Politics
Poilievre chastises Trudeau for dealing with inflation like a ‘pyromaniac promising to fight a fire’
From LifeSiteNews
At a Fix the Budget rally, the Conservative Party leader made three demands ahead of the 2024 budget release.
Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Pierre Poilievre criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge to combat sky-high inflation in a strong rebuke of the handling of the nation’s economy.
“Justin Trudeau promising to fight inflation is like a pyromaniac promising to fight a fire,” Poilievre said Sunday during a “Fix the Budget” rally at a truck depot in Mississauga, Ontario.
“He’s the one that lit the fire with his taxes and his deficits.”
Poilievre noted that “every day” Trudeau is seen in planned “photo ops,” saying that many Canadians “know the money that he’s spitting out of his mouth is money that will come out of your pocket, just like it has for the last eight years.”
The CPC leader said during the rally that his party has three demands for Trudeau concerning his upcoming 2024 budget, which is set to be released on April 16.
“Ax the Trudeau tax on food and farmers; two, build homes, not bureaucracies; and three, cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar law to bring down inflation and interest rates,” Poilievre said.
Poilievre also mentioned that he wants the Trudeau government to take away the tax on food and farmers via Bill C-234, which, if passed, would take away the carbon tax on farmers, their barns, and fuel they use to dry grain.
The bill would amend the current Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act to take the carbon tax off farmers, barns, and drying, which Poilievre said will provide food price relief to Canadians.
Poilievre also said he wants the federal government to bring in a “dollar-for-dollar” law that would help to lower high interest rates, which contributes to inflation.
He also promised that the CPC, should it form the next government, will “cut back office bureaucracy, botched procurements, and foreign aid to dictators, terrorists, and multinational bureaucracies.”
“We’ll bring that money home and invest it in our military,” he said.
Poilievre also accused Trudeau’s spending, which skyrocketed during the COVID crisis, of being a leading cause of inflation.
“When you double the national debt, you drive up demand, which builds up goods. You print $600 billion of cash, and that causes inflation just like it has everywhere and always over the last 5,000 years of economic history,” he said.
The Liberal federal government has faced backlash, notably from the CPC, that high inflation and immigration have led to soaring housing prices and interest rates.
The Bank of Canada, for the sixth straight time since July 2023, held the interest rate at 5 percent.
Protests against Trudeau have been increasing in recent months due to the unpopularity of higher carbon taxes and other governmental policies.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Trudeau’s carbon tax is costing Canadians hundreds of dollars annually, as government rebates are not enough to compensate for high fuel costs.
Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, told LifeSiteNews in January that “If the government wanted to make all areas of life more affordable, the government should leave more money in people’s pockets and cut taxes.”
“Trudeau should completely scrap his carbon tax,” he added.
Recent polls show that the scandal-plagued government has sent the Liberals into a nosedive with no end in sight. Per a recent LifeSiteNews report, according to polls, in a federal election held today, Conservatives under Poilievre would win a majority in the House of Commons over Trudeau’s Liberals.
Daily Caller
Trump, RFK Jr’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Pledge Signals Major Shift In GOP Priorities
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Adam Pack
Former President Donald Trump and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent vow to tackle public health issues together could signal a major shift in Republican priorities if the Trump campaign prevails on Election Day.
Trump has called for the creation of an independent commission with Kennedy’s input and pledged to address various Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) issues the former independent candidate has brought to the forefront, including improving the public’s intake of nutritious foods and addressing the rising trend of obesity in adults. These concerns, in addition to other MAHA priorities that have not historically found much support in the GOP such as calling for more stringent environmental regulations, indicate that a potential Trump administration may take a different approach on health, agricultural and environmental issues than during his first term in office.
Campaign officials, GOP lawmakers and health experts previewed a diverse set of MAHA priorities in interviews with the Daily Caller News Foundation. Tackling the rising chronic disease rate that impacts roughly 60% of American adults is a shared point of concern.
“It’s finally turning the page and saying, ‘We want a health system, not a disease system,’” Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told the DCNF. “For 50 years we built a disease system.”
“When we send President Trump back to the White House, he will work alongside passionate voices like RFK Jr. to Make America Healthy Again by providing families with safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic plaguing our children,” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, told the DCNF. “President Trump will also establish a special Presidential Commission of independent minds who are not bought and paid for by Big Pharma and will charge them with investigating what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic illnesses.”
Republicans and former Trump health officials are enthusiastic that marshaling the federal government in response to the country’s myriad health crises could turn the corner on an era where Americans are facing poorer health outcomes and declining life expectancy.
Redfield endorsed the idea of an independent chronic disease commission and told the DCNF that the federal government “must get more serious in preventing chronic disease” to turn the corner on an era where Americans are facing poorer health outcomes and declining life expectancy.
“It’s much more important to get real time, continuous, day-to-day monitoring of your chronic illness, not just the way the system works now where you check in every six months and someone tells you how you’re doing,” Redfield added. “No, you’ve got to check in every day.”
According to Redfield, a second Trump administration could cut the more than $4 trillion Americans spend on healthcare every year by half if federal agencies take an “all-of-government” approach to targeting substance use disorder, obesity and ultra-processed foods in addition to improving mental health services.
“These are, in my view, low-hanging fruit,” Redfield told the DCNF. “That alone would improve the American health system substantially.”
Texas Agriculture commissioner Sid Miller, who is helping vet candidates to serve in a second Trump administration, recounted running into a swarm of British schoolchildren while on a recent trade mission to the United Kingdom as providing further confirmation that a second Trump term must take action on obesity and processed foods, in an interview with the DCNF.
“90s kids and there wasn’t one fat kid in the bunch,” Miller, who has also called for bringing back the presidential fitness test program retired by the Obama administration in 2012, told the DCNF. “That kind of inspired me and made me think we’re not doing something right.”
To improve health outcomes for the more than 40% of Americans that are obese, Miller told the DCNF that a second Trump administration should consider ending Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for processed foods.
“Why are we paying for soda drinks and cookies and junk food with SNAP benefits?” Miller told the DCNF. “That needs to stop.”
Miller also pointed to his Texas Fresh Farm program that provides fresh and local products to more than 5 million Texas school members as a program that should be implemented nationwide to improve a portion of the public’s intake of nutritious foods.
Republican lawmakers have also been supportive of a second Trump administration prioritizing nutrition as part of the MAHA agenda.
“As a physician, I can absolutely say that good nutrition leads to better patient outcomes 100 percent of the time. Healthy food is medicine and is the cure for many chronic diseases and curbing health care spending in the United States,” Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas told the DCNF in a statement. “American farmers set the gold standard for nutritious food, and the MAHA agenda will work with farmers and ranchers to continue producing the safest and most wholesome food at affordable prices for our country and the world.”
Implementing MAHA priorities will likely require the empowerment of federal government agencies whose budgets and enforcement powers Republican lawmakers could be inclined to shrink. Taking action on chronic disease and obesity will also necessitate buy-in from members of the public and lawmakers that have lost trust in institutions’ abilities to tell the truth and manage crises without infringing on a person’s individual autonomy.
“Our failed response to the pandemic opened the eyes of millions to the capture and corruption of federal agencies by the corporate interests who are supposed to be regulated by them,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told the DCNF. “As a result, the public’s interest is not being well-served or properly protected.”
“Getting public health officials in the next administration that really spend a lot of energy on trying to reestablish public trust is going to be fundamental to the success of the efforts of Making America Healthy Again,” Redfield told the DCNF. “The vaccine mandates were a big mistake. Closing down our economy—a big mistake. Shutting down our schools—a big mistake. So, there was a huge loss of credibility and trust that has to be rebuilt.”
Redfield is still a strong believer in vaccines, dubbing them as “the most important gift to modern medicine,” but said that vaccine mandates are a self-defeating approach and that debate about a vaccine’s safety and efficacy should be encouraged not denounced.
“I’ve always said that Bobby Kennedy is not anti-vax. Bobby Kennedy just wanted honest transparency and debate about vaccines,” Redfield told the DCNF. “We should foster discussion and debate, and if someone has a question about looking at data to determine a vaccine’s safety that shouldn’t be listed as anti-vax. That should be listed as wanting an honest, open discussion about what is the data?”
“As we secure our borders and rebuild our economy, we are also going to Make America Healthy Again,” Trump said at a campaign event with Kennedy in Duluth, Georgia, on Wednesday. “We have more chronic health problems than any nation, more childhood diseases than we did just a generation ago. Millions of Americans are realizing that something is wrong. By getting this fixed not only will we have healthier families, we will save trillions and trillions of dollars and bring down the cost of healthcare.”
“We have a thousand chemicals in our food that are illegal in Europe, but the problem is not from those chemicals. The big problem is corruption in our federal agencies. These agencies are now owned by big Pharma by ‘Big Food’ and Big Agriculture,” Kennedy told the crowd at the same event. “Don’t you want a president that’s going to get the chemicals out of our food? And don’t you want a president that’s going to get the corruption out of Washington, D.C.? And don’t we deserve a president of the United States that’s going to Make America Healthy Again?”
Redfield also told the DCNF that he’s willing to serve in a second Trump administration.
“I’m in the final turn,” Redfield told the DCNF. “I’d obviously work in any way I can to help the President and Bobby Kennedy and our nation move toward health.”
Kennedy did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Business
Public Accounts Committee Reveals Taxpayer Dollars Funneled to Liberal Insiders with No Accountability
Public Accounts Committee reveals SDTC’s rampant conflicts of interest, lack of oversight, and millions in taxpayer dollars benefiting insiders—while Liberal MPs defend Trudeau’s “green” slush fund.
What happens when politicians promise “green energy” but deliver taxpayer-funded corruption? If you tuned in to Canada’s Public Accounts Committee this week, you found out. On the hot seat was Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), a bloated agency supposedly designed to fund sustainable technology but apparently also set up as a welfare program for ethically dubious board members.
Now, SDTC isn’t some fledgling startup or small-time charity. This agency is sitting on $330 million of your money – Canadian taxpayer money. And what did Canada’s Auditor General find in her investigation? An unbelievable 186 conflicts of interest. That’s not an organization with a few bad apples; that’s a systematic problem.
So why isn’t anyone doing anything? Here’s where it gets even more outrageous. Enter Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finkelstein, a man whose entire job is to hold officials accountable for ethical breaches. Did he step up to expose the corruption in SDTC? Not really. Von Finkelstein told the committee that his role is simply to “expose” conflicts of interest, not to actually do anything about them. Think about that. Here’s a man whose salary is funded by taxpayers, and his job description basically amounts to reading out loud the names of people breaking the rules.
Conservative MP Michael Cooper wasn’t having it. Cooper laid it out for von Finkelstein, practically begging him to explain why only two out of dozens of SDTC board members were investigated. But von Finkelstein’s excuse? He couldn’t bother because – get this – the Auditor General had already done the hard work. If that sounds like passing the buck, it’s because it is. Canadians aren’t paying for an Ethics Commissioner to sit back and watch. They’re paying for an official who’s supposed to defend the integrity of public institutions. But that’s clearly not happening here.
Liberal Apologists at Work
Not everyone on the committee wanted answers, though. Some were too busy defending SDTC’s “noble” cause. Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith practically bent over backward trying to downplay the whole thing. When Conservative MPs called SDTC a “green slush fund,” Erskine-Smith got indignant. He insisted that SDTC wasn’t a criminal organization and took offense at the term “slush fund.” Really? Because if funneling millions of public dollars into the hands of connected board members isn’t a slush fund, I don’t know what is.
Let’s call it what it is. While Erskine-Smith was busy defending SDTC’s “mission,” the committee heard exactly how that mission was carried out – through unethical, undisclosed conflicts of interest, with board members giving funds to companies they had direct financial ties to. And what did Erskine-Smith call this? Just a “few ethical lapses,” as if millions of taxpayer dollars being handed out without oversight is a minor paperwork error.
The Ethics Commissioner’s Toothless Office
Bloc MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné and NDP MP Richard Cannings pressed von Finkelstein on his office’s glaring lack of oversight. Why was he investigating just two board members when nearly 200 conflicts of interest were flagged? His answer was almost laughable: His office couldn’t enforce anything, couldn’t recoup the wasted money, and couldn’t even stop the bleeding of taxpayer funds because his role is “limited.” Limited? That’s putting it lightly.
And here’s where it gets even more insulting. Von Finkelstein admitted that he wouldn’t coordinate with other agencies like the RCMP or the Auditor General to go after these ethical lapses. This office, which exists solely to enforce ethical standards, can’t or won’t go after those breaking them. It’s as if the Ethics Commissioner’s job is to stand back and announce that something unethical happened, only to shrug and do nothing about it. Can you imagine running any organization that way? Of course not – but in the Canadian government, this seems to be the new normal.
Auditor Testifies, and It’s Worse Than We Thought
Just when we thought the Ethics Commissioner’s testimony had exposed the worst of Canada’s green-tech “accountability” disaster, along comes Auditor General official Michel Bédard. You’d think with the staggering amount of taxpayer money SDTC has under its control, someone would be keeping tabs. But if today’s testimony proved anything, it’s that this agency has zero meaningful oversight, a culture that actively ignores conflicts of interest, and no one stepping in to protect Canadians’ hard-earned money.
So, here we go again. 186 conflicts of interest, millions in public funds granted to companies with ties to board members—SDTC is basically the Wild West of “green” government spending. And guess what? Just like the Ethics Commissioner, Bédard’s office can report on it, but he admitted they can’t actually do anything to stop it. All that money might as well be floating in a pool, with insiders diving in for their share.
The “Accountability” Problem: Michael Cooper’s Pointed Questions
Conservative MP Michael Cooper wasn’t here to play around. He honed in on the obvious question: if SDTC’s board members aren’t held accountable, what’s the point of an Auditor General report? Cooper pushed Bédard to explain why these SDTC board members weren’t facing any real consequences. Bédard’s response? His office doesn’t have the authority to penalize or recover funds—it’s all just for show. That’s the message, folks: this is a government program that “monitors” ethical breaches but has no teeth.
If you’re wondering why SDTC board members feel free to treat taxpayers’ dollars like a bottomless well, this is it. They know that nothing’s going to happen. Cooper hit the nail on the head when he called out the lack of deterrence, and Canadians ought to be asking: why are we funding oversight bodies that can’t actually hold people accountable?
Liberals Try to Soften the Blow—Iqra Khalid’s Flimsy Defense
Then, enter Liberal MP Iqra Khalid, swooping in with damage control. Her goal? To downplay this mess as if it’s all just a big misunderstanding. She floated the idea that SDTC’s ethical violations weren’t “intentional misconduct” but simply lapses in judgment, suggesting board members maybe didn’t “understand” conflict-of-interest rules. Are we supposed to believe that these seasoned board members—handling millions in taxpayer funds—just forgot their ethics training?
Khalid hinted that more “training” and “internal guidance” would fix things. Bédard’s subtle response was telling: yes, training is helpful, but let’s be clear, SDTC’s issues are deeper. It’s a cultural problem within an organization that has no incentive to follow the rules. Training can’t fix a system that fundamentally disregards ethical standards. Khalid’s attempt to sidestep accountability only underscored what’s really happening here—a refusal to impose consequences.
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné and Richard Cannings: Why Aren’t Taxpayers Being Compensated?
Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné and NDP MP Richard Cannings brought up the most glaring issue yet: where’s the money? Taxpayers are funding SDTC, watching it go straight into the hands of conflicted board members, and yet, there’s no mechanism to get that money back. Sinclair-Desgagné demanded answers on why SDTC couldn’t recoup funds that were misappropriated due to these ethical lapses. Bédard’s response? The Auditor General’s office has no authority to force financial recovery, meaning SDTC’s board can make conflicted decisions with no risk of losing the cash.
Cannings and Sinclair-Desgagné went further, questioning whether anything less than legislative reform could solve this crisis. It was clear that these MPs understood the root of the problem: SDTC’s oversight is built on a house of cards, with taxpayer money at stake and no tools to hold anyone accountable. Canadians are effectively writing blank checks to a board of insiders who profit without consequences.
The Big Picture: A Culture of Entitlement and Zero Accountability
Michel Bédard’s testimony laid bare the sickening entitlement within SDTC’s leadership. This isn’t a minor oversight or an accidental misunderstanding—this is a systemic culture where people with a financial stake in the projects can vote themselves money, and no one bats an eye. Worse, the Liberal defense of SDTC is that because it has a “green mission,” its failures somehow don’t matter. They’re telling Canadians that as long as the organization’s purpose sounds virtuous, the rules don’t apply.
Let’s be real. No one believes that SDTC’s board members are unaware of basic ethics rules. These are people who sit in decision-making positions, who know full well the implications of conflict of interest. What’s happened here is that they’re taking advantage of a system that has no means of holding them accountable, and they know it.
What Canada Needs Now, Real Accountability, Not Empty Promises
The real takeaway from Bédard’s testimony? Canada’s so-called oversight framework is a farce. The Trudeau government has set up an accountability structure that looks good on paper but doesn’t stop the political class from dipping their hands in taxpayer money. If we want to see real change, Canadians need a complete overhaul of the system—one that actually empowers the Auditor General and Ethics Commissioner to take action and enforce consequences, not just to “report” and move on. Until that happens, SDTC will keep doing what it does best: functioning as a de facto slush fund for Trudeau’s elite insiders, where conflicts of interest are not exceptions but the rule.
Canadians deserve far better than a government handing out their tax dollars to political friends who think they’re untouchable. Michel Bédard’s testimony laid bare SDTC’s blatant failures, and it’s a moment of reckoning. Will any of these politicians rise above the corruption and demand real reform? Or will this testimony be just another chapter in the Trudeau government’s long saga of accountability failures?
Let’s get one thing straight: this isn’t about “green energy” or “sustainability.” Those are just fancy words bureaucrats use while they funnel public money to friends and business associates without a shred of oversight. And here’s the kicker—Liberal MPs want Canadians to think this is just a “misunderstanding” or, worse, that questioning it is somehow unpatriotic. It’s the Trudeau swamp at its finest: shut down accountability by slapping a green label on taxpayer-funded corruption and hoping no one notices.
Let’s face it: Sustainable Development Technology Canada isn’t operating in some dark corner of bureaucracy. It’s operating right out in the open, with the full backing of Trudeau’s government, while the Ethics Commissioner, the Auditor General, and Liberal MPs play the role of political apologists, doing everything they can to sweep this rot under the rug.
This committee session showed Canadians one thing loud and clear: they’re being lied to. Told that their money is supporting green technology, but instead, it’s being pocketed by insiders. SDTC, the Ethics Commissioner, the Auditor General—they’re not protecting Canadians. They’re protecting the interests of a political class that’s putting cronyism above the public good.
In a fair system, people would lose their jobs over this. Taxpayer money would be repaid. And those who let SDTC slip through the cracks would face consequences. But in Trudeau’s Canada, officials hide behind excuses, Ethics Commissioners wring their hands about “exposure,” and Liberal MPs get offended when we dare call corruption for what it is.
This isn’t “oversight.” It’s an insult to every Canadian who funds this government. It’s time to drain the Trudeau swamp, end the era of unchecked cronyism, and demand real, accountable governance. Canadians deserve nothing less.
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