Alan Aubut is a retired geologist, based in Nipigon.Until recently, the only CBC television program I would watch was “Still Standing,” hosted by comedian Jonny Harris. The show tackled the many examples across Canada of business failures and how their host communities had tried to recover — and are still standing. Communities like the one I live in, Nipigon, which in 2007 lost the Multiply Forest Products plywood mill to fire. A devastating event that came on the heels of the permanent shutdown of the Norampac container board mill in nearby Red Rock the year before. Two small towns on the north shore of Lake Superior were hit hard by the sudden closure of their primary industries within a year of one another.That tale of woe is common across Canada, to the point that Jonny Harris saw an opportunity to tell the "story of small towns in Canada and how they overcome struggles.” Rather than dwelling on the negatives, he finds ways to show the humour and the spirit that remains in those communities even after the devastating loss of their prime industries.The series began in 2015, and in April 2026, it is in its eleventh year. All because there is a long list of new subjects that share the same basic story: one-industry towns that have lost that industry. The factors are varied, but an undercurrent to all is governments, both federal and provincial, that act as though there is no tomorrow, and as though we are insulated from world economics. That is strange, given our need to remain competitive on the world market, as we have too few people scattered across too vast a land to be anywhere near “critical mass,” a term borrowed from nuclear science where you need a minimum amount of fissionable material before a sustained chain reaction can take place.To be competitive, we need to ensure our costs are not so high that buyers are driven to cheaper alternatives in our primary market, the United States (US). Costs such as energy, whether that be from hydrocarbons (i.e., “carbon” taxes that no one else saddles their industries with), or electricity. To illustrate the latter, in 2010, I moved from Thompson, Manitoba, to Nipigon. My last electric bill in Thompson worked out to 7.03 cents per kilowatt hour, all in, including delivery. Here in Nipigon, the “all in” cost was, and still is, over 20 cents. Is Manitoba a business leader due to cheap electricity? No. Thanks in part to incompetence by the NDP government in Manitoba, the price gap has narrowed even though that province has expanded its hydroelectric generation..What brought this to my attention of late is that I have discovered a YouTube series called “Industrial North.” They document the rise and fall of major companies across Canada, with many of those falls being early in this current century. Yes, some have been due to managerial incompetence, such as the fall of Nortel. Others are due to a lack of forward vision, characterized by investment in research and development. Others, like BlackBerry, are still in existence but are pale shadows of their former selves, all because they were unable to focus on their primary product for a few years, the cell phone. Many are due to the competitive advantages we had being erased by our own government, which, as the example of Manitoba illustrates, shows no apparent comprehension that we live in a competitive world and that needs to be first and foremost when government decisions are made. Literally killing the golden geese.In the old fable, a goose lays golden eggs. Instead of being satisfied with receiving one valuable egg at a time, the owner kills the goose, hoping to get all the gold at once. He finds nothing extra inside and loses the source of wealth altogether. The lesson is that when people exploit, overtax, or destroy the thing that produces value, they often end up worse off than before. Canada has seen an exodus of investment capital as well as Canadian companies leaving for the US in order to escape the ever-growing cost of government in the form of onerous taxes, rules, and regulations. One example that quickly comes to mind is Rumble, an alternative to YouTube that now has its headquarters in Florida.It was bad enough during the Harper era that our government stood idly by while core national businesses were bought by foreign companies that then closed Canadian operations or, in the case of mining, severely reduced their Canadian presence by moving head offices elsewhere. In other cases, the companies simply moved their head offices outright, as Brookfield Asset Management did. The effect was much the same: decision-making, influence, and high-value economic activity drifted away from Canada, hollowing out small, medium, and large towns and cities in the process, and giving people like Jonny Harris more material for a show that, in its own way, documents Canada’s decline..It has got to the point that I am now convinced that some individuals in government are trying to make a fortune by killing Canada’s industry through something akin to shorting. I do not mean shorting in the narrow stock-market sense, as no shares in ‘Canada’ are being traded. I mean the broader process of artificially making something less valuable so that others can later profit from the undervaluation, the weakness, the forced restructuring, or the cheapened assets left behind.In the stock market, shorting means borrowing shares in a company, selling them at today’s price, and, in aggressive cases, dumping enough stock onto the market to help push the price lower. The short seller then hopes to buy those shares back later at a cheaper price and pocket the difference. What matters here is not the literal trading mechanism, but the underlying logic: create or deepen decline, then profit from the damage.That is why shorting has such an ugly smell to ordinary people. A worker, supplier, contractor, or town loses when an industry is crippled. The short seller has his thumb on the scale while the worker, the town, and the supplier are left to absorb the damage. Hedge funds and other aggressive investors can go further by combining short positions with options, leverage, and distressed debt strategies, thus making a weakening company or country an even better opportunity. While it is not illegal, it does explain why many people, including me, instinctively distrust those who seem to profit from collapse rather than production, especially when they appear to be enabling that collapse.I am not claiming that Mark Carney, Brookfield, or anyone around them has been caught literally shorting Canada. But politics is not about proof after the fact, as then it is already too late and the damage is done. It is more about appearances before the fact, as that is the only time you, the voter, have a chance to correct the path before it is too late. Carney did formally leave his commercial posts before entering politics. Fine. Yet the appearance problem remains because he came to office from Brookfield, one of the largest asset managers in the world, a firm that thinks in terms of global capital flows, infrastructure, energy, credit, and distressed opportunities, not in terms of whether another Canadian mill town lives or dies. .So when Carney talks about making Canada less dependent on the US, while leaving in place the industrial carbon pricing system that still raises costs for Canadian producers, the question naturally arises: who benefits? Our natural market is the US. It is close, integrated, and reachable over land. Europe is across an ocean. China is ruled by a regime that is plainly incompatible with our political tradition and has repeatedly acted against Canadian interests. None of that means diversification is always wrong. It does mean that diversification pursued in a way that makes Canada less competitive at home starts to look less like a strategy and more like self-harm.The Brookfield connection makes that appearance worse, not better. Carney’s defenders will say he cut formal ties. Perhaps. But the public is entitled to notice patterns, or what look like patterns. He is abroad in jurisdictions such as India, China, and the European Union, supposedly advancing Canada’s interests. Yet it is Brookfield that is the party making material announcements in those same jurisdictions, sometimes while he is there. Carney appears to come back with little tangible for Canada. Brookfield does not. The fact that Carney and Brookfield keep turning up in the same foreign jurisdictions, with Brookfield making significant positive announcements while Carney returns with little or nothing tangible for Canada, raises the question of why he was there, who truly benefited, and why the gains appear clearer for Brookfield than for Canada. While this does not prove corruption, it does show we have an ever-growing appearance problem. And when those appearances are paired with policies that raise domestic costs, antagonize our largest customer, and leave Canadian industry weaker, a reasonable person starts to ask whether Canada is being governed for Canadians or managed in a way global finance finds convenient.A leader who is acting for his own people should not repeatedly create the appearance that his instincts remain aligned with global asset management rather than with the needs of Canadian workers, producers, and communities. That is the problem. Even without a smoking gun, the appearance itself corrodes trust. It may already be too late in this case, but that only sharpens the obligation of each person to identify the hooligans before they do damage. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.Alan Aubut is a retired geologist, based in Nipigon.
