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Liberal Patronage: $330 Million in Questionable Allocations at Canada’s Green Tech Agency

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The Opposition with Dan Knight

What we learned from the committee is as clear as it is disturbing: Liberal ministers and appointees at SDTC have been funneling taxpayer dollars to friends under the guise of green technology funding.

In a damning House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PACP) meeting, details emerged that Canada’s flagship “green” agency, Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), funneled hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into companies connected to Liberal insiders. An Auditor General’s report shed light on the staggering scale of this apparent Liberal patronage scheme, revealing that $330 million was awarded to projects with board members tied to the SDTC itself. Another $59 million found its way into initiatives that didn’t even meet SDTC’s green-tech mandate, fueling accusations of political favoritism and cronyism within Prime Minister Trudeau’s government.

Opposition MPs, led by Conservatives Rick Perkins and Michael Cooper, along with Bloc MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné and NDP MP Richard Cannings, took turns dissecting former Liberal Minister Navdeep Bains’ role in appointing Annette Verschuren as SDTC’s board chair. Testimony from the hearing, corroborated by statements from SDTC’s CEO, revealed that Bains reached out to Verschuren multiple times about her appointment, despite his claims of following an “open, transparent, and arm’s-length” process. Yet, when grilled by the opposition, Bains repeatedly invoked “process” and shifted blame onto the Privy Council Office (PCO), claiming he merely encouraged a diverse pool of applicants.

But the evidence doesn’t line up with the former minister’s narrative. Witnesses testified that Assistant Deputy Minister Noseworthy had informed SDTC CEO Leah Lawrence of Verschuren’s appointment even before it was finalized, indicating a behind-the-scenes process driven by Liberal influence. These revelations throw the credibility of the appointment process into question, suggesting it may have been less about selecting qualified candidates and more about ensuring loyal Liberal allies held key positions.

The committee’s findings, sparked by the Auditor General’s investigation, expose a serious issue of conflicts of interest within SDTC’s funding operations. This is a public agency with a mission to advance sustainable development, yet the Liberal government’s management seems to have turned it into a cash machine for insiders. The Auditor General’s report has revealed a troubling pattern of funding allocations going to companies with board connections, undercutting the government’s credibility on environmental stewardship and transparency.

What we learned from the committee is as clear as it is disturbing: Liberal ministers and appointees at SDTC have been funneling taxpayer dollars to friends under the guise of green technology funding. This isn’t just a lapse in oversight; it’s a systematic approach that prioritizes insider deals over real environmental progress, putting the Trudeau government’s commitment to transparency and sustainability squarely in doubt.

Opposition MPs Call Out Lack of Accountability

During this pivotal Public Accounts Committee meeting, opposition MPs went on the offensive, exposing a deep pattern of evasion and mismanagement in how taxpayer dollars were funneled into the hands of Liberal insiders under former Liberal Minister Navdeep Bains. Conservative MPs Rick Perkins and Michael Cooper led the charge, calling out Bains’ deflections and demanding straight answers. They pointed to the $330 million awarded by Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) to projects connected to its own board members, questioning why this blatant conflict of interest was permitted under Bains’ watch.

Perkins and Cooper’s approach was blunt. They challenged Bains on his repeated reliance on vague, bureaucratic defenses, pointing out that as minister, he had a duty to exercise oversight on SDTC’s operations. Perkins in particular questioned Bains about his involvement in appointing Annette Verschuren as chair of SDTC’s board. Despite Bains’ claims that he couldn’t “recall” specific discussions with Verschuren, evidence surfaced that he contacted her multiple times prior to her appointment. For Perkins and Cooper, this level of involvement, coupled with Bains’ repeated refusal to acknowledge conflicts of interest within SDTC, painted a damning picture of a Liberal minister who prioritized insider appointments over accountability to Canadian taxpayers.

Bloc MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné and NDP MP Richard Cannings focused their questioning on the government’s failure to ensure responsible oversight of SDTC’s environmental funds. Sinclair-Desgagné highlighted Bains’ “arm’s-length” defense as an excuse, given the testimony indicating that senior officials had preemptively informed SDTC’s CEO about Verschuren’s appointment, suggesting an internal network of influence rather than a transparent, merit-based process. She called out the apparent detachment of Bains from SDTC’s operations, underscoring how his office either ignored or bypassed red flags.

NDP MP Cannings raised critical points about the hypocrisy of a government that claims to champion green innovation while allowing SDTC to devolve into a taxpayer-funded favor bank. Cannings pointed out that SDTC’s funds, meant for real environmental progress, were instead granted to projects with questionable ties and little sustainability impact. For Canadians concerned with climate action, Cannings’ questions laid bare the truth: the Liberal government’s commitment to “green” initiatives is far weaker than their dedication to keeping insiders funded.

This unified front by Conservative, Bloc, and NDP MPs highlighted the same disturbing trend: a Liberal government that talks about accountability and climate action but delivers neither, choosing instead to use taxpayer funds to benefit those closest to the party.

Bains’ Defense: Hiding Behind “Process” and Arm’s-Length Excuses

When faced with tough questions on SDTC’s mismanagement, former Liberal Minister Navdeep Bains clung tightly to procedural defenses, repeatedly deflecting responsibility to the Privy Council Office (PCO) and downplaying his role as minister. Bains insisted that the PCO alone was responsible for vetting board members, suggesting his involvement was “hands-off” and strictly procedural. Yet, opposition MPs saw right through this tactic, viewing it as a clear attempt to dodge accountability.

Throughout the hearing, Bains deflected pointed questions by portraying SDTC’s oversight as out of his hands, claiming his office only followed standard processes. He avoided addressing why his appointee, Annette Verschuren, landed the SDTC board chair role despite potential conflicts of interest, with millions later flowing to companies linked to board members. By painting himself as a mere bystander to PCO’s vetting process, Bains sidestepped responsibility for ensuring taxpayer funds went to projects with genuine environmental merit, rather than those benefiting Liberal insiders.

When pressed about specific discussions surrounding Verschuren’s appointment, Bains leaned on what can only be described as selective memory. Asked about his personal involvement, he claimed he “couldn’t recall” multiple key conversations — a response that only raised eyebrows among committee members. Testimonies from SDTC’s CEO and other witnesses indicated Bains contacted Verschuren several times, yet his failure to acknowledge this directly cast doubt on his narrative of impartial oversight.

Opposition MPs argued that Bains’ procedural evasions were thinly veiled attempts to cover for what looks like a Liberal patronage pipeline. His refusal to answer clearly and his dependence on “I don’t recall” responses drew sharp criticism, with opposition leaders labeling it as a standard Liberal tactic to avoid admitting responsibility. The result? A testimony that shed little light on how SDTC was run but spoke volumes about the government’s willingness to dodge accountability whenever insiders are involved.

Inclusion and “Transparency” Won’t Save Liberals from Accountability

Throughout the Public Accounts Committee hearing, Liberal MPs Jean Yip and Francis Drouin took on a clear mission: protect Navdeep Bains at all costs. Instead of addressing the mountain of allegations around SDTC’s blatant cronyism and taxpayer waste, Yip and Drouin turned the hearing into a platform for Liberal talking points, spinning tales of “transparency” and “diversity” that conveniently dodged the actual corruption in front of them. Let’s be clear: hiding behind “inclusivity” doesn’t make the Liberals less corrupt, nor does it absolve them of responsibility when taxpayer money is at stake.

Jean Yip’s questioning gave Bains endless opportunities to recite the “open and competitive” process that supposedly led to Annette Verschuren’s appointment as SDTC board chair. Yet she never asked about Verschuren’s Liberal ties, or why so many millions were awarded to companies connected to SDTC board members. Yip’s focus on “inclusion” and “diverse voices” on the board was a distraction — a slick attempt to shift attention away from the Auditor General’s findings and avoid the reality that those “diverse voices” are well-connected Liberal insiders benefiting from your money.

Francis Drouin was right there to keep the narrative going, pivoting to SDTC’s supposed “green mandate” and giving Bains a platform to tout his government’s commitment to sustainability. But let’s call it what it is: a cover. By talking up sustainability and diversity, Drouin helped Bains avoid explaining why SDTC mismanaged $330 million on projects tied to its own board members, and why an additional $59 million went to ineligible initiatives. This wasn’t accountability — it was damage control, plain and simple.

Yip and Drouin’s interventions were textbook Liberal tactics: deflect, divert, and dilute the discussion. They may have repeated “transparency” and “inclusivity” all they wanted, but these buzzwords are nothing more than a smokescreen for taxpayer-funded favoritism. For Canadians watching, it was an unmistakable display of damage control — the Liberals doing everything they can to dodge real accountability while your tax dollars keep flowing to their inner circle.

Broader Implications: A Systemic Liberal Culture of Avoiding Accountability

The revelations from this Public Accounts Committee meeting show us something far darker than the mismanagement of a single agency. They expose a deeply entrenched system where Trudeau’s Liberal government doesn’t just waste taxpayer money — they use it to reward political cronies and shield insiders from accountability. This isn’t just negligence; it’s the Trudeau Swamp in action, a well-oiled machine funneling your money to friends and allies under the thin cover of bureaucratic “process.”

At the center of this scandal is a strategy the Liberals have perfected: hide behind procedural jargon and “arm’s-length” defenses to dodge any responsibility. The moment former Minister Navdeep Bains took the stand, you could see the tactics at work. Facing questions on how Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) turned into a cash cow for Liberal insiders, Bains and his fellow Liberal MPs defaulted to the same tired script — insisting every questionable allocation, every insider appointment, was just “routine process.” They claim “independence,” they claim “transparency,” but the evidence paints a different picture: Liberal insiders filling key roles and pulling the strings to channel your money into their pockets.

This scandal isn’t an isolated incident. It’s a glimpse into a troubling pattern, where taxpayer funds — meant for genuine public service — have become Trudeau’s political currency, up for grabs to those with the right connections. And make no mistake: Navdeep Bains’ refusal to answer real questions isn’t just about protecting himself. It’s about preserving a whole Liberal network that thrives on government patronage, hidden behind bureaucratic red tape. The Liberals have turned “process” into a shield, protecting ministers from facing the consequences of their actions.

The stakes couldn’t be higher for Canadians. This isn’t just about misusing a few dollars — it’s about a government prioritizing loyalty over public good, rewarding insiders while millions of Canadians wonder where their taxes are actually going. Under Trudeau’s watch, the promise of accountability has become a punchline, replaced with cronyism and evasion. So here’s the real question: Is Canada governed for its citizens, or for an elite network of well-connected Liberal insiders? Because after this committee meeting, the answer seems painfully clear.

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A Rush to the Exits: It’s Not Just Immigration, Canada Has an Emigration Crisis

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From the C2C Journal

By Scott Inniss
The Justin Trudeau government’s decade-long determination to drive immigration numbers ever-higher – a policy that public outcry now has it scrambling away from – has obscured a rather important and discouraging phenomenon: more and more people are choosing to leave Canada. Emigration is the flipside of the immigration issue – a side that has been largely ignored. With the best and brightest among us increasingly leaving for better opportunity elsewhere, this growing trend reveals Canada is no longer the promised land it once was. Using the most recently released data and analysis, Scott Inniss uncovers why so many are voting with their feet.

Elena Secara is planning a career change. And not a minor change. She’s planning on moving to a different country for the next stage of her working life.

Secara arrived with her husband and their two sons as immigrants from Romania in 2005. At that time, Canada was looking for good-quality newcomers to welcome and Romania was still struggling to pull itself out of the doldrums following its 1989 revolution. As an impressively educated couple – Elena was a bank economist while her husband Gabriel had trained as a mechanical engineer – who were both fluent in French, the Secaras’ prospects looked good. They landed in Montreal, eventually settling in the suburb of Vaudreuil in 2010.

“The quality of life is low here”: After 20 years of living and working in Canada, Romanian immigrants Elena Secara and her husband Gabriel are planning to move back to their home country, having grown disillusioned with Canada’s economic limitations. (Source of photo: Courtesy of Elena and Gabriel Secara)

But life in Canada never became quite what they had hoped. Elena could not find the kind of work she thought she would. She took a job as a business manager in a car dealership in 2006, where she has stayed on, while Gabriel hit the wall erected by many Canadian professional associations that often severely limits recognition of education and training in other countries. He took upgrading courses to have his professional degree recognized, but that still didn’t land him a job in his field. Gabriel eventually went to work in manufacturing, often pulling night shifts.

“We had to face the reality of economic life in Canada,” says Elena in an interview. “We have contributed and worked for 20 years in Canada. I have never been without a job. But with the income we can count on over the next few years, it does not allow us to live at a level we wish to live at. The quality of life is low here, and we cannot take it.” Elena became a Canadian citizen in 2009 but she’s planning to say goodbye to Canada in the next couple of years. One of her sons has already voted with his feet, and is now living in Romania.

The Secaras’ story is not unique. Every year tens of thousands of Canadians pull up stakes and start a new life elsewhere. They become emigrants, and their numbers have been rising. Recent debates over the Justin Trudeau government’s massive increase in immigration targets (which last month were scaled back a bit) have ignored the fact that about 100,000 people have been leaving Canada every year of late, undermining the very system the government is so keen to tout and costing the country some of its best and brightest. Many are like Elena – successful people who came to Canada, made it through the immigration system to become citizens, only to feel their ambitions were stymied and their dreams dashed, to grow disillusioned and, ultimately, to leave again.

For many, Canada is not the promised land, or even the type of country they thought it was.

The Outflow by the Numbers

While it is known that the flow of emigrants from Canada is increasing – and that the number-one destination is the United States – their exact number is elusive, so Canada estimates figures using data from international sources, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (Source of photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

The first thing that becomes obvious when looking at emigration is how imprecise the data is. Unlike more repressive regimes, or even the European Union, Canada has no exit controls. Emigrants can just leave – and Canadians can also take their money with them, as long as they pay their taxes – and so organizations like Statistics Canada can only make estimates. “Emigration is one of the most difficult flows [of people] to measure,” says Lorena Canon, an analyst at Statcan who studies migration, in an interview. She and other statisticians have to work with different sources of information, like tax records, lists of recipients of child welfare money, and foreign government agencies that keep records. “Because we know almost all [Canadian emigrants] go to the states, we use data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security [on new arrivals to the U.S.],” she points out by way of example.

In a 2022 study entitled The Canadian diaspora: Estimating the number of Canadians citizens who live abroad, Canon and her co-author Julien Bérard-Chagnon acknowledged the lack of precision. “The numerous challenges associated with accurately measuring emigration and the significant conceptual differences in international data mean that the few sources that are currently available…provide very different numbers,” they write, in the bureaucratese of number-crunchers. Their study sorts through and analyzes the available data to estimate the number of Canadians living abroad in 2016 at between 2.9 million and 5.5 million, with a “medium numbers scenario” putting it at 4,038,700.

These are big numbers, the “medium” scenario equating to about 12.6 percent of the Canadian population that year (the latest for which this kind of analysis exists). Even if one excluded what the authors call “Canadian citizens by descent” – those born abroad to parents holding Canadian citizenship, who might be thought less connected to Canada – the country has still lost about 2 million citizens who used to live here. (The other two emigrant sub-categories are Canadian-born citizens, who comprise an estimated 33 percent of the nation’s global diaspora, and naturalized citizens, the remaining 15 percent.)

A 2022 Statistics Canada study put the number of Canadian citizens living abroad in 2016 under its “medium numbers scenario” at roughly 4 million, or 12.5 percent of the national population. (Sources: (table) Statistics Canada, 2022; (chart data) Statistics Canada, 2024)

And given that Canon advises there’s a margin of error of “perhaps up to 5 or 10 percent” in estimating numbers, and the fact – untracked by Statcan – that there are likely Canadian expats working illegally abroad who may not want to be counted, these are likely to be conservative estimates.

The numbers have also been rising in recent years. In its work analyzing the components of population growth, Statcan estimates the number of “emigrants” and “net emigrants” (which subtracts returnees) going back to the 1970s. Both numbers gradually rose into the 1990s, then stabilized to some degree. Emigration jumped significantly in 2016-2017, coinciding with a change in how Statcan calculates its figures. Since 2021-2022 it has been rising steadily, and in 2023-2024 more than 104,000 people left Canada.

Numbers from other sources tell a similar story. This year’s American Community Survey (ACS), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, put the number of people moving from Canada to the U.S. at 126,340 in 2022, up by 70 percent from a decade ago. About one-third of those are Americans who were returning home, but the number of Canadian-born immigrants to the U.S. was 50 percent higher than in pre-Covid times.

The Flow of Money, the Flow of People

A realistic interpretation of emigration numbers would include an observation of some historical trends. Although it’s true that for centuries emigrants tended to be poor, landless people desperate for a better life, or were fleeing oppression or famine, it’s not always the case today and certainly does not describe most Canadians currently pulling up stakes. In developed nations, the more prosperous people are typically the more mobile, and with rising wealth come greater means to move to other places.

Follow the money: Alex Whalen, an economist at the Fraser Institute, believes that “the precipitous decline in earnings [in Canada], relative to the U.S.” is helping drive Canadian emigration.

The trend also very likely reflects the globalization of commerce; as more people find themselves working for transnational corporations, they increasingly see the benefits in moving abroad. This is complemented by our era’s instant access to detailed information about nearly any place, even the world’s remotest and most obscure corners. That includes real estate prices, quality of schools, leisure activities – and, among the most important categories, tax levels. More and more Canadians have gained awareness that many other countries offer not only a more pleasing climate than Canada but an equal or better quality of life and some combination of lower taxes and lower prices.

When historians are discussing major past events – like a lot of people moving around – the conversation usually includes discussion of economic circumstances. Put bluntly, find the flow of money and you can explain the flow of people. Alex Whalen, an economist and director of Atlantic Canada Prosperity for the Fraser Institute, points to the earnings gap between Canada and the U.S. as a factor driving current emigration. Its recent report, Our Incomes Are Falling Behind: Earnings in the Canadian Provinces and US States, 2010-2022compared median per capita earnings in all 50 U.S. states and 10 Canadian provinces – and painted a depressing picture. Results in 2010 were worrisome enough: Alberta was the only Canadian province in the top 20. By 2022, all 10 Canadian provinces finished at the bottom of the ranking. Every province had become poorer, by that measure, than the lowest-earning American state.

“The precipitous decline in earnings, relative to the U.S. is deeply concerning, but not entirely surprising,” says Whalen in an interview. Canadian incomes have been lower than those in the U.S. for some time, he says, but it’s the dramatic nature of their recent relative decline that’s raising eyebrows. And it is not just relative to the U.S. Whalen points to growth rates in per capita gross domestic product (GDP) – how much a country produces per person – as evidence of Canada’s waning economic power. In another recent study, the Fraser Institute noted that Canada ranked third-lowest among 30 OECD countries by that measure between 2014 and 2022, losing ground to key allies and trading partners like the U.S., U.K. and Australia.

Comparing median per capita earnings in 50 U.S. states and the 10 Canadian provinces in 2010 versus 2022 reveals Canada’s dismal economic performance. (Source of charts: Fraser Institute, 2024)

Worse, perhaps, the OECD has projected Canada will rank dead-last among member countries in per capita GDP growth going out to 2060. GDP per capita is closely linked to productivity, which has been in a troubling decline in Canada, and to business investment, which has been moribund. Countries with rising per-capita GDP provide higher average wages and salaries because the capital investments that drive the higher productivity enable employers to pay more – and create greater competition for qualified labour.

“From a competitive perspective it is not surprising to see that people are on the move [out of Canada],” says Whalen, who notes that he is not an expert on emigration. Canada’s relatively high taxation rates, he says, exacerbate the problem: “High-income people, in particular, tend to be mobile, and sensitive to taxation and over-taxation.”

The high cost of living, particularly for housing, is also an increasingly large factor. A recent survey by Angus Reid reported that 28 percent of respondents were giving serious consideration to leaving their province of residence due to the increasing unaffordability of housing. Among those, 42 percent said they would move outside Canada. The overall cost of living, finding a better quality of life and improved access to health care also made the list of reasons to leave.

Canada’s poor productivity growth, partly due to sagging business investment, means sluggish growth in GDP per capita and lagging wages; add in heavy taxation, declining health care and the grim climate, and the decision to leave Canada becomes even easier. (Sources: (charts) TD Economics, 2024; (photos) Pexels)

And those most likely to leave are the people Canada should most want to keep. As the abovementioned 2022 Statcan study put it, emigrants “are younger, earn higher incomes, are more educated and often work in fields that require a high level of skill. The departure of people with these characteristics raises concerns about the loss of significant economic potential and the retention of a highly skilled workforce.”

Canada Becoming a Big Hotel

The notion that Canada is not so much a country as a large, open-air hotel has gained ground in recent years. Emigration can be seen as part of that phenomenon. Some of the people leaving Canada are people who recently arrived. A report from the Conference Board of Canada in partnership with the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), an advocacy group focused on integrating and celebrating new Canadians, sounds the alarm bells on the immigrant-turned-emigrant trend. Entitled The Leaky Bucket, the report notes that “onward” migration had been steadily increasing since the 1980s – but positively surged in 2017 and 2019 to levels 31 percent higher than the historical average. High levels of onward migration, the report notes, “Could undermine Canada’s strategy to use immigration to drive population and economic growth.”

An updated version of the report, shows that the numbers grew again in 2020, although the document speculates that the Covid-19 pandemic could have been a factor (even though the accompanying lockdowns and travel restrictions would seem to complicate the process of moving to another country). The report forecasts that 25,500 of the 395,000 planned permanent resident admissions in 2025 will have moved on by 2030.

“These are not desperate people fleeing destitution for the comfort of Canada’s generosity,” writes Daniel Bernhard, CEO of the ICC. “Rather, they are a globally coveted talent pool with global options. When we fail to retain newcomers, we are essentially helping them to contribute to another country’s success.” And these are the very people, Bernhard lamented in a recent column in the Globe and Mail, who are “by far most eager to hit the road.”

Another study from the ICC conducted with the polling firm IPSOS was equally alarmist. The Newcomer Perspective  surveyed more than 15,000 immigrants and found that 26 percent said they are likely to leave Canada within two years, with the proportion rising to more than 30 percent among federally selected economic immigrants – those with the highest scores in the points system. Clearly, many more people are planning to check out of Hotel Canada.

“Burgeoning disillusionment”: A 2023 report warns that even recent arrivals in Canada are turning around and leaving; “After giving Canada a try, growing numbers of immigrants are saying ‘no thanks,’ and moving on,” says Daniel Bernhard (right), CEO of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. (Sources of photos: (left) The Canadian Press/Chris Young; (right) TVO today)

The top three reasons driving onward migration are all economic, led by the cost of housing, low salaries and general economic conditions. More than half of those surveyed said Canada falls short of their expectations as a place to get ahead financially. “While the fairy tale of Canada as a land of opportunity still holds for many newcomers,” Bernhard wrote in The Leaky Bucket, there is undeniably a “burgeoning disillusionment. After giving Canada a try, growing numbers of immigrants are saying ‘no thanks,’ and moving on.” It’s a particularly stark phenomenon considering that most immigrants have come from much poorer, less developed and often autocratic or unsafe nations; that these people find Canada – for decades considered the ultimate destination among those seeking a better life – to be such a disappointment that the best response is to leave is a damning indictment.

The same detachment from Canada can be seen in the number of immigrants who don’t even take the trouble to get their citizenship. Statcan highlighted the new trend in its February 2024 report, The decline in the citizenship rate among recent immigrants to Canada. In the mid-1990s, 65-70 percent of recent arrivals completed the process of becoming citizens (in 1996 it was even higher, 75.4 percent). By 2021 the proportion had fallen to 46 percent. Even accounting for the possible effects of the pandemic, which slowed the processing of citizenship applications, the citizenship rate declined at a faster rate from 2016 to 2021 than during any other five-year period since 1996.

The rising number of immigrants who don’t take the trouble to get their citizenship suggests an increasing detachment from Canada, quite possibly because the perceived value of becoming Canadian is not what it used to be. (Source of graph: Statistics Canada, 2024)

The drop was most dramatic among immigrants from non-Western nations, including East Asia (mostly China) and Southeast Asia. “This may be related to the increasing economic and international status of these regions,” the report speculates, “which may reduce the economic motivation of recent immigrants from these regions to acquire Canadian citizenship.” The value of becoming Canadian, it seems, is not what it used to be.

Canada Losing its Best and Brightest – Mostly to the U.S.

Canada, as every schoolchild learns, has thousands of kilometres of undefended border. There are places where people cross officially, at roads and airports. Some people think of these border crossings as gates. But they are not gates. They are revolving doors. A lot of people go through them, in both directions, every year.

“Revolving doors”: Canada’s border crossings with the U.S. have become gateways for those with marketable skills and high earning-power to leave the country. (Sources of photos: (left) ValeStock/Shutterstock; (right) oksana.perkins/Shutterstock)

When digesting the economic data, it becomes obvious that the flow of people out of the country is following the flow of money. People want better incomes, better prospects. It seems like stating the obvious, but sometimes the obvious must be stated. The ones leaving Canada for the U.S. are the ones in a position to do so: the ones with globally marketable skills, independent incomes or inherited wealth, who can easily start anew elsewhere. And the ones who have decent incomes are usually the ones who have the brains as well. Canada is losing its best and brightest. Instead of easing, Canada’s brain drain is almost certain to intensify. Whoever holds office in Ottawa over the next decade will be hearing about it; let’s hope they do something about it.

Political leaders often tout Canada as a land of immigrants. In 2021, more than 8.3 million people, or 23 percent of the population, were immigrants, the highest proportion since Confederation. Never mentioned is that there could be as many as 5 million Canadians living abroad – one-eighth of the Canadian population. The inflated but often-insincere rhetoric about immigration, emanating from Liberal and NDP politicians in Ottawa and from much of mainstream media, has simply ignored the whole question of outflow from Canada, of how we have lost so many of our best and brightest – and, without major economic, fiscal and governance reforms, will keep right on doing so.

On to Romania

Regardless of who wins the next federal election, any policy reforms are unlikely to come soon enough to change Elena Secara’s mind. She is firm in her decision to leave Canada and add herself and her family to the 4-million-plus Canadian emigrés. “I return to Romania every two years,” she says. “And I see improvements each time. In Canada it is the opposite. Canada is getting worse and worse. Canada is declining…In Romania there are much more opportunities for professionals, the medical system is better, the food is better.” And, she adds with a laugh, “Even the roads are better.”

On the rebound: Once poor, corrupt and decrepit, Romania today is a growing regional economic power and competitor for immigrants – including emigrants from Canada like the Secara family. (Source of photos: Unsplash)

All of which stands as another indictment of Canada. Romania spent years after the Cold War as one of the poorest, most corrupt and decrepit nations in Europe, seemingly in terminal decline, the kind of place people left if they could – and hundreds of thousands did. Romania has managed to launch a remarkable comeback, however. Its per capita GDP  still lags Canada’s considerably but it has grown impressively over the last decade. It’s one of Europe’s leading destinations for foreign investment, and on Harvard University’s Economic Complexity Index – a measure of an economy’s productive capacity – it jumped from 39th in the world in 2000 to 19th, just behind France. Canada is facing ever-greater competition from nations on the rebound just as it enters the second decade of what may be its longest and most serious economic deterioration since Confederation.

Secara doesn’t bother overanalyzing the data. For her, “quality of life” sums up her thinking. “I love Canada,” she says. “And I thank Canada for all the experiences I have. But Canada is not what it was.”

Scott Inniss is a Montreal writer.

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Addictions

BC Addictions Expert Questions Ties Between Safer Supply Advocates and For-Profit Companies

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By Liam Hunt

Canada’s safer supply programs are “selling people down the river,” says a leading medical expert in British Columbia. Dr. Julian Somers, director of the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction at Simon Fraser University, says that despite the thin evidence in support of these experimental programs, the BC government has aggressively expanded them—and retaliated against dissenting researchers.

Somers also, controversially, raises questions about doctors and former health officials who appear to have gravitated toward businesses involved in these programs. He notes that these connections warrant closer scrutiny to ensure public policies remain free from undue industry influence.

Safer supply programs claim to reduce overdoses and deaths by distributing free addictive drugs—typically 8-milligram tablets of hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin—to dissuade addicts from accessing riskier street substances. Yet, a growing number of doctors say these programs are deeply misguided—and widely defrauded.

Ultimately, Somers argues, safer supply is exacerbating the country’s addiction crisis.

Somers opposed safer supply at its inception and openly criticized its nationwide expansion in 2020. He believes these programs perpetuate drug use and societal disconnection and fail to encourage users to make the mental and social changes needed to beat addiction. Worse yet, the safer supply movement seems rife with double standards that devalue the lives of poorer drug users. While working professionals are provided generous supports that prioritize recovery, disadvantaged Canadians are given “ineffective yet profitable” interventions, such as safer supply, that “convey no expectation that stopping substance use or overcoming addiction is a desirable or important goal.”

To better understand addiction, Somers created the Inter-Ministry Evaluation Database (IMED) in 2004, which, for the first time in BC’s history, connected disparate information—i.e. hospitalizations, incarceration rates—about vulnerable populations.

Throughout its existence, health experts used IMED’s data to create dozens of research projects and papers. It allowed Somers to conduct a multi-million-dollar randomized control trial (the “Vancouver at Home” study) that showed that scattering vulnerable people into regular apartments throughout the city, rather than warehousing them in a few buildings, leads to better outcomes at no additional cost.

In early 2021, Somers presented recommendations drawn from his analysis of the IMED to several leading officials in the B.C. government. He says that these officials gave a frosty reception to his ideas, which prioritized employment, rehabilitation, and social integration over easy access to drugs. Shortly afterwards, the government ordered him to immediately and permanently delete the IMED’s ministerial data.

Somers describes the order as a “devastating act of retaliation” and says that losing access to the IMED effectively ended his career as a researcher. “My lab can no longer do the research we were doing,” he noted, adding that public funding now goes exclusively toward projects sympathetic to safer supply. The B.C. government has since denied that its order was politically motivated.

In early 2022, the government of Alberta commissioned a team of researchers, led by Somers, to investigate the evidence base behind safer supply. They found that there was no empirical proof that the experiment works, and that harm reduction researchers often advocated for safer supply within their studies even if their data did not support such recommendations.

Somers says that, after these findings were published, his team was subjected to a smear campaign that was partially organized by the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU), a powerful pro-safer supply research organization with close ties to the B.C. government. The BCCSU has been instrumental in the expansion of safer supply and has produced studies and protocols in support of it, sometimes at the behest of the provincial government.

Somers is also concerned about the connections between some of safer supply’s key proponents and for-profit drug companies.

He notes that the BCCSU’s founding executive director, Dr. Evan Wood, became Chief Medical Officer at Numinus Wellness, a publicly traded psychedelic company, in 2020. Similarly, Dr. Perry Kendall, who also served as a BCCSU executive director, went on to found Fair Price Pharma, a now-defunct for-profit company that specializes in providing pharmaceutical heroin to high-risk drug users, the following year.

While these connections are not necessarily unethical, they do raise important questions about whether there is enough industry regulation to minimize potential conflicts of interest, whether they be real or perceived.

The BCCSU was also recently criticized in an editorial by Canadian Affairs, which noted that the organization had received funding from companies such as Shoppers Drug Mart and Tilray (a cannabis company). The editorial argued that influential addiction research organizations should not receive drug industry funding and reported that Alberta founded its own counterpart to the BCCSU in August, known as the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence, which is legally prohibited from accepting such sponsorships.

Already, private interests are betting on the likely expansion of safer supply programs. For instance, Safe Supply Streaming Co., a publicly traded venture capital firm, has advertised to potential investors that B.C.’s safer supply system could create a multi-billion-dollar annual market.

Somers believes that Canada needs more transparency regarding how for-profit companies may be directly or indirectly influencing policy makers: “We need to know exactly, to the dollar, how much of [harm reduction researchers’] operating budget is flowing from industry sources.”

Editor’s note: This story is published in syndication with Break The Needle and Western Standard.

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Dr. Julian M. Somers is director of the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction at Simon Fraser University. He was Director of the UBC Psychology Clinic, and past president of the BC Psychological Association. Liam Hunt is a contributing author to the Centre For Responsible Drug Policy in partnership with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

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