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Friday, July 11, 2025

Pierre Poilievre pledges to audit Bank of Canada and ban its state-backed digital currency

Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre has announced he would ban a proposed “central bank digital currency” (CBDC) as well as audit the Bank of Canada if elected prime minister. 

“Justin Trudeau has threatened the Bank of Canada’s independence with a half-trillion dollars of deficits that required the central bank to print money and cause inflation,” said Poilievre. 

Poilievre says that ​​“(m)oney-printing deficits have sent more dollars bidding up the price of goods. Inflationary taxes have made it more expensive for businesses to produce those goods,” 

He added that “(t)he more Liberals spend, the more things cost. That is JustinFlation. I will end it, by restoring central bank independence, mandating an independent audit of all the money printing.”

The Bank of Canada is looking at potentially developing a digital currency, although it would be up to the Minister of Finance whether Canada adopts it or not. According to the bank, private digital currencies such as bitcoin could hurt its ability to “control inflation and act as the lender of last resort.”

Poilievre said he does not believe a central bank digital currency is necessary, citing risks that come with adopting one. 

The bank’s discussion paper says that a “retail CBDC is defined as a liability of the Bank of Canada denominated in Canadian dollars that can be held and transferred in electronic form by the general public.” Electronic money that is held in a bank by retail consumers can be described as a deposit, reads Poilievre’s news release.

According to him, a CBDC would lead to nationalized bank deposits and other banking activities enabled by those deposits. 

His news release also said the Bank of Canada “contradicts itself on whether a Central Bank Digital Currency would pay interest on those deposits.”

Poilievre added that the Bank of Canada would have an advantage over commercial banks because it would have the ability to print money to pay customers better interest rates.

This would lead to customers being forced to switch from a commercial bank to the central bank to receive “free money,” he says in a news release on Wednesday, on top of causing runaway inflation.

Furthermore, Poilievre says that “a central bank would not need to worry about running losses because, as Governor Macklem told the Finance Committee, taxpayers are always there to bail them out.” 

This, said Poilievre, is something that commercial banks are not able to do.

Poilievre also asserts “serious risks” to having a digital currency run by the Bank of Canada, which outweigh the benefits.

He warns that banking could become politicized, with politicians “making election promises of more generous interest rates for depositors or other benefits.” 

As Poilievre puts it, “(t)here is also the risk that the government could use the power to pick and choose winners and losers, with CBDC (central bank digital currency) regulations supporting or opposing certain industries, provinces or voter groups.”

On top of banning a Bank of Canada digital currency, Poilievre would see through a bill proposed by MP and former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer that would give the Auditor General the power to audit the Bank of Canada.

Poilievre said he supports an investigation by the Auditor General to determine if Justin Trudeau’s Liberals interfered with the independence of the Bank of Canada in order to fund their deficits, adding “(w)e need answers on why inflation is now triple the Bank’s 2% target. ”

This announcement is not Poilievre’s first when it comes to the issue of banking and digital currencies. A supporter of bitcoin, Poilievre previously stated that he wanted to make Canada the “blockchain capital of the world.”

“Government is ruining the Canadian dollar, so Canadians should have the freedom to use other money, such as bitcoin,” Poilievre said in March at a London, Ont. rally. 

Poilievre’s views on digital currencies and central banking have, however, earned criticism. Fellow leadership candidate and former Quebec Liberal premier Jean Charest accused Poilievre of “stoking the flames of populism” by attacking the Bank of Canada’s legitimacy. 

In addition to opposing government digital currencies, Poilievre has also said that he is opposed to government digital IDs.

Leftist politicians up in arms after Elon Musk buys Twitter

Source: Flickr

The news of billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk striking a deal to buy social media giant Twitter for $44 Billion USD garnered some dramatic reactions from left-wing Canadian political figures who use the popular platform. 

Musk had previously criticized Twitter’s moderating practices, which have resulted in the company receiving multiple accusations of censorship over the years.

Following the news that Musk had struck a deal to buy the platform this week, the hashtag #leavingtwitter began trending on the platform 

Among those who decided to take a break from Twitter over Musk’s purchase of the platform was Ottawa city councillor Shawn Menard, seen as one of the council’s most progressivist members.

Menard called Musk an “agitator” before his hiatus, though it appears his Twitter break did not last long.

Menard’s “non-binary” colleague Catherine McKenney also reacted to Musk buying Twitter, posting a screenshot of tweet from Jul. 2020 where Musk wrote “Pronouns suck.” 

McKenney replied by declaring “(p)roudly they/them. But we have our collective good work cut out for us.”

On the federal level, NDP MP Peter Julian blasted Musk, saying the billionaire paid “no federal income taxes in 2018.” According to Julian, Musk’s ownership of Twitter would result in the platform seeing “increased hate & disinformation.”

NDP Leader Jahgmeet Singh posted a similar tweet, calling out billionaires whom he says have “no intention” of protecting people’s rights on social media. Singh did not. However, mention Musk specifically.

Other federal NDP politicians took aim at Musk, including Manitoba NDP MP Niki Ashton, who retweeted a satirical headline from Reductress that says “BREAKING: Man Makes Midlife Crisis Everybody’s Problem.”

Meanwhile, Alberta NDP MP Heather McPhearson shared a tweet from Aaron Hoyland calling out Musk for spending billions to purchase Twitter to allow for s**tposting “without consequences.”

Some former political figures also shared their thoughts on Musk acquiring Twitter, including former Ontario NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo, who is now the minister  of a progressivist church in downtown Toronto.

She described Musk as a “Rich White Guy” and says Twitter activists will continue fighting “for the rest of us.”

DiNovo also wrote that she was “(a)mazed that everyone who pays their taxes aren’t outraged that all the Billionaires pay almost nothing .”

Justin Trudeau’s former principal secretary Gerald Butts also chimed in. He compared those who said they would leave the platform over Musk’s purchase of it to Americans who said they’d move to Canada if Bush, Obama or Trump won the election.

“Follow through will be weak.,” he prophesied.

Butts also said that “(r)ich guys have always wanted to own the dominant media of their day. The Elon story is as old as newspapers. Probably older.”

A big worry of many left-wingers, including those in the Joe Biden administration, is that Musk will allow former U.S. president Donald Trump to return to the platform. Trump was banned from Twitter in Jan. 2021, despite having almost 90 million followers.

However, Trump has said he won’t return to Twitter even if his account is reinstated, as he now has his own social media platform called TRUTH Social.

Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist”, said he wants to make Twitter’s algorithms open-source, to tackle spambots and to provide authentication to all human users.

Marco Mendicino is spreading falsehoods to justify Emergencies Act

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino invoked the debunked lie that the Freedom Convoy was responsible for an attempted apartment arson in Ottawa, and refused to retract it when called out by a Conservative MP. As the Liberals try to defend their invocation of the Emergencies Act, they still aren’t committing to disclosing cabinet documents, prompting the question of what they’re hiding. Conservative public safety critic Raquel Dancho joins True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss. Plus, a look at Alberta politics and the push for the west to say “Adios Ottawa,” with Maverick leadership candidate Tariq Elnaga.

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Canada’s totalitarian approach to Covid (Ft. Dr. Julie Ponesse)

Canada’s healthcare system didn’t have the capacity, the flexibility, the innovation or the robustness to handle a novel virus that disproportionately impacted the very old, the very weak and the very sick. Meanwhile, Canadians witnessed a colossal failure in leadership across the board – politics, government, media, business and even academia.

Dr. Julie Ponesse joins The Candice Malcolm Show to discuss Canada’s totalitarian approach to the pandemic. Dr. Ponesse recently walked away from her academic career after refusing to comply with Western University’s vaccine mandate. She says we are “living through a pandemic of coercion and compliance.”

In this interview, Candice and Dr. Ponesse touch on a range of topics, including Dr. Ponesse’s departure from academia, her book “My Choice on the ethics of forced vaccination,” Canada’s failures during the pandemic and much more.

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What do Quebecers think of Pierre Poilievre?

Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre has been attracting large crowds at his campaign events across the country. On Tuesday, the Carleton MP was in Gatineau, Quebec and invited Quebecers to meet him and hear his ideas.

True North’s Elie Cantin-Nantel was at the Gatineau rally and caught up with Quebecers who attended Poilievre’s rally.

Elie asks attendees what they thought of Poilievre’s promise to defund the CBC and what they thought of former Quebec premier Jean Charest running in the leadership race.

Trudeau minister repeats false claims about convoy during inquiry committee

Source: Parlvu

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino repeated disproven claims about the Freedom Convoy to justify the Trudeau government’s use of the Emergencies Act to crack down on the peaceful protest in Ottawa.

Mendicino and Attorney General David Lametti appeared before the Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency on Tuesday to defend the government’s use of the never-before-used act. 

While answering a question about why the government decided to resort to such extreme measures, Mendicino falsely claimed convoy protesters posed a threat to Ottawa residents and were connected to the highly-publicized arson attempt in a downtown apartment building.

“People who live in apartment buildings find that their front doors are locked and that fires are set in the hallways and corridors,” Mendicino said before Conservative MP Glen Motz interrupted on a point of order and corrected the Liberal minister.

Ottawa Police Service (OPS) has cleared the Freedom Convoy of any involvement in the arson attempt, arresting one suspect in March and another in April.  

According to a Mar. 21 OPS press release, a 21-year-old man named Connor Russell McDonald was first charged for his involvement. 

“A man has been charged in relation to a deliberately set fire in an apartment building on Lisgar Street on February 6, 2022. A second man is still wanted by police,” OPS wrote. “There is no information indicating MCDONALD was involved in any way with the Convoy protest which was going on when this arson took place.” 

On Apr. 6, the OPS issued a statement on a second man arrested for the arson attempt, revealing that 41-year-old Bartosz Wernick had nothing to do with the Freedom Convoy protests either.

Mendicino also repeated the false claim that the border blockades in Alberta and Ontario had had a “devastating” economic impact on international trade. 

“The impacts were devastating. The daily cost to the economy at each of these ports of entry were astronomical,” the minister said in committee. 

However, according to Statistics Canada, data shows that border blockades that happened while convoy protests took place in Ottawa had little effect on cross-border trade.

The government’s data revealed that international trade at Ontario and Alberta borders with the US were actually up in February compared to the same time last year.

During the committee, Lametti confirmed that the government referred to false reports from the state broadcaster to justify freezing the bank accounts of protesters. 

“There were reports. CBC reported … that there was foreign funding through a variety of different sites. The various pieces of information that we had explain the various measures that we took,” Lametti said in response to a question from Senator Gwen Boniface. 

CBC has parrotted the idea that extremists and foreign sources were behind the trucker protests despite evidence showing otherwise. 

In March, the CBC publicly retracted a news story about the convoy that erroneously claimed that support for the protests had largely come from foreigners. 

However, according to GoFundMe executives who testified before a March 3 Commons public safety committee, foreigners made up a very small portion of the donors. 

“Our records show 88% of donated funds originated in Canada and 86% of donors were from Canada,” said GoFundMe president Juan Benitez.

Throughout the protests, the Liberals and legacy media made a number of claims about the convoy ranging from extremist involvement, foreign funding and millionaires bankrolling the movement. To date, all of these claims have been called into question by law enforcement officials and fundraising executives.

Jean Charest releases platform for “clean growth and environmental results”

Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leadership candidate Jean Charest has released his platform for climate change and the environment, promising to “decarbonize our economy while creating tens of thousands of jobs.”

The former Liberal premier of Quebec touted his environmental platform as a “serious plan to deal with climate change and the environment” in an effort to bring Canada’s carbon emissions to net-zero.

The platform promises to repeal the Trudeau carbon tax and replace it with a Charest carbon tax that focuses on industrial emissions rather than a general price on carbon that Charest said “(p)uts an unfair burden on … people, especially in rural Canada.”

While the current Liberal carbon tax has generated controversy over the federal government’s authority to impose such a tax, Charest has said that he would sit down with the premiers to implement plans that respect provincial jurisdiction.

Charest has announced his plan would grant tax credits and significant investments to make Canada a leader in Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) intended to reduce emissions. A Charest government would also provide tax credits to Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) facilities that match or exceed equivalent facilities in the United States.

Saying that the “Trudeau government has made it almost impossible to build any major projects in Canada,” Charest said he would fast-track projects – including approvals of projects – that would result in emissions reductions. Charest’s plan also encourages increasing the production of liquified natural gas and building pipelines to alleviate energy concerns in Europe and Asia, and reduce reliance on Russian energy. 

In an effort to influence energy policy beyond Canadian borders, the Charest plan touts a ‘carbon tariff’ that would impose economic levies on big polluters like China. 

Charest also announced his government would negotiate with the United States to standardize North American environmental and emission regulations while simultaneously attempting to prevent an outflow of energy production and jobs in “trade-exposed industries” to countries with lower standards like China.

‘Right to Repair’ legislation would also be introduced, giving Canadians the right to repair their “(a)ppliances, vehicles, farm equipment, electronic devices, and other household items that otherwise end up as waste.”

Charest also said he would waive the harmonized sales tax (HST) on goods and services on products the government deems to help reduce emissions, including electric vehicles, high-efficiency windows and Energy-Star appliances. 

Charest has portrayed himself as a conservative with the ability to win parliamentary seats in crucial areas like the Greater Toronto Area, Quebec and other regions traditionally dominated by the Liberal Party. 

“Having a credible plan on the environment is the table stakes for any national 2022 Conservative leadership candidate who wants our party to win the next federal election,” said Jean Charest. 

“Conservatives have a proud environmental record.”

Covid lockdown advocate livestreams himself breaking isolation rules

A Calgary doctor who has been an outspoken supporter of government-imposed COVID-19 restrictions appears to have contracted COVID and live-streamed himself breaking isolation rules this week. 

Joe Vipond, an emergency room physician and climate change activist, posted a long Twitter thread on Apr. 23, beginning with a “grumpy acknowledgement” that he had tested positive for COVID-19.

Vipond, who said he was in Ottawa and travelling to a conference, obsesses over having contracted the virus despite his three doses of COVID-19 vaccine and his dogmatic use of a respirator mask and goggles while indoors. 

“I was super careful. on the airplane, goggles and respirator mask. in taxis, respirator mask with window cracked. Daily RATs. Ensured others around me masked indoors. Never took off respirator mask indoors. Air purifier in each room I slept in.”

Despite confirming with three rapid antigen tests that he had contracted the virus, Vipond appears to have posted a now-deleted livestream of himself on Parliament Hill on Apr. 26 – only three days after testing positive on Apr. 23.

The province of Ontario recommends self-isolating for five days after testing positive for COVID, or ten days if the subject is immunocompromised. Vipond’s Twitter thread where he announced his COVID infection proclaims he has deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, which would suggest he is indeed immunocompromised. 

“I’ve mentioned before I have a pre-existing condition,” he said. “This past summer I was diagnosed with DVT/PE, suspect from a hereditary problem, and am currently on blood thinners.”

When questioned on Twitter about apparently breaking provincial COVID restrictions by being out and about, Vipond replied that he had “consulted with Ontario Health” and that he would be “self-isolating” en route as he travels by car back to his home province of Alberta.

Although Vipond appears not to have followed the provincial guidelines, he frequently documents his hyper-cautious behaviour on Twitter, calling himself a “super paranoid dude” who wears a respirator mask at all times when he is indoors and avoids “any high-risk situations.”

In the aforementioned Twitter thread, he theorizes what led to him contracting COVID, concluding that he caught the virus on a train from Ottawa to Toronto. Although he said nobody was sitting beside him, he said he believes he caught the virus when he wasn’t wearing his goggles and had taken off his mask to eat orange slices. 

Vipond has been a vocal critic of the Alberta government’s response to the pandemic, arguing the province has not gone far enough to impose restrictions.

“Our government (Alberta) may no longer care about us, but we can care about each other,” Vipond wrote in a January article in the Edmonton Journal, while the province was still enforcing its mask mandate and vaccine passports.

Vipond recommended masking children in schools, vaccinating school-age children, and declaring that “(u)ntil the entire world has access to COVID vaccinations, this pandemic will not end. None of us is safe from COVID until we are all safe from COVID.”

While Alberta did impose mask mandates and instituted a vaccine passport program last fall, the province’s response was considered more lenient than most. In a recent ranking by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms on the worst rights offenders during COVID, Alberta came in second only to Saskatchewan as the “least worst” province.

True North reached out to Vipond for comment but received no response by time of publication. 

How has the Charter of Rights and Freedoms changed Canada? (Ft. The Hon. Brian Peckford)

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is 40-years-old this year. What was the Charter intended to do? What was the vision of the original signatories?

On today’s episode of The Candice Malcolm Show, Candice is joined by one of the signers of the original Charter, the Honourable Brian Peckford. Peckford served as the Progressive Conservative Premier of Newfoundland from 1979 to 1989. He is the last living signatory of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Over the past year, the former premier has become a symbol of Canadians’ opposition to government overreach and the government’s response to COVID.

Candice and Mr. Peckford discuss how the Charter has changed Canada since its signing, if the Charter protected our rights and freedoms during COVID, the government’s handling of the freedom convoy and much more.

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Liberal MP accuses Doug Ford of “crimes against humanity”

Liberal MP Julie Dzerowicz has accused Ontario premier Doug Ford of “crimes against humanity” due to his stance on climate change. 

Dzerowicz made the accusation in the House of Commons on Monday and even doubled down on the statement when questioned about it. 

“These inactions (on climate change) to me are irresponsible, unconscionable and a crime against humanity,” said Dzerowicz. 

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis rebuked Dzerowicz for the remarks.

“She did actually use the term ‘crimes against humanity’ to refer to a policy of the Ford government,” he said. “That is quite a serious accusation to be making, and I just want to invite the member, encourage the member, especially in light of actual crimes against humanity we’re seeing in Europe right now, that she would take the opportunity to apologize and withdraw the comment.” 

Dzerowicz replied that, to her, “it is unconscionable that there is a province, a territory, a municipality in this country that is not going to do its part to reduce its emissions. It is absolutely unconscionable, it is irresponsible and to me it will be seen as a crime against humanity.”

According to the United Nations, a crime against humanity is defined as any act “committed as a part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population,” including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, torture, imprisonment, sexual violence and others. 

The charge of “crimes against humanity” has also frequently been flung at the Trudeau government on social media for its restrictions on Canada’s unvaccinated population and other COVID-19 pandemic measures.

In March, Liberal politicians were in an uproar after Conservative MP Rachael Thomas announced in the House of Commons that “many Canadians” view Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a dictator.

Immediately after the comment, Liberal MPs called the language unparliamentary and an affront to democracy. 

“We have free and fair elections in Canada. All 338 MPs are elected in the same way. To use the word “dictator” demeans our electoral system and MPs need to stay away from this rhetoric,” said Liberal MP Anthony Housefather.

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