On Canada's Trajectory
Dear Mr. Poilievre,
I first wrote to you during the last campaign. A year later, the concerns in that letter have only sharpened, so I am publishing this revised version, shorter, and addressed as much to my fellow citizens as to you.
Canada's fundamental problem is that we have built an economy around housing instead of production. Canadians pour their incomes into mortgages, leaving little for the investment, innovation, and research that create real growth. Our banks profit from this arrangement, our governments depend on it, and our currency and productivity pay the price. Meanwhile, the country's ability to protect its people from fraud, crime, and institutional neglect has eroded, and Canadians know it.
Negotiating from strength
The United States is stepping back from its role as guarantor of the world order and using its economic weight to extract concessions, ally and adversary alike. As the Arctic trade route opens, American strategic interest in Canadian sovereignty will only grow. We should engage Washington directly and without illusions, and build alternatives so we never negotiate from weakness. A CANZUK agreement on trade and movement with Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom should be the first pillar.
Housing: transparency, enforcement, ownership
- Create a single public database of sale prices and ownership, accessible by API, to end information asymmetry and bidding-war blindness.
- Connect the CRA to mortgage lenders to verify declared income, and prosecute mortgage fraud with real consequences, including for those seeking citizenship on falsified files.
- Restrict corporations and REITs to purpose-built multi-family housing of twelve units or more; single-family homes are for families.
- Extend and enforce foreign-ownership restrictions, and bar entities of hostile states from farmland and land near strategic assets.
- Release federal Crown land for first-time buyers, with the land financed directly by the government at preferential rates.
- Make property taxes and land-transfer taxes deductible from federal income tax, matched by an equivalent credit for renters, so Canadians stop being taxed twice on the roof over their heads.
- Make mortgages non-recourse: if banks want the profits of the bubble they helped inflate, they must share its risks.
- Create 100-year land-lease communities for Canadians sixty and over, letting seniors downsize, unlock their equity, and escape predatory reverse mortgages.
Immigration: a citizenship worth something
- End unconditional birthright citizenship: a child born here becomes a citizen if a parent is a citizen or permanent resident.
- Remove non-citizens convicted of violent crime or major fraud, swiftly and permanently.
- Require asylum claims to be made from safe countries, and complete the restoration of visa requirements where abuse is documented.
- Reform family reunification around self-funded long-stay visas for aging parents, with sponsors guaranteeing costs.
- Introduce a Newcomer Services Surcharge of $1,500 per adult per year until citizenship, children exempt, on the British model, so newcomers contribute to the services they use from day one.
- Ask more of citizenship itself: Canadians should carry a modest worldwide tax obligation, as Americans do, so no one enjoys the privileges of the passport while contributing nothing to the country behind it.
- Set an income requirement for citizenship of 70% of the provincial median, measured on household income with fair exemptions, so the passport marks establishment, not just presence.
- And reward genuine contribution: international students who complete a Canadian degree and secure employment in their field should have a clear, fast path to permanent residency.
Healthcare: accountability for what we pay
- Build one interoperable health record across all provinces.
- Deploy nurse-led telehealth at scale, including retired nurses working part-time from home.
- Tie the system to results: when wait times exceed the OECD average, taxpayers receive a rebate for every additional month they wait. If the system makes you wait, the system pays you.
- Honour subsidized training with incentive, not conscription: expanded loan forgiveness for physicians and nurses who serve underserved communities, and voluntary return-of-service agreements.
An economy that rewards effort
- Cut federal income tax on earned and overtime income to reward work, not passive speculation.
- Give entrepreneurs a real start: a $25,000 refundable credit for new business owners, with support in the lean early years, and require banks to publish and meet small-business lending targets.
- Restore consumer fairness: deduct vehicle damage caused by government neglect of roads, create a nationwide winter-safety credit for winter tires, and expand scrappage incentives with a year of free transit.
- Restrict passports for those owing over $100,000 in taxes, the same rule Washington applies.
- Give the CRTC five years to deliver competitive telecom prices or be restructured, opening the market to foreign carriers.
- Restructure Canada Post around parcels and centralized rural service before its losses become the taxpayer's.
Quebec
The sovereignty question drains national energy every decade. Any future referendum must carry a clear question and consequences negotiated in advance under the Clarity Act framework, agreed before the vote. Certainty, in either direction, is worth more than the status quo. And end duplicate filing: negotiate a single tax return for Quebecers.
Some of these measures are bold, and a few depart sharply from the Canadian status quo. I make no apology for that. Canada broke its social contract with its citizens, with the young locked out of homes, the workers taxed into stagnation, and the honest undercut by the fraudulent. Bold measures are how trust is rebuilt.
I have developed detailed implementation notes for every measure above and would welcome the opportunity to discuss any of it with you or your team.
François Larocque
Citizen · Contact