Based on what Prime Minister Mark Carney, a Liberal cabinet minister, and a Liberal MP said publicly about China’s use of forced labour, the idea they are fiercely criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping about it in private is laughable.
Indeed, watching the performance of Carney, Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson, and former Conservative, now Liberal, MP Michael Ma on the issue over the past week, would have been hilarious if their milquetoast responses weren’t so alarming.
OTTAWA — During my years in the RCMP, I dealt with organized crime, national security threats, and foreign actors who sought to exploit Canada’s openness. We understood something fundamental: threats rarely announce themselves plainly. They operate in the grey space—deniable, incremental, and often dismissed until it is too late.
What concerns me today is not just that foreign interference is happening. It is that Canada still seems reluctant to call it what it is—particularly when it involves the Chinese Communist Party.
The Conservatives have written to the Prime Minister to demand that he clarify his position on the forced labour of the mainly Muslim Uyghur minority in China after a Liberal MP was accused of attempting to cast doubt on the existence of the practice.
Michael Chong, the Conservative foreign affairs critic, wrote to Mark Carney Friday asking him if his assessment is “that Uyghur forced labour has and is being used” in China.
Food banks across the country are being forced to scale back services at a time when Canadians need them the most, due to limited supplies.
In southern Saskatchewan, the Moose Jaw & District Food Bank plans to limit households to just one visit a month instead of the usual two, beginning April 1. They will also reduce the amount of food handed out to each visitor.
“Our resources aren’t keeping up with the demand,” said executive director Jason Moore in an interview with CTV Newsthis week.
h/t Patti Jo
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney has gone to ground.
Two days after Liberal Member of Parliament Michael Ma used his time at the House of Commons industry committee to demand that a sanctioned China expert personally confirm she had witnessed forced labour before her evidence could be taken seriously — a performance celebrated by Chinese Communist Party state media as a propaganda victory and condemned by international Uyghur organizations as an affront to Canada’s own recognition of genocide — Carney has issued no public statement.
Abdallah Aban is taking a quiet weekday moment in the food court at his local mall, munching on a breakfast sandwich, sipping his Tim Hortons.
His wife and two of his eight children are at work in the nearby Amazon warehouse. But Aban, 60, lost his job there last year and has had no luck finding a new one.
The family is getting by, even though they’re no longer receiving the Canada Child Benefit now that the kids are older, and they’re finding food and rent expensive.
Abdallah Aban, his wife and eight children? “Economic migrant” I’m betting.
Only the Star could find a writer who features a primary cause of Canada’s economic downfall as the victim.
It’s a certainty the author is an open borders scammer having been a VP of the Business Council of Canada which advocates for replacement scale mass immigration. For the benefit of the economy of course.
Michael Ma is saying he was misunderstood, but you shouldn’t believe him. The Conservative MP who crossed the floor and joined the Liberals last December has not only had a change of heart politically, but he also now appears to be speaking up for China.
On March 16, the renowned Study of the Canadian Consumer revealed that “Nearly half of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque” and that “a growing number of Canadians say they’re barely staying afloat.”
Unfortunately, even though job markets and ‘life-chances’ have unequivocally collapsed and evaporated throughout all of Canada, it is evident that the degenerate state of the Canadian nation has expanded well beyond the looming outbreak of abject poverty.
We’re now in the 20th consecutive year of freedom’s retreat around the world, says the venerable American institution Freedom House, and the current backsliding has lasted longer than the descent into fascism during the 1930s. Established in 1941 to persuade Americans to join the fight against the Nazis, Freedom House has been closely tracking democracy’s ebbs and flows since 1973. Among the findings in its latest annual report …
Should Canada put the national interest first? The Canadian answer has usually been: Sort of. Maybe. Kinda. It depends.
Even claiming that Canada has a single national interest has often triggered a cascade of questions. Who is a part of it and who is not? Does it conflict with the special claims of Quebecers? What about Aboriginal rights? Can we even speak of a single Canadian culture? Shouldn’t we instead celebrate diversity as our culture?
Mark Carney’s government is living through a modern version of these struggles as it tries to identify projects of national significance.
Floor-crossing Liberal MP Michael Ma casts doubt on reports of forced labour in China
OTTAWA – An MP who left the Conservatives to join the Liberals is casting doubt on reports of human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region.
MP Michael Ma asked an expert during a parliamentary committee hearing Thursday whether she’d seen forced labour with her own eyes.
“Have you witnessed forced labour in Xinjiang? Have you witnessed forced labour? Just a short answer — have you witnessed forced labour in Xinjiang, yes or no?” Ma said while questioning Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa.
He is a member of the Chinese regime, just as Governor Carney is. https://t.co/FUEOfBU5Rt
— Katewerk (@katewerk) March 26, 2026
Carney blows Xi.
Update: Michael Ma says his comments came across as ‘dismissive of the serious issue of forced labour’
VANCOUVER — At a moment when Canada is reassessing its economic sovereignty and Prime Minister Mark Carney is charting what he describes as a deeper strategic partnership with China, a long-running but poorly understood vulnerability is quietly advancing — one that cuts across the most sensitive fault lines in Canadian public life: Indigenous land rights, natural resource development, and Beijing’s patient, methodical campaign to secure the commodities it needs without ever having to negotiate with Ottawa.
The strategy, as intelligence documents obtained exclusively by The Bureau reveal, is not new. It is simply becoming more consequential.
We are seeing a gradual erosion of quality, choice and dietary diversity. A quieter form of food insecurity, unfolding in real time.
Surveys after surveys tell the same story: Canadians are struggling at the grocery store. And yet, despite the mounting evidence, the situation is not improving.
Our lab has been tracking consumer sentiment on food affordability for years. The latest results, based on a national survey of more than 3,000 Canadians conducted earlier this month, in partnership with Caddle, confirm what many already feel at the checkout: The pressure is not easing.
As Can Force One moved toward Chinese airspace, the delegation’s electronic devices were powered down and secured in signal-blocking bags. Burner phones were passed out: the only machines the public servants, staff and journalists would be allowed to use for the duration of their stay. The Canadian Prime Minister’s security team was taking no risks.
But Mark Carney himself was on his way to do something many back home would consider very risky indeed: signing agreements with Chinese President Xi Jinping on trade, global governance, energy, media access and law enforcement. The country Carney had called, only one year ago, Canada’s “biggest security threat,” was about to accomplish a magical transformation from frog to prince, from interfering foreign power to “strategic partner” in the “new world order.”
For most of Canada’s history there was an understood bargain at the heart of our social contract. If you worked hard, got an education, stayed out of trouble, and did your part, you would get a happy life in return. You could move out, find decent work, buy a home, raise a family if you wanted one, and feel that your life was progressing roughly according to plan. The promise was never that everything would be easy, or even equal. It was that effort would compound into stability, and stability into a future.
For many young Canadians today, that sequence of success has become delayed, distorted, and broken. The country still asks for all the same things it once did: discipline, education, thrift, patience, flexibility, and resilience. But now the rewards arrive later, at a higher price, and with far less certainty.
The Liberal Party gave it away to Time Horton’s
Canada’s immigration system is a dumpster fire led by an incompetent Minister. pic.twitter.com/zFNeFvIxBr
— Michelle Rempel Garner (@MichelleRempel) March 23, 2026
