Juno News - Conservatives demand Carney disclose and divest from Brookfield

00:00:00.000 Concernors are calling on Carney to divest from Brookfield and disclose the nearly 1,900 Brookfield

00:00:09.560 companies he profits from that are exempt from ethics screenings. Alberta's government is

00:00:14.080 introducing sweeping health care reforms which would allow physicians to work both in public

00:00:18.820 and private systems in the hopes of shortening medical wait times. A feature on X revealed a

00:00:24.560 prominent environmental activist account protesting Vancouver Island actually has U.S. origins.

00:00:31.400 Hello Canada, it's Wednesday, November 26th and this is the True North Daily Brief. I'm Isaac Lamoureux.

00:00:37.720 And I'm Wally Temptem. We've got you covered with all the news you need to know.

00:00:41.620 Let's discuss the top stories of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else.

00:00:49.280 Conservatives are demanding that Prime Minister Mark Carney immediately sell off his assets in

00:00:53.780 Brookfield Asset Management and disclose the nearly 2,000 other Brookfield companies he profits

00:00:58.800 from that are exempt from ethics checks. During a House of Commons Ethics Committee meeting,

00:01:04.000 Brookfield CEO Justin Bieber revealed that former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney benefits when

00:01:10.240 a Brookfield company succeeds. However, 95% of Brookfield's portfolio companies are not publicly

00:01:16.840 disclosed in Carney's ethics disclosure and screenings. Conservative MP Michael Cooper noted

00:01:22.220 that Carney is only subject to ethics screenings on 103 Brookfield companies despite holding

00:01:27.360 investments in the company which Bieber revealed has 2,000 companies in its portfolio. An ethics

00:01:33.100 screen blocks Carney from being involved in decisions related to those files due to a conflict of

00:01:38.140 interest. Bieber refused to commit to disclosing the other nearly 1,900 companies but said he would

00:01:44.020 take the question to advisors before answering. When asked to reveal which 20 companies are part of the

00:01:49.540 holdings of the Brookfield Transition Fund, which were noted under Carney's ethics disclosure statement,

00:01:54.520 Bieber suggested Conservatives should first ask the ethics commissioner who would have seen what was

00:02:00.160 in Carney's file. When questioned by Conservative MP Michael Barrett, Bieber revealed that anyone holding

00:02:05.920 stock options in Brookfield, such as Carney, benefits when Brookfield's companies succeed. Conservatives

00:02:11.560 noted that any Brookfield company, therefore, presents a conflict of interest as the Prime Minister benefits from

00:02:16.780 their success. So, Waleed, has there ever been a Prime Minister with more conflicts of interest than

00:02:21.820 Mark Carney? Well, Isaac, I think it's a very tough debate to have and you have to look no further than

00:02:26.380 his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, who had the conflict of interest with the weed charity, as you remember

00:02:30.380 famously during COVID, when he tapped on to the charity or the NGOs group to run the Canadian student

00:02:38.960 jobs program, normally run by the government of Canada itself, but gave them a billion dollar contract to

00:02:43.940 handle that while that group had, year after year, paid expenses and reimbursed financially his family

00:02:52.020 members, direct dependents and spouse for speaking events and other things of that nature. So, but to look

00:02:59.300 at, in terms of the benefit of interest, I would probably lean towards Mark Carney himself, because as we

00:03:05.460 know, while Trudeau may have his conflicts, I think Carney has some of the greatest in terms of quantifiable

00:03:11.540 business interests. I mean, forget the profit potential here. Think about the public affairs

00:03:17.940 side of things. During the election campaign, in the build-up to the April 28th election, he spoke during

00:03:24.900 the French language debate and promoted an electric company that Brookfield owned as a company that can

00:03:32.500 perhaps deliver some nuclear energy solutions. And he's also promoted pump companies and other companies

00:03:40.260 that have his environmental housing infrastructure solutions. And he's mentioned companies by name

00:03:47.540 or companies that are perhaps in line for government contracts even before awarding anything. So,

00:03:53.300 in terms of the reputation and the potential reception of public tax dollars,

00:03:58.740 Carney has given a lot to Brookfield and its assets already as is. That was even before the election.

00:04:04.580 Taking it to the present day as well, the fact of the matter is, as Michael Cooper himself pointed out

00:04:10.660 in this story, I mean, 95% of Mark Carney's Brookfield portfolio has not been disclosed by him. And not

00:04:21.060 only that, but you have to remember that the Privy Council just last week, the head of the Privy Council,

00:04:27.700 Michael Sabia himself has sold his ties to Brookfield, essentially his financial assets with Brookfield,

00:04:35.380 because he can see what most Canadians can see, which is the fact that there is a clear call of interest

00:04:41.380 when you have this kind of sovereign wealth fund investing in all these industries while having some

00:04:47.780 role to play in public policy. Now, he isn't necessarily a decision maker, and he's argued to save face for

00:04:53.940 Mark Carney that his decision was not a legal one, but rather a matter of optics. Optics or not,

00:05:00.260 Canadians are not stupid. Mark Carney is invested. He knows what he is doing. And I think it will take 1.00

00:05:05.620 some significant pressure, perhaps at the ballot box for Canadians to actually award the right kind of

00:05:12.500 reward to Mark Carney and Brookfield, which is a very critical response to the ballot box. Because frankly,

00:05:18.900 you know, like I said before, this is a clear conflict of interest on the Brookfield ties he has

00:05:25.460 with these companies. And of course, if the Privy Council is divesting, so should the Prime Minister,

00:05:31.380 because the Prime Minister has many more decisions and influences the leverage than anyone else in the

00:05:37.780 government of Canada. Alberta's government is introducing sweeping healthcare reforms that would allow

00:05:45.860 physicians to work in both the public and private systems for the first time under provincial

00:05:50.500 legislation aiming to expand patient choice and reduce long surgical delays. Premier Daniel Smith

00:05:56.660 said in the Post to X that long delays have left many families waiting in chronic pain.

00:06:02.100 She said, quote, waiting for needed surgery is a painful and often frustrating experience. Bill 11,

00:06:09.300 the Health Statues Amendment Act creates a new category of, quote, flexibly participating doctors

00:06:16.820 who may choose on a case-by-case basis whether to bill the provincial health plan or charge patients

00:06:22.420 privately. Surgeons could continue their practice exclusively in the public system, exclusively in

00:06:28.500 private settings, or move between both under the new rules. Smith said the number of people waiting

00:06:34.340 for surgery underscores the need for reform. Under the proposed model, surgeons participating in dual

00:06:39.940 practice could perform publicly funded procedures during daytime hours and then offer private pay

00:06:45.620 surgeries during evenings, weekends, or at rural sites. So, Isaac, you're out there in Alberta.

00:06:51.940 How can incorporating the private sector into Alberta's healthcare reduce wait times and improve

00:06:56.500 service in general? Yeah, Waleed, if Alberta gets this right, bringing the private sector into the

00:07:02.900 system won't be about two-tier care. It will be about finally fixing a system that's collapsing

00:07:08.420 under its own weight. Right now, the bottleneck is capacity. Not enough operating room time,

00:07:13.540 not enough doctors, and no way for extra resources to plug into the system. Countries that mix public

00:07:19.220 and private care show what happens when you open that up. In Switzerland, where for-profit and

00:07:23.540 non-profit hospitals compete inside a universal framework, more than 85% of patients see a specialist within

00:07:29.780 two months. In Canada, that's under 50%, and once you even get that appointment, the median wait from

00:07:36.740 specialist to treatment has stretched to about 30 weeks in Canada. Over the last few years, groups like

00:07:43.540 secondstreet.org have shown the human cost of that, estimating that around 75,000 Canadians died on

00:07:50.820 surgical and diagnostic wait lists between 2018 and 2024, with many others avoiding the system altogether

00:07:57.140 because the delays are so bad. Private participation would help in a few concrete ways. First, it creates

00:08:03.620 more places and times for care to happen if surgeons can operate in the public system during the day,

00:08:08.820 and then book extra lists in the evening, on weekends, or at underused rural sites you're suddenly using

00:08:14.180 infrastructure and times that used to sit idle. Saskatchewan already proved that this model works when the

00:08:19.220 province contracted publicly funded surgeries out to private clinics and wait times dropped by almost half.

00:08:26.020 Second, it would help attract and keep professionals. Again, leaning on Switzerland, they spend roughly

00:08:31.860 the same amount of GDP on healthcare in Canada, but have around 64% more doctors per thousand people,

00:08:40.020 along with more hospital beds and operating rooms. Competition between insurers and providers gives

00:08:45.940 doctors and nurses more options and better working conditions, instead of pushing them to leave for

00:08:50.980 the US or burnout in a rigid monopoly system. Third, it gives patients choice while protecting universal

00:08:57.700 access. The Swiss use 44 competing private insurers to deliver mandatory basic coverage. Patients can change

00:09:04.900 plans if they're unhappy and hospitals can't turn them away. And what we're seeing is about 94% of Swiss 0.52

00:09:10.740 patients report being satisfied with their system, compared with barely over half of Canadians, even though,

00:09:16.500 again, taxpayers are spending about the same in each country's as a share of its national income.

00:09:21.700 But pushing it even a step further, there's a growing public appetite for this kind of reform.

00:09:26.260 We've seen recent polling show that about a third of Canadians now say healthcare would work

00:09:31.540 better under private operation, and that support jumps to almost 50% when looking at young adults.

00:09:38.260 Other research from Second Street found that nearly half the country is interested in private health

00:09:42.820 insurance with about a third ready to pay market rates. And they estimate that if Ottawa allowed it,

00:09:48.020 the market alone would add over $20 billion a year and almost 39,000 healthcare jobs.

00:09:54.740 So the logic behind Alberta's move is simple. Let the public system keep its healthcare guarantee,

00:09:59.380 that being that no one is denied care based on their ability to pay, but allow private clinics,

00:10:04.260 insurers and providers to add capacity, compete on services and give patients alternatives when the

00:10:09.460 government line gets too long. If Alberta copies the best parts of the Swiss and European models,

00:10:14.260 it could shorten wait times, improve services and keep universal healthcare intact. But I'll add one

00:10:19.300 more thing we'll lead just quickly because the Alberta NDP has framed this change as a move towards

00:10:25.220 US style healthcare. But I asked primary and preventative health services minister Adriana Lagrange about

00:10:30.980 that. And she said that is simply not true, citing European countries and Australia as countries with

00:10:36.420 successful universal healthcare and private systems. And she said, European systems, as I've just went

00:10:42.740 over, deliver surgery within weeks or a few months and consistently rank higher in patient satisfaction

00:10:48.900 than those in Alberta. And even adding on to that a step further, Quebec and New Brunswick both

00:10:54.580 already have dual practice models that are functioning well. A new X app feature reveals the apparent US

00:11:03.060 origin of a prominent Ferry Creek protest account. The feature, which allows users to look up accounts

00:11:08.980 operational location, pins the save Ferry Creek account to the United States. The account, a central

00:11:15.700 hub for protest updates and calls for action does not appear to be using a VPN to mask its location.

00:11:21.540 This suggests its operational footprint is US based, not Canadian. The Ferry Creek protests began in 2020 on

00:11:28.900 southern Vancouver Island in a remote area with old growth, yellow cedar and Douglas fear.

00:11:34.580 A small blockade against logging road construction escalated into quote, one of the largest acts of

00:11:39.860 civil disobedience in Canadian history. Over months of standoffs, thousands of supporters joined

00:11:44.980 encampments while RCMP units enforced a court injunction. Police dismantled the main camps after

00:11:50.500 making more than 1000 arrests. The events drew national attention to the future of BC's last intact

00:11:56.340 old growth forests and exposed deep divisions within nearby First Nations over the role of outside

00:12:01.620 activists. Conservative Party MP for North Island Powell River, Aaron Gunn reacted to the possible

00:12:07.540 revelation asking quote, why do we allow foreign based activists to disrupt and kill our most important 1.00

00:12:14.020 industries? So we'll lead what drove people to investigate this group. And has there been a history

00:12:20.180 of accusations about foreign interference in leftist protests in Canada?

00:12:24.580 Well, Isaac, first of all, I think it's becoming a very common trend in the news these days with

00:12:29.700 different accounts being exposed as foreign actors. Now, I personally don't have an issue with this

00:12:34.740 being the case on a number of rhetorical issues. But of course, when you have NGOs that are operating

00:12:40.340 inciting protests and engaging in the domestic political scene of another country,

00:12:44.420 it is obviously a public interest to know where they're from. So this new update with people being able

00:12:49.540 to go to the about section of a account on X and to see where it operates from what Apple store it

00:12:56.820 came from or connected from is obviously of great interest and a great improvement to the platform and

00:13:02.340 transparency of X. Now, in terms of the leftist spheres, you have, of course, this Antifa environment

00:13:08.980 that we've discussed on previous shows when, of course, Donald Trump designated Antifa as a domestic

00:13:14.500 terrorist organization. Of course, we've always been concerned if there'll be spilloff onto

00:13:19.060 designating Canadian cells the same way, especially given the reporting that has shown how far that

00:13:25.460 these Antifa-affiliated people are into the government and institutions that we have here in Canada.

00:13:32.260 Beyond just that is we have, of course, the environmental sector. I mean, this group seems to be running from

00:13:38.340 the US and not behind a VPN or a virtual private network, which would essentially spoof the location to

00:13:44.980 somewhere virtually. It does seem like they actually are from the US. We know from the previous Biden

00:13:50.580 administration that multiple NGOs from around the world, and of course, this was something exposed

00:13:54.900 in the early days of the new Trump administration under the new Doge program that was formerly headed by

00:14:01.060 Elon Musk, also ex-CEO, that the Biden admin was engaged in a lot of foreign funding of

00:14:06.740 NGOs that were carrying out a lot of social progressive agendas. And of course, Canada is

00:14:11.620 no different. Now, of course, our own government seems to be funding plenty of that with our own tax

00:14:16.500 dollars. But the key element here that on the environment scale is you have groups like Greenpeace,

00:14:23.220 you have groups that, you know, have this international solidarity mindset and essentially have no concern

00:14:29.540 for sovereign borders and sovereign domestic interests. I mean, the case of the environment, of course,

00:14:35.700 is a global issue. But the fact of what Canada has to deal with is very different than what other

00:14:40.100 countries have to deal with, given the economic and sovereignty considerations that many Canadians

00:14:44.900 have. Of course, I think, Isaac, you and I could argue that Canadians are more open to airplanes than

00:14:49.460 ever before. Of course, unfortunately, it was only on Tuesday that Mark Carney essentially gave the keys to

00:14:56.980 Premier David Eby on a West Coast Pacific pipeline coming from Alberta, because he said in the House of

00:15:04.260 Commons that it would require the British Columbia government's consent in order to go through. So

00:15:09.700 Ottawa isn't going to push any harder than it has in the past. However, again, when it comes to the energy

00:15:15.300 issue, you know, whether it's David Suzuki and a lot of groups that are around him, they do carry an American

00:15:21.380 orientation and definitely do carry American dollars. And so it is no surprise that there is this

00:15:26.340 American locality behind this one account. This account is only about 8000 followers, but it's been

00:15:31.140 very, very targeted in exactly what kind of tweets it's putting out about information, probably best

00:15:36.980 effective when it comes to covering and inciting protests around certain areas on the West Coast in

00:15:43.780 British Columbia. So, of course, the fact that it was advertised as a BC group, you know, say,

00:15:49.300 fairly Greek and now it's come that come now it's came out that it's actually a US group or US based

00:15:55.540 group. And they can show that not only groups have great leverage and great influence in Canada,

00:16:00.740 but they have manipulated their character time and time again to show themselves as Canadian groups

00:16:07.700 while actually being foreigners, unfortunately. That's it for today, folks. Thanks for tuning in.

00:16:15.780 You can stay on top of new episodes every weekday by subscribing to the Daily Brief on iTunes and

00:16:20.420 Spotify. Also, while you're at it, make sure to hit us with a five star rating and please leave a review.

Juno News - November 26, 2025

Conservatives demand Carney disclose and divest from Brookfield

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