committed and life imprisonment for certain categories of speech.

And then there is the broader architecture of executive power that Carney has been assembling since taking office. The One Canadian Economy Act, passed in June 2025, allows Cabinet to declare any infrastructure project to be in the “national interest” — at which point all regulatory findings required under any federal law are deemed to have been made, and the Minister can issue a single document authorizing the project to proceed. The government has invoked emergency-powers rhetoric to justify everything from housing construction to trade corridors, framing routine policy priorities as crises that require bypassing normal democratic processes. And in March 2026, the Carney government asked the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn two lower-court rulings that found the invocation of the Emergencies Act during the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests was unlawful and violated the Charter. Two levels of court agreed the law was used unconstitutionally. Carney’s response was not to accept the rulings but to appeal them — seeking to establish the legal precedent that a future government can invoke emergency powers to crush a protest it finds politically inconvenient.

This is the legislative programme that a manufactured majority will be asked to pass. Criminalization of speech the government deems hateful, with fewer safeguards against abuse. Mass surveillance of Canadians’ digital metadata. A regulatory framework for online content that hands a government commission authority over what can and cannot be said on the internet. Executive power to bypass environmental and regulatory law by declaring projects to be in the national interest. And a legal campaign to establish that the Emergencies Act can be wielded against citizens who dissent.

A minority government would face opposition, amendment, and compromise on every one of these bills. A majority government faces none. With 172 seats, the Liberals control the legislative agenda, dominate every committee, and pass legislation without a single opposition vote. The bills listed above move from contentious proposals to foregone conclusions.

That is what is at stake on April 13. Not merely which party holds a few extra seats, but whether the legislative checks that remain — the last thin barriers between proposal and law — survive the week. The husk of Canadian democracy has absorbed every violation documented in this piece: elections used as escape routes, votes that went uncounted, foreign interference met with partnership rather than prosecution, a Parliament that did not sit, a Prime Minister no one elected, and a majority no one voted for. Each one was treated as an isolated incident. Each one was normalized. And each one made the next one possible.

The husk holds. It absorbs. And if the majority falls into place next week, it will have served its final purpose — providing the appearance of democratic legitimacy to a government that has spent five years systematically dismantling the substance of it.

The sharp rise in homelessness has brought this debate into focus, especially after a shocking report from the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The report outlined a dramatic rise in homelessness, noting an increase of 107% between 2020–2022 and 2024. Ontario alone recorded more than 85,000 people experiencing homelessness in 2025.

Homelessness has grown to the point where the Commission now calls it a human rights crisis. The report clearly identifies the problem. The solution, however, is far less clear. The Commission reflects what many Canadians instinctively believe: when there is a problem, government spending should fix it.

Yet there is little evidence that this spending and these programs have solved the problem in any meaningful way.

Over the past decade — especially since COVID — Canada has undertaken one of the largest expansions of social policy in its modern history.

Federal and provincial governments deployed tens of billions toward poverty reduction, housing stability, and homelessness prevention. Through income transfers, eviction moratoriums, emergency benefits, and large housing programs, policymakers promised to protect the most vulnerable and maintain social stability during an unprecedented disruption.

However, the results tell an uncomfortable story that many Canadians seem reluctant to confront, in part because Canada remains a deeply pro-welfare society. How long will Canadians tolerate the economic burden created by these policies? Especially future generations who will inherit the cost of today’s political decisions.

Despite this surge in intervention, key indicators have moved in the opposite direction. Housing affordability has fallen to historic lows, homelessness has risen sharply, and a growing share of working Canadians now live in financial precarity.

According to Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada’s Everyone Counts 2024 report, nearly 60,000 Canadians experience homelessness on any given night. This is nearly double the level observed just six years earlier, before COVID. Even more striking is the shift in severity: unsheltered homelessness, including encampments, increased from 14% in 2018 to 28% in 2024.

These trends did not occur in the absence of government action. They occurred during a period defined by aggressive spending and intervention — market restrictions, prolonged lockdowns, eviction moratoriums, income replacement programs, and large housing subsidies — all intended to reduce poverty and prevent homelessness.

The central question is no longer whether governments acted, but whether their actions addressed root causes or instead distorted the systems they were meant to stabilize.

The pandemic period offers a useful lens for examining this divergence. Lockdowns and economic restrictions hit lower-income workers hardest, particularly those in service sectors. At the same time, asset prices — especially housing — rose rapidly. This dynamic widened the wealth divide: those with assets saw their balance sheets grow, while those without faced rising costs and declining stability.

While it remains difficult to isolate how many people were pushed into poverty or homelessness directly because of these policies, the broader pattern is clear. Economic disruption combined with housing inflation increased vulnerability across large parts of the population. These were policy choices, though many remain uncomfortable acknowledging that fact. Inflation is a policy choice, not an act of God or nature.

COVID itself did not dictate these decisions. Lockdowns, the closure of small and medium businesses deemed “non-essential” while large corporations remained open, curfews, quantitative easing, and near-zero interest rates all contributed to the domino effect of regressing socioeconomic conditions we all see today.

These conditions also coincided with rising mental health problems. Drug and alcohol abuse increased alongside depression and suicide, driven by isolation, fear, and financial strain. This aligns with data showing homelessness nearly doubling since 2019, according to the Everyone Counts 2024 report.

This raises a basic question: if spending and intervention increased so dramatically, why did outcomes continue to worsen?

A common assumption is that poverty and homelessness persist because governments have not spent enough — that more funding would produce better results. But this assumption deserves scrutiny.

Federal homelessness spending alone has increased roughly 374% compared to the previous decade, averaging more than $561 million annually through programs such as Reaching Home, alongside billions more committed through recent budgets. Yet the persistence — and growth — of the problem suggests the relationship between spending and outcomes is far from linear.

Figure 1. Actual & Planned Spending on Homelessness Programs

People assume that more government spending is always the solution, yet in business we know that spending does not equate to results or success. So why does this fantasy correlation prosper in the political realm?

How did we get to a place where we believe politicians with short-term objectives and little to no understanding of basic economics trick us into allowing them to keep expanding debt, which we citizens must bear without holding accountability for those failures?

According to the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s 2024 Federal Spending to Address Homelessness report, achieving a 50% reduction in chronic homelessness would require an additional $3.5 billion PER YEAR, Meanwhile, Budget 2024 proposed $1 billion over four years to stabilize Reaching Home, plus $250 million over two years to address encampments and unsheltered homelessness.

Notice the pattern — more intervention, more spending, and the promise of improvement.

The continued rise in homelessness despite increased spending raises another question: what is the government actually doing with the money? To explore this, we can look at Red Deer as an example.

In 2019, Red Deer launched what it called an ambitious plan to end homelessness. The plan proposed spending $273 million over five years. At the time, the city had an estimated 150 homeless individuals — implying a cost of roughly $1.82 million per person.

The justification was that 1,800 additional people were at risk of homelessness, and the city wanted to act proactively. In practice, this meant preparing housing capacity rather than preventing homelessness upstream.

The more realistic conclusion is that when governments announce spending to “address homelessness,” they often mean managing homelessness — not reducing the number of people who become homeless, but transitioning them into publicly funded systems after the fact.

It is therefore not surprising that two years after the end of this five-year plan, homelessness in Red Deer continues to rise and the city struggles to keep up with shelter demand.

Self-interest is a basic principle of human behaviour, and governments are not exempt from it. Governments must justify their existence, and so must the NGOs that depend on government funding. If a government-funded shelter sees homelessness decline, its funding may also decline. That creates incentives that do not always align with solving the problem permanently.

With this in mind, it is notable that the 2019 Red Deer plan was not the first attempt to end homelessness there. An earlier five-year plan launched in 2014 aimed to end homelessness by 2018. The 2019 plan followed when that goal was not achieved.

Recently, Red Deer announced a third plan beginning in 2026 called Project Nexus, involving a range of publicly funded programs, including addiction support, healthcare services, and temporary and long-term housing.

Despite hundreds of millions in spending across multiple plans, homelessness continues to rise. Rather than eliminating homelessness, governments appear to be building permanent bureaucracies to manage it. Big business for the Welfare State.

It is therefore unsurprising that the NDP has now elected a leader proposing to double down on this approach with even more expansive federal programs.

Avi Lewis claims his platform will “end homelessness” through coordination across all levels of government. Yet, as the Red Deer example shows, even at smaller scales, governments have struggled not only to end homelessness but even to reduce it.

Understanding poverty and homelessness in Canada requires looking beyond headlines and intentions. It requires examining policy design, incentives, and unintended consequences — in other words, basic economics.

If the goal is not simply to manage poverty but to reduce it, then the key question is no longer how much governments spend, but whether the current intervention model can solve the problem at all.

Is welfarism truly the solution?

“Emergencies have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have eroded. Once suspended, it is not difficult for those who assume emergency powers to ensure the emergency never truly ends.”

- Friedrich August Von Hayek