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Sunday, October 5, 2025

“I’m open to it”: Independent MP Kevin Vuong eyes new home with Conservatives

By
Andrew Lawton
-

A Toronto MP booted by the Liberals during the last federal election is considering a move to the Conservative bench.

Kevin Vuong was elected in 2021 despite his ejection as the Liberal candidate following details of a withdrawn sexual assault charge from over two years earlier coming to light. He still appeared on the ballots as a Liberal, but went to Parliament as an independent.

In an exclusive interview on The Andrew Lawton Show, Vuong said he would like to join the Conservative caucus and run under Pierre Poilievre in the next election.

“The door has always been open from my side,” Vuong said. “I’ve chatted with people and they’re like ‘Yeah, Kevin, I think you’d fit right into caucus.’ But you know, it’s not just up to me, I think it’s up to the party brass and the leadership, as well, to find a fit and a path.”

Vuong said he’s had some informal conversations with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre “on the margins” to express his interest in working with him.

“If that’s something they want to pursue, listen, like I said, I’m open to it,” Vuong said.

Poilievre’s office declined to comment.

Vuong said in the interview that he had only been a “card-carrying Liberal” for a few weeks when he ran for the Liberals in Spadina—Fort York to replace Adam Vaughan. Vuong said he had never been especially partisan, which is partly what drew him to municipal politics as a Toronto city council candidate in 2018.

He was unsuccessful but said he was approached by former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer’s team to run as a Conservative candidate in Toronto in the 2019 election. While he ultimately chose to run for the Liberals in 2021, he noted he finds sources of agreement with both them and the Tories.

“I can tell you for a fact I wouldn’t vote for the NDP. They do not reflect my values,” he said. “I think like the majority of Canadians, I’m pretty centrist.”

Vuong has been critical of the Liberals on numerous occasions since being elected. He has sharply condemned antisemitism and accused the Liberals of not doing the same. He has also called for relief on Trudeau’s carbon tax.

Vuong has also supported the Liberal government on key votes, including to support Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act to crack down on the Freedom Convoy in 2022. However, he wrote last month that if he were to go back knowing what he does now, he likely would have opposed it.

The son of Chinese refugees from the Vietnam war, Vuong has been an officer in the naval reserves since 2015.

He was named the Liberals’ candidate in Spadina—Fort York on Aug. 13, 2021, just over a month before the election. His campaign was derailed days before the election when the Toronto Star reported that Vuong had been charged with sexual assault in 2019. The charges were withdrawn seven months later, but Vuong did not disclose them to the Liberal party or to the Royal Canadian Navy.

The Liberals dropped him as a candidate, but ballots were locked in and many had already been cast through advance voting. Vuong won the election by 2,158 votes.

In his interview on True North, Vuong said he believes the accusation against him, which was from a woman he had dated for a few months, was part of a “honey trap” operation. He claimed his opposition of China’s communist regime given his family’s background would make him a prime target of such a move by China.

The Conservatives have made no formal overtures to Vuong to welcome him into their ranks either as a caucus member or candidate for the next election, which Vuong believes they will win. He was candid that the opportunity to be part of a government was enticing.

“I think the Conservatives will form the next government,” he said. “Who wouldn’t want the opportunity to be able to contribute and, I think, course correct and right the ship of the direction that Canada has been going?”

Liberals rack up $1.3 million bill in “affordability” retreats

By
Quinn Patrick
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a three-day cabinet retreat in Hamilton last year that ultimately cost taxpayers over $305,000, bringing the total cost of the three federal government “affordability” retreats to more than $1 million in a single year.

Newly obtained documents acquired by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation through an access to information request revealed that Trudeau and his cabinet ministers spent $305,000 on a three-day retreat to combat inflation and the high cost of living for Canadians last January. 

“Taxpayers can’t afford any more of Trudeau’s affordability retreats,” said the taxpayer watchdog group’s federal director. Franco Terrazzano. “Who in their right mind spends more than $1 million on ‘affordability’ retreats in one year while Canadians are struggling?”

Trudeau announced at the time of the retreat that it was going to be an opportunity, “to build on our continued efforts to make life more affordable for the middle class and people working hard to join it.” 

The records reveal that the Liberals spent $32,000 on “hospitality” and $20,000 on meals and incidentals. This did not cover the price of their actual hotel rooms, which cost taxpayers another $50,000.

Meeting rooms were also booked for the retreat, costing an additional $48,000 with another $26,000 in rental equipment and finally $71,000 for audio and visual services. 

Among food expenses were a $3,493 worth of pop and juice, $542 for potato chips, a $250 cheese board, $240 worth of cookies and $220 worth of pita chips and hummus spread. 

The records obtained by the CTF did not include expenses from the Privy Council Office, meaning the total bill is likely to be even higher than it currently appears. 

The Liberals’ previous cabinet retreat in Prince Edward Island cost the Privy Council Office $328,000 in expenses, with the total bill coming in at $485,196 with costs coming in from other departments. 

The first “affordability” retreat was held in Vancouver in September 2022, which cost taxpayers $275,000, with the National Post obtaining records that the total cost racked up to $471,070, upon further cabinet expense disclosures. 

“It was really important for me to get that kind of direct fingertip feel of what is happening with the Canadian economy and what Canadians are feeling,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters in Vancouver at the time. 

Records revealed that the retreat served filet mignon, prawn ravioli and grilled dijon salmon, among other options. 

“At the very least, maybe Trudeau should consider renaming his affordability retreats,” said Terrazzano. 

UAlberta talk discussed whether people have to “die off” so Canada can achieve equity

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
-

University decolonization activists are musing about whether people need to “die off” for Canada to achieve equity.

At a Monday talk on decolonization hosted by the University of Alberta’s “Anti-Racism Lab,” an audience member asked panelists the macabre question.

“I’m referring to the mentality, so the fact that we’re still here after the Civil Rights Movement, the Holocaust. Like at what point in my head I’m wondering, do people have to die off before we get to this place of the narrative? The narrative has to change, right? At some point with white folks, right? When does colonization filter out? Or does it continue to just be generational?” asked the audience member. 

Malinda Smith, the vice-provost of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the University of Calgary responded by saying it was a ”very good question” before delving into various laws that promote equity in Canada. 

“In a way it attends to why employment equity hasn’t been as effective as it had the potential to be. You see within this current moment, with the pushback against the kinds of gains of the women’s movement, including, for example, reproductive rights,” explained Smith.

“You see the pushback against the civil rights movements and efforts to reconceptualize the idea of race, to make the rebrand, to bring in scientific racism back, to bring in a commitment to eugenics back, you see the ways of which critical race theory, intersectionality are all being rearticulated as kind of woke.”

During the talk, Smith also said merit in academia was a form of “whiteness” and mentioned the case of former Harvard president Claudine Gay who left her position after reports that she had plagiarized in her academic work. 

“White students are rightfully presented as being allowed to believe in their own merit while at the same time denying the meritorious potential of anyone unlike them, particularly those who are members of racially minoritized groups,” claimed Smith. 

“This means then that merit is almost always a concept that sticks to whiteness and anyone else who, whether you think of the recent case of Claudine Gay at Harvard, a distinguished scholar at Harvard, who got tagged with the label of a diversity hire, so no matter what you achieve, you are by virtue of your racial markers, the skin that we are in, so to speak, not meritorious.”

Gay received public pushback after she refused to condemn antisemitism at Harvard and faced calls from the university’s donors to have her removed from the position.  

Recent research by the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, authored by social scientist David Millard Haskell from Wilfrid Laurier University, revealed that diversity, equity and inclusion policies actually led to more bigotry in academia. 

Proponents of DEI training often assert its efficacy without sufficient empirical evidence to support their claims,” Haskell said.

“However, there’s clear empirical evidence that certain aspects of DEI instruction lead to greater prejudice and even harm.” 

“One last shot at getting this right”: Danielle Smith calls for restraint in 2024 budget

By
Isaac Lamoureux
-

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith unveiled a new budget approach to secure the province’s prosperity “long after our last barrel of oil has been produced.”

Smith told Albertans in a televised address Wednesday night how the province intends to manage its budget and finances in the years ahead.

The volatile price of oil and gas causes Albertans to ride a budgetary roller coaster from year to year, said Smith. She added that predicting world oil and gas prices is like predicting the weather during the spring in Alberta.

“It is time for our province to implement a long-term strategic financial plan that gets us to a stable, balanced budget each and every year with predictable and stable revenues to fund our core social programs,” said Smith.

The dependence on revenue from non-renewable resources has become unsustainable, the premier said.

Alberta needed about $16 billion of resource royalties to balance its $70 billion provincial budget in 2023. It was a good year for resource revenues but continuing to rely on $16 billion or more to balance the budget each year is a recipe for massive debt and cuts to health and education, she said.

“Some say the answer is higher income taxes or a sales tax. I reject this,” said Smith.

According to the premier, increasing these kinds of taxes will result in economic decline,  as seen in other provinces and many states across the border.

The personal income tax cuts promised in the UCP’s 2023 election campaign will be pushed back a year to be phased in responsibly. The cuts would have created a lower income tax bracket for income below $60,000 per year, saving those earners $760 a year and a 20% reduction in their tax bill.

Former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed created the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund in 1976. The fund was initially created to invest a portion of Alberta’s non-renewable resource revenues each year, so the investment income earned on the fund would eventually grow large enough to eliminate the province’s reliance on resource revenues altogether.

“In Alberta, if we had just reinvested the income earned in our Heritage Fund from the Lougheed government’s initial deposits of about $12 billion in the late 70s and early 80s, even without investing another extra dollar, our Heritage Fund would be worth over $250 billion today, earning between $12 and $25 billion per year in revenue,” said Smith.

Several countries, such as Norway, have adopted the same strategy and possess sovereign wealth funds large enough to eliminate their nation’s reliance on resource revenues entirely. 

Following the Lougheed government’s initial deposit, 30% of each year’s resource revenues were invested annually. Stopping in 1987, no further deposits were made for approximately two decades. Deposits resumed briefly between 2006 and 2008, only to cease once again.

Between 1977 and 2011, the Heritage Fund’s net income was $31.3 billion. During the same period, the government withdrew $29.6 billion, according to the Fraser Institute. 

By the end of 2012, the Heritage Fund’s market value was $18.4 billion. The fund was worth $21.2 billion as of March 31, 2023. 

Comparatively, Alaska created the Alaska Permanent Fund in 1978. By 2014, this fund was worth $61.3 billion Canadian. The Alaskan fund invested 25% of oil revenues each year, and the government was not permitted to touch the fund principal. In 1980, Alaska updated its fund to require that 50% of all newer mineral lease rentals, royalties, royalty sale proceeds, and net profit shares be deposited.

Last year, Alberta passed a law mandating that all income earned in the Alberta Heritage Fund must be invested in the fund. 

Smith has also instructed Alberta’s finance minister to limit government spending to below the legislated rate cap of inflation plus population growth. 

“Instead of spending all that non-renewable surplus cash on the wants of today, we will be fiscally disciplined, invest in the Heritage Fund annually, strategically pay down maturing debt, and slowly but surely wean our province’s budget off the volatile roller coaster of resource revenues,” said Smith.

“Our province has one last shot at getting this right.”

By the end of 2024, Alberta will release a long-term financial plan to grow the Heritage Fund to between $250 and $400 billion by 2050, the same year the province plans to achieve carbon neutrality. 

“Meeting these two goals simultaneously with Alberta technology, determination, and ingenuity will leave an invaluable legacy for further generations of Albertans and Canadians,” said Smith.

The Andrew Lawton Show | Independent MP Kevin Vuong on ups and downs of being without a party

By
Andrew Lawton
-

Spadina—Fort York member of Parliament Kevin Vuong was elected as a Liberal but never joined the party’s caucus as he had been booted during the campaign for failing to disclose a withdrawn sexual assault charge. Since 2021, he has continued to represent his constituents as an independent MP, and has increasingly been supportive of positions the Conservatives are taking up – from condemning antisemitism to opposing the carbon tax to combatting foreign interference. In this wide-ranging special edition of The Andrew Lawton Show, Andrew Lawton sits down with Vuong in his Toronto home to discuss his past, present, and future as an MP.

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The Daily Brief | “British Columbians” is offensive and exclusionary?

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
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The British Columbia government thinks that referring to residents as “British Columbians” is too offensive and exclusionary.

Plus, Pierre Poilievre told reporters on Wednesday that female-only spaces should be protected from biological men who identify as women.

And critics are concerned that the Liberal government’s proposed online harms legislation will violate the free speech rights of Canadians.

Tune into The Daily Brief with Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Noah Jarvis!

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Trudeau blames “conspiracy theorists” for declining trust in legacy media

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
-

Justin Trudeau says “conspiracy theorists” and “social media drivers” are to blame for the declining trust in legacy media.

Trudeau made the comments in an interview on Real Talk with Ryan Jespersen, an Alberta talk show. 

“There is out there a deliberate undermining of mainstream media. There are the conspiracy theorists, and there are the social media drivers who are trying to do everything they can to keep people in their little filter bubbles to prevent people from actually agreeing on a common set of facts,” said Trudeau.

“The way that the CBC and CTV, when they were our only sources of news, used to and Global News used to project across the country, at least a common understanding of things.”

A University of Oxford report on global media last year painted a bleak picture of the Canadian media landscape, with a significant erosion of trust in traditional news sources.

Data showed a staggering decline in trust towards traditional news outlets, with only 40% of Canadians expressing confidence in their reporting.

This skepticism is particularly pronounced among English-speaking Canadians, where trust levels plummeted to 37%, compared to 49% in French-speaking regions.

Furthermore, concerns about government intervention in media regulation have exacerbated the crisis, with many questioning the impartiality and independence of publicly-funded outlets like the CBC and others that have received government funding.

As reported by True North, there’s growing anxiety within news organizations over the uncertain fate of government funding. The expiration of the Local Journalism Initiative, a flagship program introduced by Trudeau’s government in 2019, threatens the livelihoods of over 400 journalists hired under the initiative.

The Liberal government has yet to indicate whether it would renew the funds. Trudeau’s term is also up next year and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who is currently leading in the polls by a wide margin, has said that he would end media subsidies. 

Canadian millennials outnumber baby boomers due to immigration

By
Quinn Patrick
-
Source: Unsplash

The number of millennials officially outnumbered the baby boomer generation in Canada last summer, according to new data from Statistics Canada, largely due to the influx of younger immigrants coming into the country. 

Additionally, the average age of the country decreased from July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2023, for the first time since 1958. 

As of July 1, 2023, the millennial generation (born between 1981 and 1996) officially accounted for a greater proportion of the population than baby boomers (born 1946 to 1965).

“The baby boomer generation became the largest in the population in 1958, seven years before the last baby boomer was even born. For 65 years, they remained the largest generation in the Canadian population. From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, baby boomers accounted for around 40% of the population,” reads the report from Statistics Canada. 

“By comparison, millennials’ demographic weight will never reach the level of baby boomers’ and is expected to peak at its current level of 23%, according to the most recent population projections.” 

Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) has also grown dramatically, becoming the third-largest generation in Canada, after surpassing Generation X (born between 1966 and 1980).

The report noted that people from Generation X were born during a time of declining fertility rates and, therefore, could never have been the country’s largest generation.  

Generation Z is projected to surpass millennials between 2038 and 2053. 

The increase in millennials and Generation Z is primarily due to the record number of temporary foreign workers and international students Canada has taken in, with the millennial generation receiving 457,354 new people from those sources alone in the span of a year. 

Those figures surpass the youngest cohort of the population, Generation Alpha, those born after 2013, of whom the majority were born in Canada. 

“The median age, which divides the population into two groups of equal size, also fell, from 40.9 to 40.6 years over the same period. This is the first time in 65 years that the mean and median ages of the population have both fallen in the same year. This last happened between 1957 and 1958, driven by the birth of the large baby boomer cohorts,” reads the report. 

Among all the five-year age groups, those aged 30 t0 34 grew the fastest over the July 1, 2022 to July 1, 2023 timeframe.

Newfoundland and Labrador was the province with the highest average age, being 45.7 years old. It also had the highest number of people aged 65 years and older, making up 24.4% of the province’s total population.

The Prairies had the youngest population, with Alberta’s average age being 39.1 years and also the province with the lowest cohort of people aged 65 years and older at 15.1%.

The largest cohort of baby boomers reside in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, however millennials have surpassed boomers in both Ontario and British Columbia. 

As for those numbers broken down by men and women, they remain relatively equal. 

“Canada’s population was virtually evenly balanced between the number of women+ (20,084,054) and the number of men+ (20,013,707) on July 1, 2023,” reads the report.

“The ratio of the number of men+ to 100 women+ varied little from the late 1980s to 2016, fluctuating from 98.0 to 98.5. This ratio has risen slightly in recent years, reaching 99.6 as of July 1, 2023.”

The slight increase in more women than men is a result of women having a longer life expectancy than men. 

MPs summon Guilbeault to committee to explain road funding remarks 

By
Isaac Lamoureux
-

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has been summoned by the Transport, Infrastructure, and Communities Committee to clarify his contentious statements on ending federal road funding. 

During the committee hearing on Wednesday, Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party Melissa Lantsman said that Guilbeault and his colleagues were being called to appear so they can be held accountable for the extreme and reckless policy positions that he recently put forward.

“He has proven himself to Canadians to be a radical, far-left Greenpeace activist that he has described himself to be, and his actions as environment minister haven’t made any constructive changes or positive steps towards protecting the environment,” said Lantsman. 

“He has sought to divide, virtue signal, and implement an extremist agenda. At each point of his tenure, he has doubled down on the punishing carbon tax, that certainly doesn’t work, and that floods the government coffers with hundreds of millions of dollars that make Canadians poorer and not richer.”

Lantsman added that Guilbeault has an effective ban on fossil fuel development at a time when Canadians and the world need the country’s fossil fuels more than ever. Lastly, Lantsman talked about Guilbeault’s latest comments —that the government of Canada would no longer build any roads—a policy that she explained would negatively affect all Canadians.

Guilbeault said last Monday that road construction encourages people to use cars, so the federal government would no longer provide municipalities with funding for new roads. He said those funds should instead be used to fight climate change.

“Our government has made the decision to stop investing in new road infrastructure. Of course, we will continue to be there for cities, provinces, and territories to maintain the existing network, but there will be no more envelopes from the federal government to enlarge the road network,” he said.

After Premiers Danielle Smith and Doug Ford called out Guilbeault for his comments, he backtracked on them last Wednesday. He claimed that he should have been more precise with his language and that he was only referring to some road projects.

Conservative transport critic Mark Strahl introduced a motion summoning Guilbeault to explain his remarks before the transport committee.

The original motion proposed that the committee conduct a study with at least six meetings focused on infrastructure in Canada. It called on Guilbeault, the Minister of Housing, Sean Fraser, the Minister of Transport, Pablo Rodriguez, the Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, and the CEO of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, Ehren Cory, to appear as witnesses before the committee.  Each of the invitees would appear alone for three hours. 

The transport committee gathered Wednesday morning to vote on the motion.

Following detailed discussions and an amendment and sub-amendment, the finalized motion was unanimously approved. This motion calls on Guilbeault, Fraser, and Rodriguez to appear for one hour each separately within 14 days. The hearing will take place outside of the normal hours of sitting of the committee, as it is an emergency hearing.

B.C. serial killer Robert Pickton becomes eligible for day parole

By
Quinn Patrick
-

B.C. serial killer Robert Pickton will soon become eligible for day parole, prompting the families and friends of his victims to hold a candlelight vigil on Wednesday at Pickton’s farm where the murders took place. 

Pickton was charged with murdering 26 women and would later claim his murder tally to be 49. In 2007, he was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder.

He was sentenced to life in prison without parole for 25 years, however, he will be eligible for day parole on Thursday, and full parole in 2027. 

Pickton often preyed on women who were prostitutes, drug abusers or homeless, inviting them to stay at his pig farm in Port Coquitlam, where they would later be raped, tortured and killed. 

News of his day-parole eligibility sparked outrage from the victim’s families and friends, who announced that they would be holding a candlelight vigil at the site of the Port Coquitlam farm.  

“It’s been very difficult,” said Lorelei Williams, a cousin of victim Tanya Holyk, in an interview with CityNews.

Holyk’s DNA was discovered on the property.  

“It’s sickening. I can’t believe it’s already coming up. I can’t believe so much time has passed. I still can’t believe that no one else has gone to jail for this, as well,” said Holyk.

“I already don’t trust the justice system, and this just makes me not trust it even more because the fact that a person like this could be let out of jail, or who would apply. I really don’t believe that he’ll be given day parole, but the fact he can apply, it’s disgusting. Our system isn’t a justice system at all.”

Pickton was never charged for the murder of Holyk, despite her remains being found on his property, something that has left her family in disbelief for years.

Holyk’s case was no exception, 19 other investigations against Pickton were stayed because the Crown had secured six convictions.  

“That’s not justice for my family,” said Williams. “I want justice for my family. Why can he not be charged with my cousin’s murder? Her DNA was found on that farm.”

“I just think about Tanya and how old she would have been today and what life would be like if she were here and if she were around. What keeps me going is the fact that what I’m going through right now is nothing compared to what my cousin went through.

“That’s what keeps me going. I will keep doing this for Tanya. I will keep fighting for her because I can.”

According to the Toronto Sun, the RCMP asked permission to destroy around 14,000 pieces of evidence related to investigations against Pickton last December.

The victim’s families spoke out about the news and demanded answers for this during a press conference last month. 

“Why in this case are they trying to erase the evidence?” said Sarah Jean de Vries, the daughter of a woman whose remains were discovered on Pickton’s farm after she went missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 1998.

Lorelei Williams told CityNews that she was never made aware of the evidence disposal.

“They never informed my family. This has been so traumatizing for me,” she said. 

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