Business
The Problem With Trudeau’s Fiscal Responsibility Message
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Franco Terrazzano
This year’s interest charges will cost taxpayers more than $46 billion. That’s almost $4 billion every month that’s not going to improve services or lower taxes. It’s also a cost of more than $1,000 for every Canadian.
There’s only one problem with the federal government’s messaging about saving money: the feds aren’t actually saving money.
“The foundation of our Fall Economic Statement is our responsible fiscal plan,” said Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
The mid-year budget update shows the government increasing spending by $15 billion this year. A far cry from Freeland’s March promise to find “savings of $15.4 billion over the next five years.”
Next year, the government will increase spending by $30 billion. And that comes on top of an already ballooned baseline.
The feds spent all-time highs before the pandemic. That means Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was spending more before the pandemic than the feds did during any single year during World War II, even after accounting for inflation and population growth.
Freeland is trying to put Canadians’ minds at ease by claiming her deficits are “modest.” Canadians have heard this before.
When running for prime minister in 2015, Trudeau promised to run a few “modest” deficits of less than $10 billion before balancing the budget in 2019. Trudeau blew that balanced budget promise by a “modest” $20 billion.
This year’s deficit is projected to hit $40 billion. Deficits in 2024 and 2025 are both projected to be $38 billion.
Is this the new modest? Four times larger than the “modest” deficits Trudeau first promised?
The mid-year budget update proves this government has no idea how to balance a budget.
In fact, the only mention of a balanced budget in Ottawa comes from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who forecasts the next balanced budget will happen in 2035. But that relies on the economy growing every year, relatively low interest rates and no new spending.
A government too incompetent to balance the budget means Canadians are paying dearly just to service the debt.
This year’s interest charges will cost taxpayers more than $46 billion. That’s almost $4 billion every month that’s not going to improve services or lower taxes. It’s also a cost of more than $1,000 for every Canadian.
Next year, debt interest charges will surpass federal health transfers to the provinces. Soon, every penny collected from the GST will go toward servicing the debt.
As bad as the budget is, the government could keep the ship from sinking with modest spending restraint.
The government could balance the budget next year by using its own projected program spending from two budget updates ago. Instead of running a $38-billion deficit next year, taxpayers would have a $1-billion surplus if Freeland just stuck to the spending plan she created in 2021.
This highlights the root of Trudeau’s spending problem – the ratchet effect. Almost every budget document released by this government drastically increases spending.
The mid-year budget update in 2019 first projected spending in 2024 to be $421 billion. This year’s budget update shows the government will spend $519 billion in 2024.
This government’s muscle for fiscal responsibility has atrophied.
MPs from all political parties can’t help themselves from taking a pay raise every year – regardless of the struggles their constituents endure. The prime minister can’t help but spend $61,000 on Manhattan hotel rooms during a two-day anti-poverty summit.
No one in government is willing to end the hundreds of millions in bureaucratic bonuses, despite departments consistently meeting less than half of their own performance targets.
The Liberals are also unwilling to take the air out of the ballooning bureaucracy, which increased by 98,000 employees since they took power. That’s almost 40 per cent more federal employees. The bureaucracy currently consumes half of every tax dollar used in day-to-day spending.
No party in the House of Commons is willing to oppose the more than $43 billion taxpayers are being forced to give multinational corporations to build battery plants.
This government hasn’t shown one iota of fiscal restraint. In fact, the government appears to be trying its best to run up the red ink. Fortunately for taxpayers, it would only take modest spending restraint for a serious government to bring the books back into black.
Franco Terrazzano is the Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Automotive
Dark Web Tesla Doxxers Used Widely-Popular Parking App Data To Find Targets, Analysis Shows
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Thomas English
A dark web doxxing website targeting Tesla owners and allies of Elon Musk appears to be compiled from hacked data originally stolen from a massive ParkMobile app breach in 2021, according to records obtained by a data privacy group.
The site, known as DogeQuest, first appeared in March and publishes names, home addresses, contact details and other personal information tied to Tesla drivers and DOGE staff. Marketed as a hub for anti-Musk “creative expressions of protest,” the platform has been linked to real-world vandalism and remains live on the dark web. Federal investigations into DogeQuest are already underway, the New York Post first reported.
“If you’re on the hunt for a Tesla to unleash your artistic flair with a spray can, just step outside — no map needed! At DOGEQUEST, we believe in empowering creative expressions of protest that you can execute from the comfort of your own home,” the surface-web DogeQuest site reads. “DOGEQUEST neither endorses nor condemns any actions.”
A screenshot of the DogeQuest surface website captured on April 3, 2025. (Captured by Thomas English/Daily Caller News Foundation)
ObscureIQ, a data privacy group, compiled a breakdown of the data — obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation — and determined 98.2% of records used to populate the site matched individuals affected by the 2021 ParkMobile breach.
Encouraging destruction of Teslas throughout the country is extreme domestic terrorism!! https://t.co/8TCNIbrQxA
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 18, 2025
DogeQuest originally appeared as a surface web doxxing hub, encouraging vandalism of Teslas and displaying names, addresses, contact details and, in some cases, employment information for roughly 1,700 individuals. The site used stolen ParkMobile records along with data purchased from brokers, flagging anyone who had a Tesla listed in their vehicle registration profile, according to ObscureIQ’s analysis.
The platform — now operating as “DogeQuest Unleashed” via a .onion dark web address — has also published personal details of high-value targets including senior military officials, federal employees and private sector executives in Silicon Valley. A spreadsheet reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation indicates several individuals targeted work areas like cybersecurity, defense contracting, public health and diplomatic policy. DOGE staff and their families appear prominently throughout the data.
A screenshot of DogeQuest’s surface website, captured on April 3, 2025. (Captured by Thomas English/Daily Caller News Foundation)
No other reporting has yet tied DogeQuest directly to the ParkMobile breach, which impacted over 21 million users in 2021. The company, which facilitates cashless parking across the U.S., quietly disclosed the breach in April of that year, admitting that “basic user information” had been accessed. ObscureIQ’s research shows that exposed data included email addresses, license plate numbers and phone numbers — enough to triangulate identity when paired with commercial data brokers.
The company agreed to a $32 million settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit stemming from the data breach. The lawsuit alleged that ParkMobile failed to secure its Amazon Web Services cloud storage, allowing access to the data. Although payment data were reportedly not compromised, plaintiffs argued the exposed information still posed serious privacy risks — a claim now reinforced by its use in the DogeQuest doxxing campaign.
Despite federal attention, the site has proven difficult to keep offline, as the dark web mirror incorporates anonymized hosting methods, frustrating law enforcement takedown efforts.
The Department of Justice charged three suspects last week linked to physical attacks on Tesla vehicles, charging stations and dealerships across multiple states, though it has not publicly confirmed any link between those suspects and DogeQuest. Meanwhile, the FBI has acknowledged it is “actively working” on both the doxxing campaign and a parallel rise in swatting incidents affecting DOGE affiliates.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By J.D. Foster
“Liberation Day” has come. So what does it mean? Beats the hell out of me.
What we know is that President Trump’s avalanche of tariffs was to hit a peak on April 2; not end, mind you; not necessarily “the” peak, as more could be on the way; but a peak.
No Trump policy more completely breaks with America’s past than his “beautiful” tariffs on just about everything coming into the United States from just about anywhere.
Will this new policy liberate American manufacturing from foreign shackles? Will it usher in a new era of prosperity, keeping in mind the United States had for many years the consistently best-performing economy in the industrialized world, even overcoming the many inane obstacles erected by the Biden-Harris Administration?
Or will it leave the United States isolated, friendless, and weakened?
The correct answer at this point is no one knows, not even the bloviating talking heads on TV confidently predicting demise or Shangri-la.
Think of it this way. Suppose you’re a restaurant chef and a woman hands you a new recipe. Her father turns 75 soon and they want to have a party at the restaurant. The recipe is for the father’s favorite dish, one her mother made for years.
The recipe looks old, with odd ingredients and processes you’ve not seen before. Now judge it as a chef.
You can’t. Even as you start chopping and dicing, mixing ingredients as instructed, you’re not too sure how this is going to turn out. You have to wait until the dish is on the plate and taste it.
That’s the case with Trump’s tariffs. How will this all turn out? It’s too soon to tell.
The stock market sure doesn’t like it, but why should it? The investor class doesn’t understand this any better than you do. What they do understand is this new policy has upended assumptions and created enormous new uncertainties. We know that dish as those ingredients are always good for a big pullback.
Much of the confusion arises because we don’t know the underlying policy and likely this uncertainty is intentional. Trump likes keeping his counterparts, in this case our trading partners, guessing. If it means Americans are confused for a bit, Trump’s cool with that. Breaking eggs to make an omelette. It will pass and America will be great again afterward. Bon appetite.
If the core policy is to erect massive and mostly permanent tariff walls behind which American firms can hide, then we know how this will turn out: America, meet the dustbin of history.
If the core policy is to force our trading partners to deal with America fairly by reducing their trade barriers after which Trump will remove his tariffs, then this could turn out very well. Tariffs (and non-tariff barriers) in the U.S. and those of our trading partners would fall, reinvigorating the free trade that has energized prosperity for decades.
Which is it? Walls and doom or freedom and prosperity? Again, too early to tell.
Whatever else Trump does in his second term, these tariffs will define his presidency, akin in consequence to Ronald Reagan’s pro-growth tax cuts and Joe Biden’s inflation.
Trump in his second term clearly lives by the saying, “go bold or go home.” He’s got “bold” down pat. We will see over the next year or so whether he and the Republicans go home. Has he liberated Democrats from any fear of Republicans in the mid-terms or in 2028, or he’s liberated America from any fear of Democratic socialism and wokism returning in our lifetimes. The chips are all-in. Soon we will see the cards. Uncertainty, indeed.
JD Foster is the former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former chief economist and senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He now resides in relative freedom in the hills of Idaho.
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