The News Rundown
- What is precarity?
- Did Canadians move to precarity? If so, how and why?
- The role the media plays
- How this shakes out
- With the federal election campaign now underway it makes sense to take a look at some of the local campaigns shaping up. Specifically the campaigns around Edmonton Southeast and Edmonton Gateway.
- We’ll start with the simplistic case: Edmonton Gateway.
- It was announced this week that provincial NDP MLA Rod Loyola will be running for the Liberals in Edmonton Gateway and resigning his provincial seat.
- Loyola as an NDP MLA raises the question, why not run for the federal NDP? The answer is that the Liberals this time simply present a better chance of Loyola winning the seat.
- This puts Loyola against veteran Conservative MP and deputy leader Tim Uppal.
- Loyola has a non-zero chance of winning and given the redistricting there is a chance Edmonton Gateway could be competitive.
- As we’ve been doing for years we showcase histories of candidates that the media will not.
- Loyola has in the past praised former Venezuela dictator Hugo Chavez. Chavez of course destroyed Venezuela’s economy and persecuted his opponents.
- Loyola when he ran for the Alberta NDP leadership called for massive increases to Alberta oil royalties which would effectively kill the industry.
- Loyola was also listed in 2013 by the Marxist Leninist Daily as the media contact for an Edmonton tribute to Chavez.
- It seems as though the Liberal party is becoming a catch-all for anyone who opposes the Conservatives who wants to run in this election.
- While Loyola is a surprising candidate for the Liberals, our next candidate in Edmonton Southeast is not. Amarjeet Sohi.
- Sohi is of course Edmonton’s mayor and will be taking an unpaid leave of absence during the campaign.
- If he is not successful in his bid to return to Ottawa he’ll resume his mayoral duties and not run for re-election.
- Sohi on his decision to run said, “This is the most consequential election of our lifetime — we must fight to defend our sovereignty, economy, and workers against President Trump.”
- This spurred a great deal of question from some on council including Tim Cartmell who is running to be mayor this fall.
- Cartmell feels that if Sohi was going to run in Edmonton Southeast, he should have resigned as mayor.
- He put it simply: “My colleagues can run a meeting. It’s the bigger stuff. It’s the representation of the city, the voice of the city, the chief diplomat, kind of stuff. That is the real question. Who do councillors on a rotating basis take their advice from? The staff in their council office, which already have certain tasks? The staff in the mayor’s office who might be working in the best interests of the city, but might be working in the best interests of mayor Sohi’s candidacy federally?”
- This has created a perception, specifically from Cartmell, that Sohi is putting Edmonton as his second choice.
- Sohi of course left his role as councillor in 2015 to run for the Liberals under Trudeau and was elected and then defeated in 2019. As a cabinet minister he had a mixed record from positively advocating for the city to infamously ranting at a train carrying oil.
- Former Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel offered his views and he was blunt: “This isn’t the most publicly popular council or mayor, and this gives him an opportunity to maybe go gracefully and run in the southeast... It’s a bit disappointing that as a mayor, not as a councillor so much, to step down. You make a decision to stay for four years and then with some time to go you leave to move on.”
- Mandel having experience moving from municipal to provincial politics said that while issues are of equal importance, “To leave that to go on to federal politics, to go off into Ottawa and to some distant place which I don’t know how effective that is for the city sometimes, well the mayor is effective for our city and is supposed to be our leader, but things change.”
- He also said that with the mayor’s job you commit to doing or not commit to doing it.
- This all comes back to the question of political opportunity.
- Typically in Alberta the race is for the Conservative nomination.
- There’s going to be about 3 competitive seats in Edmonton and a couple in Calgary out of the province’s 37 seats up from 34 last time.
- Are these people running because they want to do good or are they seeing an opportunity? We’ll leave that to the voters to decide later in April.
- Supplementals:
- BC Premier David Eby has said that he's going to walk back a key portion of the NDP's tariff response bill following a backlash over concerns that the proposed legislation would give the government the power to bypass the legislature.
- He's not walking back all of the bill, just a particular part of it. But hearing about it from some news media, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that, because the reporting around the issue has been very shoddy at best.
- Eby says the government will remove Part 4 of the Economic Stabilization Tariff Response Act, the section that would give the cabinet the power to bypass the legislature and implement regulations in response to the "actions of a foreign jurisdiction" or any measure that supports the economy.
- Eby said that while his government needs to be able to act quickly in response to the U.S. president's economic targeting of British Columbia, democratic and legislative oversight is still a priority.
- The about-face follows negotiations this week between Attorney General Niki Sharma and the two B.C. Green MLAs over changes to the bill introduced on March 13. Critics included the B.C. Conservatives, some business groups and former B.C. Liberal premier Gordon Campbell.
- Campbell told CBC News earlier this week he did not buy Eby's argument that the emergency powers are needed so B.C. can respond more swiftly to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs: "It is the move of an autocrat, not someone who claims to be a New Democrat. It's a move that says the legislature will effectively be suspended for two years while whatever the premier decides to do gets done. That is not how a democracy works."
- While Campbell's remarks were well reported, a lesser known critic came from a fairly popular if not wrong place at the wrong time premier, Campbell's predecessor former NDP premier Ujjal Dosanjh.
- Dosanjh said the NDP was casting away the very democratic governance of the province by consolidating power in the executive at the expense of the 93 MLAs elected by British Columbians to debate and pass legislation.
- “This is a fundamental brutal assault on our constitution, on our way of governing ourselves and it is not warranted by anything I can imagine. It just boggles the mind. I can’t imagine any circumstances under which any government in a democracy should be given these powers in a blank cheque,” he added.
- The other parts of the bill involve breaking down interprovincial trade barriers and giving B.C. the ability to toll trucks that drive through the province to Alaska. Those sections remain unchanged and will be debated in the legislature after it returns from a break on Monday, and Eby promises it will be passed soon this spring.
- B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad says the entire bill should be scrapped. Instead, Rustad says Eby should adopt the bill on interprovincial trade that the Official Opposition has floated.
- "This [Bill 7] still gives [Eby] unlimited power to access private information, to use it for whatever he would like to use, as well as to bring in tolls or even road pricing if he wants to. Eby wanted dictatorial powers. Now, he wants partial dictatorial powers. That's still an abuse of democracy."
- The Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, B.C. Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of B.C., Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Independent Contractors and Businesses Association in B.C. and Urban Development Institute all wrote to the premier and Attorney General Niki Sharma in the last week asking the interprovincial trade component of the bill be split off separately, because their members cannot support the unjustified expansion of power the NDP is proposing. Several law firms also wrote against the bill, which Dentons' said was a 'draconian measure'. The firm compared Eby’s steps to those of Trump’s use of broad, unchecked, sweeping powers to bypass democratic institutions. It said: “Fear too often has been used by governments to justify undemocratic action. British Columbia should be careful not to do the same.”
- While everyone is talking about how Eby has changed his mind, what hasn't been reported is how he may try to reintroduce the now removed part of the bill at a later time. In his press conference he said: “We do need this authority. We do need the ability to respond quickly, and we’ll work with those key stakeholders that we committed to work with at the beginning of this process to get it right and ensure that they’re comfortable with these provisions. If there’s a chance for us to retool this and ensure that the safeguards are in place to make people feel comfortable that there’s democratic and legislative oversight of these incredibly important provisions, then we will do so.”
- With David Eby, it's surprising that his background as a lawyer in civil liberties would allow his conscience to go completely against his roots. It appears that the old political adage remains true: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. David Eby, while seemingly repudiating all that he used to stand for, may yet become what many fear: the Canadian left's version of Donald Trump. We will see.
- Supplementals:
Firing Line
- Mark Carney’s campaign should be raising questions about his past history at Brookfield Asset Management. From moving jobs to the US after it was clear Donald Trump won the election and exploiting tax loopholes for gain in Bermuda.
- It has become public that Carney personally co-chaired two investment funds dedicated to the transition to a net zero carbon economy worth a total of $25b.
- The funds were registered in Bermuda amongst other locations to benefit from tax advantages.
- The funds were the Brookfield Global Transition Fund worth $15b and the Brookfield Global Transition Fund II worth $10b.
- If we look at what this means for a man who is Prime Minister and is looking to continue in that role it raises questions about Carney’s fiscal policy.
- The use of tax havens is nothing new but it paints a picture of a person who is motivated by private sector profits. The question is: has Mark Carney’s priorities changed now that he’s Prime Minister?
- It paints a very interesting picture where Carney has spoken of an industrial carbon tax on steel producers and environmental measures according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer that will raise prices for Canadians.
- If Mark Carney is using tax havens, shouldn’t he be doing all he can to lower income taxes for Canadians and for businesses in Canada so they don’t have to go to Bermuda or the United States?
- Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said,”[Carney's] company, under his watch, put money in Bermuda to avoid paying taxes. All while Liberals force Canadians to pay higher taxes, Mark Carney dodges the bill himself. He thinks millionaires like him shouldn't have to pay.”
- Jagmeet Singh and the NDP’s attacks on Carney have landed on deaf ears in the first week of the campaign when this should be a bread and butter win for the NDP.
- Carney himself said that the “structure of the funds is designed to benefit the Canadian pension funds that invest in them.”
- The way such a fund works is that the fund is set up in Bermuda because they have no corporate income tax. Such a thing is often called a “flow-through entity.”
- After this that fund will invest in projects world wide. It could be a road in Europe, a shopping mall in the US, or a port in Asia.
- These businesses pay their taxes and their profits are sent back to the Bermuda fund.
- The Bermuda fund then sends profits to its investors including Canadian pension plans.
- What these green funds do is then invest in green type projects so things that may be renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, and avoid focus on traditional industries like coal, oil, and gas.
- Carney himself sees this as no problem given he’s put his assets in a blind trust - but it doesn’t change the fact that he and his companies benefited from policies that are typically frowned upon by most voters.
- Carney justified the entire structure first by admitting that it was “an efficiency of a structure” type situation and he said, “the important thing… is that the flow-through of the funds go to Canadian entities, who then pay the taxes appropriately.”
- But of course Brookfield’s actions don’t matter.
- This has spurred further discussion of whether or not Carney is a tax avoider according to NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and the bigger questions should now be in the open: what about Carney’s other assets?
- Specifically the curious case of a $256m loan from a Chinese state-owned bank is raising eyebrows.
- The loan was first reported in the UK’s Daily Telegraph that said, Carney met with the People’s Bank of China deputy director in October and two weeks later Brookfield secured a $256m loan from the state-owned bank.
- At this time Carney was still advisor to Justin Trudeau and it raises a lot of questions:
- Did Canada offer anything to China and what was Carney’s involvement?
- Why would there be meetings with top government CCP bankers for a quarter billion dollar loan while he was acting for the Canadian government?
- Why would he be collaborating with a hostile foreign regime that we have since learned executed four Canadians and took numerous Canadians hostage for a lengthy period of time, and given that Mr. Carney knows that he still owns massive financial interests in Brookfield, which owes a quarter billion dollars to a Chinese state controlled bank?
- These questions were asked by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre this week and he said, “we have never in our history had a weak, out-of-touch leader so terribly compromised and conflicted, whose interests go against our national interest. And I call on Mr. Carney right now to come before a microphone today and explain if this loan is still in place and if he still has those Brookfield assets that he had up until a few weeks ago.”
- A review of documents compiled by online outlet The Bureau showed that Brookfield maintains over $3b in politically sensitive investments with Chinese state-linked real estate and energy companies along with a substantial offshore banking presence.
- Carney served as chair and head of impact investing at Brookfield Asset Management. He undoubtedly had a role in all these decisions.
- One such real estate venture is a $750 million entry into a high-end Shanghai commercial property in 2013, as China’s real estate bubble was peaking, involving a Hong Kong tycoon affiliated with the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). The CIA labels the CPPCC as a “united front” entity of Beijing.
- Fast-forward 10 years, China’s real estate market crashed and Brookfield with Carney as chair “secured hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from the Bank of China to refinance its Shanghai commercial land holdings.”
- The connections between the CCP and the Liberals seem strong.
- Paul Chiang a Liberal running in Markham-Unionville suggested during a local Chinese language media conference in January that the people should claim a bounty on Joe Tay, presently running for the Conservatives in Don Valley North.
- "To everyone here, you can claim the one-million-dollar bounty if you bring him to Toronto's Chinese consulate," Chiang said, according to the Toronto Association for Democracy in China (TADC).
- Chiang has since apologized but it raises huge questions about the China connection with the Liberal Party of Canada.
- This story is innocent at first because it’s focused squarely on Mark Carney’s assets aimed to help Canadian pensioners - the primary voting bloc this time for the Liberals.
- But diving deeper we uncover a collection of investments and connections that raise questions for local candidates and the Prime Minister himself.
- The media should be treating this as a huge explosive story but they aren’t. They’re too focused on retaliation and making the US President out to be the bad guy to the benefit of themselves and the Liberals.
- Supplementals:
Quote of the Week
“This is a fundamental brutal assault on our constitution, on our way of governing ourselves and it is not warranted by anything I can imagine. It just boggles the mind. I can’t imagine any circumstances under which any government in a democracy should be given these powers in a blank cheque.” - Former BC NDP Premier Ujjal Dosanjh’s remarks on current BC NDP premier David Eby’s undemocratic Bill 7.
Word of the Week
Precarity - the state of persistent insecurity.
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Show Data
- Episode Title: Precarious Precarity
- Teaser: We talk about the rise of precarity in Canada, Edmonton’s mayor Amarjeet Sohi is running for the federal Liberals, and David Eby partially backs down from his undemocratic bill. Also, we look at the relationship between Mark Carney’s assets and China.
- Production Code: WC-411-2025-03-29
- Recorded Date: March 29, 2025
- Release Date: March 30, 2025
- Duration: 1:09:44
- Edit Notes: Shane cough
Podcast Summary Notes
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