When your home isn't your home due to a court ruling...

Plus Canada is a bad trading partner and good polls for Poilievre.

Oct 19, 2025

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of today’s newsletter, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all of the readers and subscribers.

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So you may not own your home after all…

The City of Richmond, British Columbia is warning homeowners their title to their homes may be at risk. It all dates back to an August ruling from the B.C. Supreme Court called Cowichan Tribes that said Crown and private title in a 7 1/2 square kilometre area of Richmond was “defective and invalid.”

While some at the time said that the ruling would not impact homeowners, the legal department for the City of Richmond clearly thinks differently.

“The court has declared Aboriginal title to your property which may compromise the status and validity of your ownership – this was mandated without any prior notice to the landowners,” a letter sent to homeowners in the area impacted reads.

The letter was sent by Mayor Malcolm Brodie and tells residents the city will be appealing and holding public consultations. It’s not just the City of Richmond appealing this ruling it’s also the province and the Musqueam Indian Band.

You can read more from our friends over at Juno News.

The entire ruling from the B.C. Supreme Court is confusing, as is the jurisprudence set out by the Supreme Court on the issue of Aboriginal title dating back to one of those decisions in 2014. Thankfully Professor Dwight Newman, the Canada Research Chair in Rights, Communities and Constitutional Law at the University of Saskatchewan, has laid out an explainer of what happened in the Cowichan case, the 2014 Supreme Court case and what needs to be done going forward.

Give it a read.

Canada is an unreliable trade partner…

I spent a lot of time at the Banff Forum, held in Quebec City this year, talking about trade. It was a major focus of the forum and the reason for my appearance, speaking on a trade panel.

One of my messages, and it’s a message that I’ve been presenting for a long time, is that Canada isn’t the pure free trader we pretend we are and in fact, we are a problem for many countries around the world.

Now we have India’s High Commissioner saying straight up that we are unreliable in an interview with CTV’s Question Period.

The problem, as I point out in my latest Toronto Sun column, is that we are a problematic trading partner for many countries and on many fronts. We can send Mark Carney to Europe as we have done, or to Asia as will happen this week when he travels to the Asean Summit.

Check the column out and share it on social media, it’s a view you won’t hear in much of the Canadian media.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Polling is favourable to Pierre Poilievre…

Despite most headlines about Poilievre being negative, the latest Abacus Data poll put his Conservative Party at 41% nationally, the Liberals at 40% and the NDP at 8%. What is interesting is the regional breakdown which includes the Conservatives and Liberals statistically tied in Ontario.

This isn’t what you would expect based on the mainstream media chatter or the constant negative headlines about Poilievre.

Based on these numbers, it’s likely we would still have a minority government, but it could very well be a Conservative minority.

What’s also interesting is that while Canadians generally give Carney and his team decent marks for handling Trump, that’s not the biggest issue. Once again, when asked to rank their three biggest issues, Canadians listed the cost of living as the number one issue, followed by the economy second while Trump was tied for third with healthcare.