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Conservatives demand Brookfield Asset Management reveal Mark Carney’s compensation

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6 minute read

From Conservative Party Communications

Canadians Deserve to Know How Much Carney is Being Paid

Today, Common Sense Conservative MPs Michelle Rempel Garner and Michael Barrett wrote this letter to Bruce Flatt, the CEO of Brookfield, calling on him to fully disclose Carbon Tax Carney’s compensation for his role as Chair of Brookfield Asset Management. The full text can be found below:

Dear Mr. Flatt, 

We are writing with regard to the Chair of Brookfield Asset Management, Mark Carney, who has acted in a senior leadership position for your company for some time now.

During the same time period, Mr. Carney has been advising Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, and advocating for policies that have arguably wreaked havoc on Canada’s economy, like the carbon tax.

After nine years of this NDP-Liberal Government, which by their own very public admissions have relied on Mark Carney for advice, Canadians are witnessing the worst decline in living standards in forty years. The cost of housing has doubled, and record numbers of Canadians are having to depend on food banks to survive. 

Since August 2020, Mr. Carney has helped the NDP-Liberal Government hike its carbon tax on the backs of working Canadians, even endorsing it in his book, saying “One of the most important initiatives is carbon pricing…The Canadian federal carbon pricing framework is a model for others.” And since September 2024, when Trudeau appointed Carney as the Liberal Party’s Chair of the Leader’s Taskforce on Economic Growth, he would have had input into the most recent Fall Economic Statement which plunged Canada into a $62 billion deficit, blowing past the NDP-Liberal Government’s own fiscal guardrails.

And all the while Carney was advising the Liberals to continue carrying out their agenda of economic vandalism, he remained the Chair of Brookfield Asset Management, posing grave ethical questions that could have real-life consequences for millions of Canadians.

For instance, just a few days after his official appointment as Chair of the Leader’s Taskforce on Economic Growth, The Logic reported that Brookfield Asset Management has been actively lobbying the same federal Liberal government he’s been advising for $10 billion from the Canadian taxpayer. And Mr. Carney has strongly advocated for policies that would destroy Canada’s oil and gas sector, while at the same time your company invested in oil companies in Brazil and the United Arab Emirates. 

There are many other instances of questionable policy decisions the NDP-Liberal Government has made while Mark Carney was both advising them and acting as the Chair of Brookfield Asset Management – decisions that potentially could have resulted in Mr. Carney’s personal gain.

While we have written to the Federal Lobbying Commissioner to examine whether this arrangement broke any lobbying rules, that investigation may not shed public light on whether Mr. Carney was personally motivated by the structure of his compensation model with your company to advocate for certain policies in his senior advisory capacity with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.

Executive compensation for a Chair at a company the size of Brookfield can include salary, performance bonuses, stock options, lucrative expense accounts and more. Since Mr. Carney has a direct, senior, advisory line into Justin Trudeau’s government, and since your company has many interests which involve the type of policy on which Mr. Carney was advising the government, revealing the full scope of Mr. Carney’s compensation package to the public is essential to understanding what impact his access into the federal Liberal government had on his personal fortunes, if any.

For this reason, you must disclose Carney’s compensation structure with Brookfield Asset Management. This is especially important as Carney is now mounting a leadership campaign – with the help of members of Justin Trudeau’s inner circle – that could see him become the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and the Prime Minister of this country, with even more power and more access.

It is vitally important for Canadians to know whether or not Mr. Carney’s compensation with Brookfield could increase if the Liberals implement his policy ideas. While food banks report over two million visits in a single month, Canadians have a right to know the fine details about the impact of insider access on their lives.

You must be transparent with Canadians on this matter. The stakes could not be higher.

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Business

We need our own ‘DOGE’ in 2025 to unleash Canadian economy

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From the Fraser Institute

By Kenneth P. Green

Canada has a regulation problem. Our economy is over-regulated and the regulatory load is growing. To reverse this trend, we need a deregulation agenda that will cut unnecessary red tape and government bloat, to free up the Canadian economy.

According to the latest “Red Tape” report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, government regulations cost Canadian businesses a staggering $38.8 billion in 2020. Together, businesses spent 731 million hours on regulatory compliance—that’s equal to nearly 375,000 fulltime jobs. Canada’s smallest businesses bear a disproportionately high burden of the cost, paying up to five times more for regulatory compliance per-employee than larger businesses. The smallest businesses pay $7,023 per employee annually to comply with government regulation while larger businesses pay $1,237 per employee.

Of course, the Trudeau government has enacted a vast swath of new regulations on large sectors of Canada’s economy—particularly the energy sector—in a quest to make Canada a “net-zero” greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter by 2050 (which means either eliminating fossil fuel generation or offsetting emissions with activities such as planting trees).

For example, the government (via Bill C-69) introduced subjective criteria—including the “gender implications” of projects—into the evaluation process of energy projects. It established EV mandates requiring all new cars be electric vehicles by 2035. And the costs of the government’s new “Clean Electricity Regulations,” to purportedly reduce the use of fossil fuels in generating electricity, remain unknown, although provinces (including Alberta) that rely more on fossil fuels to generate electricity will surely be hardest hit.

Meanwhile in the United States, Donald Trump plans to put Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will act as a presidential advisory commission (not an official government department) for the second Trump administration.

“A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy,” the two wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal. “DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions. The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited.”

If Musk and Ramaswamy achieve these goals, the U.S. could leap far ahead of Canada in terms of regulatory efficiency, making Canada’s economy even less competitive than it is today.

That would be bad news for Canadians who are already falling behind. Between 2000 and 2023, Canada’s GDP per person (an indicator of incomes and living standards) lagged far behind the average among G7 countries. Business investment is also lagging. Between 2014 and 2021, business investment per worker (inflation-adjusted, excluding residential construction) in Canada decreased by $3,676 (to $14,687) while it increased by $3,418 (to $26,751) per worker in the U.S. And over-regulation is partly to blame.

For 2025, Canada needs a deregulatory agenda similar to DOGE that will allow Canadian workers and businesses to recover and thrive. And we know it can be done. During a deregulatory effort in British Columbia, which included a minister of deregulation appointed by the provincial government in 2001, there was a 37 per cent reduction in regulatory requirements in the province by 2004. The federal government should learn from B.C.’s success at slashing red tape, and reduce the burden of regulation across the entire Canadian economy.

Kenneth P. Green

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
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Addictions

Annual cannabis survey reveals many positive trends — and some concerning ones

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By Alexandra Keeler

On Christmas Eve, during his final year of high school, Justin Schneider’s friend handed him his first bowl of weed.

Schneider says he remembers it being an especially stressful evening and thinking, ‘Oh my God, they were lying to us about this.’

“Here I was this ‘good kid,’ staying away from alcohol and drugs, but this stuff is the best thing I’ve ever had,” he said. “But that reaction was brought on because it was the first time I’d ever taken any type of medication for anxiety.”

At first, Schneider used cannabis to cope with generalized anxiety, depression and insomnia. By his late twenties, he had become a heavy user.

In 2018, after more than 20 years of daily cannabis use, he was finally able to overcome his cannabis dependency with the help of a psychiatrist and addictions counselor.

Canadians’ relationship with cannabis has shifted dramatically since it was first legalized for non-medical use in 2018, a new survey shows.

The 2024 Canadian Cannabis Survey, released by Health Canada Dec. 6, reveals cannabis use has become increasingly normalized, driven by broader legal access and growing social acceptance. It also suggests legalization has achieved many of policymakers’ key goals.

But Schneider and others warn cannabis is not without its risks, and say better public education is required to address some of cannabis’ lesser known risks.

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‘Some sketchy guy’

Health Canada’s annual survey, which collected responses from more than 1,600 Canadians aged 16 and older, reveals a thriving legal cannabis market in Canada.

The number of users purchasing cannabis through legal channels has nearly doubled since legalization, rising from 37 per cent in 2019 to 72 per cent today.

“I imagine if I was just starting out [with cannabis] now, I wouldn’t ever have to interact with some sketchy guy, and that would have been easier growing up,” said Jesse Cohen, a 34-year-old daily cannabis user from Montreal.

Cohen uses cannabis to unwind after work or while performing menial tasks at home. Today, he picks up his supply from a sleek, well-lit government-regulated dispensary. He feels this interaction is safer than buying it on the black market.

Cohen says he has also seen the quality and variety of products on the market improve — accompanied by an increase in price.

In the survey, just over one-quarter of all respondents said they used cannabis for non-medical purposes in the past year, up from 22 per cent in 2018. Among youth, that number was 41 per cent.

The number of youth using cannabis has remained stable since 2018, a finding that challenges some critics’ claims that legalization would lead to higher rates of youth consumption.

“For youth, I do think that the whole legalization de-stigmatized and took the risk out of it — it wasn’t a taboo subject or a taboo activity anymore — so there wasn’t the same draw,” said Ian Culbert, executive director of the Canadian Public Health Association, a non-profit that promotes public health.

“Let’s face it, youth experiment, and if it’s something your grandmother is doing, you don’t necessarily want to be doing it too.”

Another positive trend, Culbert says, is that cannabis users now seem to be better informed about the risks of driving while high.

Only 18 per cent of people who had used cannabis in the past year reported getting behind the wheel after cannabis use, down from 27 per cent in 2018.

Culbert interviewed cannabis users when cannabis was legalized. At that time, many said they thought their driving abilities improved when under the influence of cannabis.

“Of course, that’s just not the truth … They felt that their video game experience was so much better when they were consuming, therefore why wouldn’t driving a car be better?” Culbert said.

“I think [because of] education efforts, and the fact that police across the country have put in programs to identify and prosecute people who are driving impaired, that message has gotten through, and people are now equating it to drinking alcohol and driving.”

Public health campaigns also seem to have raised awareness of cannabis’ risks to physical health. Successive Health Canada cannabis surveys have shown a growing understanding of cannabis’ effects on lung health and youth brain development.

Schneider believes public health campaigns now need to focus more on the mental health risks associated with heavy cannabis use.

“I think there’s a responsibility to say that, for a small proportion of people, it can be very psychologically addictive and very, very risky to mental health.”

According to Health Canada, regular cannabis users can experience psychological and mild physical dependence, with withdrawal symptoms that include irritability, anxiety, upset stomach and disturbed sleep.

“You don’t actually have anxiety,” said Schneider about his own withdrawal symptoms. “But your brain creates it anyway, driving you to use cannabis to relieve it.”

Research also shows frequent use of high-THC cannabis is linked to an increased risk of psychosis, a mental condition marked by a disconnection from reality. Individuals with mental disorders or a family history of schizophrenia are at particular risk.

In the survey, only 70 per cent of respondents said they had enough reliable information to make informed decisions about cannabis use. And the number of respondents saying they have not seen any education campaigns or public health messages about cannabis has increased, from 24 per cent in 2019 to 50 per cent today.

Culbert says the revenue that the government generates from cannabis creates a disincentive for it to issue strong health warnings.

“There’s no coherence in our regulatory and legal frameworks with respect to health harms and the level of regulation,” he said.

“Governments are addicted to their sin taxes,” he said.


This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.

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