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Friday, October 3, 2025

Feds impose 2-year cap on international students, reducing number by 35%

By
Quinn Patrick
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Source: CPAC

The federal government plans to impose a temporary, two-year cap on international student permits.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller made the announcement Monday as the Liberals began their cabinet retreat in Montreal.

“In recent years, the integrity of the international student system has been threatened,” the federal government said in a statement. “Some institutions have significantly increased their intakes to drive revenues, and more students have been arriving in Canada without the proper supports they need to succeed. Rapid increases in the number of international students arriving in Canada also puts pressure on housing, health care and other services.”

The government said the cap would “better protect international students from bad actors and support sustainable population growth in Canada.”

The debate around what the appropriate amount of international students to accept has been mounting for some time now and was exacerbated when news of how the program was being exploited broke last year. 

A probe into the student visa fraud scheme was launched last June by the federal immigration department. It found rampant fraud going back to 2017.

Of the 2,000 student visas that were investigated, about 1,485 applicants were found to have been issued fake letters of admission into colleges and universities. The majority of them had come from India, China and Vietnam. 

“Enough is enough,” said Miller during a press conference in December, as he announced that the government would restrict the number of permissible work hours each week for international students. “The fraud and abuse needs to end,” said Miller.

Miller also announced that beginning on Jan. 1, 2024, applicants would have to pay $20,635 for their cost-of-living study permit, up from the initial $10,000 financial requirement. A fee which does not include their tuition or travel costs. 

The new measures were an attempt to tamp down on fraud and alleviate the housing supply shortage.

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem gave a speech to the Canadian Club last month where he suggested that Canadian rents would probably have started to decrease if not for the Liberal government’s record-high immigration targets, much of which is made up of international students.  

“Canada’s housing supply has not kept up with growth in our population, and higher rates of immigration are widening the gap,” said Macklem while speaking at Toronto’s Royal York Hotel on Dec. 15.

The Government of Canada announced a new intake cap on international student permit applications on Monday to “stabilize new growth for a period of two years.”

“For 2024, the cap is expected to result in approximately 360,000 approved study permits, a decrease of 35% from 2023. In the spirit of fairness, individual provincial and territorial caps have been established, weighted by population, which will result in much more significant decreases in provinces where the international student population has seen the most unsustainable growth,” reads the statement. 

The temporary change in policy will not affect study permit renewals and “those pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees, and elementary and secondary education are not included in the cap. Current study permit holders will not be affected.”

The number of international students who seek asylum in Canada has also become a booming trend in recent years with the number more than doubling since 2018. 

Government data obtained under an access to information request revealed that the number of refugee claims made by international students is 2.7 times higher than the amount of claims six years ago. 

Last year, there were 4,880 cases and in 2018, there were only 1,835. 

The Daily Brief | Poilievre slams Freeland and the WEF

By
Cosmin Dzsurdzsa
-

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre blasted Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland for jet setting to speak at the World Economic Forum conference while lecturing Canadians about the climate.

Plus, the International Coalition Against Illicit Economies published a report that referred to Canada as a “safe haven” and an “international hub” for crime organizations to thrive in the country’s “booming” market for illicit trade.

And one in five restaurants in Canada could shut down as the deadline to repay Covid pandemic emergency loans looms.

Tune into The Daily Brief with Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Lindsay Shepherd!

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Elizabeth May says she is going on a hunger strike for a ceasefire in Israel-Hamas war

By
Noah Jarvis
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Leader of the Green Party of Canada Elizabeth May is participating in the #hungerstrikeforgaza campaign, which calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and for an arms embargo against the Israeli government. 

In a short post on X, May retweeted a video promoting the hunger strike with the caption “I am hunger striking for Gaza.”

May did not provide any additional information as to what her hunger strike will look like.

The video depicts Rachel Smalls, a Toronto-based left-wing activist and self-proclaimed “queer activist” who is an organizer for the anti-war activist group World Beyond War at a launch event for the hunger strike for Gaza campaign giving a speech in which she condemns Israel’s “horrific war crimes” in Gaza and calls for an arms embargo against Israel. 

She also demonizes Canadian companies selling arms and parts to the Israeli government, including Apex Industries, Gastops, ASCO Industries, Ben Machine, and Inkas. 

While not present in the video, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri and Tarek Loubani are credited as organizers in launching this campaign.

A few months ago, Loubani, a London, Ont based doctor, was arrested and charged with mischief for vandalizing Liberal MP Peter Fagiskatos’ constituency office with ketchup, meant to mimic blood. 

True North reached out to May and the Green Party asking her what goals need to be met for her to cease her hunger strike, how thorough she plans on committing to the hunger strike, and if she supports Israel’s right to defend itself. May and the Green Party did not meet the deadline for comment. 

The Green Party’s deputy leader Jonathan Pedneault did not comment on May’s decision to join the pro-Gaza hunger strike. 

The Green Party has had issues dealing with antisemitism in the past.

In the 2006, 2008, and 2011 elections, the Green Party ran Monika Schaefer as a candidate in Alberta’s Yellowhead riding. 

Schaefer had expressed troubling antisemitic views that included blaming Jewish people for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and called the Holocaust the “biggest and most pernicious and persistent lie in all of history.”

Schaefer was later arrested and convicted in Germany on incitement to hatred charges for her Holocaust denial. 

In 2015, the Green Party ran Sharon Danley as the Spadina-Fort York candidate who had made multiple disturbing social media posts including one comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler and blamed the “Jewish faction within the party” for her election defeat.

In 2016, the Green Party adopted a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions resolution at their party’s national convention targeting the Israeli economy. 

A year after electing the first Black Canadian and Jewish woman to lead a federal party, Annamie Paul stepped down as the Green Party’s leader in 2021 after a series of internal party disputes over the Israel-Palestine conflict and facing what Paul described as racism and sexism.

LAWTON: Alberta power crisis highlights flaws in green energy transition (ft. Kris Sims)

By
Andrew Lawton
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Last week, Albertans were greeted with an unexpected emergency alert, warning of rotating power outages due to extreme cold straining the electrical grid. Canadian Taxpayers Federation Alberta director Kris Sims joined True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss the role Ottawa’s green energy regulations have played in this crisis.

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The Canadian journalist who helped take down Harvard President Claudine Gay

By
Elie Cantin-Nantel
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While Canadians may be familiar with the controversies surrounding now former Harvard University president Claudine Gay, they may not be aware that a Canadian journalist played a crucial role in exposing the plagiarism allegations that contributed to her downfall.

Gay resigned from her prestigious position on Jan. 2, 2024, amid blowback from a congressional testimony where she refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s policies, and amid being accused of plagiarism.

Christopher Brunet, a Canadian writer currently working as a contributing editor at The American Conservative, was behind the first reports on Gay and her alleged plagiarism that received international attention.

True North caught up with Brunet – who is currently living in Romania amid having left Canada during the pandemic, in part due to government-imposed mandates and restrictions.

From academia to journalism:

An economist by trade, Brunet entered the media scene in 2020 after he spoke out in defense of a University of Chicago professor while he was working at the institution. The professor in question, Harald Uhlig, was being attacked by progressives for criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Brunet told True North his defence of Uhlig led to him getting reprisals of his own – leading him to begin writing about problems in academia on Substack. 

“I started writing angrily on Substack,” he said. “I was writing about corruption in economics or in academia… I leveraged that Substack writing into a job at the Daily Caller, then I went from the Daily Caller back to Substack, then I went from Substack to The American Conservative, where I currently am.”

The case of Claudine Gay:

It’s important to note that Brunet had been on Gay’s case prior to the post-Oct. 7 controversies.

On April 17, 2022, Brunet published an article titled The Curious Case of Claudine Gay, in which he expressed some questions and concerns about her conduct as the then Dean of Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences and how she ended up in the position in the first place. 

“A lot of her shortcomings became immediately obvious to me. You can kind of just look at her CV and tell that she’s not good enough for Harvard.” said Burnet.

Many have since accused Gay of being a “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) hire. That accusation was hardened by reports that the Harvard search committee was only considering presidential candidates that met DEI criteria. 

The fallout following Gay’s testimony:

It was only after Gay’s explosive testimony in front of Congress, that Brunet’s initial reporting on her began to pick up steam. 

“I wrote my article, A Curious Case of Clutting Gay, and nobody cared. It had no impact (at the time),” he noted. “Two years later, it got like hundreds of thousands of views and raised thousands of dollars for me.” 

“It really gave me a lot of credibility because people can see the date on the article and they can say, ‘oh he wrote this two years ago.’ It wasn’t like just a dog pile-on in the moment.” 

In the days following the testimony, Brunet received a tip off from someone who had compiled cases of suspected plagiarism against Gay. “It was handed to me on a silver platter,” said Brunet.

Brunet decided to reach out to Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow and director of the initiative on critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute – who has become a prominent anti-DEI voice. Rufo helped Brunet make the allegations against Gay go viral.

“I didn’t need to bring it to Chris Rufo. I guess I could have reported it myself,” noted Brunet. “But he’s kind of a master at getting, shaping the narrative and bringing attention to a story. And so I think that was a really good choice in retrospect.”

“He blew up the story, and I couldn’t have done it without him.”

The impacts of Brunet’s reporting: 

Brunet told True North that at first, even with Rufo’s help, he was not certain that the allegations would be consequential enough to bring down Gay.

“I was a little bit sheepish almost because I was like, ‘I’m not sure if this is enough to bring her down.’ It was plagiarism, but it was like a few examples of it. And it wasn’t like the worst plagiarism in the world.” 

But then, things changed, as more outlets began reporting on the controversy, and more allegations came out.

“We got really, really lucky because right as soon as we reported it,  the Washington Free Beacon reported on it and then the New York Post and then another guy on Twitter and then the Free Beacon again,” noted Brunet.

“We got the ball rolling.”

In the end, almost 50 allegations of plagiarism were levelled against Gay – who ended up resigning as president of Harvard University.

Accusations of Racism:

After Gay’s resignation, Gay herself, as well as BLM activists and the legacy media said racism had a link with her downfall. Something Brunet wholeheartedly rejects.

“For me, this was just like another case of research misconduct. I mean, it didn’t really matter who she was. It’s just the fact that she was guilty.” 

He added that such allegations were however “just predictable” in today’s society.

What’s next for Brunet?

While Claudine Gay is no longer at the helm of Harvard, Brunet plans to continue writing about the university. He tells True North he has a few projects in the works, citing a surprisingly large interest in the affair. 

“I’ve written lots of stories about Harvard in my career, too many to count,” he said. “There’s a lot of interest in this topic in general.”

Everything you need to know about Google’s Online News Act deal with Ottawa

By
Clayton DeMaine
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Google Headquarters, Mountain View, California Photo taken from Tanikal.com

Google struck a deal with the Canadian government last year that will see the company give $100 million to Canadian media organizations in response to the Online News Act. One expert said the amount is “far less than meets the eye.”

Trudeau’s Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge called the deal a “historic development,” and insisted that the government made “absolutely no concessions” when dealing with Google.

Michael Geist, professor and Canada Research Chair in Internet and eCommerce Law at Ottawa University, disagrees. Geist has criticized the Online News Act since it was first introduced as Bill C-18.

“I think the government was left trying to come up with some way to salvage this deal,” he said, “so they struck a deal that contradicts much of what the government had said it was intending to do with this legislation.”

Google now only has to negotiate with one representative for the collective of journalist organizations in Canada instead of the original plan of Bill C-18, which was for the company to enter into organizations with each news site.

Google also was exempted from the Final Offer Arbitration System which was described as a key component of the Online News Act, which Geist said was in and of itself noteworthy.

“The fact that they created a carve-out for Google is a big change. The fact that they arrived at a final number, a number that is far below what they previously estimated this bill was going to generate, is a big change,” Geist said.

Despite the deal Geist still thinks “the whole thing is pretty concerning.” He said, “the government dug a hole for itself with this legislation.”

The group who will act as negotiators and administrators of the $100 million media fund has yet to be determined.

“There will be a certain percentage (of the media fund) that can be allocated towards administration costs. The expectation is about 5% of that will go towards admin, about $5 million,” he said.

Once a group emerges to oversee this process and be the group negotiating with Google, various Canadian media companies will go to them to get their share of the fund.

Geist said News Media Canada and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters representing print and broadcast media are likely players.

“With $5 million in admin fees available or roughly, it may be attractive for different players to try to position themselves as the entity that runs this,” he said.

The status of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is less clear. Meta blocked Canadian news in response to the bill at the beginning of August. In some cases, local media companies saw a 25% decline in viewers in the months that followed.

“You have to account both for the lost revenue from Meta, which, based on its public statements, probably runs in the range of $20 million for the deals that they previously had that are now lost, plus the lost value of all the links, which is clearly worth millions of dollars as well,” Geist said.

Google also had deals with many Canadian news outlets that Geist estimates to be from $40 to $50 million. These won’t be added to the $100 million deal.

Accounting for the revenue lost from previous Meta and Google deals, administration costs for the group running the negotiations, and what was lost from potential links from Meta, Geist said the approach was ultimately not the right one.

“I think that it represents some amount of new money, but by and large, for many outlets, they will get less than they got before. Some others will get nothing at all,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a success in that regard, and there were better options that were available.”

True North reached out to Kevin Desjardins, president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, but he did not respond by the time of publication.

85 Chinese research groups listed by feds as potential threat to national security

By
Quinn Patrick
-

The Canadian government has publicly named 85 Chinese research institutions that they believe “may pose” a threat to national security and potentially sensitive research on Tuesday.

The list of research institutions also includes 12 Iranian and six Russian organizations, which the Canadian government believes have ties to “military, national defence or state security entities.”

The list is part of an effort to keep Canadian research and development secured from theft and espionage, particularly in sectors like advanced weaponry, quantum science and aerospace.

“While Canadian-led research is defined by its excellence and collaborative nature, its openness can make it a target for foreign influence, increasing the potential risks for research and development efforts to be misappropriated to the detriment of national security,” said Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne in a statement Tuesday.

While federal officials know that foreign interference is at play, they still don’t have a complete understanding as to what extent. 

“In defining the list, there would be an understanding of risk factors and how they relate to Canadian institutions but also to international institutions,” one official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, told Global News.

Officials acknowledged that protecting Canadian research institutions will come at a much higher cost but that there also may be an even greater cost to sensitive research being “exfiltrated” by foreign agents.

The listing, which has been carefully compiled for some time, also included 11 “sensitive technology research areas.” 

These areas include AI, energy technology, digital infrastructure technology, surveillance tech, human-machine integration, space and satellite research, amongst others. 

The list was not made in terms of targeting specific countries or companies, Champagne told a House of Commons committee last November, but the list clearly reveals that the bulk of these organizations are coming from the People’s Republic of China. 

The majority of entities on the list have direct ties with the Chinese armed forces, like the Rocket Force Command College, People’s Public Security University of China, or the National University of Defence Technology.

“China has been dramatically ramping up its research and development capacity. And part of that has been adopting Western technologies and turning them into Chinese innovations,” said Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a University of Ottawa professor and expert on Canada-China relations in an interview with Global News.

The new policy will be applied via federal funding which is channeled through granting agencies as well as the Canada Foundation for Innovation. 

There will be a vetting process for grant applications labelled as “sensitive technology,” and the researchers associated with the project cannot be connected with any of the listed organizations. 

“Threats can come from anywhere at any time. … What we’ve been working with our intelligence agencies (on) is to make sure we are as specific as we can be,” Champagne told the committee.

Besides entities with connections to China, there are Russian entities, like the 27th Scientific Centre of the Russian Ministry of Defence and 48th Central Scientific Research Institute. 

Listed also, are Iran’s Aerospace Research Institute Baghyatollah Medical Sciences University, and several other institutions associated with Tehran.

The new policy is scheduled to come into effect in September and officials say that the list will be reviewed and updated on a regular basis. 

OP-ED: Canadian policymakers should learn from Fauci’s confessions

By
Kenneth Green
-

Canadians interested in interrogating the government response to COVID-19 recently heard an interesting admission. During a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C. last week, Anthony Fauci, the architect of American COVID policy, admitted that social distancing mandates of “six feet apart” were “likely not based on scientific data” and “sort of just appeared.”

Of course, the same is true for most of other non-pharmaceutical COVID interventions, where there was very little unambiguous science to be followed and policies were essentially pulled out of the air, wrapped in a lab coat and presented as “the science” with a heavy dose of “if you argue, you’re a denier.” These policies included compulsive handwashing, voluntary quarantines, mandatory business closures, mask wearing and school closures.

The inability of schools to manage social distancing was part of the rationale for school closures, as students and teachers could not remain “safely” six feet apart. But Fauci won’t accept any responsibility for the closures or harms to students because of them. In his testimony, he dumped the blame on school districts, rather than public health authorities. According to one House member on the panel, Fauci is still not convinced there was learning loss.

But there was.

According to research conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the federal education department (the same government for which Fauci worked), school closures set children back. The Nation’s Report Card, which measures student achievement in the U.S., found in 2022 that students in grades four and eight fell significantly behind in reading and further behind than ever in math.

Here in Canada, student achievement has tumbled following COVID government school closures. In Ontario, where the largest share of Canadian students live, schools were closed provincewide for 27 weeks.

But the consequences of school closures were clear before 2020. Governments should have known better. Someone as well-resourced as Fauci would clearly have had access to the evidence that lost classroom time hurts student achievement, contributes to longer-term student absenteeism, and negatively impacts the social progress of children. Yet like policymakers here in Canada, he advocated schools be closed anyway. 

Now, once again the facts are being ignored or denied. As the adults in the room, we must be the stewards of good policy for children. Even if well-intended, the harms of school closures by government diktat must be acknowledged, lest we repeat these mistakes.

In a study we coauthored in 2022, we observed that losses in student performance across provinces reflected significant damage to children’s future prospects. In one example, according to the Calgary Board of Education “number of students who passed the grade 12 diploma exam in Math 30-1 declined by 18 per cent from 77.8 per cent of students in 2018-19, to 63.6 per cent of students in 2021-22. The number of grade 12 students who passed the English 30-1 exam declined by 9 per cent, from 86.8 per cent in 2018-19 to 78.8 per cent in 2021-22. This is significant given the importance of the diploma exams.”

We also observed that school closures led to greater chronic absenteeism, greater educational inequality, and a rise in anxiety, depression and suicide among young people. Research shows that school closures likely reduced the lifetime earnings of students, which also hurts the economy over the long term.

In light of Fauci’s admission that there was little sound science to justify “social distancing” and its trickle-down impacts on society—in other words, that we witnessed a historically unprecedented façade of faux-science at the time of society’s greatest need—Americans and Canadians would surely welcome more admissions about other “follow the science” policies.

But more welcome yet would be for our public health leaders to step up and stop pretending they were blameless. Without this, public trust in public health can only continue to decline. Rather than pointing fingers at others, the COVID-19 public health cadre, the biggest failures in recent history, should make way for new public health professionals who might start out with a greater sense of responsibility, having seen their predecessors booted into obscurity.

Kenneth Green and Paige MacPherson are analysts with the Fraser Institute.

Canada has become a “safe haven” for transnational criminal syndicates: report

By
Quinn Patrick
-

The International Coalition Against Illicit Economies ICAIE published a report that referred to Canada as a “safe haven” and an “international hub” for crime organizations to thrive in the country’s “booming” market for illicit trade. 

“Canada has become a safe zone for the world’s most notorious crime groups and threat networks that are harming Canada’s national security and imperiling the security of other nations,” reads the report. 

Items most commonly trafficked in Canada’s booming illicit economy are fentanyl and fake pharmaceuticals but there is also a growing market of illegal alcohol and cross-border money laundering.

“Today, Canada is not merely a consumer of illicit goods and contraband, but increasingly serves as a hub of illicit trade, production and distribution of illicit goods, an exporter of such contraband, and a money laundering safe haven for a potpourri of criminal networks,” wrote authors Calvin Chrustie and David M. Luna. 

“Canada remains a financial haven for kingpins, kleptocrats, oligarchs, and corrupt officials to reinvest stolen funds from their countries in real estate, energy, mining, and other sectors.” 

Tens of billions are laundered annually through Canada from the proceeds of human trafficking and the sale of illegal drugs and weapons, according to the report. 

The report also noted that Canada is increasingly becoming the new destination for  multinational crime syndicates to set up shop.  

“Canada has become a major global refuge for transnational crime networks and their dirty money, including the world’s most notorious networks and their leaders like Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán and the Sinaloa cartel, Chinese drug kingpin Tse Chi Lop, Hezbollah Financier Altaf Khanani, and other bad actors,” reads the report. 

Canada’s biker gangs buy drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine off Mexican cartels via help from Chinese and Iranian criminal networks. 

The smuggling of drugs into B.C. is facilitated in particular by Chinese syndicates.

The report alleges that the proliferation of crime throughout Canada is the result of Canadian governments and law enforcement agencies, at every level, holding a “historic dismissal” of transnational crime.

According to the report, Canada drastically lacks a federal strategy to coordinate intelligence agencies like CSIS, CBSA and law enforcement like the RCMP to fight these growing illicit markets.

The ICAIE called for politicians to promptly acknowledge this burgeoning issue and take action to form something akin to a Canadian National Security Strategy, which could cut off the flow of illegal goods to and from the border.  

Former RCMP senior operations officer and co-author Chrustie said that Canadian laws have lagged behind the times and are desperately in need of reform for the crimes of the present.

“Stop saying you’re fixing the problem unless you’re having substantive discussions about legal reform, including the Charter, because the other things won’t work,” Chrustie, who is also a senior partner with consulting frim Critical Risk Team, told National Post in an interview.

Chrustie cited rules around disclosure of evidence in trials as not having the adequate protection necessary for sensitive information and evidence, especially when it’s obtained by allied intelligence like the FBI.  

“Nothing will change unless we change our disclosure laws to allow us to collaborate and co-operate with our foreign partners, because our laws don’t allow us to protect their information and their intelligence,” said Chrustie, referencing a 1991 Supreme Court ruling that made it a requirment for prosecutors to disclose “all relevant information” to the defence in criminal cases. 

Another issue facing Canada is that while there is a “national” police force with the RCMP, there isn’t a “federal policing” force that focuses on tackling modern crimes of national significance, like the ones mentioned in the report, noted Chrustie.

“You don’t see (the U.S.) Drug Enforcement Administration agents doing highway patrol. You don’t see the DEA arresting drunks. The DEA are targeting the Triad and the cartels for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. They take it seriously, they know it’s very difficult,” he said. 

“The people (at the RCMP) are fantastic, but it’s just not sustainable,” added Chrustie. “The model is broken.”

Poilievre slams Quebec Mayors over new housing construction

By
Isaac Lamoureux
-

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre openly criticized the mayors of Montreal and Quebec City, calling them both “incompetent” over the lack of new housing construction, sparking a heated debate among political figures. 

Following his first post on X calling out the mayors in French, Poilievre had numerous subsequent posts with additional data to support his claims and concerns.

“Massive drop in construction in Quebec, while Trudeau gives billions to incompetent mayors, Marchand and Plante, who block construction sites,” Poilievre wrote in his first post to X. “Federal money for cities will be tied to the number of houses and apartments built when I’m PM.”

Bruno Marchand, Mayor of Quebec City, lashed back at Poilievre in French about an hour after his initial post.

“Poilièvre’s ‘common sense’ is to insult the elected representatives of Quebec. Frankly. This is not only contempt for elected officials, but for all those who work on housing issues in our city. It’s petty politics. Quebec does not deserve this contempt,” said Marchand.

Poilievre responded by accompanying figures published by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, showing Quebec City’s housing starts were down by 40%, followed by Montreal at a 37% decrease. 

“Mr. Mayor, your bureaucracy is blocking construction, resulting in a 40% drop in housing starts, while your citizens endure some of the worst rent increases in the country. I’m not going to force taxpayers to send you cheques to deprive people of housing,” wrote Poilievre.

Based on the data, only Trois-Rivières and Saguenay had increases, 14% and 49%, respectively. Poilievre congratulated both of these cities in his next post to X.  

The mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, also replied to Poilievre.

“Before calling anyone incompetent, Mr. Poilièvre should understand that in Quebec, federal funding for housing does NOT go through the cities,” she said. “‘Common sense’ also means understanding the financing mechanisms specific to each province.”

Poilievre responded with data that showed housing starts were down in Montreal by 37% and nearly 25,000 housing units have been obstructed since the start of the Plante administration in Montreal in 2017.

“Madam Mayor, construction starts in Montreal are in free fall because of your bureaucracy which prevents construction in the midst of a housing crisis. And Trudeau continues to send you cheques,” said Poilievre in his first post calling out Plante.

“By preventing the construction of tens of thousands of units, the Plante administration is contributing to making Montreal less and less affordable,” said Gabriel Giguère, author of the study from which the data was pulled. 

“Fewer civil servants, more housing when I am PM,” Poilievre added in his second post addressed to Plante.

Speaking in Nunavut, Trudeau gave his short take in French on the arguments between Poilievre, Marchand, and Plante.

“I’m extremely disappointed by what we saw from Mr. Poilièvre today in terms of his contempt for Quebec elected officials. It’s been several times now that he has shown condescension and ignorance about how things work between the federal government and the provinces,” said Trudeau. “I think it’s high time he apologized for his behaviour and for what he’s been saying, attacking elected officials in Quebec.” 

According to The National Post, Marchand said in a radio interview that he hopes Poilievre does not become prime minister. 

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