Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Let’s Make Canada Great Again!

Trump’s Team Unity… Tulsi Gabbard, JD Vance, President-elect Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jun., Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy… if they’re able to do all they’re promising, Canada will be more uncompetitive yet, writes Brian Giesbrecht and the best and brightest will leaveTrump campaign.
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Trump will make America so tempting to the talented, that we’re going to get more uncompetitive still
“The number of people migrating to the US is not the main concern, more importantly it is who is leaving.”
The “brain drain” is a problem that has been a real concern for Canada at many times in our history. In the 1990s it was a topic fiercely debated by policy wonks, politicians and other concerned Canadians. Many of our best and brightest were benefitting from expensive college and university educations here, then promptly moving south for better opportunities.
Simply put, when Canada raises taxes, and stifles economic opportunity for young people here, while the Americans are lowering taxes and opening up their economy to the south of us, we can expect to see much of our best talent move south.
That’s what we have been seeing for some time now — doctors, engineers, trades and businesspeople of all types moving to escape the high taxes and the stagnant economy they see in what is today’s high-tax, big government, woke Canada.
Since 2015, housing costs have risen much faster than wages, making house ownership and rent costs absolutely punishing. Excessive immigration numbers have only added to the misery. Canada, for many years considered to be one of the best western countries in which to live is now one of the worst.
Canada’s current brain drain trickle can be expected to turn into a flood. Trump has promised to deregulate, lower taxes and “drain the swamp”. His appointment of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to the mischievously named “DOGE” (Department of Government Efficiency) is evidence of his seriousness.
As evidence of how quickly things are turning, consider the huge stock market gains that happened as a direct consequence of Trump’s election. Clearly, the “smart money” is anticipating that Trump’s promises to “drill, baby, drill” and reinvigorate an over-regulated and over-taxed Biden economy are more than empty promises.
So, while right now Trump is busy trolling Democrats with his cabinet picks, by the time we get around to a spring election here it is probable that Trump will have the American economy galloping along. Meanwhile, at the same time that Trump is lowering taxes and deregulating, the Trudeau government is going in exactly the opposite direction.
Chrystia Freeland is determined to raise the capital gains tax. A capital gains tax hike will cause widespread damage. Meanwhile her proud socialist colleague, Steven Guilbeault — who has never seen an extra tax or regulation he doesn’t like — is dead-set on hiking Canada’s job-killing carbon tax yet again.
And let’s not forget the Trudeau affirmative action, DEI, merit-killing philosophy that has steadily eroded our competitiveness and standard of living. When contrasted with the Biden race-based version of the same, it was bad enough that Canada’s productivity continues to fall relative America’s. (Our sickly dollar is barely over 70 percent of theirs, while our government expenditures make up a staggering 44% of GDP.)
The contrast between the two economies can only be expected to become more pronounced as Trump’s America becomes increasingly merit-based. DOGE will take a meat cleaver to government spending, and the DEI, critical race theory Bidenite mush, will be trashed.
While Canada is still dealing with such woke idiocies as boys in girl sports, child mutilation in the name of gender ideology, and pretending to believe indigenous activist claims about secret burials of indigenous school children, Trump’s America will look very attractive to ambitious young Canadians who want to skip the wokeism, and raise their families in a country that rewards hard work. It will be hard to blame our best engineers, and tradespeople from heading down to exciting opportunities in Texas, Montana and elsewhere in the United States, when their talents are not appreciated here.
Many have already departed. Canadian accents are increasingly common in Texas. The contrast between a Trump America that rewards hard work, and a Trudeau Canada that only taxes it will be stark. Enterprising Canadians will face the choice of staying in a Canada that takes bigger and bigger bites out of paychecks, or moving to a country that doesn’t.
Let’s remember that many of our highly educated doctors and professionals are recent immigrants, with no special loyalty to Canada. Steven Harper also spoke of the “anywhere people” and the “somewhere people”. Those in the first category are the educated and privileged class whose have the money and talent that make it possible for them to move anywhere in the world on short notice. We need both the talented immigrants and “anywheres”, but they will be the first to leave.
Canada has gone through similar brain drain episodes before. During the 1990s there was a very real concern that we were losing far too many good people. A debt problem that began with the big-spending Pierre Trudeau government got steadily worse, our civil service was bloated, and taxes were far higher than they were for our American counterparts. To their credit, the Chrétien/Martin government introduced a budget in 1995 that helped with those problems.
The incoming Steven Harper government 2006-15 further stemmed the tide of departures by building a competitive economy that had our dollar at par with the American dollar. For a brief time the Canadian dollar was even higher! In these days of our pathetic 70 cent dollar it now seems hard to believe that even happened.
There seems to be little hope that the current Liberal government — still dug in in Ottawa — will take steps to make our economy competitive with Trump’s. As Kevin O’Leary explains, the damage that Trudeau has done to the Canadian economy is incalculable.
Canada has been on a slow downward slide since 2015. This has been Canada’s “lost decade”.
But there are reasons other than just the economic for wanting to leave. Under Justin Trudeau Canada has become not only a poorer place, but a directionless dystopia for many conservative-leaning Canadians. Extreme progressivism — “woke” — is the Trudeau Liberal religion.
As Eric Kaufman points out, extreme beliefs, such as “a man becomes a woman by saying so,” the belief in such economy-killing absurdities as “carbon-zero by 2040,” “borders don’t matter,” “merit-based hiring is systemic racism” etc are accepted by only a small minority of Canadians, and yet those are the policies the current government is forcing on everyone.
To add insult to injury we have Trudeau tweeting “a trans woman is a woman,” “we accept all comers,” “Canada is a genocidal nation,” and other such inanities. The great majority of Canadians do not want Trudeau’s “post-national state with no core identity” bilge. They want Canada back.
Trump has promised to rid his country of the extreme progressivism that Americans so convincingly rejected on Nov 5. Post-election surveys have revealed that the single most important issue that persuaded swing voters to vote for Trump was Kamala Harris’s support for taxpayer funding for transgender surgery for prison inmates.
This bit of woke craziness proved to be a bridge too far even for those who usually voted Democrat.
We can expect to see a virtual war on woke when Trump assumes power. In fact, it is already happening. Absurdities, like men forcing their way into women’s sporting events and women’s spaces will come to an end. Most Americans simply don’t want radical progressivism. As Professor Kaufman’s survey shows (above) — neither do Canadians.
The old saying is that living next to America is like sleeping with an elephant. Every time that the elephant moves, we had better do so too. With the election of Donald Trump, Canada must quickly adjust to the moves that elephant makes. Or suffer the consequences.
The chance to do so will likely be next spring, when Justin Trudeau will finally be forced to call an election. His election strategy will almost certainly be the same one he has used against previous Conservative challengers — he accuses them of being “like Trump.” But this time this strategy might not work.
If Trump’s America is humming along on all cylinders, while Trudeau’s weak, woke Canada looks pathetic in comparison, this time Canadians might say, “Yes, like Trump’s America. That’s exactly what we want!”
We need our best and brightest to stay here. We need to end the brain drain. We can do that by making Canada into a 2025 version of the Canada we used to know.
Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He was recently named the ‘Western Standard Columnist of the Year.’
Business
Hudson’s Bay Bid Raises Red Flags Over Foreign Influence

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
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.
Business
Canada Urgently Needs A Watchdog For Government Waste

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Ian Madsen
From overstaffed departments to subsidy giveaways, Canadians are paying a high price for government excess
Not all the Trump administration’s policies are dubious. One is very good, in theory at least: the Department of Government Efficiency. While that term could be an oxymoron, like ‘political wisdom,’ if DOGE is useful, so may be a Canadian version.
DOGE aims to identify wasteful, duplicative, unnecessary or destructive government programs and replace outdated data systems. It also seeks to lower overall costs and ensure mechanisms are in place to evaluate proposed programs for effectiveness and value for money. This can, and usually does, involve eliminating some departments and, eventually, thousands of jobs. Some new roles within DOGE may need to become permanent.
The goal in the U.S. is to lower annual operating costs and ensure that the growth in government spending is lower than in revenues. Washington’s spending has exploded in recent years. The U.S. federal deficit exceeds six per cent of gross domestic product. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, annual debt service cost is escalating unsustainably.
Canada’s latest budget deficit of $61.9 billion in fiscal 2023–24 is about two per cent of GDP, which seems minor compared to our neighbour. However, it adds to the federal debt of $1.236 trillion, about 41 per cent of our approximate $3 trillion GDP. Ottawa’s public accounts show that expenses are 17.8 per cent of GDP, up from about 14 per cent just eight years ago. Interest on the escalating debt were 10.2 per cent of revenues in the most recent fiscal year, up from just five per cent a mere two years ago.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) continually identifies dubious or frivolous spending and outright waste or extravagance: “$30 billion in subsidies to multinational corporations like Honda, Volkswagen, Stellantis and Northvolt. Federal corporate subsidies totalled $11.2 billion in 2022 alone. Shutting down the federal government’s seven regional development agencies would save taxpayers an estimated $1.5 billion annually.”
The CTF also noted that Ottawa hired 108,000 more staff in the past eight years at an average annual cost of over $125,000. Hiring in line with population growth would have added only 35,500, saving about $9 billion annually. The scale of waste is staggering. Canada Post, the CBC and Via Rail lose, in total, over $5 billion a year. For reference, $1 billion would buy Toyota RAV4s for over 25,600 families.
Ottawa also duplicates provincial government functions, intruding on their constitutional authority. Shifting those programs to the provinces, in health, education, environment and welfare, could save many more billions of dollars per year. Bad infrastructure decisions lead to failures such as the $33.4 billion squandered on what should have been a relatively inexpensive expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline—a case where hiring better staff could have saved money. Terrible federal IT systems, exemplified by the $4 billion Phoenix payroll horror, are another failure. The Green Slush Fund misallocated nearly $900 million.
Ominously, the fast-growing Old Age Supplement and Guaranteed Income Security programs are unfunded, unlike the Canada Pension Plan. Their costs are already roughly equal to the deficit and could become unsustainable.
Canada is sleepwalking toward financial perdition. A Canadian version of DOGE—Canada Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Team, or CAETT—is vital. The Auditor General Office admirably identifies waste and bad performance, but is not proactive, nor does it have enforcement powers. There is currently no mechanism to evaluate or end unnecessary programs to ensure Canadians will have a prosperous and secure future. CAETT could fill that role.
Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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