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Opinion

Paul Wells: A poor choice of venue

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From Paul Wells on Substack

The Liberals wanted to beat Pierre Poilievre in the House of Commons. No such luck.

On Pierre Poilievre’s first day as leader of the Opposition, eleven months ago, the Liberals’ best available minister sought to frame the battle ahead.

“We are going to see two competing visions over the course of this session,” Randy Boissonnault said, largely ignoring Poilievre’s first question.

“The first is our government’s plan to support Canadians and those who need it most. The second is that of the Conservative Party and members of Parliament who would leave Canadians to their own devices.”

Boissonnault’s answer struck me at the time as the best available information about the Trudeau Liberals’ plan for Poilievre. It’s worth revisiting.

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At the time, late in September 2022, Poilievre had won a resounding victory over the rest of the Conservative leadership field. The Trudeau government had an opportunity to influence votes’ perceptions of the Liberals’ latest opponent. Many observers assumed the Liberals would do this through some sort of ad campaign, as Stephen Harper had done against Paul Martin, Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, and tried to do against Trudeau, always well ahead of an election.

Boissonnault was announcing the Liberals wouldn’t do this. The main parties’ “two competing visions” would become clear throughout “this session,” in the venue where life is divided into sessions: Parliament. (My procedure-wonk friends will remind me that a “session” isn’t a school year, it’s the space between a Throne Speech and a prorogation or dissolution. Still, a year is a good time for an interim check-in, and plainly things are happening.)

I’m going to say it hasn’t gone well for the Liberals. A stack of polls tells me so, but we don’t only need polls. The Cabinet has gathered in Charlottetown to hear from an academic who calls the state of housing in Canada “a crisis.”Meanwhile the guy who ran economic policy for Justin Trudeau’s government for seven years is calling affordable housing “the urgent economic need of today.” Imagine how many urgent economic needs we’ve heard about since 2015. Maybe the urgent economic need all along was to resist the urge to treat every need as urgent. Anyway the Liberals expected they could govern by picking issues that would work to their advantage. Instead an issue has been picked for them.

Poilievre made no secret of his own plan to use housing shortages to illustrate “two competing visions.” Every time he stood that day he repeated that housing prices had doubled under Trudeau. Boissonnault’s response was, in some cases, to ignore the question (“Mr. Speaker, let us talk about how people can pay their bills with our new dental plan”) and in others, to mention the day’s latest government policy: a one-time top-up to the Canada Housing Benefit, which would be worth $500 for people whose family income was under $35,000. The top-up began two months after Boissonnault spoke and ended three months after that, in March of this year. After that, Boissonnault and his colleagues would leave Canadians to their own devices, we might say.

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Why has the parliamentary session, as glimpsed since last September, been a bad choice of venue for the Liberals’ narrative of two competing visions? A few reasons.

First, most Canadians ignore Parliament. This trend has accelerated in the last eight years. Partly because the audience for just about any given thing in our society has declined as attention spans fragment. Partly because it’s increasingly obvious that the House of Commons no longer provides even occasional surprise. Stephen Harper and Jean Chrétien used to say surprising things. Not often. But they’d reveal a conversation they’d had, or announce a decision, or cleverly sabotage a question’s intended effect. This crew is earnest and general. Always.

Second, Poilievre likes Parliament more than Trudeau does. Not in the sense that he respects it as an institution. Neither of them does. The whole notion is quaint. But Poilievre looks forward to Question Period, rehearses for it, relishes its limited opportunities. Trudeau, who systematically demotes naysayers, has never believed he should have to put up with any in the middle of his workday.

It’s easy to understand a guy disliking Parliament. But disliking Parliament makes Parliament an odd choice of venue for making any kind of important case.

The third problem with the notion that an ordinary governing year would define Poilievre is that it allowed Poilievre to specialize while the government generalized. Any Canadian government has to manage the normal array of dreary files, the bilateral relationship with the U.S., the post-pandemic recovery, ports and bridges and health transfers and public-sector strikes. Not every day can be a message day, even for a government that tries to make its every act a message. That’s why governing parties often prefer to put the “governing” and “party” parts of their mission under distinct command structures.

It’s often said that in making his campaign team his governing team, Trudeau limited the effectiveness of his government. It’s increasingly clear the problem goes the other way too: How can a Prime Minister’s Office think clearly about politics?

The upshot is that while the Liberals have been fitfully defining their opponent he has been diligently defining them. It has gone better for him than for them. A new poll, by Abacus for the Toronto Star, shows that “more [respondents] think Poilievre is genuine than phoney, strong instead of weak, down to earth instead of elitist.” This will be vexing news for readers who think the Conservative leader is phoney, weak and elitist, but in politics the goal isn’t to believe your own beliefs really hard, it’s to get other people to believe them. Here the Liberals’ problem is much like their problem on housing: It’s as though they just realized they have a job to do.


A note to readers as an election approaches, whether that election happens in 2023, 2024 or 2025. If you have a strong emotional investment in anyoutcome in that election, this newsletter will certainly disappoint you. I’m not here to help Poilievre. I’m not here to defend Trudeau. I see qualities and flaws in each. I might even amaze everyone by mentioning the NDP, once or twice. This isn’t an artificial stance born of some mandate for “objectivity” or, worse, “balance.” I’m selling my opinions here. But my opinions don’t line up cleanly with the party lines in most elections and they won’t in this one.

Readers who are inclined to work fulltime to correct other readers’ opinions should remind themselves that the election won’t be won or lost in the comment board of the Paul Wells newsletter. Thanks, as always, for your support and interest.

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Business

Hudson’s Bay Bid Raises Red Flags Over Foreign Influence

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Scott McGregor

A billionaire’s retail ambition might also serve Beijing’s global influence strategy. Canada must look beyond the storefront

When B.C. billionaire Weihong Liu publicly declared interest in acquiring Hudson’s Bay stores, it wasn’t just a retail story—it was a signal flare in an era where foreign investment increasingly doubles as geopolitical strategy.

The Hudson’s Bay Company, founded in 1670, remains an enduring symbol of Canadian heritage. While its commercial relevance has waned in recent years, its brand is deeply etched into the national identity. That’s precisely why any potential acquisition, particularly by an investor with strong ties to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), deserves thoughtful, measured scrutiny.

Liu, a prominent figure in Vancouver’s Chinese-Canadian business community, announced her interest in acquiring several Hudson’s Bay stores on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (RedNote), expressing a desire to “make the Bay great again.” Though revitalizing a Canadian retail icon may seem commendable, the timing and context of this bid suggest a broader strategic positioning—one that aligns with the People’s Republic of China’s increasingly nuanced approach to economic diplomacy, especially in countries like Canada that sit at the crossroads of American and Chinese spheres of influence.

This fits a familiar pattern. In recent years, we’ve seen examples of Chinese corporate involvement in Canadian cultural and commercial institutions, such as Huawei’s past sponsorship of Hockey Night in Canada. Even as national security concerns were raised by allies and intelligence agencies, Huawei’s logo remained a visible presence during one of the country’s most cherished broadcasts. These engagements, though often framed as commercially justified, serve another purpose: to normalize Chinese brand and state-linked presence within the fabric of Canadian identity and daily life.

What we may be witnessing is part of a broader PRC strategy to deepen economic and cultural ties with Canada at a time when U.S.-China relations remain strained. As American tariffs on Canadian goods—particularly in aluminum, lumber and dairy—have tested cross-border loyalties, Beijing has positioned itself as an alternative economic partner. Investments into cultural and heritage-linked assets like Hudson’s Bay could be seen as a symbolic extension of this effort to draw Canada further into its orbit of influence, subtly decoupling the country from the gravitational pull of its traditional allies.

From my perspective, as a professional with experience in threat finance, economic subversion and political leveraging, this does not necessarily imply nefarious intent in each case. However, it does demand a conscious awareness of how soft power is exercised through commercial influence, particularly by state-aligned actors. As I continue my research in international business law, I see how investment vehicles, trade deals and brand acquisitions can function as instruments of foreign policy—tools for shaping narratives, building alliances and shifting influence over time.

Canada must neither overreact nor overlook these developments. Open markets and cultural exchange are vital to our prosperity and pluralism. But so too is the responsibility to preserve our sovereignty—not only in the physical sense, but in the cultural and institutional dimensions that shape our national identity.

Strategic investment review processes, cultural asset protections and greater transparency around foreign corporate ownership can help strike this balance. We should be cautious not to allow historically Canadian institutions to become conduits, however unintentionally, for geopolitical leverage.

In a world where power is increasingly exercised through influence rather than force, safeguarding our heritage means understanding who is buying—and why.

Scott McGregor is the managing partner and CEO of Close Hold Intelligence Consulting.

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Bjorn Lomborg

Net zero’s cost-benefit ratio is crazy high

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From the Fraser Institute

By Bjørn Lomborg

The best academic estimates show that over the century, policies to achieve net zero would cost every person on Earth the equivalent of more than CAD $4,000 every year. Of course, most people in poor countries cannot afford anywhere near this. If the cost falls solely on the rich world, the price-tag adds up to almost $30,000 (CAD) per person, per year, over the century.

Canada has made a legal commitment to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. Back in 2015, then-Prime Minister Trudeau promised that climate action will “create jobs and economic growth” and the federal government insists it will create a “strong economy.” The truth is that the net zero policy generates vast costs and very little benefit—and Canada would be better off changing direction.

Achieving net zero carbon emissions is far more daunting than politicians have ever admitted. Canada is nowhere near on track. Annual Canadian CO₂ emissions have increased 20 per cent since 1990. In the time that Trudeau was prime minister, fossil fuel energy supply actually increased over 11 per cent. Similarly, the share of fossil fuels in Canada’s total energy supply (not just electricity) increased from 75 per cent in 2015 to 77 per cent in 2023.

Over the same period, the switch from coal to gas, and a tiny 0.4 percentage point increase in the energy from solar and wind, has reduced annual CO₂ emissions by less than three per cent. On that trend, getting to zero won’t take 25 years as the Liberal government promised, but more than 160 years. One study shows that the government’s current plan which won’t even reach net-zero will cost Canada a quarter of a million jobs, seven per cent lower GDP and wages on average $8,000 lower.

Globally, achieving net-zero will be even harder. Remember, Canada makes up about 1.5 per cent of global CO₂ emissions, and while Canada is already rich with plenty of energy, the world’s poor want much more energy.

In order to achieve global net-zero by 2050, by 2030 we would already need to achieve the equivalent of removing the combined emissions of China and the United States — every year. This is in the realm of science fiction.

The painful Covid lockdowns of 2020 only reduced global emissions by about six per cent. To achieve net zero, the UN points out that we would need to have doubled those reductions in 2021, tripled them in 2022, quadrupled them in 2023, and so on. This year they would need to be sextupled, and by 2030 increased 11-fold. So far, the world hasn’t even managed to start reducing global carbon emissions, which last year hit a new record.

Data from both the International Energy Agency and the US Energy Information Administration give added cause for skepticism. Both organizations foresee the world getting more energy from renewables: an increase from today’s 16 per cent to between one-quarter to one-third of all primary energy by 2050. But that is far from a transition. On an optimistically linear trend, this means we’re a century or two away from achieving 100 percent renewables.

Politicians like to blithely suggest the shift away from fossil fuels isn’t unprecedented, because in the past we transitioned from wood to coal, from coal to oil, and from oil to gas. The truth is, humanity hasn’t made a real energy transition even once. Coal didn’t replace wood but mostly added to global energy, just like oil and gas have added further additional energy. As in the past, solar and wind are now mostly adding to our global energy output, rather than replacing fossil fuels.

Indeed, it’s worth remembering that even after two centuries, humanity’s transition away from wood is not over. More than two billion mostly poor people still depend on wood for cooking and heating, and it still provides about 5 per cent of global energy.

Like Canada, the world remains fossil fuel-based, as it delivers more than four-fifths of energy. Over the last half century, our dependence has declined only slightly from 87 per cent to 82 per cent, but in absolute terms we have increased our fossil fuel use by more than 150 per cent. On the trajectory since 1971, we will reach zero fossil fuel use some nine centuries from now, and even the fastest period of recent decline from 2014 would see us taking over three centuries.

Global warming will create more problems than benefits, so achieving net-zero would see real benefits. Over the century, the average person would experience benefits worth $700 (CAD) each year.

But net zero policies will be much more expensive. The best academic estimates show that over the century, policies to achieve net zero would cost every person on Earth the equivalent of more than CAD $4,000 every year. Of course, most people in poor countries cannot afford anywhere near this. If the cost falls solely on the rich world, the price-tag adds up to almost $30,000 (CAD) per person, per year, over the century.

Every year over the 21st century, costs would vastly outweigh benefits, and global costs would exceed benefits by over CAD 32 trillion each year.

We would see much higher transport costs, higher electricity costs, higher heating and cooling costs and — as businesses would also have to pay for all this — drastic increases in the price of food and all other necessities. Just one example: net-zero targets would likely increase gas costs some two-to-four times even by 2030, costing consumers up to $US52.6 trillion. All that makes it a policy that just doesn’t make sense—for Canada and for the world.

Bjørn Lomborg

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