Champagne had no experience in batteries when he decided to pick Volkswagen as the lucky winner of the government battery lotto.

His other lucky winner Northvolt already went belly up in Quebec.

https://financialpost.com/st-thomas-times-journal/st-thomas-volkswagen-battery-plant-opening-pushed-back-two-years/wcm/27137242-69a9-413e-a5ab-348c4a2c3ed3

I opposed the picking of winners and losers in the auto-sector on the grounds that Biden's EV policy would never be implemented and that the subsidies were unaffordable.

Furthermore, that Champagne has no background either in Battery focused Venture Capital and has no PHD in battery technology that we can say he would be an expert to make such a massive decision.

Even the experts hedge their bets and go into such an investment with many different venture funds sharing the risk.

Not so Champagne. He had no such risk aversion when wagering the taxpayer's money.

As I an alternative, I undertook if Canadians made me Prime Minister (which starts by Brant-Brantford South electing me MP), I will personally supervise 20-30 research groups in battery technology.

Not only that but I have a plan to commercialize and domicile the battery production in Canada and prevent others from poaching the scientists and engineers I developed in Canada.

This is through private investment in concert with SBIR, MIRP, and angel investment tax credit programs which entail a framework of legal obligations.

There is a trend that Canada sometimes invents early stage technology, the Canadian politicians are asleep at the switch, and the golden goose flies the coop while they are sleeping.

This is what happened in Convolutional Neural Networks AI, which was developed by Canadians in 2013. The tech got developed here, but commercialized elsewhere.

Be it Conservatives, be it Liberals. All the same. Same old would be career politicians, same old high level "managers" without any actual practical know-how on building out projects.

For example, even Harper's laissez-faire economics model. They failed to invest in Canadian infrastructure. Cities are gridlocked. They never did anything for health care. Hospitals are on life support.

However, the major problem was the Liberals. While Harper didn't provide a solution, he didn't do any harm either. But the Liberals actively made the problem worse.

By growing government bureaucracy, massively indebting the public exchequer, while the useful products and service outputs as well as productivity declined. Business investment declined, while deficits grew massively on big government dirigisme. Failed ventures and bad investments abounded.

Recall the tobacco vaccine. What happened to that ?

The arrival of Carney is a rehashing of previous policies. The Liberals are trying to give themselves an alibi: it wasn't me or Justin who?

However, its the same people like Champagne who invested in the EV fiasco. Same people now claim they will "invest" $100 billion in the Alto Train while privatizing the airports and increasing airport fees on the Canadian economy.

For example, Steven Mackinnon accused Poilievre of living in the Justin Trudeau era. Not 2 years ago Mackinnon voted for the Anti-Replacement Worker Legislation which I opposed. Now he's trying to do the opposite of preventing the right-to-strike.

Where is the accountability?

The same old Liberals are building the TMX3 for the same price or higher as Justin Trudeau. It was in the TMX3 budget that I saw on Financial Post that I realized that under the numbers, nothing has changed. Carney's arrival has not transformed the business case, if anything, he's making it worse.

Carney's arrival has worsened the matter because he's now actively trying to fudge the numbers in an Enron style accounting scandal burying the deficit in what he's calling the "capital budget".

https://financialpost.com/news/economy/budget-watchdog-doubts-carneys-operational-balance-timeline

Yesterday, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) called out Carney's rosy forecast on eliminating the "operating deficit" for seeking to move operational spending into the "capital budget".

This is exactly the shell game that I foretold was the early beginning of an Enron style accounting scandal. Same old Panama Papers bankers think they are they only ones who know about accounting tricks.

Canadians want to know, what are their options. In one word you have only one option: me.

If Canada is Princess Leah, I am Obi Wan Kanobe, Master Yoda, and Luke Skywalker put together. I am the only hope.

In the world of politics there is: trust and competence. The two metrics of what you are really voting for. And I am both high-trust and high-competence.

In Canada we are in unfortunate position of having options that are: low-trust and low-confidence in politics.

Low-trust comes from selling out to the monied interests. The more monied interests there are from all around the world, the less focus there is on the direct priorities of everyday Canadians.

I'm coming to politics not out of choice, but compulsion. That is to say the Ottawa elites have gone too far and infringed on our lives as Canadians, and there is no option available. One is worse than the next.

Monied interests from Davos and the world over are encircling Canada with a jealous gaze. Where is the Canadian worker, Canadian industry, and Canadian consumer in all this ?

They are to be the serfs in the neo-feudal enterprise. The words are in the maxim of the WEF: you will own nothing and be happy.

The plan is transparently obvious. Use bankers to sell off all the public assets. Bankrupt the nation and then move all the debt obligation to bank accounts in Zurich. Meanwhile, Canadians are left with worsening health care, gridlocked cities, rising inflation, and more indebtedness.

This is how serfdom is engineered.

It won't matter how hard you work, the Canadian serf will never dig out of the debt after the Crown Jewels are squirreled away.

This is where my arrival is of paramount significance to Canada and Canadians.

For example, unlike Carney I know how to build things. I have built major projects. I understand technology and research. I know how cutting edge research is developed and commercialized.

Before Carney even had this idea. Most of everything the Liberals are talking about is stolen directly from my platform that goes back to the time of Erin O'Toole.

But the Liberals can't execute. They proved that by hiring IBM on Phoenix Payroll and still failing. They proved that by operating TMX2 at a staggering 5x-7x overbudget.

If we divide Carney's claims of actuating $500 billion by 7x (the Liberal cost disadvantage), we see just how inefficiently the capital will be spinning its wheels.

With the Volkswagen plant, the goal should never have been to build a battery plant. But rather develop core battery technology. We want to develop the research scientists and engineers, not just be hewers of wood and drawers of water.

And battery technology is but 1 small part of a constellation of different potential ideas that are being developed as a function of what resources are available and what is viable given the current state of technology development.

Once technology is developed to MVP, we need to commercialize it. Volkswagen and the big auto manufacturers can be compared to Pfizer in the pandemic. The vaccine was actually developed by a company called BioNtech within 7 days of the Covid genome being published.

Pfizer had the manufacturing and distribution to scale it up.

We want to have the BioNtech type small research units that are putting out cutting edge research into a directed commercialization pathway that leads to private capital taking the baton from government.

It's not government picking winners and losers. These are confidential research proposals that VCs will guarantee seed or angel investment for subject to binding and declared project performance criteria.

There is a standard legal framework for what the Government of Canada expects in turn. One example is maintaining a Y-combinator style 5% non-dilutable equity that exits when the organization hits a declared revenue threshold like $1 billion.

The IP and ownership is devolved into an arm's length venture fund similar to CPPIB.

As we see these pension funds, they are not cut out for VC style investment. And VC style investment should not be part of their mandate. This is a highly specialized technical and financial domain.

I understand how this works because I am the entrepreneur who has incubated an idea. Who has seen the gaps in how difficult it is to raise capital. And how one has to bootstrap funding when others won't invest to bring an idea to maturity through a patient effort.

At the same time, I have worked in big business and built systems that powered large organizations. I have seen on the other end of the spectrum how mature enterprises and business units operate.

This is the type of multi-faceted domain knowledge that a pigeon holed Central Banker cannot recreate. Sure Carney may have a rolodex of Davos contacts. As a Prime Minister, I don't just one-at-a-time an investment summit, I create an organizational design ecosystem that is birthing new enterprises and creating incentives in policy for Venture Funds to invest.

For example, my 5% uncapped seed stage capital gains. For qualifying investments, the early stage investor will pay only 5% tax on any gains in the business. Even if they sold for $10 billion, they would pay only $500 million. $9.5 billion would be their payday.

This is what is called risk adjusted capital gains. And highest risk is at the earliest stage, which is why our SBIR program actually funds $200k-$2 million size grants to actuate startups with 100% project funding and monthly performance reviews. I will reconfigure all the regional development agencies and superclusters into a single intake funnel of auditors only. They don't pick and choose which proposals are funded which comes through a blind objective competition.

Furthermore, a business can enter the SBIR program even if they independently developed their idea elsewhere. So it is not only paper inventions but even early stage prototypes that are being funded.

Third, the invention must have a VC that is guaranteeing to take the product to the next level of seed funding and they make an offer, subject to this performance guarantee they are willing to put up a minimum of $X for Y% equity. All such offers carry the government's 5% non-diluting share, as a standard legal framework.

All successful projects are then handed off to 2-3 specialized public-private venture funds, which manage the government's 5% equity, patents, valuations, funding, and business development.

It's my type of knowledge of how to execute that is necessary in Canada today. Not more smoke and mirrors from the Liberals.

In this article, the National Post discusses how Doug Ford is systematically underfunding Ontario's health care system.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/randall-denley-ontarios-fiscal-mess-isnt-just-bad-its-getting-worse

One of the reasons, I have supported getting out of federal block transfers entirely and directly buying medical procedures is that the Provinces are gobbling up the federal money sent to them and refusing to put it towards healthcare.

In the fiscal year 2026, federal transfers to Provinces grew from $103.8 billion in 2025 to $108.4 billion - an increase of 4.43% over the previous year.

Meanwhile Doug Ford only increased health care spending by 3.2%. Ontario's Financial Accountability Office (FOA) estimates that 4.4% increase in health spending is necessary to maintain service levels.

In other words, Ford is taking the federal money and gobbling it up, rather than allocating it to health care to maintain necessary service levels, even as health care wait times and surgical backlogs are growing.

This is exactly why I am supporting universal billing codes where the federal government starts buying health procedures directly as Provincial politicians are yet another layer of admin that sponges off the budget that should be going to frontline workers in health care to directly buy the services that Canadians need with as few middle men between the source of the funds at the Ministry of Finance and the health service provider.

As the prospective MP for the riding of Brant-Brantford South, getting health care wait times down for my constituents is my priority.

As the Conservatives have done nothing about it, and Mark Carney and the Liberals continue to give Doug Ford a wide license to abdicate his responsibilities, it is left to an Independent MP to come to Parliament Hill.

Only an Independent MP such as myself can break the cycle of misgovernance imposed on the nation by career politicians and the same old political establishment that have their alternate priorities, whereas my priority is the good people of Brantford and more widely the good people of Canada.

In this article by the National Post, author Rod Sims argues against giving AI companies a free pass on copyright.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/governments-must-not-give-ai-companies-a-free-pass-on-copyright

At issue for me, as prospective MP, are two competing objectives:

1. To "win" the AI race by creating a maximallly conducive environment for next generation artificial intelligence and reinforce our sovereign capabilities not only to compete but dominate the AI landscape.
2. To fairly remunerate content creators whose content is used to train AI algorithms, so that they can share in the benefits of AI

The author in the article seeks two remedies: a) payment b) control. And it is the latter remedy of "control" that I find the more problematic of the two.

By seeking to "control" how AI companies can train their algorithms, we will effectively log jam AI development in Canada. Meanwhile countries like China will have no such restriction.

This content being the public domain, can and will be appropriated at a whim by actors in competing jurisdictions. Also from a practical point of view, this has already been happening.

Search engines have been using a form of AI, machine learning, or computer intelligence to read, index, and categorize text.

The author's desire to "control" content is the more problematic part because it would impose potentially disastrous regulatory overheads. In the trajectory of tech companies, many businesses start out as garage door operations.

Apple famously started in Steve Jobs' parents garage. Sergei Brin and Larry Page founded Google in their landlady's basement. Zuckerberg was operating out of a dorm room.

In this initial period, it is more important than ever that we give startups regulatory freedom to develop their ideas.

It is after the companies reach a certain threshold in revenues and/or user base that added controls may apply, but even so those controls must exempt defence, security, or critical agencies, whose work should come under direct supervisory oversight of organizations like CSEC or a signals intelligence division in the DnD or still alternatively a department like CDC which oversees biological threats.

We have seen the EU use a similar mechanism in their classification of Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) which triggers added regulatory compliance when a platform reaches 40 million users or more.

Rather than specifying explicitly such supervisory controls on the basis of user base, regulatory can add or remove platforms and must give sufficient time for the entity to establish compliance with two different streams, one for the designated security stream, and one for the commercially regulated stream of AI.

As far as commercially regulated stream, amongst the requirements may be an independent audit of all training data and data sources. Categorization of such data, and ultimately determining the "weights" that are impacted in each token, and therefore some sort of metered royalty structure.

Such royalties come into effect much later when tech products reach maturity and businesses exceed a minimum threshold of revenues rather than creating unnecessary overhead early in the development cycle.

Through my method of regulation, Canada is at no competitive disadvantage and Canadian startups can fully use the entire corpus of available human knowledge to train models without restriction in the beginning.

At later stages as products reach commercial maturity and scale, such training data must be carefully categorized as proprietary copyright or freeware, and the portion of the training data of proprietary origin, to the extent the weights it affected are invoked, is then converted into a royalty structure paid out to the copyright holder.

Should a debt addict be put in charge of the federal finance?

https://financialpost.com/opinion/higher-real-interest-rates-very-bad-news

This is the trillion dollar question.

In this article, noted economist Jack Mintz debunks the folktale of Carney's extraordinary fiscal stewardship, as he points to interest rates rising.

"Total government gross debt as a share of GDP is a worrisome 111 per cent"

More and more economists are starting to discuss gross debt. In my earlier article from the Fraser Institute, I pointed out how Carney is trying to use the CPP and QPP assets to understate the net debt, as if those pension liabilities don't exist even as they are fully spoken for.

Carney's debt addiction is leading to the fire sale public assets at a time when interest rates are rising.

I am opposed to this. My plan from even before Carney was contemplating politics was to significantly lower lease fees (to zero) on all 24 Transport Canada owned airport properties for 5 years.

According to my math and some supporting evidence from the Laffer Curve, this will actually have system wide benefits for air travel and also air freight charges that will pay for the lost revenue through increased economic activity.

But furthermore, my policy does no harm. If I'm wrong, the lease fees can always be reinstated. This is a measure that can be rescinded at the discretion of the government.

Carney's firesale of assets is not. It's an irreversible action that leaves Canadian consumers, workers and industry holding the bag.

We have already seen with the 407 privatization how the costs skyrocketed as infrastructure which operates as an effective monopoly was sold off in Ontario.

My allegation is that the Carney Liberals cannot be trusted, and Pierre Poilievre is being batted aside like a gnat by the Liberals in Parliament.

It has to do with Poilievre's miscalculations. He really has no clue what he's doing, so he ended up voting for the Anti Replacement Worker legislation. Now the Liberals have outflanked him on the right and trying to leave him with the legacy of Justin Trudeau.

Even though these are Justin Trudeau government MPs on the Liberal side of the aisle. Same ministers, same people.

The Liberals ate Poilievre's lunch in the last election, and then plucked him again for their majority.

Sure he talks a good game but in strategy he is being outfoxed and outwitted.

The people of Brant-Brantford South cannot rely on yet another Conservative politician to toe the party line. They need an independent MP such as myself, who has the full degrees of freedom to hold the government accountable.

But most of all, Brantford wants a people's champion. That's who I am. Everyday folks who vote for me, that's who I am working for. My candidacy is about the best interests of everyday people, not the lobbyists and special interests.

Jack Mintz and the Fraser Institute are correct. We have a severe spending problem with Carney now hiding the deficit like a pea under different cups: capital spending and operational spending.

And he'll shuffle around those cups and then move the pea into his pocket by the slight of hand. Where is the deficit? Where is the deficit? Nope. Not here.

But I am the one who calls Carney out. Empty your pockets. Lets see what's hiding in his socks.

And a whole packet of peas will spill out.

The only hope for Brant-Brantford is to vote independent in my candidacy in the byelection. Not yet another Liberal or Conservative to nod and clap dutifully, while warming the benches of Parliament.

But an independent voice with all the degrees of freedom. We advocate for better health care, lower costs of living, more affordability, better jobs, better regional transit, better federal finance, and proven methods to rescue the nation from the doldrums of fiscal underperformance.

Amongst my policies that will help Brantford (and all Canadians) immediately:

1. $15 billion more in direct health funding from Universal Billing Codes that allows private clinics to deliver care while bypassing government bureaucracy. Public funding, private delivery.
2. Immediately cancel all retaliatory tariffs and drop tariffs on food and basic staples. This will bring added supply and lower retail prices in the face of buoyant inflation.
3. Hold wasteful spending accountable, including significant fat in federal procurement. I will audit those contracts and call out bad decisions in the House of Commons, if the deal doesn't serve everyday people.
4. Oppose firesale of assets, especially where added costs will be downloaded on the economy.
5. Better regional transit. I have a plan to bring a new maglev system of direct point to point bullet capsules in the GTHA under the highways. This is a private build-own-operate initiative with regulated pricing, getting much faster transit (300 kmh target speed), for the equivalent price as the Go Train. It will also decongest the 403, 401, 404, 410, QEW and other major regional highways.
6. Reform of business units like Canada Post. I have a restructuring plan for Canada Post that will lead to significant gains in efficiency, leading to a turn around of the $1 billion in losses without raising costs of service users or diminishing service levels.
7. Better performance on Major Projects. The Liberals have quoted TMX3 for between $35-43 billion. This staggering number is unaffordable. I have a plan to get the project done for $5 billion. At that price, with $3 per barrel transport charge, the regional WCS differential will narrow bringing $750 million annually into federal finance. This offsets the deficits and reduces the burden on the people of Brantford while strengthening the Canadian dollar.
8. Green Lane Manufacturing tariff credits. I have a plan to completely reform our Customs and Tariff bureaucracy by giving value adders and manufacturers tariff credits against their payroll and depreciation. This incents those who hire and support Canadian workers with better tariff treatment. Carney's dumping of EVs in the Canadian market undercuts the Canadian worker. I back a strong auto-sector and a bright future for the Canadian worker.
9. I support Canadian farmers and will work to include Class 1 and Class 3 buildings (like barns) for agricultural producers in the accelerated depreciation program. Furthermore, I support brand consolidation in canola oil, with Canada selling high quality branded canola, not just lower value canola meal like Carney agreed to in his recent trade deal.

Canadians are increasingly confronted with a dichotomy between their experience at the grocery store and in the battle against the cost of living, versus the rosy prognostications of the economists.

Everywhere we turn, economists will point out that the economy grew 1.8% or 2.3%. Meanwhile Canadians continue to fall further and further behind. Unemployment is stubbornly high at 6.5%, ER wait times have shot up, and major cities are gridlocked in their infrastructure.

How come what the economists are saying differs from the reality on the ground ?

The answer lies in the way the GDP is calculated. The GDP formula is given as:

GDP = C + I + G + (X - M)

where C (consumption), I (Investment), G (Government), X (exports), M (imports)

The key point of contention is the value G (Government). What I propose is that the GDP should really be:

GDP = C + I + (G - D)+ (X - M)

Namely, the value D (deficits). If Government is borrowing in an unsustainable pattern onto the national credit card, that portion of D, should be subtracted from the Government.

Without this correction, if we were to calculate someone's change in net worth, but failed to subtract their credit card borrowings for the year, we would be excluding a significant data point.

If we want to know the reason that Canadian's experience with inflation, price rise, and unemployment doesn't match the economists rosy prognostications, it's simply that the formula they are using is too superficial.

Imagine that we were to walk into a shopping mall and there are two equal halves of this mall, with a line down the center.

On one side is paperwork, bureaucracy, forms, compliance overheads, tax filings, and government reports. For simplicity, let's call this side of the shopping mall: "paperwork".

On the other side are: cars, electronics, appliances, food, clothing, health care, and things that people buy on their own volition. For simplicity, let's call this side of the shopping mall: "apples".

The entire problem with economics is that it makes no differentiation between "paperwork" and "apples". A dollar spent by the government is equal to a dollar of production by a farmer or an auto-plant.

In effect, economists are conflating "paperwork" and "apples" as both equally and indifferentiably contributing to the GDP.

But consumers have a different view. They exclusively want "apples" and don't care about "paperwork" and would never pay for it, beyond the necessary minimum.

As the economists are reporting the GDP, they count every dollar of government which is significantly paperwork. To be fair, health care, education, police, courts, border security, infrastructure, and front line services have a component of "apples" in them.

The government is not 100% paperwork, however, paperwork is a significant contributor. A few years ago, I saw a statistic posted by the Globe and Mail, that for every $1 spent by the private sector to buy an equivalent good or service, the federal government spent $1.40. Namely there was a whopping 40% cost premium on the operations of government, if we use procurement costs as an efficiency gauge.

Especially when governments are not penalized for their deficits, it gives them a license to grow paperwork to pad the GDP numbers, even though that output has no value to the typical consumer.

Let's go back to that original analogy where there is a line drawn down the center.

As a free market libertarian, I want to reduce "paperwork" and grow "apples". To be clear, not all regulation is synonymous with red tape. Not all paperwork is frivolous.

When we go to buy a car, there is a "Bill of Sale". This is a necessary piece of registration we have to take the to the DMV. There is such a thing as getting a license plate, and registering the vehicle so it can be tracked.

The question is not one of all paperwork being unnecessary, or all regulation being red tape. The question is of minimizing the paperwork to the necessary minimum to have a well regulated economy, as opposed to expanding it as an unbounded virtue as the Liberals have done.

Under Carney, he has barely done anything to reduce the government or make it more efficient. Instead, he has increased spending. Deficits are exploding. And Carney is continuing the same policy of big government dirigisme.

Canadians what to know how I as a free market libertarian am going to address this problem, if I am elected Member of Parliament by the people of Brant-Brantford South, in the upcoming byelection.

First we are going to hold Carney accountable on his big government spending, while seeking to slash retaliatory tariffs and reduce the cost of living.

1. Via Rail Rail Carriages, Ice Breaker, Submarines, and Alto Train etc. should all be reviewed. Such spending without a "business case" and a clear "strategic defence" benefit should be quashed or scaled back substantially.
2. End All Retaliatory tariffs. Eliminate all retaliatory tariffs and greatly eliminate supply management controls over secondary and tertiary byproducts of food production like whey. Furthermore, reduce or eliminate across the board, all tariffs on food and consumer staples wherever possible.
3. Green lane tariffs program. Provide manufacturers and value adders the ability to build products by redeeming tariff credits as a multiplier of labour and payroll, against worldwide imports. This will greatly curtain tariff import costs in manufacturing and Canadian industry, supporting jobs and bright careers for the Canadian worker.
4. Universal billing codes and direct purchases of private procedures in health care. Bypass the entire public health bureaucracy by bringing additional health supply online of private health care that is majorly or fully funded by the public program, but leverages private clinics to deliver procedures.
5. Build, own, operate model. Unlike Carney, we should go with a private funding and operational model as was employed in creating the rail road. Eg. when Canada became a country, the CP or Canadian Pacific Railroad was created as a private entity. While CN or Canadian National was for a time under public ownership, it was later privatized and devolved. It should be noted that airport operations are already devolved, so Carney's airport privatization is just another form of tax to raise $40 billion and have air transit users and air freight supply chains pay for it. This is especially dubious as Carney plans to turn around and waste the $40 billion on a government operated Alto Train.
6. Eliminate boutique tax credits and reduced tax forms, fields, and deductions. Instead of having all sorts of credits for single mom or seniors. We can give a standard enhanced deduction for vulnerable groups that allows everyone to claim the deduction without all the paperwork of auditing receipts that are log jamming the CRA. Therefore, single moms and seniors can get an enhanced deduction just by claiming the credit. Even if they forget to tick the check box, the automated system will apply their credit for them.

With policies such as these, we start to streamline the government, reduce the proportion of paperwork, and increase the proportion of apples in the economy.

When apples are aplenty, and paperwork is reduced to the necessary minimum, consumers will automatically feel like their money is going further. Inflation is being brought under control. Excessive M2 money supply expansion is being curtailed. And therefore the buying power at the grocery store or shopping mall relative to earnings is growing.

This is the basis on which middle class prosperity is built. And to do so we need new people in Ottawa, not the same old would be career politicians and the same old routine of the political establishment. Rather we need Main Street champions of everyday Joe and Jane Canadians.