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Canada deserves to know.
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11 articles
The Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) was created in 2006 to provide non-partisan, independent analysis to Parliament on the federal budget, economic projections, and the financial implications of legislation. The PBO is led by an Officer of Parliament appointed for a seven-year term and reports directly to Parliament rather than the government of the day. This article walks the PBO's mandate, the reports they publish, what the "independent" designation actually means, where they have publicly contradicted government numbers, and why every serious civic conversation about federal spending should start with the PBO's estimates rather than the government's.
Across Prime Minister Mark Carney's first year in office (March 2025 - February 2026), in-flight catering on the 28 official flights he took as Prime Minister cost approximately $524,815 CAD (£281,773 in the original UK media reporting). The figure was provided in writing by the Government of Canada in response to Order Paper Questions tabled by opposition Members of Parliament — meaning the number is the government's own published answer, drawn from internal expense records. Specific high-cost examples documented in the response: approximately $21,000 in catering for a two-hour flight to Washington DC in May 2025 for the Prime Minister's first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump; approximately $159,000 in catering for a combined visit to the United Arab Emirates and the G20 summit in Johannesburg; and an October 2025 flight where the refreshments cost approximately eleven times the fuel costs for that journey for 55 delegates. For comparison: Statistics Canada's Survey of Household Spending reports the average Canadian household spent $8,659 on food from stores in 2023; Canada's Food Price Report 2024 projected a typical family of four would spend $16,297.20 annually on a healthy diet, or $339 per person per month. The Carney flight-catering total therefore equals roughly 60 family-of-four annual healthy-diet budgets, or 32 average household annual grocery bills. This article documents the proactive-disclosure record, the specific high-cost flights, the family-food comparison, and the honest caveats — including the fact that "refreshments" covers the entire travelling delegation, not just the Prime Minister personally.
Mark Carney joined Brookfield Asset Management in 2020 as Vice Chair and Head of ESG and Impact Investing, later becoming Chair of the Brookfield Asset Management board. He held those roles until January 2025, immediately before launching his successful Liberal leadership campaign and becoming Prime Minister in March 2025. According to Brookfield's 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Carney held 409,300 unexercised Brookfield stock options worth approximately US$6.8 million as of December 31, 2024. Brookfield is one of the largest residential property owners in Canada, with 31,211 residential units in the country (part of a North American portfolio of over 73,000 single-family lots). Upon becoming Prime Minister, Carney placed his assets in a blind trust and established a conflict-of-interest screen — administered by his chief of staff Marc-André Blanchard and Privy Council Clerk Michael Sabia — intended to wall him off from official decisions involving Brookfield and the payment-processing firm Stripe (on whose board he also served). His ethics filing lists more than 100 entities under the conflict-of-interest screen. In April 2026, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics published a report recommending that prime ministers be required to fully divest their investment portfolios on taking office, not merely place them in a blind trust. Democracy Watch has characterized the blind-trust-and-screen arrangement as "loophole-filled." This article documents the financial relationship, the conflict-of-interest architecture, the specific concerns raised about it, and Carney's defenses — sticking strictly to the documented financial record.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is the federal body designed specifically to audit how privacy-affecting government and private-sector practices are conducted. Every recent lawful-access bill in Canada — Bill C-30 (Toews, 2012), Bill C-2 (Strong Borders Act, 2025) — included some statutory role for the OPC in the regime being created. Bill C-22 (Lawful Access Act, 2026) does not. The OPC has no audit role over the bill's one-year metadata-retention requirement, no review role over the Public Safety Minister's secret capability orders, and no complaint jurisdiction over the new regime. The bill instead points to the Intelligence Commissioner as the review body for ministerial orders — a different review body with a different scope. This article walks through what changed between the predecessors and the current bill, and what an OPC role could look like as an amendment.
On April 28, 2026 — the first day the Liberals’ new House majority took effect — two House of Commons standing committees voted to go in camera on motions involving public-interest accountability. At HESA (Health), Liberal Parliamentary Secretary Maggie Chi moved to take the meeting in camera while a Conservative motion to ask the Auditor General to audit PrescribeIT was on the floor. The vote was 6–5: six Liberals YEA, four Conservatives plus one Bloc MP NAY. At ETHI (Ethics), Liberal members made an identical move on a Conservative motion that would have required the Privy Council Office to provide regular updates on the Prime Minister’s ethics screen. The pattern triggered a public defence from Liberal House leader Steven MacKinnon, who pledged "open committees" the next day.
PrescribeIT, the federal e-prescribing service operated by Canada Health Infoway and built primarily by Telus Health, will go offline at 11:59 PM EST on May 29, 2026. Health Canada has acknowledged "more than $290 million" in federal spending on the program over 10 years; Conservative MPs use the rounded "$300 million" figure. Roughly $98 million of that flowed to Telus Health, which retained approximately 85% of the underlying intellectual property. Adoption never broke 5% of Canadian prescriptions. On April 27, 2026, four Conservative MPs on the House of Commons Health Committee — led by Conservative health critic Dan Mazier — formally asked the Auditor General to investigate. The Conservative Party stated that on the same day, "Liberal Members filibustered the health committee to block the release of those documents." Bloc Québécois MP Maxime Blanchette-Joncas endorsed the audit request. Health Canada told the committee that detailed PrescribeIT spending is not centrally tracked.
On November 4, 2025 — the morning of the federal budget — Conservative MP Chris d’Entremont became the first Conservative to cross to Mark Carney’s Liberals, six months after winning re-election by 533 votes on the Conservative ticket. Within ten days, the watchdog group Democracy Watch filed a formal complaint with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, arguing that d’Entremont’s loss of his Deputy Speaker salary top-up created a financial motive that warranted investigation under the Conflict of Interest Code. The Commissioner declined to investigate.
Conservative MP Michael Ma crossed the floor to Mark Carney’s Liberals on December 11, 2025 — nine days after a Hansard speech in which he attacked the Liberal record on housing, productivity, and economic governance, calling them "team feudalism." He has since admitted he was "truly a Conservative" at the Conservative Christmas party the night before he crossed. A constituent petition calling for his resignation has reportedly gathered tens of thousands of signatures.
On November 6, 2025, Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux announced he was resigning from Parliament, telling constituents there was "no coercion" involved and that his focus needed to be on his family. On February 18, 2026, he reversed course, kept the Edmonton Riverbend seat his constituents had elected him to as a Conservative, and crossed the floor to the Liberals. Within weeks he was named a Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on Economic and Security Partnerships and joined Mark Carney on a trip to India, Australia, and Japan.
On January 11, 2026, Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu told a local newspaper she supported a petition calling for automatic byelections when MPs switch parties, saying voters "deserve a chance to have a redo." On April 8, 2026, she crossed the floor to the Liberals herself. Sarnia-Lambton’s mayor and the local Conservative riding association president have publicly called for her to face a byelection. She has not.
Between November 2025 and April 2026, four Conservative MPs crossed the floor to join the Liberal caucus. Combined with three byelection victories, these crossings gave the Liberals a working majority in the House of Commons — without a general election. An Angus Reid poll found 74% of Canadians believe floor-crossing MPs should be required to run in a byelection.