Tap The Maple

Canada's Alto high-speed rail project was supposed to cost between $60 billion and $90 billion. Now the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates the baseline could reach $113 billion, and its uncertainty analysis contains an astonishing upper-tail number: $243 BILLION. And that's only the beginning. The proposed Kingston route isn't included in the baseline estimate. The final route isn&...

Canada's population numbers just underwent a staggering revision, and the timing couldn't be more important. Statistics Canada initially estimated Canada's population fell by more than 102,000 people in 2025. Revised estimates now show the population actually GREW by more than 280,000. That's a swing of roughly 383,000 people. At the same time, Prime Minister Mark Carney is already...

Mark Carney, the Nobel Peace Prize, TIME Person of the Year—and a veteran tribute clip that raises an uncomfortable question: what does honour actually mean? Footage circulating from an Edmonton Oilers game appears to show Carney remaining seated while people nearby stand during a tribute to a Canadian Army veteran. Canadians deserve an explanation. Meanwhile, speculation about international recog...

Canadian media, Mark Carney, LNG Canada and the proposed West Coast pipeline: what happens when the headlines leave you with an impression the full timeline challenges? Feeling misled goes deeper than disagreeing with a news story. You trusted someone to give you enough information to make up your own mind. In this episode of Tap the Maple, Bakes checks the records behind Carney’s big energy annou...

Donald Trump has just taken the Canada-U.S. trade war somewhere extraordinary: the United States is now BANNING certain Canadian products from entering the country. Alcohol. Dairy products. Motorcycles. Nearly US$1 billion in Canadian imports are affected. But instead of asking the same question we've been asking for months, “What is Trump doing to Canada now?”, today we're asking somethin...

Bill C-39 promises “one project, one decision, in one year.” But Mark Carney promised to fast-track Canada’s major projects last year. What happened to them? The government says 27 nation-building initiatives have been referred to its Major Projects Office, representing $200 billion in potential investment. In this episode of Tap the Maple, Bakes follows the difference between a project being anno...

CTV warned Canadians that U.S. border officials can search their cellphones without reasonable suspicion. That's true, but once you look at the actual U.S. policy, the court case behind the story and CBP's own statistics, the picture becomes very different. More than 420 million travellers were processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in FY2024. Electronic devices searched: 47,047,...

Mark Carney says Ottawa is on track to balance its operating budget ahead of schedule. But Canada's Parliamentary Budget Office has just released an analysis that raises some fascinating questions about what “balanced” actually means. The federal government now separates spending into operating and capital categories, and the PBO says some of those classifications “appear contradictory.” Even...

Mark Carney told The New York Times that Canada prepared for the “extreme tail risk” of American military action under Donald Trump. There is one enormous problem: Trump had already been asked directly whether he would use military force against Canada, and he said no. So why did Canada’s prime minister resurrect the image of an American invasion during a major interview with an American newspaper...

Canada’s “Elbows Up” movement began as a patriotic response to Donald Trump, American tariffs and threats against Canadian sovereignty. But has it now crossed the line from patriotism into Canadian extremism? A businessman visiting Canada from London, England used those exact words: “Canadian extremism.” At first, the description sounded outrageous. Then we examined the movement itself: government...

Diana Fox Carney has been appointed Canada's Ocean Envoy, and the government says the position is UNPAID. But does a zero-dollar salary answer every financial question surrounding the prime minister's spouse? On today's Tap the Maple, Bakes examines Diana Fox Carney's new role, the 2027 Our Ocean Conference in Halifax, and the financial and ethical questions surrounding an appointm...

Donald Trump may have found a way to weaken one of Canada’s strongest remaining trade advantages: potash. Canada currently supplies roughly 80% of the potash imported by the United States and produces nearly one-third of the world’s supply. That gives Saskatchewan enormous economic importance—and gives Canada something Washington genuinely needs. But Belarus was once responsible for roughly one-si...

Mark Carney's $500 BILLION investment ambition is facing a major test as Canada's Parliament returns. With new corporate tax incentives, faster project approvals, proposed labour-law changes and a federal budget approaching, what will Canadians actually get? Welcome to Tap the Maple. The Liberal government has laid out an ambitious economic agenda. Ottawa wants to attract private capital,...

Mark Carney says Canada’s consumer carbon tax is gone, but the legislation and machinery behind it were never completely dismantled. The federal fuel-charge rate was reduced to zero. Now, as Canada explores an unprecedented new relationship with the European Union, an uncomfortable question must be answered: could European carbon-pricing requirements help bring a consumer-facing carbon cost back?...

Mark Carney’s approval rating has reportedly reached approximately 70%, one of the highest levels ever recorded for a Canadian prime minister. But how much of that approval has Carney actually earned? His popularity may be borrowed from Donald Trump, Canadians’ patriotic response to the trade war, the collapse of Justin Trudeau and promises of economic results that have not yet arrived. Canada is...

Mark Carney and the Liberal government constantly compare Canada with the G7, but why? In Parliament, government announcements, economic speeches and press conferences, Canadians repeatedly hear that Canada has the fastest growth, lowest net debt or strongest performance in the G7. But “leading the G7” may not mean what Canadians think it means. In this episode of Tap the Maple, Bakes exposes how...

Canada’s proposed EU associate membership is being celebrated as a historic escape from American dependence, but the invitation is not what Canadians have been told. “Associate member” is not an existing status in the European Union. There are no published terms, no defined cost, no guaranteed single-market access and no explanation of which European regulations Canada could be required to follow....

Mark Carney has cut Canada’s marginal effective tax rate on new business investment from approximately 13% to 6.4%, at an estimated fiscal cost of $36 billion over five years. But the Liberal government was already boasting that Canada had the lowest effective tax rate on new investment in the G7. If Canada already offered the best tax treatment, why did Carney need to cut that rate almost in half...

Canada is racing to become an AI and data-centre powerhouse, but can Canada's electricity grids actually keep up? A proposed AI data centre in Sault Ste. Marie is seeking as much as 400 MW of electricity, while massive new Northern Ontario transmission projects are targeting roughly the same 2029 timeframe. Then the story got much bigger. Bell has announced plans that could expand its AI data-...

Mark Carney's Canada Investment Summit is being promoted as the beginning of a $1-trillion investment boom — but what happened behind the scenes raises some remarkable questions. Less than two weeks before the summit, Invest in Canada CEO Laurel Broten left more than a year before her term was scheduled to end. At the same time, questions were emerging about the agency's board governance a...

Mark Carney and the Liberal government are flooding Canadians with strategies, spending announcements, international partnerships and promises of economic transformation. But where are the documents Canadians need to verify any of it? Ottawa has not released the complete American trade offer it rejected before asking Canadians to prepare for sacrifice and economic pain. The RCMP has refused to rel...

Mark Carney says Canada's economic pivot will come at a cost. Canadians are being told to prepare for sacrifice, disruption and economic pain. Then an extraordinary interview with Diana Fox Carney arrives. The prime minister's wife openly acknowledges that her husband's position gives her access to people, conversations and opportunities that other Canadians simply don't have. She...

Something has changed in Canada, and I don't think it's for the better. The Canada-U.S. trade war has become about far more than tariffs and negotiations. Canadians are boycotting, booing, policing where other Canadians travel and what they buy, questioning one another's patriotism and increasingly treating disagreement as betrayal. So for this episode of Tap the Maple, I'm doing something differe...

Could Canada be sending Old Age Security payments to people who have already died? A viewer sent me an extraordinary allegation about OAS payments continuing overseas after recipients die, and I initially thought there was no way the numbers would support the concern. Then I started digging. Canada's Old Age Security program paid approximately $80.2 BILLION in benefits in 2024–25. According to fed...

A growing political narrative says Canadians who question Ottawa's response to Donald Trump, criticize counter-tariffs, or point to Canada's economic vulnerabilities are somehow “blaming Canada” — or worse, siding with America. I reject that completely. Donald Trump owns America's tariffs. He owns his rhetoric and his attacks on Canada. But Canadians are still entitled to ask a much bi...