By Garry Clement

This year also reaffirmed Canada’s habit of strategic hesitation. Despite overwhelming evidence and allied action, the federal government continued to delay meaningful steps against hostile foreign actors operating within our borders.

As 2026 starts with high-consequence geopolitical events in Venezuela and Iran, Canada continues to present itself to the world as stable, prosperous, and benign. Yet the defining lesson of this past year is that our perceived strength is increasingly an illusion — a façade sustained by political denial, regulatory weakness, and the monetization of risk.

Across multiple fronts — land ownership, real estate, immigration, organized crime, and national security — the same pattern has repeated itself. Warnings were issued. Evidence accumulated. And Ottawa largely chose inaction.

The result is a country drifting further into vulnerability while congratulating itself on tolerance and openness.

Canada’s economy remains dangerously reliant on sectors that are poorly regulated and easily exploited: real estate, land, natural resources, and mass immigration. Throughout the year, investigative reporting and law enforcement intelligence continued to show how foreign capital — often opaque, sometimes criminal — flows freely into these systems with little resistance.

From farmland acquisitions on Prince Edward Island and the Prairies, to urban real estate markets untethered from domestic incomes, Canada has treated ownership and sovereignty as inconveniences rather than safeguards. Weak beneficial ownership registries and limited enforcement ensure that we often do not know who truly controls critical assets — and, worse, seem uninterested in finding out.

This is not economic growth. It is asset stripping disguised as prosperity.

The most brutal manifestation of these blind spots remains fentanyl. In 2025, Canada further cemented its reputation as a preferred destination for laundering synthetic drug profits. Chinese triads, Mexican cartels, and domestic gangs continue to exploit casinos, shell companies, and real estate — not because they are clever, but because Canada is permissive.

Each overdose death is more than a public health failure. It is a financial crime, a national security issue, and a policy indictment. While peer nations have hardened their anti–money laundering regimes, Canada remains slow, fragmented, and politically cautious — a combination that organized crime understands perfectly.

This year also reaffirmed Canada’s habit of strategic hesitation. Despite overwhelming evidence and allied action, the federal government continued to delay meaningful steps against hostile foreign actors operating within our borders.

Some critics charge that Mark Carney’s Liberals are already seeking to water down the long-delayed foreign agent registry, with fines of as little as $50 for non-compliance, while the government has estimated almost 1,800 entities would be expected to register, with 50 additions every year, if this future law were adhered to.

The failure to decisively confront Iranian regime proxies, foreign influence operations, and transnational criminal networks reflects a broader unwillingness to accept that Canada is no longer insulated by geography or reputation.

Our allies increasingly see Canada not as a leader, but as a weak link.

Perhaps nowhere was short-term thinking more evident than in immigration and education policy. Foreign students have become a financial lifeline for institutions, yet oversight remains inadequate. Education visas increasingly function as labour permits in all but name, feeding industries already plagued by regulatory gaps.

Public safety consequences — including in commercial trucking — are no longer theoretical. Nor are concerns about transnational criminal exploitation of these pathways. Yet the federal response continues to prioritize revenue and labour supply over integrity and enforcement.

These are not isolated failures. They are symptoms of a governing philosophy that treats risk as politically inconvenient and accountability as optional. Critics are dismissed as alarmist. Warnings are reframed as xenophobic. And systemic problems are deferred until they become crises.

Canada has been entrusted with extraordinary abundance — land, resources, institutions, and social cohesion. Over the past year, it has become clearer than ever that we are squandering that inheritance.

A nation can only live on reputation for so long. The erosion visible in 2025 will accelerate unless decisive reforms follow: real transparency in ownership, enforceable anti–money laundering laws, a serious national security posture, and immigration systems rooted in integrity rather than expedience.

Canada does not need to abandon openness. It needs to pair openness with vigilance.

The year behind us should be remembered as a warning. Whether the year ahead becomes a correction — or a collapse — will depend on whether leaders finally choose stewardship over denial.

As former Conservative immigration minister Jason Kenney and Conservative Senate leader Leo Housakos have noted, as reported in The Bureau’s analysis of the information war emerging from the Trump administration’s indictment alleging a Maduro narco-state conspiracy, the events in Venezuela are global in nature, and connect directly to Canadian vulnerabilities to transnational money laundering and lax immigration controls that are strategically leveraged by hostile regimes from Beijing to Tehran and Moscow.

And according to Housakos, due to actions emanating from Central and South American authoritarian regimes, including Venezuela, and ultimately instigated by enemies from Beijing, Tehran and Moscow, the upshot is that Western democracies are now facing hybrid warfare threats unprecedented since the Second World War.

In other words, through the tools of transnational drug mafias, political corruption, disinformation, terror and protest, human trafficking, and weaponized migration, Xi, Putin, and the Iranian clerics are attempting to destabilize our societies, softening our defenses before kinetic warfare, or defeating us from within without firing a shot.

Without urgent and decisive leadership in Canada, and the moral clarity and just force that has been in such lack, the continuity of our nation’s great promise is increasingly in doubt.

From the Fraser Institute

By Ben Eisen and Jake Fuss

According to a recent study, living standards in Canada have declined over the past five years. And the country’s economic growth has been “ugly.” Crucially, all 10 provinces are experiencing this economic stagnation—there are no exceptions to Canada’s “ugly” growth record. In 2026, reversing this trend should be the top priority for the Carney government and provincial governments across the country.

Indeed, demographic and economic data across the country tell a remarkably similar story over the past five years. While there has been some overall economic growth in almost every province, in many cases provincial populations, fuelled by record-high levels of immigration, have grown almost as quickly. Although the total amount of economic production and income has increased from coast to coast, there are more people to divide that income between. Therefore, after we account for inflation and population growth, the data show Canadians are not better off than they were before.

Let’s dive into the numbers (adjusted for inflation) for each province. In British Columbia, the economy has grown by 13.7 per cent over the past five years but the population has grown by 11.0 per cent, which means the vast majority of the increase in the size of the economy is likely due to population growth—not improvements in productivity or living standards. In fact, per-person GDP, a key indicator of living standards, averaged only 0.5 per cent per year over the last five years, which is a miserable result by historic standards.

A similar story holds in other provinces. Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Saskatchewan all experienced some economic growth over the past five years but their populations grew at almost exactly the same rate. As a result, living standards have barely budged. In the remaining provinces (Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta), population growth has outstripped economic growth, which means that even though the economy grew, living standards actually declined.

This coast-to-coast stagnation of living standards is unique in Canadian history. Historically, there’s usually variation in economic performance across the country—when one region struggles, better performance elsewhere helps drive national economic growth. For example, in the early 2010s while the Ontario and Quebec economies recovered slowly from the 2008/09 recession, Alberta and other resource-rich provinces experienced much stronger growth. Over the past five years, however, there has not been a “good news” story anywhere in the country when it comes to per-person economic growth and living standards.

In reality, Canada’s recent record-high levels of immigration and population growth have helped mask the country’s economic weakness. With more people to buy and sell goods and services, the overall economy is growing but living standards have barely budged. To craft policies to help raise living standards for Canadian families, policymakers in Ottawa and every provincial capital should remove regulatory barriers, reduce taxes and responsibly manage government finances. This is the great policy challenge for governments across the country in 2026 and beyond.

Ben Eisen

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Jake Fuss

Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute