Canada’s multi-billion-dollar equalization program - sold to taxpayers as a noble way to help “have-not” provinces punch at the same weight - is fundamentally broken. That’s not rhetoric. That’s the conclusion from hard data released today by the Fraser Institute.

In a new study, analysts Tegan Hill and Joel Emes examined 44 years of equalization payments against provincial GDP per person, the most straightforward measure of economic living standards. Their verdict is damning: in 15 of the last 25 years, one or more provinces with higher GDP per person received equalization payments while a province with lower living standards received nothing.

The program is supposed to work like this: richer provinces pay in, poorer ones get help to provide comparable public services without crushing their residents with taxes. In practice, it’s a political slush fund that frequently rewards the wrong provinces and punishes others.

The most glaring example is from 2009 to 2018. Ontario collected equalization payments every single year - totaling 19.0 billion dollars - even though the province enjoyed a higher GDP per person than British Columbia in each of those 10 years. BC got zero. On average, Ontario’s GDP per person sat 3.2 percent higher than BC’s during that stretch.

Let that sink in. A larger, more populous province with a stronger economy on paper was treated as a “have-not” while British Columbians - dealing with crushing housing costs, resource sector battles, and their own fiscal pressures - got stiffed.

This wasn’t a one-off anomaly. The Fraser Institute found discrepancies in all but three years between 1981 and 2024. Among recipient provinces, richer ones by GDP per person routinely received larger per-capita payments than poorer ones. Newfoundland and Labrador, riding an oil boom, had higher GDP per person than multiple provinces in the 2000s - sometimes as many as four other provinces - yet still pulled in bigger equalization cheques.

These aren’t random glitches. The research points to ongoing, structural issues baked into the equalization formula. The way Ottawa measures fiscal capacity, includes or excludes certain revenues, and applies the program creates perverse outcomes year after year.

Equalization has become untethered from its original purpose. Instead of a transparent, needs-based transfer, it functions as a political tool that keeps certain provinces dependent and others resentful.

For resource-producing provinces in the West, this is particularly galling. British Columbia and Alberta generate enormous wealth through forestry, mining, energy, and ports, yet the system often treats their success as a reason to extract more while handing cheques to jurisdictions with weaker economic performance.

The Western Provinces are tired of being treated as reliable ATMs for Confederation while fighting their own battles - exploding housing prices, strained health care, crumbling infrastructure, and endless regulatory war on the industries that actually pay the bills. Every dollar funneled into a flawed equalization system is a dollar not available for BC priorities or tax relief.

This latest evidence should be required reading for every MLA in Victoria and every MP in Ottawa. The current formula fails the basic test of fairness and economic reality. Provinces with higher living standards shouldn’t be on the dole while others with genuine challenges get shortchanged.

The Fraser Institute has done the numbers. Now it’s time for politicians who actually represent working British Columbians and Western Canada to demand real reform - or better yet, a complete overhaul. Equalization as currently structured isn’t equalizing opportunity. It’s entrenching mediocrity at everyone else’s expense.

The data is clear. The program is broken. Pretending otherwise is just more Ottawa gaslighting.

You know, folks, sometimes you jump into something not because it looks like a winner, but because it looks right.

Today is my last day. I’m officially separating myself from the Kerry-Lynne Findlay team.

Most people don’t know the story. I came into the B.C. leadership campaign right after the David Denhoff explosion, right when the former campaign manager said he had no faith in the candidate and would be joining another team. I joined when we were sitting at about three percent in the polls, when Polymarket had us at +3000 over/under. We were up against a polished, establishment darling who had two million dollars raised and had all the right people whispering in all the right ears. We had no money, almost no policy, basically nothing except sweat, determination, cigarettes at 3 a.m., and this crazy idea that maybe the outsiders could actually win.

And somehow… we did.

It was the Bad News Bears of politics against the machine. I came on to fix communications and social media. Before I got there the accounts were basically dead. After? We were in the fight every single day. At our peak, we organically hit half a million on some posts, regularly sat at 200-300k on others with no paid Facebook ads & we never boosted a single thing.

Yesterday a someone who worked on the campaign called me out of the blue to talk shop. Said he’d watched me in the Telegram and WhatsApp groups at 11 p.m., midnight, 4 a.m., 5 a.m. Asked when I slept. Truth is, I didn’t much. I was researching, editing video, fixing graphics, making sure our side actually had a voice while everyone else was sleeping. He said the socials were a mess when I showed up and that once we got rolling, we were there. I was humbled that someone saw that and it meant more than he knows.

I made it crystal clear from the very first day I had zero interest in any government job or a senior role. There was a back and forth if I’d stay on in other capacities moving forward. Right now I just don’t see a workable path ahead in the current setup. Some things that should have been handled still haven’t been, and I’ll leave it at that.

Mostly I want to thank the people you’ll never hear about, the ones who will never get their names in lights. The quiet grinders behind the scenes who poured everything into this thing. You made the impossible happen. We really were the Bad News Bears… and we won.

I never advertised my involvement much, because I still believe the same thing I believed when we were climbing out of the basement: in these races, the candidate should be the story, not the staff. I believed it then. I believe it now.

It was an absolute honor. I’ll carry this one with me.

As to what’s next, stay tuned...

My province needed me. I had a real shot to help drain the swamp, and sometimes you just have to step up and get your hands dirty.

I also don’t want to be swampy. I’ve built this thing from nothing and kept it pure because I don’t answer to anybody. Right now, even though there’s no actual strings attached, it’s sitting on a greasy g…

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It’s a label he didn’t reject — but he reframed it.

“I don’t get up in the morning to be a disruptor for the sake of it,” Fulmer said. “But there are systems that are broken… we can either keep allowing the system to be broken or we can actually disrupt what we’re doing and actually make change.”

That distinction matters. Fulmer is not presenting disruption as personality or branding. He is presenting it as a response to what he describes as systemic failure in British Columbia. During the interview, he repeatedly characterized the province as “tragically broken,” arguing that frustration without action is meaningless. “We can all yell at the radio… but we actually got to do something,” he said.

That definition moved quickly from theory to action.

Fulmer used the interview to walk through his newly signed “Unite the Right” agreement with Dallas Brodie and One BC, a deal that would see One BC stand down in 88 ridings, while a Fulmer-led Conservative Party would step aside in five. In return, One BC would support a Conservative government through a confidence-and-supply agreement.

His justification was not ideological. It was numerical.

“If One BC polls more than 3.5%, mathematically the Conservative Party cannot win an election,” Fulmer said.

That was the core of his argument. Not unity as a slogan, but vote-splitting as a structural problem that has to be addressed directly. Fulmer framed the deal as a necessary correction to what he described as naïve thinking within the party — the idea that smaller right-of-centre parties would simply disappear.

“We can either bury our head in the sand… or we can say to ourselves, that will cost us the election,” he said.

Fulmer also pushed back on the idea that the agreement undermines democratic choice. Instead, he argued it preserves it by giving voters clear options without splitting outcomes. “People are entitled to vote for whoever they want to vote for,” he said, while maintaining that coordinated ridings prevent that choice from inadvertently handing victory to the NDP.

He went further, warning that without this kind of arrangement, narrow Conservative wins in past elections would not hold. In ridings decided by dozens or hundreds of votes, even a small One BC presence would flip the result. “If One BC was in play in those ridings, we would lose them,” he said.

The deal itself immediately generated reaction, both support and criticism, but Fulmer presented early indicators of grassroots backing, pointing to a surge in small-dollar donations and membership sign-ups following the announcement. He described contributions coming in “$15 at a time, $25 at a time,” from across the province.

Beyond the agreement, the interview reinforced Fulmer’s broader posture in the race.

Fulmer openly rejected the idea that candidates should avoid confrontation or run a consensus-style campaign. “A leadership contest is not a beauty pageant,” he said. “We have to contrast with each other… how else do the members choose if there isn’t a contrast between us?”

He has acted on that view.

Fulmer has directly challenged the records of other candidates, particularly those who were not present during the party’s earlier, weaker electoral position. “When we were down and we needed people… where were you?” he asked, framing past participation as a measure of credibility.

At the same time, he drew a line around political consistency. Fulmer acknowledged that changing positions can be legitimate, but only if it is explained. “True wisdom… is being able to say, I believed something once… and I have changed my opinion,” he said, adding that what he rejects is when candidates “pretend they didn’t have that view.”

Fulmer also addressed the internal dynamics of the leadership race itself, pushing back against what he characterized as an overly cautious campaign environment. He rejected the idea that candidates should avoid direct contrast with one another. “A leadership contest is not a beauty pageant,” he said. “We have to contrast with each other… how else do the members choose if there isn’t a contrast between us?”

That willingness to draw distinctions has already translated into concrete actions within the race. Fulmer has openly questioned the records of other candidates, particularly those who were not involved with the Conservative Party during the 2024 election cycle. “When we were down and we needed people… where were you?” he asked, framing participation during lower polling periods as a measure of commitment.

Throughout the interview, Fulmer’s approach remained consistent: identify structural problems, reject passive acceptance, and justify intervention as necessary rather than optional. His positioning as a “disruptor” is therefore less about style and more about method — a willingness to challenge both external systems and internal party dynamics.

Whether that approach resonates with members will ultimately be decided in the leadership vote. What is clear from the interview is that Fulmer is not attempting to run a consensus campaign. He is running on the premise that disruption is required and that avoiding it carries greater risk than embracing it.

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There are candidates in this race who talk about change like it’s a slogan, and then there are candidates who talk about it like they’ve actually had to make payroll, fire people, balance books, and take responsibility when things go sideways. Iain Black very clearly wants you to understand he belongs in the second category.

From the outset, he frames his story not as ideology, but as lived experience. He doesn’t begin in politics. He begins as “the proverbial son of poor immigrants,” raised by parents who arrived in Canada with a two-year plan that turned into a lifetime . That’s not just biography—it’s positioning. It’s meant to signal something: discipline, upward mobility, and a belief that systems should work because they once did.

Black’s path runs through IBM, then into the private sector where, by his own description, he became the guy companies called when things were failing. “Stepping into highly dysfunctional situations… hemorrhaging money,” he says, before adding, almost casually, that it “sounds a lot like B.C. at the moment” . That line tells you everything about how he sees the province—not as a political project, but as a broken organization.

And that’s really the frame he returns to again and again. Government, in his view, isn’t fundamentally different from business. It’s about execution. “It’s about discipline. It’s about focus. It’s about making the tough decisions and executing on them,” he says . Not complicated. Not theoretical. Just work.

Where it gets more interesting is when you push him on politics itself—on the chaos inside the BC Conservative movement, the fractured caucus, the lingering resentment from the collapse of BC United. Black doesn’t deny any of it. In fact, he leans into it. He describes the challenge bluntly: “If you’ve got the wrong leader, the caucus is going to eat them alive” .

That’s not campaign rhetoric. That’s someone who’s been in the room.

His answer isn’t ideological purity. In fact, he rejects that outright. The idea of “purity tests,” he argues, is fundamentally flawed because no two people define conservatism the same way. “Are you a real conservative? What does that mean?” he asks, before listing off competing interpretations—low taxes, small government, social values, free markets—none of which fully capture the whole .

Instead, he offers something more pragmatic, and frankly more uncomfortable for activists who want clear lines: a coalition. A “big tent” where disagreement isn’t a weakness but a feature. “We’re not afraid to agree to disagree… and defend your right to say what you just said,” he explains .

That’s easy to say. Much harder to enforce in a caucus that hasn’t learned discipline the way the old BC Liberals did. Black’s argument is that he’s one of the few people who actually knows how to impose that discipline because he’s done it before—in government and in business.

Then the conversation turns to policy, and this is where the tone shifts from philosophical to surgical.

On crime and fentanyl, he rejects the idea that this is primarily a geopolitical issue and reframes it as a criminal one. “I don’t care whether the precursors… are coming from California or Scotland. It’s criminals who are bringing them into this country,” he says . His solution isn’t abstract—it’s enforcement, technology, and making life “uncomfortable” for criminals so they move elsewhere.

On immigration, he’s more direct—and more controversial. He argues the system has fundamentally changed, pointing to the volume of arrivals and the abandonment of a high-bar, points-based system. “We… allowed into this country more people in the last decade than we normally do in 50 years,” he says . His criticism isn’t just about numbers—it’s about capacity, about a system that wasn’t prepared to absorb the influx.

Then comes housing, and here Black sounds less like a politician and more like an operator who’s spent time reading balance sheets. He doesn’t just say “build more.” He breaks down cost structures—development charges, permitting delays, financing costs—and ties them directly to price. At one point, he claims up to 35% of a condo’s cost can be tax-related through municipal charges .

And the solution? Not slogans. Process.

Cap development charges. Force faster permitting. Introduce pre-certified applications so projects don’t sit in bureaucratic limbo for years. “You just cut two to three years out of that process,” he says . It’s detailed. It’s technical. And it’s clearly where he feels most comfortable—fixing systems, not debating them.

But the moment that defines the interview—really defines his campaign—is DRIPA.

Every candidate says they’ll repeal it. Black doesn’t stop there. He warns that repeal isn’t the end of the story—it’s the beginning of a far more complicated one. Protests, legal uncertainty, investor hesitation, fractured relationships with Indigenous leadership. “This is a much, much bigger problem than that,” he says, rejecting the idea that repeal is some kind of simple reset .

And then he draws a line that separates him from the field: this isn’t an entry-level job.

“Who’s going to take the phone calls… when the industry is phoning… when there are protests… when projects are stalled?” he asks . It’s not a hypothetical. It’s a warning.

Because his entire case—every answer, every example—comes back to one idea: experience.

Not theoretical experience. Not academic credentials. Operational experience. The kind where decisions have consequences and there’s no one else to blame.

He closes exactly where he started. “Experience matters,” he says, arguing that British Columbia is at a moment of real risk, and that voters—not just party members—will ultimately decide whether they want someone who’s already been tested .

And that’s the pitch. Not hope. Not revolution. Not even ideology, really.

Just competence.

In a province that increasingly feels like it’s running on autopilot, that may be a stronger argument than it sounds.

To our paid subscribers: you funded this. The cameras, the microphones, the lighting, the computer, the audio gear, that didn’t come from some corporate sponsor. It didn’t come from government grants…

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I spent 24 years as an NDP strategist, organizer, federal and provincial executive member, and proud fighter for working people under Jack Layton’s big-hearted vision. That party once tried to be for all Canadians. It dreamed of lifting everyone up.

In 2017, I first raised the alarm inside the party and publicly. I declared myself a Christian-Zionist: so…

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Campaign Website: ⁠https://warrenhammbc.com/⁠

Warren Hamm, Rossland contractor, helicopter maintenance engineer, and BC Conservative leadership candidate, joins The Opposition with Dan Knight for a long-form conversation about the future of British Columbia.

Hamm lays out his “Builders, Not Bureaucrats” message and explains why he believes the province is being strangled by red tape, regulatory overreach, and a political class disconnected from working people. With more than 30 years in aviation, construction, and the resource sector, he argues that BC needs practical leadership rooted in real-world experience — not career politicians.

In this interview, Hamm discusses cutting regulatory barriers to housing and development, reviving forestry and mining, restoring affordability, strengthening regional economies, and confronting what he calls government waste and dysfunction. He also addresses his high-profile permitting dispute with the City of Rossland, the BC Supreme Court ruling that followed, and why he chose to sue individual councillors over what he says was bad-faith decision-making.

The conversation also covers SOGI, parental rights, party unity, and how he plans to defeat David Eby in the next provincial election.

This is part of The BC Conservative Leadership Interview Series — long-form, unscripted conversations with the candidates asking to lead the party.

Listen, watch, and decide for yourself.

Follow for more #bcpoli coverage and leadership interviews

Vancouver—Hon. Kerry-Lynne Findlay used her lengthy sit-down on The Opposition with Dan Knight to make a simple argument to British Columbia conservatives: this leadership race is not about who can sound conservative for 20 minutes on a podcast. It is about who has actually governed, who understands the law, and who has not spent the last few years pretending yesterday’s bad decisions were harmless misunderstandings.

Findlay, a former federal cabinet minister and former chief opposition whip, opened the interview by presenting herself as a veteran, not a tourist. She described herself as “a lawyer and the mother of four,” calling that “probably my proudest achievement,” and said she entered the B.C. Conservative leadership race because she believes the province is in serious trouble under “the current regime.” She told Knight, “This is my home. I’ve lived here all my life,” and said she felt called “to move forward and I want to do it in my home, for my home, for my neighbors, for British Columbians.”

That personal introduction quickly gave way to a harder political message. Findlay repeatedly returned to the same theme: voters are being asked to trust politicians who now claim they did not understand what they were voting for when they backed controversial legislation in the legislature. She rejected that excuse outright. Referring to DRIPA, she said legislators who now describe it as merely “aspirational” are offering an explanation that does not survive basic scrutiny. “You put it in the law of the land,” she said. “You unanimously voted for something that you as a legislator, having done any research at all, should have understood is not aspirational.” She added, “You do not legislate and then say, ‘Oh, I just thought it was kind of fluff.’”

That was one of the most revealing moments of the interview, because it went directly to the quiet civil war inside the B.C. Conservative movement. Findlay is not merely running against the NDP. She is also drawing a bright line inside her own leadership contest, arguing that conservative voters are right to question candidates who once supported the very measures they now say they oppose. She framed that as an issue of legislative seriousness and political trust. “Voters remember decisions,” she said. “They remember outcomes. They remember how it affects their life.”

On DRIPA itself, Findlay’s argument was more detailed than the usual slogan politics. She said she would repeal it, but she did not stop there. She tried to explain why, grounding her critique in her own legal work and personal involvement in Indigenous land issues. She recounted her experience living on leasehold property on Musqueam land and described how uncertainty around governance and taxation affected property values and financing. According to Findlay, the issue is not simply whether title is formally taken away. The issue is whether the legal and financial uncertainty hollow out the practical value of ownership. “You still held title, but all the equity is gone,” she said, arguing that “the fear is real” and “the uncertainty it brings into your property is real.”

She argued that reconciliation should focus on “economic development, economic partnerships, peaceful coexistence,” but insisted that those arrangements must work “for all British Columbians.” She said governments had failed to defend ordinary property holders and accused them of abandoning the broader public for ideological reasons. Her description was blunt: “When our governments do not speak for us, they abandon all of us, 95% of us, at least for our ideology.”

Findlay was just as direct on SOGI. She did not offer the careful consultant-approved language that has become common among politicians trying to offend as few people as possible. She said she would repeal SOGI as well, and when Knight asked whether the answer should be repeal, reform, opt-out, or status quo, Findlay ruled out keeping the current system. “We definitely can’t keep the status quo,” she said. “This is harming our children.”

She argued that SOGI has gone far beyond anti-bullying, dismissing that familiar defense as inadequate. “If it was just an anti-bullying program, why would the parents be up in arms about it?” she asked. “Nobody wants their child to be bullied.” She said the problem is that it has “been in effect weaponized and promoted by teachers unions,” and she criticized what she described as inappropriate and age-inappropriate material in schools. “It is confusing many children,” she said. “This is harmful. It is indoctrination. And this is not where it should be in our schools.”

The interview became even more pointed when Knight raised a specific flashpoint from 2020 involving former B.C. Liberal MLA Laurie Throness. At the time, Throness publicly argued that conversations between minors and counselors—particularly around gender identity—should remain voluntary and not be automatically restricted under proposed conversion therapy legislation. The backlash inside his own party was immediate and severe. He was removed from caucus, and several colleagues publicly denounced his remarks, with some describing his views as “abhorrent.”

Knight brought this up not as an abstract debate, but as a test of how candidates interpret dissent within their own ranks—especially on contentious cultural issues.

Findlay’s response was not cautious. She said she was “rather shocked” by the reaction at the time and pushed back on the idea that expressing a dissenting view on such a topic should be treated as beyond the pale. Referring directly to statements made during that period, she singled out current leadership rival Caroline Elliott, saying she had seen footage where Elliott described those views as “abhorrent.”

“I think it was Carolyn Elliott… because I’ve seen the tape where she said, ‘are abhorrent to me personally,’” Findlay said. “That’s a huge red flag to me.”

She framed the issue not as agreement or disagreement with Throness’s position, but as a question of how a political movement handles internal disagreement. In her view, labeling a colleague’s opinion as morally unacceptable crossed a line. “This is not a conservative,” she said. “This is not someone who is looking at reasonableness, common sense, freedom of speech.”

That exchange revealed a deeper divide within the leadership race. Findlay is drawing a distinction between candidates based not just on policy, but on their tolerance for dissent—particularly on issues involving education, parental rights, and gender identity.

She went on to connect that moment to a broader pattern she sees developing in British Columbia. Findlay pointed to recent decisions by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, including the high-profile ruling against former school trustee Barry Neufeld, who was ordered to pay significant damages over public comments related to gender identity and education. In her view, these cases reflect a system that is increasingly punitive toward individuals who express views outside an accepted ideological framework.

Rather than treating controversial opinions as part of a democratic debate, Findlay argued that institutions are moving toward enforcement—where certain positions are not just challenged, but sanctioned.

The implication was clear. For Findlay, the Throness incident was not an isolated controversy from years ago. It was an early example of what she believes has since become more entrenched: a political and legal environment where dissent on sensitive social issues can carry professional and financial consequences.

The discussion then shifted to public safety, housing, and the province’s broader governing philosophy. Findlay said the government’s approach to supportive housing was failing vulnerable people by placing low-income residents and seniors in unsafe environments alongside people actively using drugs. “They call it supportive housing, supportive of who exactly,” she said, arguing that the current model has produced “crime, chaos and disorder.” She said that if she became premier, “public housing means that there is no drug use in public housing,” and that such housing should be reserved for vulnerable and low-income residents who need safety and stability, not more disorder.

On internal party politics, Findlay was careful but not exactly warm. Knight asked about campaign turmoil involving David Denhoff, who had left her team and aligned with a rival campaign. Findlay declined to dwell on the details, calling them “internal campaign matters,” but defended her earlier statement on the episode. “When someone is asked to step aside, there’s a right way to handle it,” Knight quoted from her public post. “Endorsing a rival on your way out, isn’t it? It’s not principle that’s opportunistic.” In the interview, she said she was “surprised” by how the situation played out and added, “I’m not leaving the race.”

Asked about the possibility of bringing independents back into the fold if she became leader, Findlay left the door open. She said she had been in contact, directly or indirectly, with most of them and argued that a viable alternative to the NDP cannot be built on a fractured coalition of competing anti-NDP voices. “If we are moving forward to build a team that is a viable alternative to the NDP, and there are people who see that as attractive and want to be part of it, then I am more than willing to talk to them,” she said. But she also warned that some independents were watching to see whether the party would choose “a reliable conservative” or someone else. “If the person who comes out in the lead is not a conservative, they’re not interested,” she said.

Findlay also offered a candid assessment of how British Columbia conservatives got to this point. She praised John Rustad for many things he did early on, but said the larger political realignment happened because voters were looking for a real opposition, not a softer version of the governing ideology. She specifically criticized the old B.C. Liberal coalition for backing the NDP motion condemning the Freedom Convoy and praising the government’s handling of COVID-19. “I had so many calls on that,” she said, recalling conservatives asking, “what are they doing?” She said the rise of the modern B.C. Conservative Party was “more of an indictment” of the previous coalition than an endorsement of its successors.

On affordability, Findlay’s message was relentless. She called the recent provincial budget “the no hope budget” and pointed to the province’s debt and deficit as proof that the government has abandoned any serious claim to fiscal restraint. “We’ve overspent,” she said, describing a government that had pursued “an ideological path” and now wants taxpayers to clean up the mess. She cited “183 billion in debt” and “a deficit of 13.3 billion,” and said the result was a province in which too many people are hanging on by a thread. “40% of British Columbians say they’re $200 away from insolvency at the end of each month,” she said, while “200,000 people a month” are relying on food banks.

On fuel prices, she was explicit. She said she had recently paid “220 a liter” herself and argued that the province’s layered fuel taxes were punishing workers and driving up the cost of everything else. Her proposed solution was straightforward: “I have proposed that we ax the tax on gas. And that means gas and diesel.” She tied that to the broader cost of living, saying taxes on fuel and freight are passed through the entire economy, from groceries to household essentials. “You end up not just with higher gas prices, but higher grocery prices, higher everything prices,” she said.

To support her argument that governments can actually cut taxes and restore fiscal discipline, Findlay leaned on her federal record. She reminded listeners that she served in Stephen Harper’s government and said that administration reduced the GST, lowered personal and corporate income taxes, introduced income splitting for seniors, and returned the federal books to balance after the recession. “It is possible,” she said. “You need to focus. You need to understand that government is not there to burden the workers.”

When Knight pressed her on deficits and spending discipline, Findlay described a government-wide review model in which ministers would be expected to identify cost reductions and justify spending based on results. She said taxpayers should not be told, in effect, that government mismanagement entitles politicians to demand more money. “It is punitive and not fair to say to hardworking people, ‘we’ve spent too much of your money, therefore give us more taxes.’” She said any government she led would make spending restraint a core discipline rather than an afterthought.

The interview ended where it began: with Findlay trying to separate herself from the rest of the field on the question of conviction. “I am a conservative by conviction, not by convenience,” she said. She described herself as “the only one in this race who has governed as a conservative,” and argued that experience matters because British Columbia is facing complicated legal, fiscal, and institutional problems. She said the province is rich in resources but has failed to act like it, and she tied responsible development, lower taxes, and disciplined government to a broader promise of optimism. “I don’t want people to lose hope,” she said. “I want to provide that hope, that optimism, by being a leader that leads by example and shows that we can do it, and that we have a bright future.”

What emerged from the conversation was not a candidate trying to soften edges or hide behind process language. Findlay was making a prosecutorial case, against the NDP, against bureaucratic overreach, against high-tax government, and, just as clearly, against conservative candidates whose records do not match the convictions they now claim to hold. That is the bet she is making in this race. Not that voters want another smiling placeholder with a new logo and a stack of consultant lines, but that they are tired of being lied to by people who vote one way, explain it away later, and then ask to be trusted all over again

OTTAWA—Conservative MPs opened the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights study of Bill C-16 with a strong attack on the government’s handling of mandatory minimum penalties, warning that the bill’s new “safety valve” would render them effectively optional.

In his opening round of questioning, Conservative MP Larry Brock told Min…

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OTTAWA—For the first hour of the House of Commons immigration committee meeting, what unfolded was not a calm policy discussion about managing one of the most complex systems in the country. It was something closer to a stress test—and the system, both politically and administratively, did not pass.

The backdrop to the entire exchange was the Auditor Gen…

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I sat down with Peter Milobar, the Kamloops Centre MLA and candidate in the BC Conservative leadership race, for a wide-ranging conversation about the province’s direction.

Milobar walked through his background: six years as a city councillor, nine years as mayor of Kamloops, all while running a family hospitality business and coaching his kids’ hockey and lacrosse teams. He entered provincial politics in 2017 and has been re-elected three times. He described the decision to run for leader as one that required serious family conversations because of the heavier time commitment, but ultimately came down to this: “Do I have the skill set required to lead a party to actually pull this province out of the mess that it’s in… I realized that I have the requisite skills. I have the history and the background and the track record… I wouldn’t sleep at night if this race came and went and I didn’t at least attempt to offer up my skill set.”

On the NDP’s fiscal record, Milobar was direct. This year’s deficit is $9.6 billion, with $13.3 billion projected next year, even after nearly $2 billion in new taxes aimed mainly at seniors on fixed incomes, working families, and small businesses. “Normally if you were running record deficits, it would be because you’re trying to protect things we value like health care and education and revenues have dropped… In this case, every year they’ve been collecting more and more tax revenue off of you, me and every other taxpayer in British Columbia. And yet at the same time, ever growing deficits.”

He pointed out that health care spending has gone from $17 billion when the NDP took office to $40 billion today, while access has deteriorated. “If I mention to you a $16 orange juice, you know exactly what I’m talking about,” he said, arguing that big abstract numbers glaze over eyes, but everyday costs like groceries and gas hit people where they live.

On energy and resource projects, Milobar criticized the regulatory burden and the slow rollout of Bill 15, passed nine months earlier to speed up approvals but still without the necessary regulations. He described the ripple effect: major mine investments stall for years, and that uncertainty stops smaller decisions too — the motel owner wondering whether to renovate, the Tim Hortons franchise deciding whether to open. “This government actually views accelerating projects… we need to do this in a serious way.”

He argued for consistent, fair consultation timelines on Indigenous issues rather than endless extensions that make government look like it is picking winners and losers. On DRIPA specifically, he noted that every candidate in the race is calling for repeal, and he campaigned on it in 2024. “The Conservative Party is saying we need to repeal it… this isn’t a new position for me at least.” He stressed that repeal would not remove constitutional rights but would restore the province as the final decision-maker after proper consultation.

On education and SOGI, Milobar said he campaigned in 2024 to repeal it. “There needs to have a relook at needs to get things back to a place where people are more comfortable… the pendulum has swung much too far the other way.” He agreed that schools must keep kids safe from bullying, but argued parents deserve more transparency and that basics should come first, leaving more social issues to families and other influences.

Milobar grew up working in his family’s hotel business from age nine — sweeping parking lots, night audits, helping with books. He and his wife sold the last remnants in early 2018. He used that experience to describe the pressures on small businesses today: payroll costs 30 percent higher than the Canadian average, punitive tax increases including 7 percent on security guards and bookkeeping, and the added burden of crime and disorder. “If we also don’t impact crime and safety on our streets at the exact same time… those small businesses are still going to struggle.”

On harm reduction, he recalled that in 2016, as mayor, Kamloops council unanimously supported exploring supervised injection sites amid rising overdoses. He described it then as not a “magical solution to everything” but something that needed consideration. Today he supports Alberta’s approach of rapid voluntary treatment access, more involuntary care for those who cannot care for themselves, and dry housing options. He criticized BC Housing for recently adding requirements that even new “dry” housing projects must allow drug and alcohol use. “This is not a government that truly believes that recovery and treatment is actually a viable path forward for people.”

As the MLA whose riding includes the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation and the former Kamloops residential school site, Milobar addressed the 2021 announcement regarding 215 potential unmarked graves. He said everyone, including the First Nation, wants the truth and more clarity on timelines, spending, and next steps. “I think everyone does want the truth… what has been expanded to so far? What is the game plan moving forward and what is the ultimate timeline for discovery of any remains or not?” He noted the federal funding involved and the redacted documents, saying clearer answers on what has and has not been found would reduce skepticism.

Milobar closed by encouraging people to join the BC Conservative Party before the April 18 membership cutoff and participate in the ranked ballot vote from May 9 to 30. His website is petermilobar.ca.

NEW YORK—Fresh off a marathon sit-down with Joe Rogan that reached millions of Americans directly, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre capped a whirlwind week-long tour of the United States last night with a pointed, optimistic address at the Foreign Policy Association in New York City. Speaking at the Harvard Club on March 19, 2026, Poilievre laid out…

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AUSTIN—Look, if you’ve ever wondered what happens when you put a no-BS comedian who actually trains with kettlebells in the same room as a Canadian conservative leader who grew up in a working-class Calgary suburb and still talks like a normal human being, Joe Rogan’s latest podcast is it. For two straight hours, Pierre Poilievre sat across from Rogan i…

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Ottawa – The Bank of Canada just announced it’s holding its key overnight rate at 2.25%, exactly where it’s been for months. No surprise there, pretty much every economist on the planet saw this coming. But let’s be honest: in a world where oil prices are spiking because of a full-blown war in the Middle East, inflation is creeping back up, and U.S. tra…

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When I sat down with Dr. Julian Somers after his appearance before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, I expected a discussion about addiction policy. What I got instead was something much larger and much darker: a portrait of a province, and really a country, that seems to have spent years replacing evidence with ideology, recovery with managed dependency, and independent inquiry with something much closer to institutional intimidation.

Officially, the federal committee was studying “pharmaceutical sovereignty.” That sounds dry, technocratic, almost boring. The formal idea was that Canada needs to stop being so dependent on foreign countries for the medicines it needs, especially after COVID exposed how flimsy our supply chains really are. So witness after witness came before MPs and delivered roughly the same pitch. Apotex said Canada needs domestic manufacturing preferences and faster approvals. Generic manufacturers said Ottawa needs to make Canada a better place to invest. Industry groups warned that supply chains could be weaponized and that Canada needed stronger domestic production and procurement preferences. The whole thing had the feel of a very polished lobbying exercise dressed up as patriotism.

Somers noticed that too. He told me the hearing felt “a little imbalanced” because most of the other witnesses were really offering “variants on a very similar line of requests for concessions and supports to industry” that would make Canada a more favorable place to do business. In other words, everybody else came to Ottawa asking for some form of help, some form of protection, some form of political preference. That was their version of sovereignty. Somers’ version was very different. He said once he looked into the term, he realized it was really about “autonomy” and “protection from outside influences or corrupting influences,” and on that subject, he said plainly, Canada had been “misdirected in terms of pharmaceutical policies by inappropriate reasons” and by weak safeguards around “profit” and “personal gain.”

That is when the conversation became genuinely interesting, because Somers was not there to flatter the room. He was there to explain how British Columbia, and by extension Canada, wound up with what he called a “pharma-first” addiction policy. In his committee testimony, he had already told MPs that over the last decade Canada introduced addiction policies that were “ill advised, misrepresented, intentionally unevaluated” and that caused “immense harm to citizens and communities.” He said Canada became “the only place in the world” that prioritized dispensing pharmaceuticals to people living in poverty with profound addictions while effective forms of intervention were sidelined or maligned. He also told the committee, flatly, that there “was, and remains no evidence indicating that pharmaceuticals were either safe or effective in promoting recovery from severe addiction.” That is not subtle language. And it is not the sort of thing Ottawa normally likes to hear spoken out loud.

In our interview, Somers backed that up by going back to first principles. He has spent roughly forty years in this field. Early in his career he worked at Riverview Hospital, back when governments were still dismantling large institutions and promising that compassionate, modern, community-based systems would be built in their place. That was the promise. He told me the basic problem was not simply closing institutions. The problem was closing them without actually building the systems that were supposed to replace them. He said Canadian governments failed to create the recovery-oriented, community-based structures they had promised, and the consequences of that failure have been visible for years. He pointed to evidence, including work from St. Paul’s Hospital, showing that people admitted with addiction or mental illness were often discharged to “no fixed address,” only to return quickly because nothing meaningful in their lives had changed. The state removed one kind of system and never built the other. That vacuum matters, because into that vacuum stepped a pharmaceutical model.

Somers’ description of how that happened is where things start to get uncomfortable. He told me the shift did not look like a normal evolution in public policy. It looked coordinated. He pointed to the old HIV/AIDS policy world in British Columbia, and specifically to the way its leading figures moved into addiction policy. He said the evidence of coordination was “pretty remarkable” and “extremely strong.” In his telling, the provincial health officer who had run that office for two decades moved toward addiction policy and then left his post around 2017 or 2018. His hand-picked successor, Dr. Bonnie Henry, later issued a report in 2019 calling for decriminalization and pharmaceutical safe supply. Another former deputy remained at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. Then, in 2020, Perry Kendall, Mark Tyndall, the scientific director of the Michael Smith Foundation, and former AIDS researcher Evan Wood all announced ventures tied to safe supply, automated opioid dispensing, or related pharmaceutical models. Somers’ conclusion was blunt: “There’s no way that that would happen by chance. It’s clearly a coordinated push.”

And it wasn’t just the personnel. Somers said that between 2020 and 2021, researchers affiliated with the B.C. Centre on Substance Use published a burst of fifteen papers urgently calling for safe supply. That sounds impressive until you hear the next part. According to him, “not one” of those papers presented actual results related to the safety or effectiveness of safe supply itself. Instead, he said, they described populations of people living in poverty with untreated addictions and mental illness and then leapt from those descriptions to calls for large-scale pharmaceutical intervention, while ignoring the interventions that actually address those underlying conditions. He said it looked like an effort to “flood the journal marketplace” with apparent support for safe supply, even though it was “all the same people, all based in BC.” He was almost amused by the brazenness of it. “Hats off,” he told me, for coordinating the plan and executing it. “It just so happens it was a terrible plan.”

That gets to the heart of Somers’ argument. The problem was not merely that the science was weak. The problem was that weak science was paired with strong institutional power. He said the people driving this agenda had no interest in debating ideas. They used a “bullying” approach. He pointed to the Alberta government’s safe supply committee, where he expected proponents of safe supply would come and defend their evidence. According to him, they refused to appear, sending “huffy sounding” rejection letters instead. In his reading, they did not stay away because the forum was beneath them. They stayed away because they had nothing serious to defend. For a long time, he said, very few people wanted to say this publicly. Only after decriminalization and safe supply were themselves declared failures by political leaders did it become permissible to criticize them. Until then, the system operated by intimidation.

The committee hearing itself reflected that. Somers told me it was obvious some members did not understand how his line of questioning fit the study’s purpose. Procedural objections were raised several times. That is revealing in itself. If “pharmaceutical sovereignty” simply means building more pills in Canada, then Somers is inconvenient. But if sovereignty means independence from corrupting influences in drug policy, from profit incentives, from private capture, from institutional groupthink, then he may have been the only witness actually speaking to the deepest threat in the room.

His view is that one of the biggest reasons Canada got here is embarrassingly simple: money. In his committee testimony, he said Canada differs from comparator nations by failing to require pharmaceutical companies to disclose the amounts they provide to clinicians, hospitals, activist groups, and universities, and how those funds are used. He said Canadian academic organizations that once focused on other issues shifted toward addiction with pharmaceutical backing. He also told MPs that “there is no way to explain Canada’s pharma first addiction strategy without considering the role of money.” That was not rhetorical flourish. It was a direct accusation that financial incentives shaped public policy.

And then he told me the story that, in many ways, explains everything.

For about twenty years, Somers had been leading research in British Columbia tracking people diagnosed with addiction through courts, corrections, income assistance, housing, shelters, hospitals, and pharmaceuticals. He and his collaborators had built a substantial research base and produced reports for different levels of government. They wanted to take the next obvious step: connect coroner data to their existing databases so they could see where the people who were dying had touched public systems, and what risk patterns might have been visible beforehand. That sounds like the sort of thing any sane government would want. If you are serious about preventing deaths, you want to know who is dying and what interventions might have reached them earlier. But in 2017, Somers said the provincial health officer told him directly: “We’re not going to do that because we need to get the message out to the public that everyone is at risk, just like HIV/AIDS.” Read that again. Not because the data couldn’t be collected. Not because the methods were unsound. Because the public message had already been chosen.

He then went to the coroner. After months of consideration, he said, the coroner’s office told him it would only release the information to the provincial health officer and the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. As Somers noted, both organizations were led by people who would later go on to establish safe supply companies. This is the sort of thing that, if it happened in some foreign country we didn’t like, would immediately be described as a conflict-ridden patronage network. But because it happened here, under the banner of harm reduction and public health, many respectable people decided not to notice.

That was not the end of it. Somers told me he later tried to pursue the research through a Statistics Canada agreement. After months of work, he said, that path was also closed off after contact between Statistics Canada officials and the same B.C. institutions. Then came the part that still sounds unbelievable even when you hear it directly from him. After briefing provincial deputy ministers and indicating that the government was not handling addiction and homelessness optimally, he says he received a letter one week later ordering the destruction of his entire database. Decades of research. International collaborators. Doctoral students. Published work. Approved and funded projects. Gone. This was not a mild administrative rebuke. This was the state moving to wipe out the evidence base of a critic. And again, note the sequence. First the message is controlled. Then the data is withheld. Then the archive itself is targeted. If that does not qualify as authoritarian behavior, what exactly would?

Somers did not stop there. He raised another extraordinary question involving research ethics and the so-called drug-user co-op research associated with UBC. He noted that you cannot publish research in accredited journals involving human subjects without ethics board approval. He also said Health Canada had deemed the proposed activities too risky and effectively illegal. Yet papers were still published, and among their findings were that roughly half of the members experienced at least one non-fatal poisoning during the study period and that more than half passed drugs on to members of the public. Somers told me, “for the life of me,” he could not explain how ethics boards approved this except perhaps that the people involved carried prestige and money. He said he had written to the ethics board chairs asking for information and had been ghosted. Again, the same pattern: controversial policy, weak evidence, questionable oversight, and an institutional wall when anyone asks how it was approved.

What makes Somers compelling is that he does not just criticize. He has a coherent alternative. He believes addiction is not primarily a problem of chemistry but of control. People lose control over behaviors that are harmful to them, and recovery means reestablishing that control through meaningful relationships, social reintegration, housing, employment, and treatment that aims at real change, not indefinite maintenance. In the committee, he contrasted ordinary Canadians with professionals such as physicians, lawyers, and airline pilots. When those people develop addictions, they are not handed a fistful of euphoric drugs and told this is compassion. They are put into structured psychosocial interventions and required to abstain. Ordinary people, especially the poor, get something very different. They get drugs. Somers’ point was not merely moral. It was that we already know what a serious standard of care looks like. We just reserve it for the privileged.

That, more than anything else, may explain why his testimony made people in Ottawa so visibly uncomfortable. The pharmaceutical industry witnesses had a simple script. Canada is vulnerable. Canada needs more production. Canada needs faster approvals, more subsidies, more preference for domestic firms. Fine. That is familiar. Somers showed up and asked a much more serious question. What if the bigger sovereignty problem is not foreign dependence, but domestic capture? What if the real threat is that Canadian drug policy has been bent by money, prestige, ideology, and networks of insiders who do not tolerate dissent and do not welcome scrutiny? What if the state itself has spent the last several years helping to enforce a pharmaceutical model that cannot defend itself honestly? That is not a comfortable hearing anymore. That is an indictment.

I came away from the interview thinking something very simple. We are constantly told by political and institutional elites that they are “following the science.” But science, in the real world, is not a slogan. It is a process. It requires open debate, transparent funding, hostile scrutiny, access to data, and a willingness to be proven wrong. What Somers described was the opposite of that. He described a system in which the conclusion was chosen first, the message was managed, the data was controlled, the critics were isolated, and the public was told this was compassion.

That is not science. That is politics wearing a lab coat. And Canada has paid dearly for it.

OTTAWA—Ottawa’s debate bureaucracy arrived yesterday at the Procedure and House Affairs Committee with a familiar message: trust us, the system is working. Yet the exchange over media accreditation revealed something far less reassuring—a government-created commission struggling to explain why it wants to keep control over who counts as a journalist whi…

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Ottawa – What was billed as a sober parliamentary study on “pharmaceutical sovereignty,” how Canada can stop being at the mercy of India and China for life-saving drugs, quickly became something far more explosive: a multi-hour public grilling of the pharmaceutical industry’s role in the opioid catastrophe, complete with named executives, destroyed rese…

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Ottawa—If the March 9 ethics committee hearing was supposed to be Parliament’s long-overdue reckoning with Canada’s lobbying law, Democracy Watch says MPs barely scratched the surface.

Democracy Watches press release

In comments after the hearing, Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher said the House of Commons ethics committee largely failed to confro…

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Ottawa—On Tuesday morning, members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage sat down to discuss the “state of the journalism and media sectors.” The witness list included nonprofit media founders, community radio representatives, and industry lobby groups. But the hearing quickly became something else entirely after former CBC jou…

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