Dan Knight

Conservative leader unveils aggressive plan to slash bureaucracy, repeal anti-energy laws, and put “Canada First” after a decade of Liberal stagnation and American dependence.

There was a moment in Osoyoos, British Columbia, this week when you could feel the tectonic plates of Canadian politics shift. Pierre Poilievre didn’t just give a campaign speech—he delivered a declaration of war. Not against a rival party, not against a foreign power, but against the bloated, self-sustaining bureaucracy that has buried this country in red tape, crushed small business, and handed our economic sovereignty to Washington.

And he did it with names, numbers, and fire.

Standing beside Conservative candidates Helena Konanz and Dan Albas—real people with skin in the game—Poilievre laid out the most aggressive anti-regulation, pro-prosperity plan Canada has seen in a generation. This wasn’t “efficiency.” It wasn’t “modernization.” It was a full-scale rollback of the federal state.

A 25% cut to red tape within two years.
A “two-for-one” regulation kill rule: for every new rule, two must die.
A dollar-value offset: $1 of new administrative cost must be matched by $2 in cuts.
And for once, someone’s watching the swamp: the Auditor General will audit compliance.

No tricks. No loopholes. No gluing rulebooks together to fake progress like the Liberals did. Real cuts, enforced in public, with consequences.

Now compare that to what the Liberals have done. Under Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney, the number of federal rules has exploded—149,000 and counting. That’s 20,000 more than a decade ago, with $51 billion in annual compliance costs for small businesses. It’s not just inefficiency. It’s economic sabotage.

And who benefits from that sabotage? The United States. Poilievre didn’t dance around it—he hit it head-on. President Trump has said he prefers the Liberals in power. Why? Because they’re weak. Because they keep Canadian oil in the ground and Canadian dollars flowing south.

“Trump supports the Liberals because he wants Canada to stay weak,” Poilievre said. “I want the opposite. I want to bring it home.”

The press tried to corner him—tried to paint him as “too Trump-like.” The irony, of course, is that Trump has openly rejected him, because unlike Trudeau and Carney, Poilievre is not for sale.

And then came the attacks on Aaron Gunn. The media paraded misinformation accusations that Gunn denied the impact of residential schools. Poilievre didn’t flinch. He called it out for what it was: misinformation. He defended his candidate. He stood for truth, not Twitter mobs. And he flipped the narrative: if you want prosperity and dignity for First Nations, give them control over resources, revenue, and jobs—not slogans.

Then came the issue of interprovincial trade, where Poilievre again showed he’s living in the real world. Local wineries in the Okanagan are shipping their product to the U.S. because it’s easier than selling across provincial lines. Under the Liberals, it’s harder to trade within Canada than with foreign nations. That’s not a federation—that’s a farce. Poilievre promised to tear down the internal barriers the Laurentian elite have protected for decades.

The CBC? He torched it. Not with culture war talking points, but with precision. It’s become an overfunded, Toronto-centric mouthpiece for the Liberal Party, sucking up $1.5 billion a year to produce less local coverage than ever. Mark Carney just promised another $150 million with no plan to pay for it. Poilievre called it what it is: “a morbidly obese Liberal government—on steroids.”

And he’s right. Carney hasn’t named a single Liberal expenditure he’d reverse. Not one. He’s offering the same broken promises, wrapped in fancier language, from the same corrupt team.

Poilievre, on the other hand, laid out a detailed plan to:

• Eliminate the GST on new homes and Canadian-made cars.
• Cut income taxes by 15%.
• Abolish the capital gains tax on money reinvested in Canada.
• Fast-track LNG projects on the West Coast.
• Repeal every anti-energy, anti-growth law passed by Trudeau’s swamp.

He didn’t ask for permission. He promised results. He’s not trying to manage the decline. He’s here to stop it.

Final Thoughts

I’ve been watching these press conferences like a normal person, which means with my jaw somewhere on the floor. On one side, you’ve got Pierre Poilievre, actually talking about numbers, policies, things that, you know—exist in the real world. On the other side? You’ve got Mark Carney, Trudeau’s old economic braintrust, grinning like a Bond villain, promising to “invest” another $150 million into the CBC—because apparently, $1.5 billion a year isn’t enough to produce wall-to-wall Liberal talking points and a half-hour panel on white fragility.

Carney calls it “public broadcasting.”
Let’s call it what it is: state propaganda—funded by you, weaponized against you.

And this is the guy who’s being sold to Canadians as the adult in the room? The savior? Mark Carney—the guy who’s spent the last decade not in Canada, but lecturing Canadians from London, New York, and climate finance panels in Geneva? He’s not some neutral economist. He’s a gold-plated Davos swamp rat who literally helped engineer the economic disaster we’re now living through—and now he wants to be rewarded with the keys to the kingdom?

This man flew in from Glasgow—no joke—where he was pushing his net-zero snake oil to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats who couldn’t find Fort McMurray on a map if their Tesla battery depended on it. And what’s he proposing now? Keep Bill C-69, the law that strangled Canadian energy, killed pipeline after pipeline, and handed America control over our oil wealth. Keep the law that says: If you want to build anything in this country, you better ask permission from 14 departments and Greta Thunberg’s cousin first.

Oh, and while he’s at it, don’t expect a single dollar of waste to be cut. Not one. Carney hasn’t named a single Liberal program he’d reduce. Not the CBC. Not the bloated bureaucracy. Not even the social engineering schemes buried deep in your child’s classroom.

So let’s spell it out: Mark Carney is Trudeau without the TikTok. Same worldview. Same smugness. Same ideology. Except now he’s dressed it up in Oxford accents and finance jargon and thinks you’re too dumb to notice.

He talks about “fighting climate change,” but never mentions the carbon imports from China. He talks about “building the future,” while propping up the same agencies that couldn’t build a bus stop on time. He talks about “standing up to Trump,” while literally keeping in place the laws that give Trump control over our energy, our jobs, our investment.

And we’re supposed to believe he’s the serious one?

No. What he is—is the avatar of managed decline. The velvet glove of the same iron fist that’s been throttling Canadian prosperity for ten years. Poilievre sees it, and he’s naming it. That’s why the media hate him. That’s why the Liberals fear him. And that’s why Donald Trump doesn’t want him elected—because he won’t roll over like Carney will.

So again—this is not a normal election. It’s not Liberal vs. Conservative. It’s not progressive vs. populist. It’s elite decay vs. national revival.

Poilievre doesn’t want to “manage” this slow-motion collapse. He wants to rip the duct tape off the pipes, shut down the bureaucracy, and start building again. He didn’t ask for permission. He didn’t host a panel. He promised results.

And when he says “Canada First,” it’s not some borrowed slogan. It’s a warning to the swamp: Your time is up.

Carney is decline dressed as competence.
Poilievre is the first sign of life this country has had in a decade.

So yeah, Pierre Poilievre chose defiance.

Now it’s your turn.

Sam Cooper

Retired Toronto Police Deputy Chief Peter Yuen, who joined the board last year of a Chinese international school in Markham flagged in testimony on foreign interference in a neighboring riding in 2019, has been named the new Liberal candidate in Markham–Unionville. He replaces Paul Chiang, who resigned last week amid an RCMP review into controversial remarks suggesting a Conservative opponent could be handed to Chinese officials for a bounty.

The appointment places Yuen—now a central figure in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s campaign—at the center of a riding already under scrutiny in Canada’s evolving foreign interference investigation.

Paul Chiang, a former Markham police officer who unseated longtime Conservative representative Bob Saroya to win Markham–Unionville for Team Trudeau in 2021, stepped down as the Liberal candidate after the RCMP confirmed it was reviewing remarks he made to Chinese-language media in January 2025. During that event, Chiang reportedly suggested that Conservative candidate Joe Tay—a Canadian citizen wanted under Hong Kong’s National Security Law—could be taken to the Chinese Consulate in Toronto to claim a bounty.

In choosing another Chinese Canadian police veteran, the Liberals appear poised to reassure diaspora voters rattled by Chiang’s exit. Yuen, who immigrated from Hong Kong in 1975 and rose to lead Toronto Police’s community outreach and diversity programs before retiring in 2022, brings deep ties to both the Hong Kong diaspora and the mainland Chinese community in Markham—connections that may stir further controversy.

Videos and a report posted on the Toronto Chinese Consulate’s website show that in 2018, Peter Yuen attended a gala hosted by the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations—an association with direct ties to the Chinese Consulate and Beijing’s United Front Work Department. During the event, which featured remarks from China’s Toronto Consul General to Yuen and other Canadian politicians, Yuen stood beside a prominent Markham community leader known for attending high-level United Front meetings in Beijing with President Xi Jinping, and sang the patriotic song My Chinese Heart.

In August 2024, Peter Yuen joined the board of NOIC Academy in Markham, an educational institution that came under scrutiny during Ottawa’s Foreign Interference Inquiry. CBC News and The Globe and Mail reported in April 2024 that testimony at the Hogue Commission—tasked with investigating foreign interference in Canada’s 2019 federal election—revealed that CSIS had flagged irregularities involving NOIC Academy students in the neighboring Don Valley North riding.

According to The Globe, allegations tied to NOIC appeared in a declassified summary of CSIS intelligence released during the inquiry. “Intelligence reported after the election indicated that veiled threats were issued by the (People’s Republic of China) Consulate to the Chinese international students,” the summary stated. The intelligence further suggested that “their student visas would be in jeopardy and that there could be consequences for their families back in the PRC” if they did not vote for a particular Don Valley North candidate.

Don Valley North, the riding that neighbors Markham–Unionville, is where Joe Tay is running for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party in this election.

NOIC announced Yuen’s appointment in an August 2024 statement, writing: “The former Deputy Chief for the Toronto Police Service joined the management team of NOIC Academy officially just last week.” The school added: “Before Peter joined, NOIC’s Advisory Committee was composed of ‘literati’ (educators), but this time a ‘general’ was ushered in.”

The academy, which educates international students from China, further highlighted Yuen’s leadership background: “Deputy Yuen was in charge of Community Safety Command which provides proactive and reactive public safety services and programs in partnership with diverse communities and key stakeholders.”

Joe Tay, a former Hong Kong broadcaster whose independent reporting from Canada drew retaliation from Beijing, issued a statement last week rejecting Paul Chiang’s apology for the bounty remarks, calling them “the tradecraft of the Chinese Communist Party.” He added: “They are not just aimed at me; they are intended to send a chilling signal to the entire community to force compliance with Beijing’s political goals.”

His concerns were echoed by dozens of NGOs and human rights organizations, which condemned Chiang’s comments as an endorsement of transnational repression.

Even after Chiang’s resignation, Prime Minister Mark Carney faced renewed scrutiny for expressing confidence in him just hours before the RCMP announced its investigation. Carney characterized the controversy as a “teachable moment”—a stance that drew sharp criticism.

The Durham Regional Police Association—which represents officers in one of the three Ontario forces where Chiang served—issued a statement condemning Carney’s actions. “We are disappointed in the clear lack of integrity and leadership displayed by Mark Carney to stand by this candidate rather than act after such egregious actions,” the association wrote, adding that Chiang’s conduct “would be held to a higher standard for an active officer in Ontario.”

The group also rejected Carney’s defense of Chiang’s law enforcement background: “The fact that Mr. Carney used Chiang’s policing career as a shield for his actions undermines the great work our heroes in uniform do in their communities each and every day.”

Chiang’s resignation and Yuen’s sudden elevation now place the spotlight squarely on Markham–Unionville—setting the stage for one of the most closely watched races in the coming election.

Come back to The Bureau for continued reporting on Canada’s election.