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Opinion

Canada’s Financial Freefall: When Rosy Rhetoric Meets Hard Reality

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This article is from The Opposition With Dan Knight substack.  

The Trudeau Government’s Economic Alchemy: Turning Gold Hopes Into Lead Numbers

Good morning, my fellow Canadians. It’s September 3, 2023, and if you’re expecting to wake up to a bright, financially secure Canada, well, I have some sobering news for you. The latest figures from Statistics Canada are in, and they confirm what many of us have suspected: the Canadian economy is not on the up-and-up. Despite the rosy pictures painted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minster Chrystia Freeland, the real numbers don’t lie, and they point to an economic landscape in turmoil. Allow me to break it down for you.

The new Statistics Canada data is in, and it paints a rather bleak picture of the Canadian economy under the watchful eyes of the federal government and Justin Trudeau. Let’s delve into some numbers, shall we? A staggering $16.5 billion in debt was added by Canadian households in the first quarter of this year alone, with $11.2 billion being in mortgage debt. In an environment of 5% interest rates, a rate we haven’t seen for over a decade, this is a financial bomb waiting to explode.

And let’s not forget inflation. Since 2021, we’ve seen a cumulative inflation rate of around 16.5%. Now, remember, these aren’t just abstract numbers on a ledger somewhere; these are realities hitting your grocery bills, your gas prices, your rents, and slowly emptying your wallets. But it’s not just households feeling the pinch. The economy as a whole is stalling, with real GDP nearly unchanged in the second quarter of 2023, following a measly 0.6% rise in the first quarter.

Amidst all this, Justin Trudeau and the federal government seem content piling on debt like there’s no tomorrow. The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s March 2023 report shows Canada’s deficit is expected to rise to $43.1 billion in 2023-24, up from $36.5 billion in 2022-23. And let’s not forget that 1 out of every 5 dollars in this debt spree didn’t even exist pre-pandemic. Essentially, we’re spending money we don’t have, to solve problems we’re not solving, all while making new ones.

So, where has all this spending gone? Not into securing a robust future for Canadians, I can tell you that. Despite the monumental deficits and the reckless spending, housing investment fell 2.1% in the second quarter,marking its fifth consecutive quarterly decrease. Canadians are struggling to make ends meet, and the government’s financial imprudence is exacerbating, not alleviating, the situation.

But here’s a twist to the story: while investments in housing decline, Justin Trudeau decided it was prime time to open the floodgates of immigration. There’s an aspect of governance called planning, something that seems foreign to this administration. How does one justify allowing over a million immigrants into Canada without even hinting at a solution for housing them? The result is basic economics – demand outstrips supply, and prices soar.

Remember the days before Trudeau’s reign, when the average home in Canada cost around $400,000? Eight years under his watch and that figure has doubled. Trudeau’s policies seem like a cruel jest to young families, professionals, and, frankly, anyone aspiring to own a piece of the Canadian dream. It’s almost as if he expected the housing market to “balance itself”.

And before you think this is just a ‘rough patch,’ let me remind you that household spending is also slowing. So not only are Canadians going into debt, but they’re also cutting back on spending. They’re being hit from both sides, and there’s no end in sight. The government’s promises of prosperity seem increasingly hollow when we see that per capita household spending has declined in three of the last four quarters.

The Trudeau administration’s approach to governing appears to be in a parallel universe, one where debt is limitless, and financial responsibilities are for the next government or even the next generation to sort out. And don’t even get me started on the higher taxes lurking around the corner to pay off this bonanza of spending. This isn’t governance; it’s financial negligence.

When Canadians were told that this level of inflationary spending could turn our country into something akin to Venezuela, many scoffed at the idea. But let’s face it: the signs are becoming hard to ignore. The truth is, many Canadians have been led to believe they can have gold-plated social services without paying an ounce of gold in taxes. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seemed more than happy to sell that narrative. He promised a utopia, a social safety net woven from dreams and aspirations. But what has that net caught? Rising costs, crippling debt, and a harder life for everyday Canadians.

Trudeau has turned out to be less a responsible steward of the economy and more of a Pied Piper, leading us all off a fiscal cliff while playing a cheerful tune. Or perhaps he’s more like the Cheshire Cat from “Alice in Wonderland,” grinning broadly as he disappears, leaving behind only his grin and a trail of false promises.

As we approach the pivotal year of 2025, don’t forget who sold you this bill of goods. Remember the skyrocketing costs of living, the unmanageable debt, and the empty words that were supposed to make everything better. I, for one, certainly won’t forget. And I suspect, come election time, neither will you.

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Opinion

Canadians Must Turn Out in Historic Numbers—Following Taiwan’s Example to Defeat PRC Election Interference

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Beijing deploys organized crime to sway Taiwan’s elections — and likely uses similar tactics in Canada, Taiwanese official warns

As Canadians head to the polls on Monday, The Bureau is reposting this report, originally filed from Taiwan, in the public interest.

The 2025 federal election has already been confirmed—through official Canadian intelligence disclosures and our reporting—to have been injured by aggressive foreign interference operations emanating from Beijing. These operations include highly coordinated cyberattacks against Conservative candidate Joe Tay, as well as the potential of in-person intimidation during canvassing efforts in Greater Toronto, according to The Bureau’s source awareness.

The scale and impact of Beijing’s interference in Canada’s 2025 election remains under investigation and is not yet fully understood. However, The Bureau believes it is critical to underscore that as voters face disinformation, manipulation, and suppression attempts, and certain candidates evidently receive support from Xi Jinping’s United Front, the best response is robust democratic participation.

Our groundbreaking 2023 report from Taiwan demonstrates that even under greater and more sustained foreign assault—including sophisticated polling manipulation, corrupt media influence, and the use of organized crime to distort public opinion—Taiwanese citizens have consistently defended their democracy by turning out to vote in record numbers.

Buttressing The Bureau’s findings, the Brookings Institution confirmed: “Taiwanese saw the results of this in 2024: China’s interference became more dangerous as it evolved to be more subtle and untraceable. The Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda campaign in Taiwan may have undergone a paradigm shift, as it evolved from a centralized and top-down approach to a more decentralized one.” This United Front work included tactics in which “individuals or groups in Taiwan may receive Chinese funding for election campaigns or to produce fake election polls.”

The Bureau encourages all Canadians, regardless of political preference or predictions from polls and odds-makers, to exercise their democratic right to vote. As Taiwan’s example shows, a free society depends not only on recognizing threats, but on the collective will of its citizens to confront them—at the ballot box.


TAIPEI, Taiwan — Beijing has interfered in Taiwan’s elections by using organized crime networks to influence votes for certain candidates and is likely using the same methods in Canada, a senior Taiwanese official said Tuesday.

Responding to questions from journalists in Taiwan, Jyh-horng Jan, deputy minister of the Mainland Affairs Council, said that Beijing uses “collaborators” including illegal gambling bosses and Taiwanese businessmen to interfere in Taiwan’s elections.

The Bureau asked Jan if he could describe Taiwanese knowledge of Beijing’s election interference methods, in comparison to examples of China’s recent interference in Canadian federal elections through the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front, which has allegedly clandestinely funded Beijing’s favoured candidates, according to Canadian intelligence investigations.

“We’ve been facing China’s United Front for over half a century in Taiwan and I think China’s tactics have been changing all the time,” Jan said. “Since we are in the lead up to a presidential election next January, we know that they have already started the United Front campaign against us.”

The Council is the Taiwanese government arm mandated to deal with all matters related to Beijing, and works with intelligence and police agencies in order to assess and counteract the Chinese Communist Party’s subversion campaigns.

Jan said the Council has already gathered intelligence indicating China is running influence campaigns against certain candidates in Taiwan’s upcoming January 2024 presidential election.

The front-runner in that contest, Taiwanese vice-president William Lai, is viewed by Beijing as a “separatist” and strong opponent of the Chinese Communist Party’s plans to pressure Taiwan into subordination.

Without naming Lai or any other candidates as Beijing’s alleged targets, Jan said the Council has learned wealthy businessmen will be used as fronts for Beijing to criticize candidates the Chinese Communist Party disfavours.

“We recently found out that China don’t like some of our current presidential candidates. So they’re going to use our business associations who are investing in China to make public statements against certain candidates,” Jan said. “By doing this, they want to shape this image that Taiwanese people are expressing opposition to a certain candidate. Whereas it is actually their voice.”

Jan also told a gathering of international journalists of an alleged method of Chinese election interference that focuses on underground gambling networks.

He described a complex scheme in which Beijing funded and used organized crime gambling rings to influence votes for certain candidates in Taiwan.

“I will share an example that has been happening in Taiwan and probably elsewhere, including Canada,” Jan said. “This is a very classic tactic of China’s election interference.”

According to Jan, the scheme involves underground betting on election candidates, and how the gambling odds can influence actual results at the ballot boxes.

“In the lead up to elections there will always be illegal election operations in Taiwan, so China tends to take advantage of such operations and they will work with the operators from these election gambling rings,” Jan said.

“Beijing will work with such election gambling operators telling them if you can get more people to wager on this specific candidate they will get a very high cash pay off,” Jan said. “And when the operators spread the word [in the betting community] the voters will flock to support this specific candidate.”

Chinese agents also inject funds into these underground betting operations that influence voting results, Jan said.

The Bureau asked Jan to clarify, whether he was alleging that Beijing is systematically using organized crime to influence votes for certain candidates.

“Because this is illegal activity, of course our law enforcement will crack down on such activity and the police were also [able to] issue a fine in this regard,” Jan said. “So this information, regarding illegal election; this is something that is out there, so I can afford confirm that.”

In response to a follow-up question from The Bureau, regarding a ProPublica investigative report that alleged Beijing used Fujian transnational crime suspects in its secret police stations, in Italy, Jan confirmed that his Council recognizes Beijing’s use of transnational crime networks for various objectives.

“So the criminal organization that you were talking about; this criminal organization exists wherever there are overseas Chinese, and one of their responsibilities is to control the activity of overseas Chinese,” Jan said.

(The Bureau reported from Taiwan with international media at the invitation of and with support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has no input on The Bureau’s coverage.)

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C2C Journal

“Freedom of Expression Should Win Every Time”: In Conversation with Freedom Convoy Trial Lawyer Lawrence Greenspon

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Lawrence Greenspon Defends the Fundamental Freedoms of All Canadians

By Lynne Cohen

“Law is an imperfect profession,” famed American lawyer Alan Dershowitz – defender of such notorious clients as Claus Von Bülow, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and O.J. Simpson – once wrote. “There is no perfect justice…But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it.”

Like Dershowitz, Lawrence Greenspon has spent a career fighting injustice in all its forms. Over the past 45 years Greenspon has become one of Canada’s best-known criminal lawyers through his defence of a long list of clients at risk of being crushed by Canada’s legal system – from terrorists to political pariahs to, most recently, Tamara Lich, the petite grandmother who became the public face of the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest.

In taking on these cases, Greenspon is not only giving his clients the best defence possible, he’s also defending the very legitimacy of Canada’s legal system.

Lich faced six charges and up to 10 years in jail for her role organizing the peaceful Ottawa protest. Earlier this month she was found guilty on a single charge of mischief. The Crown says it intends to seek a two-year sentence for that one charge.

In an interview, Greenspon said he decides on cases based on whether he believes in the cause central to the case: “What’s at stake. And can I make a difference?” What attracted him to Lich’s case were key aspects of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that Greenspon felt needed defending. “Canadians have a constitutionally protected right to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly,” he said. “These are fundamental freedoms, and they’re supposed to be protected for all of us.”

At issue was the impact the protest had on some downtown Ottawa residents and whether that conflicted with Lich’s right to free speech and peaceful protest. “We were prepared to admit right off the bat that there were individuals who lived in downtown Ottawa who experienced some interference with their enjoyment of their property,” Greenspon noted.

“But when you put freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly on a scale against interference with somebody’s enjoyment of property, there’s no contest. Freedom of association and peaceful assembly, and freedom of expression – these should win every time.”

Such a spirited defence of Canadians’ Charter rights is characteristic of the entire body of Greenspon’s legal work. Although his clients aren’t always as endearing as Lich.

Prior to being in the spotlight for the Lich trial, most Canadians probably remember Greenspon from the 2008 trial of Mohamed Momin Khawaja, the first person charged under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act. The evidence against Khawaja was substantial and convincing. He was even planning a suicide mission against Israel. Greenspon is a Jew. It was not an issue.

“The fundamental point is that everybody’s entitled to a defence,” Greenspon said. What really mattered was the constitutionality of the new terror law, which Greenspon argued impinged on the free speech rights of Canadians.

In 2018 Greenspon represented Joshua Boyle, who faced over a dozen criminal charges stemming from accusations made by his wife Caitlin Coleman after they returned from being held captive in Afghanistan. Greenspon’s meticulous cross-examination of Coleman led Judge Peter Doody of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to conclude, “I do not believe her, just as I do not believe Mr. Boyle.” All charges against Boyle were dismissed.

He also defended Senator Mike Duffy, who in 2014 found himself charged in connection with an expense account scandal. “Duffy’s presumption of innocence had been completely annihilated. I had no problem representing Mike. In fact, I feel proud to have represented Mike,” he said.

Throughout his legal career, Greenspon has fought tirelessly for the constitutional rights of all his clients, regardless of public sympathy or apparent guilt. While such a stance can make him unpopular, such work offers a crucial bulwark against the state’s misuse of its authority in pursuing particular individuals, as well as the gradual erosion of the liberties promised to all Canadians by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Every Canadian has a stake in ensuring the court system is held to account at all times, regardless of the apparent evidence, current political mood or public support.

Without the work of lawyers such as Greenspon, Charter rights can soon deteriorate into empty platitudes – as the federal government’s shocking treatment of the peaceful Freedom Convoy protesters revealed. That included the unjustified imposition of the Emergencies Act, the freezing of donors’ bank accounts, the mass arrest of supporters and the marked reluctance to grant bail to those charged.

As Greenspon pointed out numerous times during the trial, the conciliatory and always respectful Lich represents the very ideals of peaceful protest in Canada. And for the sole charge on which she was convicted, she still faces two years in a federal penitentiary.

In the case of Khawaja, Greenspon was asked by an Ottawa synagogue to explain why he, as a Jew, was defending an Islamist terrorist. “I told the synagogue members, somebody has to stand up for the person who finds themselves set against the entire machinery of the state. In this case it happens to be Khawaja. But what if the next guy is named Dreyfus?”

Lynne Cohen is a writer at C2C Journal, where the longer original version of this story first appeared.

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