Nearly six months after

promising

to “build twice as many homes every year,” on Sunday, Prime Minister Mark Carney followed the path laid out by virtually every other left-leaning politician in the country by launching a

new government bureaucracy

intended to increase the stock of affordable (read: socialized) housing throughout the country.

You’ll be forgiven if you’ve heard this one before. Promising affordable housing is a

favourite pastime

of the federal Liberals, largely because most of the impediments to building new homes fall outside Ottawa’s jurisdiction. It’s far easier to spend gobs of taxpayer money and create giant new bureaucracies than to actually deal with the reasons why Canada’s housing supply has failed to meet demand.

In 2017, the Liberals launched a $40-billion “National Housing Strategy” (NHS), which has since

more than doubled

in size, with the

goal

of building 125,000 new public housing units, refurbishing 300,000 and cutting homelessness in half within a decade. In the lead-up to the

2021 election

, the government set aside an additional $2.5 billion to create 35,000 affordable units. And the 2024 budget and fall economic statement

earmarked

an extra $8.3 billion for various affordable-housing initiatives.

How successful were these strategies? The proliferation of homeless encampments in our major cities clearly show that, eight years into its 10-year plan, the Ottawa isn’t anywhere close to cutting homelessness in half. Indeed, a

report

last year from Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada found that the homeless population increased by 20 per cent between 2018 and 2022.

Counting the number of homeless people is notoriously hard. Quantifying the affordable housing stock should be relatively easy. But unfortunately, even that is too much to ask of this country. According to

a 2024 report

from the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative, “There is no official estimate of the size (absolute or proportion of total) for Canada’s social or non-market housing stock.”

The government will brag that the NHS has “supported or committed to the creation of 134,707 new units and the repair of 272,169 units,” but how many of those have actually been completed is far less clear.

Enter Mark Carney with his “

bold new approach

” to solving the housing affordability crisis: spending “unprecedented” amounts of money to fix the problem that the previously unprecedented amount of taxpayer-looted wealth failed to address. His government is launching a new federal bureaucracy — unimaginatively called Build Canada Homes (BCH) — with $13 billion in initial funding.

At the outset, BCH intends to build 4,000 new affordable homes on federal land in Dartmouth, N.S., Longueuil, Que., Winnipeg, Edmonton, Ottawa and Toronto. But construction isn’t supposed to even get underway until sometime next year, and it could be years before any of those homes are occupied.

To spearhead the new department, Carney tapped

Ana Bailão

, a former Toronto city councillor who was on the board of Toronto Community Housing and chaired the planning and housing committee. While the prime minister

hailed her

as a “seasoned leader with deep experience in affordable housing,” her track record on the file is less than stellar.

According to data from the

Low-end of Market Rental Housing Monitor

, Toronto’s stock of non-market housing actually decreased during Bailão’s tenure on city council, from 77,742 units in 2010 to 72,143 in 2022. Even according to the

city’s own numbers

, half way through its 10-year plan to build 65,000 rent-controlled homes between 2020 and 2030, it has only completed 1,242.

The city maintains a running tally of its progress toward its affordable-housing target, which shows that the vast majority of projects are stuck in the pre-planning and application-review stages. And herein lies the problem: even purpose-built government housing initiatives do not have the inertia necessary to cut through the mounds of red tape that municipalities have built up over the years.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre identified this problem long ago, promising to use the federal purse strings to coax cities into relaxing zoning rules and reducing bureaucratic overhead. By hiring a former city planner who presided over an ever-worsening real estate market to head the new housing department, Carney is virtually ensuring that it will be business as usual for Canada’s overbearing city councils.

Worse still, this week’s announcement does nothing to increase the supply of market housing — the type that productive members of society aren’t forced to subsidize through their tax dollars. Based on

promises made

during the election, that plan is still to come, but it will also involve the BCH acting “as a developer” and require significant amounts of public funding.

Carney has clearly failed to learn the No. 1 lesson of the past 10 years of Liberal rule: you can’t solve problems by throwing truckloads of money at them. If the $82-billion NHS failed to bring house prices and homelessness under control, it’s hard to see how the $13-billion BCH is going to fare any better.

Ultimately, our leaders need to realize that more socialism is not a cure for past socialist excesses. Only a free housing market unencumbered by zoning and other laws that prevent densification and urban sprawl can provide Canadians with the housing they need at prices they can afford. Creating a new federal bureaucracy run by a career urban planner is not going to achieve that goal.

National Post

jkline@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/accessd

• Jesse Kline: Mark Carney’s five-year plan for Soviet-style housing
• Tasha Kheiriddin: Carney’s coming housing boondoggle

Following a summer of horrific crimes — a fatal domestic
assault
in the street by a man on release, the
stabbing
of a grandmother in front of a grocery store, the
execution
of a loving father in front of his children during a break-in, to name a few — the Liberals want you to know that they’ve got a plan for justice reform. 

It involves reforms for bail, domestic violence and hate crime — which were already reformed a few years back. Justice Minister Sean Fraser is coming into the fall session with the same old dusted-off stack of ineffective ideas that his predecessors already implemented. 

The Liberals have made changes to bail laws
twice
: in 2019 and again in 2023. 

In 2019, via Bill C-75, the Liberals codified the
principle of restraint
in the Criminal Code, a principle that was first brought into law back in
1972
, and has since been mandated by the Supreme Court on multiple occasions. It requires offenders to be released with the fewest conditions possible to ensure community safety. Practically, the Liberals didn’t change anything. 

More substantial was the Liberal addition of
racial considerations
into bail, primarily aimed at reducing the disproportionately higher prison populations of Black and Indigenous people. While it was marketed as a fairness measure, it was actually the opposite: it became easier for those in groups that most often find themselves in jail to receive bail thanks to this new identity bonus.

And to reduce the number of people being charged with bail condition violations, the Liberals added an option to hold a “judicial referral hearing” instead of laying a new charge when accused persons miss, say, a court appearance. But to the
disappointment of defence lawyers
(and probably the approval of almost everyone else), this provision is not being used in practice. Another illusion of change.

Finally, the Liberals helped along their feminist image by supposedly making it more difficult for domestic abusers to get bail — but only in the slightest sense. For those who had already been convicted of domestic violence, they created a presumption against granting bail, also known as a “reverse onus” provision, that makes jail in the lead-up to trial the default position of the court. Presumptions can be overcome with relative ease, however; they’re a bit like a speed bump in a parking lot.

By 2023 the Liberals learned they could just continue expanding reverse onus provisions to more crimes — various firearms and weapons offences — to create the appearance of progress. And so they did, with
Bill C-48
. Then came another trompe-l’œil of domestic violence reform: instead of just having a reverse onus favouring bail for repeat convicted abusers, this would be expanded to those who have also been discharged (found guilty, but not convicted) for domestic violence. That’s an incremental change of microscopic value. 

They also began
requiring
judges to consider the safety of victims and the community in their bail decisions — which, again, was already the case. How effective was all that? Nothing changed because it wasn’t a real change.

Even more reverse onus provisions are coming to bail in a fall bill, Fraser
says
— which just shows how little thought is actually being put into the justice file. Expect it to be just as inconsequential. This is just spinning tires in the mud while claiming to be getting somewhere. 

As for hate crimes, it’s a similar story. An offence
called
“Mischief relating to religious property, educational institutions, etc.” was created in 2017 with the assent of
Bill C-305
. It expanded the crime of mischief to religious property, which has been around
since
at least 2002, to daycares, schools, sports facilities, seniors homes, etc., used by minorities. It’s there to give the appearance of doing something — but it doesn’t, because regular mischief is an offence that already exists and works just as well. Indeed, it’s more likely to be used because it’s more established in the law, more flexible and more familiar to prosecutors and police. 

The Liberals followed that up with an update to the
old law
against obstructing clergymen, as well as disturbing religious services and gatherings for a “moral, social or benevolent purpose” — which they
actually considered repealing entirely in 2015
— by making the wording of the offence gender-neutral. Their reforms amounted to changing various instances of “he” to “they.” This happened in 2019 with
Bill C-51
. 

Now, the Liberals are
expected
to propose legislation this week that will create a new intimidation offence to ban people from scaring others away from accessing religious properties, and another offence that will criminalize — for the nth time — the obstruction of religious property. 

So, that’s the Liberal formula for dealing with hate crimes: take something that was already illegal, create a redundant provision that makes it doubly or triply illegal, and pat yourself on the back. Meanwhile, hate crimes have surged against Jews in particular, their synagogues becoming absolute magnets for Molotovs, bullets and heckling crowds. 

It’s trite at this point, but the problem lies with policing and prosecution — not enough charges laid on Islamist agitators, and, of the few that actually make it into existence, too many being snuffed out by Crown prosecutors.

The next few months will see another slew of disappointments of a similar theme. Fraser told media
last week
that his new hate crime bill will be coming forward very soon; yet another bail bill is likely coming next month; finally, “later in this parliamentary sitting,” we should expect a bill on domestic violence. 

It’s the fall; Parliament hasn’t sat for all of 2025 save for a few weeks, and Liberals are using their precious time remaining to ban criminal activity
that was already banned long ago
.

National Post

As the recent military parade and meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Beijing demonstrated, the global power structure is unravelling. The magnetic pull of the western alliance is cracking while that of our authoritarian adversaries is intensifying. In the

words

of the Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov, the image of China’s Xi Jinping, flanked by leaders of fellow nuclear powers Russia and North Korea, as ICBMs rolled through flag-waving crowds in Tiananmen Square, “marked a new phase in the redrawing of the international order.”

The impulsive, increasingly self-absorbed and often contradictory U.S. leadership of western alliances in Europe and Asia contrasts sharply with the newfound solidarity among China, Russia and North Korea. Formerly putative U.S. allies like India, Brazil, Vietnam and South Africa are increasingly attracted by the certainty, stability and less abrasive manner of China as opposed to the punitive tariffs and often insulting rhetoric from Donald Trump that antagonize governments and their people alike. It is, as Fareed Zakaria

described

on CNN, “the greatest own goal in modern U.S. foreign policy.”

Erstwhile U.S. NATO allies are being bludgeoned by Trump’s unlawful tariff measures. Most have bent their knee to accommodate the U.S. president in the hope of achieving some stability in what, for each, is a major, if not vital economic partnership.

The “America First” lunges by President Trump are stirring similar populist sentiments across Europe. In Britain, Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party lead the governing Labour Party in polls by 11 points. The faces and voices at Reform’s most recent convention had a distinct Trumpian ring, appealing to those who are tired of the government in power and fed up with being told what they should think by the establishment about immigration, multiculturalism, transgenderism, etc. Above all, they fear losing their country to those who despise them.

In France, yet another centrist government has fallen. The new prime minister will be the fourth in one year, and the chaos is only making things easier politically for the party treated as a pariah by the media — Marine Le Pen and her National Rally. As Gerard Baker

notes

in the Wall Street Journal, Le Pen’s designated successor, 29-year-old Jordan Bardella, “has worked with her to detoxify the brand, dispelling its old stench of antisemitism and Nazi-adjacent ideology.”

In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz is attempting to stave off growing public anger but is hamstrung by his dependence on the Social Democrats and is losing ground to the far-right, populist Alternative for Germany party.

The Europeans chose not to fight over tariffs, even though they had the economic power to resist. They chose to flatter and appease the U.S. president while trying to rekindle political, strategic and even economic dependency on Washington. But, following hapless concessions and humiliation, the European public must be increasingly indignant. It is time to strengthen the political union, put an end to the “vetocracy” that allows Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to block EU military assistance to Ukraine, and build Europe’s own defence system — a coalition of the willing — that is not completely reliant on the U.S. and can instil some fear in the Kremlin.

European leaders are trying gamely to fill the vacuum created by Donald Trump on the Russian–Ukraine conflict. Their fear of Russia is palpable. But, thus far, their new sense of unity and resolve falls short. Trump is now urging his European NATO members to join in secondary sanctions against countries buying cheap oil and gas from Russia. By repeatedly pausing to impose sanctions, Trump simply encourages more of the same from Vladimir Putin.

Events in Anchorage provided an unwarranted moment of glory for Putin but delivered nothing for the U.S., the West and certainly not for Ukraine. Poorly planned and executed, it revealed the shallowness of U.S. geopolitical capabilities. Before even beginning peace negotiations, the U.S. made unilateral concessions to Russia’s demands. Trump’s real goal on Ukraine remains obscure. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian people suffer escalating missile and drone attacks. Putin obviously believes that Ukraine’s army will break before his economy collapses, and every day without concrete U.S. action makes that more likely. Meanwhile, the 85 U.S. Senators committed to stronger sanctions against Russia sit supinely on their hands awaiting approval from the White House.

The U.S. levied secondary tariffs on India, with which it has cultivated closer, even strategic relations for more than two decades, but spared China knowing that China has real power to retaliate, whereas India does not. But how does this make strategic sense for America?

Russia’s drone attacks on Poland were neither inadvertent nor accidental. They targeted NATO unity and confidence, testing western patience and its inability to act. Trump’s feeble response — “It could have been a mistake” — was swiftly rebutted by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who

said

: “It wasn’t, and we know it.”  But it may intimidate Europeans into prioritizing their own security, not Ukraine’s.

The lack of depth in U.S. geopolitical thinking is clear. Foreign policy is more performative than concerted, more in tune with America First dogma than principled alliance leadership. The Democrats nationally have little to offer. They are in abject disarray and, if their two far-left mayoral candidates win in New York and Minneapolis in November, internal divisions will intensify.

The assassination of youth conservative organizer Charlie Kirk was a severe blow to the civil discourse he championed and is sure to exacerbate already brittle political divisions in America.

Globally, the negative impulses and insults from America will not be quickly forgotten. Because the White House is unpredictable and puts more emphasis on self-serving transactions for headlines than on strategy, it is souring attitudes among would-be friends and becoming more vulnerable to the machinations of would-be foes.

For Canada in particular, there is no reason to believe that good relations with the U.S. are just around the corner. We need to remove the blinkers and make decisions urgently on policies that serve our national interest, not woke symbolism, attract investment and improve productivity. Increased self-reliance is essential together with close relations with others, including China and India, who seek more productive and less abrasive relationships.

National Post

Derek H. Burney is a former 30-year career diplomat who served as Ambassador to the United States of America from 1989-1993

• Derek Burney: Action urgently needed as Canada-U.S. relations drift precariously
• Are Trump, Putin and Netanyahu propelling the planet toward the end of sovereignty?

Chrystia Freeland’s exit from cabinet, while not expected, is no great surprise.

The job of transport minister is unglamorous, dominated by regulation of railway rolling stock and of passenger bills of rights. The minister’s path is potholed with potentially career-limiting port, railway or airline strikes.

Former Conservative transport minister John Crosbie expressed his frustration in 1986 when he said no one understands how air fares work. “Why I should be expected to understand them is beyond me,” he said.

For someone with Freeland’s vaulting ambition, being parked in the backwater of transport, albeit with the additional nominal responsibility for internal trade, must have felt like those aspirations were being thwarted.

She said in a 

social media post

Tuesday she does not intend to run in the next election and that the time is right to seek fresh challenges. Quite why she didn’t make that decision before the last election suggests she thought Prime Minister Mark Carney would restore her to former glories, before she sparked the coup that made Justin Trudeau’s position untenable last December,

which saw her resign from cabinet the first time

.

Carney, the godfather to Freeland’s son, was Lincolnian enough to understand he needed to repair injured feelings after the leadership contest, in which he won 86 per cent of members’ votes and she won just eight per cent. He was clearly aware that untended, that hurt might have escalated into hostility, and Freeland could do to him what she did to his predecessor.

Instead, he offered her a position inside the cabinet from which she could watch the action on the ice, if not score any goals.

With her resignation, he has offered her the position of being Canada’s special representative for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

It’s not clear what that entails, given Canada already has an energetic ambassador in Kyiv in Natalka Cmoc.

But it’s a soft landing for the former finance minister and will give Carney time to look for a star candidate to parachute into her safe Liberal riding of University—Rosedale. The prospect of mini cabinet shuffle will also keep the caucus in line, as part of the perennial backbench battle between the hope of promotion and the experience that it won’t happen.

Freeland’s knowledge of, and commitment to, Ukraine is not in doubt and perhaps she will carve out a meaningful role once peace finally comes.

More likely, she will find a high-profile international role outside government that reflects her sense of her own destiny. Her career has been peripatetic since she started a freelance journalism career in Ukraine but it has been marked by one constant: every job has been an upgrade on its predecessor, until now.

She made her name as the Financial Times’ Moscow bureau chief in the 1990s. Bill Browder, the financier and human rights activist, wrote in his book Red Notice that he met Freeland in Moscow to discuss his struggles with a Russian oligarch. He described her as having a “zealous fire in her belly” and making up for her lack of stature with her approach to life.

By that time, she already had

a bulging KGB file under the code-name “Frida”

and was described by the Russian secret service as “a remarkable individual — erudite, sociable, persistent and inventive in achieving her goals.”

She penned a book on her time in Russia in 2000 called Sale of the Century, about the country’s “wild ride” from communism to capitalism, and another called Plutocrats: the rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else in 2012.

Trudeau and his team were intoxicated with the ideas about income equality and redistributive “fairness” in Plutocrats.

In admiring terms, Freeland quoted former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers saying that focusing on redistribution made more sense than focusing on growth — an idea she championed enthusiastically in government.

She was recruited to run in the safe Toronto Centre seat, after Bob Rae’s retirement, and was appointed international trade minister after the Liberals won in 2015.

With President Donald Trump’s first victory in 2016, she was appointed foreign affairs minister in place of Stéphane Dion, who was considered a potential liability in the new Washington. She won good reviews, at least initially, for her keen interest in human rights and her commitment that Canada would stand up at a time of American retrenchment. Canada “is an essential country at this time in the life of our planet,” she said.

But critics would claim that too much of what followed echoed Trudeau’s virtue-signalling to the UN General Assembly in 2016, when he declared: “We’re Canada and we’re here to help.”

In reality, Canada did not have the hard power or the energy to live up to the rhetoric, particularly when it was forced to deal with a Trump administration intent on a trade war.

As negotiations on an updated NAFTA proceeded, relations between Freeland and the American trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, became strained over Canada’s “values-based” foreign policy.

Trump made public

his disdain for the Canadian foreign minister

, saying: “We don’t like their representative very much.”

Freeland got much of the kudos when the CUSMA deal was signed but the final, brass-tacks negotiations were between Lighthizer and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner on the American side, and Trudeau’s top staffers, Gerald Butts and Katie Telford, for Canada.

At the time the COVID pandemic struck, Freeland was openly coveting the finance minister’s job, colleagues said.

By summer 2020, the incumbent Bill Morneau was resisting efforts to make temporary support programs more permanent. In August, he was thrown overboard, with the Prime Minister’s Office whispering to journalists that he was “too orthodox” in his approach.

Freeland was brought in, declaring the pandemic a “tremendous opportunity” for the country to rebuild along more equitable, greener lines.

Her strategy was based on interest rates as a share of GDP being at 100-year lows. The assumption was that debt-servicing costs would remain below 10 per cent of tax revenues in perpetuity (they rose to 11 per cent in 2024/25).

She was warned by veterans like former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge that debts and deficits are arithmetic, not ideological. She dismissed such warnings as being the ravings of a generation scarred by the debt crisis of the mid-1990s. “It is a poor general who fights the last war,” she said.

“In today’s low interest environment, not only can we afford these investments in Canada’s future, we would be short-sighted not to make them.”

The fruit of such thinking was the 2021 budget, which included $143 billion of new spending and projections that the national debt would hit $1.5 trillion within five years (from $615 billion when Trudeau took power).

In her social media posting on Tuesday, Freeland noted that Canada made it through the pandemic while maintaining its triple-A credit rating. She would probably point to the introduction of child care as a good investment for the future.

But her “pre-loaded stimulus” was undoubtedly overgenerous: in the first three quarters of 2020, Statistics Canada said the average household amassed $10,500 in savings, compared to $1,157 in 2019. And she made no allowance for the possibility, nay inevitability, of borrowing costs exceeding economic growth.

As finance minister, she never hit a target she imposed on herself, from falling debt-to-GDP levels to limiting the deficit to $40 billion.

It was only at the 11th hour that she broke with Trudeau’s profligacy, reversing the decision to spend billions on “costly political gimmicks” like the two-month GST holiday and the $250 rebate cheques for 19-million households.

Her act of rebellion brought down a prime minister and paved the way for Carney’s accession.

He should be grateful for that. But he should also thank the minister most closely associated with Trudeau’s utopian crusade to change the world in his own progressive image for signalling her intent to move on from frontline politics.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

• John Ivison: Carney’s many promises confront reality, and real opposition
• John Ivison: The NDP’s rapidly declining sanity affects us all

The KGB once lauded Chrystia Freeland as someone who was “inventive” in achieving her goals.
 

The ex-Soviet spy agency’s insightful
analysis
is in need of an update to include the fact that she never achieved her ultimate goal of becoming prime minister despite an artful public letter that slipped a stiletto between the shoulder blades of Justin Trudeau.
 

Having toppled the king, Freeland was denied the crown by a Liberal party that may have celebrated her ruthlessness but was distrustful of her ambition.
 

The party, like the KGB, may have recognized that during her time in office Freeland displayed that most guileful of political talents – being loyal until it no longer suited her.
 

On Tuesday, Freeland
announced
she was stepping down from her transport minister role and would not stand at the next election. Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was appointing her as “Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine.”
 

Freeland, who is of Ukrainian descent and speaks the language, has been a harsh critic of Russia’s war.
 

“The brave people of Ukraine are fighting for their democracy and freedom — but they are also on the front lines fighting for us all. Canadians will continue to stand with Ukraine in the face of Russia’s illegal invasion,” she
wrote
last year.
 

The prospect at being a thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin will no doubt delight the irrepressible Freeland who is sure to again attract the attention of Russia’s intelligence service.
 

In 2014, Freeland, who also speaks Russian and was stationed in Moscow as a journalist during the 1990s, was banned from the country because of her anti-Soviet activities.
 

Although a self-declared Russophile, Freeland has been adamant in her denunciation of Putin.
 

Freeland entered politics in 2013 and her star really began rising after the election of Trudeau as prime minister in 2015.
 

He appointed her minister of international trade that year, the first of many cabinet appointments: foreign affairs, intergovernmental affairs, finance, and deputy prime minister.
 

According
to Catherine Tsalikis, who wrote a biography of Freeland — Chrystia: From Peace Valley to Parliament Hill — she was Trudeau’s right-hand, having one-on-one meetings with him every week.
 

During her time in finance (2020-2024) she spent the nation’s money at record amounts, increased the deficit to an astonishing $62 billion, raised taxes on middle-income families, and lowered living standards, according to an
analysis
by the Fraser Institute.
 

Under her tenure, the government spent $54.1 billion on debt interest, more than health transfers to the provinces ($52.1 billion.)
 

Freeland’s record at finance was “one of continuous deficits and growing debt,”
said
the Fraser Institute.
 

All this in the name of being a loyal Liberal.
 

Freeland was also not above stoking the rhetorical flames if it suited the party’s needs.
 

Her defence of a capital gains tax increase in 2024 was simply bonkers. Those who opposed the increase were being selfish and unfair to younger generations, she said, before envisaging some dystopian future.
 

“Do we want to live in a country where those at the very top live lives of luxury but must do so in gated communities behind ever higher fences using private health care and airplanes because the public sphere is so degraded and the wrath of the vast majority of their lesser privileged compatriots burns so hot,” she said.
 

If Freeland had quit politics in November 2024 she might have been best remembered as a divisive, reckless spending, Trudeau-loyalist and devoted Liberal.
 

But Freeland wrote her legacy in a letter the next month when she resigned the finance position.
 

Trudeau, her former best friend, planned on replacing her with Carney and Freeland quit before she could be ousted.
 

But if she was going then she was determined to bring Trudeau down with her.
 

Trudeau had to eschew “costly political gimmicks,” she wrote, a shot at the then-prime minister’s plan to give $250 rebate cheques to working Canadians.
 

She implied Trudeau was not working in “good faith and humility” with provincial premiers and that the party was more focused on itself than with helping Canadians.
 

Having initiated Trudeau’s demise, Freeland began jockeying for the prime minister’s role with one of her first acts being to distance herself from the Liberals’ record.
 

“Canadians want good jobs, homes they can afford and great care for their kids. They want a government that is as careful with Canada’s money as Canadians are with their own,” said Freeland in January this year, conveniently forgetting that she was the one who was responsible for the out-of-control spending.
 

However, she was denied the role by Carney whose “Elbows Up” grandstanding eclipsed Freeland’s political treachery.
 

The Woman Who Brought Down Justin Trudeau is probably not the way Freeland would like to be remembered, but it was, undoubtedly, her greatest public service.
 
 

National Post

• Terry Newman: Carney follows Trudeau with hollow boast about female Liberal MPs
• Tasha Kheiriddin: Carney’s coming housing boondoggle

Monday’s first session of Question Period opened with Prime Minister Mark Carney and Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre displaying common courtesy toward each other, and a bit of humour from Poilievre, who, after thanking the constituents of his new riding, Battle River-Crowfoot, also thanked Carney for calling a prompt byelection, playfully quipping, “I wonder if one day he might regret that decision.”

Poilievre’s challenge will be maintaining that playful, distanced tone while holding the long-serving Liberals to account under their new leader Carney. Poilievre already has his finger on Canada’s pulse, as shown by the Liberals adopting his ideas, leading to their electoral success. Poilievre’s goal, now, is to retain the wit and precision he brings to issues that matter most to Canadians, while winning over more hearts. Monday’s first session was a good start.

Arriving to standing applause from the Conservative caucus, Poilievre entered late and apologized, joking that his mother would not approve of such tardiness.

After that, Poilievre wasted no time framing their oppositions’ approach going forward, asking the Speaker, “In the spirit of good faith, I wonder if (the prime minister) agrees that our goal should be a Canada where hard work is rewarded, where food and homes are affordable, where streets are safe, borders are solid and we’re all united under a proud flag.”

This opening statement isn’t a simple policy slogan centred around one issue, like the Liberals’ “Elbows Up” or “Building Canada Strong.” It’s a cohesive overarching vision for Canada. And so far, Carney and the Liberals have offered nothing like it.

It also serves as a reminder, not only to the new prime minister and his party, but to Canadians, that it is the Conservatives that brought these issues to the forefront, and it is the Conservatives who will be holding the government to account going forward, day in and day out.

Carney, for his part, cordially welcomed Poilievre back to the House of Commons, responding, “I agree entirely with the sentiment and objectives of the leader of the Opposition.”

Carney then pivoted to proudly exclaiming, “He may notice a few things have changed since he was here last; The largest women’s caucus in Canadian history.”

It seems Mark Carney is already following in Justin Trudeau’s footsteps. In 2015, former Prime Minister Trudeau made a similar

boast

about his gender-balanced, ethnically-diverse cabinet, which consisted of 15 men and 15 women. “Because it’s 2015,” he said at the time.

We all know how that played out. By 2019, two of those female cabinet ministers resigned, along with another female caucus member.

In February of 2019, Jody-Wilson Raybould, Canada’s first Indigenous Minister of Justice and Attorney General, an MVP of this gender-parity cabinet, quit, citing ethical concerns. According to Wilson-Raybould, Trudeau and his aides had pressured her to interfere in a criminal prosecution against Quebec’s SNC-Lavalin which was facing corruption charges. After refusing, she was demoted to Veterans Affairs in a cabinet shuffle and resigned. She later testified before parliamentary committee detailing the pressure campaign. It was ruled that Trudeau violated conflict of interest rules.

The following month, Jane Philpott joined her, saying the treatment of Wilson-Raybould raised “

serious concerns

” for her. 

“The solemn principles at stake are the independence and integrity of our justice system,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “Sadly, I have lost confidence in how the government has dealt with this matter and in how it has responded to the issues raised.”

Wilson-Raybould and Philpott both had distinguished careers and exemplary resumes before joining the party, much more distinguished than Justin Trudeau’s. These interferences and demotions put into question the actual aims of Trudeau’s gender-parity, ethnically-diverse cabinet.

Also in March, female Liberal caucus member, Celina Caesar-Chavannes, a parliamentary secretary resigned, both in support of Wilson-Raybould and due to personal interactions with Trudeau, which she later described in an interview with Jordan Peterson. In the interview, she told Peterson that the tokenism in the party was “dehumanizing.” According to Caesar-Chavannes, she wanted to quit the same day as Wilson-Raybould, but Trudeau told her to wait to resign, because he was concerned about “

the optics of having two women of colour leaving

,” on the same day.

Later in 2024, Chrystia Freeland, then deputy prime minister and finance minister, resigned from Trudeau’s gender-parity cabinet after receiving word she was going to be shuffled out of her position. Freeland was

reportedly

at odds with Trudeau’s preference for deeper spending.

Trudeau’s “Because 2015,” was obviously a virtue-signalling ploy, which did not match how he and his government treated MVP female cabinet members and other female caucus members, and now they’re playing the same game again, hurling the boast as if Canadians are unfamiliar with how the Liberal Party actually treats women.

On the other side of the caucus, there’s no need for the Opposition to brag about their strong female MPs or ethnicity, or sexuality. It is assumed that MPs are there because they are qualified, not because of their sexual identity. For example, Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman has been at Poilievre’s side since 2022. The Conservatives do not feel the need to boast that she’s a woman or a lesbian for clout. That’s not why she’s there. Her skills are obvious.

Unless the Liberals come up with an overarching vision for Canada like Poilievre’s and learn from their past identity-peddling mistakes, it looks like they will be doomed to repeat them.

X: @TLNewmaMTL

tnewman@postmedia.com

It’s official: Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal government are in the housing business. Last week, Carney unveiled

Build Canada Homes

, a $13 billion development scheme that will

help fund 

the construction of 4,000 modular homes on six sites across the country starting next year, and “scale” up to 45,000. The agency

will

“fight homelessness by building transitional and supportive housing…  build deeply affordable and community housing for low-income households, and partner with private market developers to build affordable homes for the Canadian middle class.”

Sounds grand. But its mandate is at odds with its method. And the same middle-class taxpayer that is supposed to benefit from this boondoggle will end up footing its deeply unaffordable bill.

The first goal of Build Canada Homes is to construct transitional and supportive housing. These aren’t “forever homes” but housing that gets people off the street or out of precarious situations.

Newsflash: in major metropolitan areas, such homes already exist. Both Toronto and Vancouver are seeing

an unprecedented condo crash

. In Toronto, at publication, there are 3,279 listings going for $600,000 or less, with units

starting to sell in the $300,000

’s, prices not seen for decades. There are also 1,911

unsold new units in completed projects

and 11,073 unsold units currently under construction.

If the government wanted to house thousands of homeless people today, it could scoop up condos at bargain prices, hire the same

“mission driven organizations”

it mentions to help people settle, and mandate treatment programs for addiction and mental health issues as a quid pro quo. Instead, the government wants to start building modular housing in a year’s time, from scratch.

And it will face several hurdles. It will require new infrastructure, in the form of water mains, electrical connections, and roadways. It will require labour when Canada has a

shortage of construction workers

and will still be short over 100,000 in 2034. And based on previous government boondoggles

like ArriveCan

, it will come in over budget and favour friends of those in power.

Now, for the middle class. What is an affordable home? The issue isn’t the cost of housing, but its relation to wages. Across the country, real estate prices

rose seven times faster

than wages since 1981. That gap is narrowing, with average home

prices down four per cent in Toronto and Vancouver

year over year. But it’s still not enough to entice many middle-class buyers.

What should the government do instead of building? Again, support conversion of existing stock. Toronto’s problem, for example, isn’t that it doesn’t have housing, but that it has a “missing middle” of multi-unit housing. To change this, it recently gave permission for multiplexes, which are being unsurprisingly challenged by irate neighbours who don’t want ugly mega-buildings next door.

Rather than start NIMBY wars, why not incentivize homeowners to convert their existing properties into duplexes and triplexes? Older homeowners who want to remain in their home after the kids are gone, younger people who might want to buy with friends but each have their own space. Converting single family homes but retaining neighbourhood character would increase density in a liveable city.

But instead of working with what’s there, Carney wants to create “an entirely new Canadian housing industry.” Problem is, he won’t. He will create a subsidized housing industry, a model that is as old as the hills.

Perhaps Carney figures that without public money, private developers won’t build anything. The CMHC

forecasts

that housing starts will fall to 220,000 units by 2027, a 20 per cent drop from 2021. Nine condo projects

have been cancelled

this year in Toronto, on pace to meet last year’s total of 11. Building doesn’t pay, because there are no buyers.

Instead of working against the market, why not take advantage of it? Why not help people right now, today? Once existing stock is gone, demand will create an incentive to build again. And the government won’t have to spend public money to do it.

Postmedia News

Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.

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For the second time in one week, Russia has violated the air space of a NATO member. On Sunday, a Russian drone flew through Romanian airspace, coming just days after a Russian drone incursion over Poland. Both incidents represent an unprecedented provocation between Vladimir Putin and NATO with the potential to cast the West into armed and prolonged conflict. There is no playbook for theatrics such as these; Putin’s antics — although momentarily contained — reveal an official disregard for sovereignty and statecraft without clearly-defined objectives, ambitions or outcomes.

Such weaponized uncertainty is the stuff of political nightmares, even as it increasingly becomes the norm worldwide. Russia’s drone-play came barely a day after Israel launched a brazen attack on Hamas’ political leadership in the heart of Qatar’s capital, Doha. Meanwhile, the U.S. — unleashed by President Donald Trump’s disdain for both terror and drug-trafficking — has now twice shot and destroyed boats off the coast of Venezuela that Trump claimed were ferrying drugs for notorious

narco-gangs

, such as the Tren de Aragua cartel. An early September attack killed a reported 11 traffickers, while a second Monday saw “three male terrorists” killed off of the Venezuela coast, according to the President. “Big bags of cocaine and fentanyl” were “spattered all over the ocean,”

Trump declared to reporters

with characteristic bravado.

With a cluster of warships still positioned in the Caribbean, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned such strikes could continue as America evolves its decades-long war on drugs into an actual war. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, undeterred by the global outrage at the Doha strike, says any Hamas leader who managed to survive (most did) remains an Israeli target, nations and borders be damned.

As summer eases into fall, the world is entering nothing less than a bona fide sovereignty crisis. What were once clearly-defined borders and boundaries are now dissolving amid act after act of institutionalized globalized incitement. Nearly two years after Hamas’ attack on Israel reduced peace accords to rubble, the most basic tenants of nationhood no longer seem to matter.

No nation is stoking the sovereignty crisis right now quite like Israel. What began as legitimate responses to brazen violations of Israel’s own sovereignty has evolved into a multi-theatrical assault on any target Jerusalem believes threatens its nationhood and survival. Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, the mullahs in Iran, Hamas leaders in Qatar or Tehran and Houthi warlords in Sanaa — all are fair game.

Of course, considering the thousands of missiles Hezbollah rained down on Israel from Lebanon and the seemingly endless Houthi drone attacks from Yemen, Netanyahu is not without cause. Just like Hamas’ brazen breach two Octobers ago, such affronts represent inviolable violations of Israel’s own sovereignty that cannot go unanswered. But there is a cost to such duty, the sovereignty crisis now playing out across the globe.

Indeed, while Israel has chosen to limit its actions to the Middle East, Russia’s incursions into Poland and Romania along with Trump’s battleships in the Caribbean are the real scary spots. The White House has made clear they view narco-traffickers as nationless, border-less bandits whom U.S. forces may legitimately

“blow up”

without regard for sovereignty or state-affiliation.

Speaking in Ecuador this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump wants to “wage war on these groups because they’ve been waging war on us for 30 years.” Pretty provocative stuff, particularly as it came amid Trump’s renaming of the Department of Defense to the Deptment of War. Far more provocative was Rubio’s refusal to dismiss suggestions that drug traffickers from U.S. allies such as Ecuador or Mexico could face “unilateral executions” such as the one launched off of Venezuela last week.

Already Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is facing her most severe domestic challenges amid White House demands to position U.S. troops on Mexican soil, a violation of sovereignty Sheinbaum insists is an

uncrossable red-line

. But Trump’s entire second term, despite its relatively infancy, has been nothing less than one disregarded red line after another. After all, what else would you call his endless threats to “annex” Canada, “reclaim” Panama or “buy” Greenland?

As the world awaits both an explanation and response to Russia’s drone sweep over Europe, the potential for a Ukraine-styled conflict on NATO soil has never been greater. Like Netanyahu, who attempted to kill off Hamas’ leadership just as they were considering an apparent cease-fire, Putin has little concern for the global coalition clamoring to end his war with Kiev. If anything, he appears eager to ratchet up the threat level.

These are uncharted waters far rougher than the drug-filled seas off of Venezuela targeted by Trump or the luxury villas along the Arabian Sea destroyed by Netanyahu. And Putin’s posturing has the potential to invoke obligatory NATO responses that if not enacted, would embolden his fellow

axis-of-evil despots

in Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran.

(The US made clear it will defend NATO).

With just weeks until the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks, Netanyahu is primed to erase any semblance of Gaza as the world once knew it. And this means ending even the minimal Gaza sovereignty that allowed Hamas to fester in the first place.

Netanyahu is remaking Gaza into an image of uncertain conclusion, much as he is remaking the entire Middle East. Both Putin and Trump have clearly taken notice, following suit with equally unbridled arrogance. Sovereignty has been the first casualty of this trio’s ambitions — but the casualties will inevitably mount as boundary after boundary continues to be violated.

David Christopher Kaufman is a former New York Post columnist and editor.

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