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For the week of March 16, 2025:

Canada has its 24th Prime Minister.

On March 14, Mark Carney took the oath of office and unveiled his Ontario-centric, 24-minister cabinet. It was five days after the Liberal Party leadership coronation. It was also one day after Justin Trudeau said farewell via 30-second social media video. 

Mark Carney’s buzzword is building. Is he building a new government or building an election campaign with leftovers from the Trudeau era? 

To answer that question and more is guest Mario Canseco of Research Co. 

Plus Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines and a special St. Patrick’s Day edition of the Virtual Nanaimo Bar. 

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Have you missed an edition of theBreaker.news Podcast? Go to the archive.

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For the week of March 16, 2025: Canada

Bob Mackin

A man claims he was scammed out of $26 million worth of his Bitcoin by a woman claiming to be a cryptocurrency expert living in Vancouver.

In a Feb. 6 B.C. Supreme Court ruling, released March 13, Justice Bruce Elwood said that Lixiao Wang hired private investigator Gregory Tweed to help him trace cryptocurrency transactions that flowed to Binance Holdings Ltd. and Coinbase Global Inc.

Wang said he made 13 transfers totalling more than $26 million to an account on the weeexproit.com website after he was contacted in early 2024 on WhatsApp by Qin Xin.

Wang attempted to withdraw funds but found his account locked. weeexproit.com staff told him his account had been locked after cyberattacks and offered to perform a security audit if he deposited $6 million.

“Mr. Wang became suspicious and did not comply with this demand,” Eldwood said. “He has since been unable to access his account and unable to recover his funds.”

Wang applied to the court for and received production and preservation orders for information about the identities of the account holders who received the transactions and for the cryptocurrency and fiat funds held by the account holders to be preserved.

At the time of the two-day hearing, Wang had not served the petition and he did not allege wrondgoing by either Binance or Coinbase. But he intends to commence an action against the account holders and possibly others.

Elwood found that Wang showed first impression evidence against the individuals in control of the accounts on Binance and Coinbase, “acting together with Xin to perpetrate a fraudulent scheme to defraud him of his cryptocurrency.”

“I am satisfied that the respondents, Binance and Coinbase, are the only practical source of the personal information identifying the wrongdoers, and the only source of the information identifying the individuals in whose accounts the stolen bitcoin is presently being held,” Elwood concluded.

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Bob Mackin A man claims he was scammed

Bob Mackin

When Taylor Swift ended the Eras Tour in Vancouver last December, local tourism boosters said it would be a $157 million gold rush for the economy.

So how much did the superstar’s promoter pay to rent money-losing B.C. Place Stadium for the final three nights of her $2 billion grossing tour?

Outside B.C. Place Stadium on Dec. 7, 2024. (Mackin)

It is a state secret.

Under British Columbia’s freedom of information law, theBreaker.news obtained a copy of the license agreement between the taxpayer-owned stadium and the Ontario subsidiary of Swift’s Texas promoter, Messina Touring Group. Attendance for the three shows was a combined 178,042.

What MTG agreed to pay for the Dec. 1-5 move-in, Dec. 6-8 concerts and Dec. 8-10 move-out is censored. B.C. Place claims disclosure would harm its finances and reveal MTG’s trade secrets.

According to the key clause in the Sept. 27, 2024 contract:

Also, B.C. Place management was entitled to receive an undisclosed quantity of free tickets and suites:

Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner adjudicators and B.C. Supreme Court judges have repeatedly held that the public has the right to see contracts negotiated between private companies and public bodies.

B.C. Pavilion Corp., the stadium’s parent, forecasts it will end the fiscal year on March 31 with a $2.7 million loss.

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Bob Mackin When Taylor Swift ended the Eras

Bob Mackin

A who’s who of the Vancouver real estate industry, municipal politicians and even the couple at the centre of the B.C. Housing nepotism scandal turned out to support Mark Carney’s winning bid for Liberal leadership on Feb. 12.

Carney, who will be sworn-in as Canada’s 24th Prime Minister on March 14, drew 85 people to an event at a private residence in the V6J 1G1 postal code, according to the Elections Canada list of attendees obtained by theBreaker.news.

Mark Carney(left) and Wade Grant (Grant/X)

The postal code matches that of Rennie Marketing Systems. Founder Bob Rennie and son/principal Kris Rennie were on the list, along with chief operating officer Gregory Zayadi.

Notable politicos included Metro Vancouver chair and Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley, West Vancouver Mark Sager, Vancouver city councillor Lisa Dominato, former Metro Vancouver chair Greg Moore, and Trudeau Liberal Members of Parliament Parm Bains (Steveston-Richmond East) and Randeep Sarai (Surrey Centre).

Also: former Atira CEO and Canada Mortgage and Housing director Janice Abbott and former B.C. Housing CEO Shayne Ramsay. They lost their jobs after a 2023 provincial government report found Ramsay in conflict of interest for favouring wife Abbott’s Atira Women’s Resource Society with millions of dollars in contracts.

During a March 4 Conversations Live panel discussion, Rennie said he was “working with Carney.”

“I’m trying to get a rental program in where people can buy, put it into a 25-year pool, get a preferred rate from CMHC and let’s allow foreign buyers to buy it,” Rennie said.

“They have to rent it out for 25 years and it will show the world we are open for business, because right now all of our governments are not showing that we’re open for business.”

Others who paid between $0 and $1,750 to meet and greet Carney:

  • Dax Aquilini, Aquilini Group, VP investments
  • Jill Atkey, B.C. Not For Profit Housing Association, CEO
  • Sheila Biggers, St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation, CEO
  • Nicole Brassard, Global Public Affairs, VP, former Liberal Party VP
  • Mike Bucci, Bucci Developments, VP
  • Suky Cheema, BDO Canada, real estate leader
  • Ajay Dilawri, Dilawri Auto Group, co-founder
  • Jonathan Cooper, Strand, SVP
  • Rossano De Cotiis, Onni Group, president
  • Geoff Duyker, Mosaic Homes, SVP
  • Nabih Faris, Intergulf, CEO
  • Ivan Fecan, Rogers Communications, director
  • Patti Glass, Grosvenor, VP
  • Byng Giraud, Sedgwick Strategies
  • Wade Grant, Musqueam Indian Band, intergovernmental relations officer, and Quadra Liberal nomination candidate
  • Quinten Grimm, Squamish Nation, project management specialist
  • Azim Jamal, Pacific Reach, CEO
  • Hassan Khosrowshahi, Wesbild, chair
  • James Innis, Sutton Group, president

    Atira CEO Janice Abbott with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland (second from left) (Nomodic/CMHC)

  • Stephen Kukucha, Fort Capital, senior advisor, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, former director
  • Robert Macdonald, Macdonald Development chair
  • John MacKay, Strand, managing director
  • Susan MacLaurin, director, Nch’kay Development
  • Anne McMullin, Urban Development Institute, CEO
  • Craig Munroe, Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, director
  • David Negrin, Isthmus Management, chair
  • Deep Singh Sidhu, Massive Canada Building Systems Inc., chief investment officer
  • Gail Sparrow, Musqueam Capital Corp., director
  • Barrett Sprowson, Peterson Real Estate, VP
  • Ronald Stern, Stern Partners, founder
  • Ben Taddei, Conwest Developments, COO
  • Khelsilem Tl’akwasikan (aka Dustin Rivers), Squamish Nation council chair
  • Gurpreet Vinning, Prospectus Associates, partner
  • Bruno Wall, Wall Financial chair
  • Grace Wong, Chinese Canadian Museum, chair
  • Wilson Williams, Squamish Nation, spokesperson
  • Duncan Wlodarczak, Onni Group, chief of staff, Liberal Party of Canada in B.C. chair

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Bob Mackin A who’s who of the Vancouver

Bob Mackin

The daughter of a Vancouver man denied bail in Paris last month said she is devastated.

Thomas Herdman, 64, has been locked up in a French jail since June 2021, accused of money laundering and other offences related to a Vancouver encrypted phone company that U.S. authorities shut down in 2021.

Julie Kawai Herdman (left) and Thomas Herdman. (Kawai Herdman)

“My dad’s civil rights are being violated from being in there for almost four years without a trial and just the conditions he’s in,” Julie Kawai Herdman said in an interview. She said the case should be bigger news in Canada.

On March 12, 2021, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of California announced racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to distribute controlled substances charges against Herdman and a West Vancouver man, Sky Global CEO Jean-Francois Eap. U.S. prosecutors claimed Sky Global netted hundreds of millions of dollars in profits by helping transnational criminals hide their transactions from law enforcement.

Herdman, through a company called LevUp Tech, distributed Sky Global’s modified smartphones, which worked on an encrypted network called Sky ECC. Police from Belgium, France and Netherlands cracked the company’s French server and have used the evidence to prosecute hundreds of cases.

None of the allegations against Eap and Herdman has been tested in court. Herdman denies wrongdoing and Eap vowed in March 2021 to clear his name.

The case in the U.S. against Herdman and Eap has not proceeded to trial. Herdman met in Spain to co-operate with U.S. prosecutors, but was extradited to France instead.

In late January, Eap opened another location of his Hello Nori sushi restaurant chain at Park Royal in West Vancouver after more than three years of on again, off again construction. He is among the 30 charged by the French, but Herdman is the only one in custody. French prosecutors have been unable to extradite the others.

On Feb. 27, with his daughter in the courtroom, Herdman applied to be released on bail so he could live and work in Paris under house arrest and electronic monitoring while waiting for the trial, expected in 2026.

Kawai Herdman planned to live there with her father if he had been freed.

“Because I haven’t seen him for so long, I don’t think I would leave his side,” she said. “But apparently that wasn’t enough convincing for the judges, because they still declared him a flight risk.”

U.S. authorities claim Vancouver-based Sky Global sells goods and services to transnational drug criminals. (Sky ECC)

According to the statement he read in court, Herdman pleaded for bail so he could “prove my innocence from outside these walls.”

“My family’s paid millions in legal fees, losing their breadwinner to a French prison cell deemed ‘fine’ by authorities but condemned as overcrowded and inhumane by Europe,” he said. “This isn’t just my suffering—it’s theirs. Four years isn’t detention; it’s punishment without a verdict.”

Herdman’s lawyer called the French stance “absurd.”

“He is approaching four years of pretrial detention, a duration typically reserved for violent crimes and terrorist offences,” said Paul Sin-Chan.

Herdman missed his daughter’s University of B.C. graduation ceremony last May. His 93-year-old mother is recovering from a stroke.

“He’s always a little bit worried if he’s going to get home in time to see her before she gets even more sick,” Kawai Herdman said.

Jean-François Eap (Facebook)

Kawai Herdman describes the Fleury-Mérogis prison as grey and dystopian. Her father complained to her about the quality of food and the lack of heat in his room. She said he sometimes huddles around a stove to get warm.

“He’s lost a lot of weight and it looks like he’s lost a lot of a strength,” she said.

When they learned of the charges in 2021, Kawai Herdman and her mother shared in the shock and disbelief. But Herdman them assured that co-operation with U.S. authorities would result in a resolution.

“We didn’t think it was like a super huge deal to begin with, because my dad was sure that he was going to come home.”

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Bob Mackin The daughter of a Vancouver man

Bob Mackin

The end is here for Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who relied heavily on the West Coast to win his only majority government in 2015.

The Liberal Party chooses his successor March 9 — 3,412 days since Trudeau’s swearing-in.

The son of Pierre Trudeau promised “sunny ways” in 2015. Yet, he leaves in 2025, under a cloud after a series of conflict of interest scandals, the worst pandemic in a century and threats to Canada’s sovereignty from China’s Xi Jinping and the United States’ Donald Trump.

When he came to West Vancouver on Sept. 10, 2015 to announce an ocean protection strategy, I went to ask about his promise to spend billions of dollars on rapid transit infrastructure. Montreal’s corruption-plagued SNC-Lavalin wanted contracts to expand Vancouver’s SkyTrain and Canada Line network.

Candidates behind Trudeau on John Lawson Pier included Vancouver-Granville’s Jody Wilson-Raybould. Three years later, she was the Attorney General who upheld the rule of law, while he was the Prime Minister who got caught trying to let SNC-Lavalin off the hook.

CLICK and WATCH: Justin Trudeau on Sept. 10, 2015.

Justin Trudeau’s election eve rally was Oct. 18, 2015 inside the jam-packed Pipe Shop in North Vancouver’s Shipyards District.

As I left, I noticed a familiar face: Liberal Party fundraiser and former Richmond MP Raymond Chan.

I had been trying for several months to ask Chan questions about his solicitation of political donations from real estate developer Michael Mo Yeung Ching.

Ching, the son of Hebei’s former Chinese Communist Party secretary Cheng Weigao, was wanted in China on charges of corruption.

In 2015, Ching was in a marathon legal battle to clear his name and seek Canadian citizenship (he finally got it in 2020). It had emerged that Ching donated more than $11,000 to Trudeau’s campaign. His daughter, Linda Ching, had been the president of the federal Young Liberals in B.C. and a director of the Trudeau supporters’ group called Tru-Youths.

Moments after turning on my iPad camera, a group of people suddenly surrounded me and blocked my lens. They refused to tell me their names.

A North Vancouver RCMP officer later told them that reporters in Canada are free to shoot video in public. The Mounties refused to investigate my assault complaint. YouTube rejected Chan’s attempt to censor the video.

CLICK and WATCH: Inside and outside Justin Trudeau’s 2015 campaign finale.

Bob Mackin The end is here for Canada’s

For the week of March 9, 2025:

It is the end of the Justin Trudeau era. 

Trudeau must go and make way for a new Liberal leader, as Canada grapples with the Trump trade war and moves one, big step closer to a federal election. 

Looking back at one of Canada’s most-controversial and most-consequential prime ministers, with guest Tom Korski, the managing editor of Blacklock’s Reporter. 

Plus, hear from Jack O’Halloran, the CEO of Surrey Urban Mission Society, and this week’s Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Have you missed an edition of theBreaker.news Podcast? Go to the archive.

NEW: Subscribe to theBreaker.news on Substack. Find out how: Click here.

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For the week of March 9, 2025: It

Bob Mackin

Longtime former BC Liberal cabinet minister Mike de Jong says he is still in the dark about why the Conservative Party cancelled his Abbotsford-South Langley nomination bid.

In a March 6 message to supporters, de Jong expressed his disappointment and said he was given less than 12 hours overnight to prepare submissions for a 9 a.m. meeting to review his appeal.

Mike de Jong quit as an MLA and began a campaign in 2024 to run for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives (de Jong/X)

“Suffice to say it is difficult to make meaningful submissions when the rationale for the decision being appealed is being entirely withheld from you except for the claim that I am unqualified for the position of MP,” de Jong’s message said.

De Jong said he spent the last year campaigning and signing up “thousands of members” and is demanding answers about why can’t run on Pierre Poilievre’s team.

“Despite my record of transparency, service and integrity, no specific reason for my disqualification has been provided except for the claim that I was not qualified.”

De Jong spent just over 30 years as an MLA in Abbotsford ridings, between 1994 and 2024. While in government from 2001 to 2017, he held a succession of portfolios: forests, public safety and solicitor general, attorney general, health and finance. De Jong also unsuccessfully sought the party leadership twice.

But he was not immune from controversy.

While attorney general in 2010, two deputy ministers cut a deal to pay $6 million in legal fees for Dave Basi and Bob Virk, the two BC Liberal aides charged in the BC Rail corruption scandal. Their trial suddenly ended with a plea bargain, but de Jong denied he was involved in the decision.

While health minister, several drug safety researchers were wrongly fired over an alleged privacy leak. The government announced the scandal the day after de Jong became finance minister in 2012.

As finance minister, de Jong famously claimed that he did not use email.

He was in charge of casino and real estate regulation. But, under his watch, money laundering ran rampant. In 2022, an NDP-ordered public inquiry found that de Jong and other BC Liberal government witnesses, including ex-Premier Christy Clark, had simply failed to do their jobs to properly oversee casinos.

Meanwhile, Conservatives who are officially nominated are gearing up for a spring federal election.

In Campbell River on March 6, North Island-Powell River candidate Aaron Gunn is hosting a “Pre-Election True North Strong and Free Rally.”

North Vancouver-Capilano candidate Stephen Curran is opening a campaign office at 11 Lonsdale on March 8 with help from former B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and current District of North Vancouver Mayor Mike Little.

On March 9, the Liberal Party is expected to announce Mark Carney as its new leader and successor to the resigning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The federal election is scheduled for October, but could be called sooner.

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Bob Mackin Longtime former BC Liberal cabinet minister

Bob Mackin

A Crown prosecutor stayed assault charges against an Ontario convict accused of beating his girlfriend in the British Properties while on parole.

Tyrell Evans, 36, pleaded guilty to possessing a 10-inch knife for a dangerous purpose on Jan. 23. North Vancouver Provincial Court Judge Robert Hamilton ordered him to serve a 90-day sentence to be followed by 12 months of probation.

Tyrell Evans (Toronto Police Service)

West Vancouver Police Department (WVPD) issued an unusual public warning to stay away from the 800-block of King Georges Way on the morning of May 22, 2024, when they arrested Evans at a mansion advertised as a $20,000-a-month short-term rental.

WVPD later said officers responded to calls that a woman was in distress. Evans was charged with possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, assault causing bodily harm and assault by choking.

Prosecutor Samantha Norton had proposed 12 months in jail and 18 months probation. In the case summary, Norton told the court that police set-up a “silent containment perimeter” after they were called to the area on May 21. Around 7:30 a.m. the next morning, Evans came downstairs. Through large windows in the rear of the mansion, he saw some of the officers in the backyard, picked up a 10-inch knife from the kitchen and said “just shoot me” and “I’m not going back.”

Police had their guns drawn. Evans remained inside, pacing, drinking and speaking on the phone.

“He gestured with the knife,” Norton told the court. “He did not point the knife at police or himself.”

Evans went upstairs and out of sight for approximately 40 minutes before he surrendered without incident at the front door.

Evans appeared for his sentencing by video conference from Matsqui Institution. Defence lawyer William Jessop said Evans arrived in B.C. around May 18 and stayed with other individuals who rented the Airbnb for the Victoria Day long weekend “for lack of a better term, consuming alcohol and partying.”

Criminal history

At the time of the West Vancouver arrest, Evans had been on full parole for almost 14 months with conditions that included a ban on alcohol consumption and to report any friendships or relationships with women.

British Properties crime scene on May 22, 2024 (Mackin)

A Sept. 2 Parole Board of Canada (PBC) report obtained by theBreaker.news said Evans was sentenced to seven years and four months in Ontario after pleading guilty to possession for the purpose of trafficking, assault with a weapon, possessing property obtained by crime and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle.

In April 2017, Evans pointed a handgun at a man’s head, but the gun did not discharge. In August 2017, Evans led police on a chase, but they found oxycodone pills and ammunition the next day at his home. In September 2018, Evans crashed a vehicle and fled the scene, but police found cash and 2.66 kg of cocaine nearby.

PBC decided to revoke parole because of the West Vancouver incident. Evans had failed to disclose the girlfriend to a bail officer for a two-year period and had not requested permission to travel to B.C. That report cited the WVPD investigation and described the allegations of assault.

“The victim had reported that you kicked her in the chest and punched her face numerous times and would grab her hair and push it against the floor,” said the PBC report by member Janelle Jackiw. “The police described her injuries to be serious and they attested that the victim will have long months to fully recover and that she would not be able to recognize herself when she looks at herself in the mirror.”

Decision to stay charges a secret

Those details were not mentioned in the Jan. 23 sentencing hearing, which focused on what Evans did with the knife and said to police.

“Based on what Mr. Evans said, I suppose it was an attempt to hurt himself, to get the police to shoot him,” Hamilton said. “But that didn’t materialize. On the sort of continuum of possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose, nobody was threatened, nobody was hurt.”

Citing its policy, the B.C. Prosecution Service refused to explain why it dropped the charges that Evans assaulted his girlfriend. Spokesperson Damienne Darby said the Crown charge approval standard is based on the public interest and substantial likelihood of conviction.

“I can say that the decision to stay two of the charges in this case was made after further information was received by the prosecutor with conduct of the file,” Darby said. “After reviewing this information and the rest of the file materials the prosecutor concluded the charge approval standard could no longer be met. In these circumstances a stay of proceedings is the appropriate course of action.”

Parole Board members Alison Scott and Kathleen Gowanlock originally ruled in April 2023 in favour of full, conditional parole for Evans, after concluding that he did not present an undue risk to society.

Evans’s statutory federal release date is in June. Hamilton decided that he must not possess weapons, including knives, except for working or eating. After finishing his provincial sentence, Evans must leave B.C. within seven days of release and not return for the length of the probation order.

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Bob Mackin A Crown prosecutor stayed assault charges

Bob Mackin

The former central banker poised to succeed Justin Trudeau as Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister advised the B.C. NDP cabinet almost four years ago.

Mark Carney (left) and Justin Trudeau at the 2018 G20 summit in Argentina (PMO/Scotti)

Documents obtained under the freedom of information law show that then-Brookfield Asset Management vice-chair Mark Carney made a presentation to John Horgan’s cabinet on June 16, 2021.

What he actually said to Horgan, 18 ministers and four ministers of state is a secret due to cabinet confidentiality. The content of the presentation and minutes will not be revealed until the 15-year exemption expires in 2036.

What is known is that Carney made the presentation to the cabinet at a noon, hybrid meeting that was scheduled to last an hour. Two cabinet members were absent: Minister of Health Adrian Dix and Attorney General and future Premier David Eby.

“Cabinet reviewed a presentation entitled ‘Mark Carney Presentation British Columbia Cabinet Meeting,” provided by Mark Carney, dated June 16, 2021,” the minutes said.

“Cabinet were also provided the following: (censored).”

The meeting came about when an aide to George Heyman, the NDP Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, contacted an aide for Carney at Brookfield Asset Management’s Gatineau, Que. office.

“Minister Heyman would like to have a conversation with Mr. Carney about the relationship between financial investment trends and climate plans like CleanBC, and on behalf of Premier Horgan would like to explore if he would be willing to speak to our executive council at an upcoming cabinet meeting,” said the May 10, 2021 email from Kelly Sather.

It almost didn’t happen. Sylvie Peterson, Brookfield’s impact fund investigating administrative manager, told Heyman’s administrative coordinator Alyssa Hrenyk that Carney’s “diary is currently heavily committed.” He probably could not participate until the fall, Peterson said.

But they eventually settled to have Carney connect by webconference.

An arm of Brookfield, Brookfield Renewable U.S., has investments in the Kokish, Pingston, Powell, Lois, Hystad and East Twin hydroelectric facilities in B.C.

In January, Carney resigned as chair of Brookfield in order to run for Liberal leadership. Carney is the favourite to be named the new Liberal leader on March 9.

At the time of his presentation to the NDP cabinet, Carney was also the United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance.

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Bob Mackin The former central banker poised to