Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training has become the norm in corporations, the public sector, and academia in an attempt to cleanse institutions of systemic racism and purge people’s biases. While the goal may be noble at its core, there is no proof these programs work. In fact, they actually make things worse, according to a new research report from Prof. David Millard Haskell of the Aristotle Foundation. He joins True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss.
Also, British Columbia is doubling down on its “safe” drug supply programs despite a growing amount of evidence it is harmful. National Post writer Adam Zivo weighs in.
Plus, Canada’s finances may be in a terrible place, but a new study from the Fraser Institute lays out a roadmap to a balanced budget by as soon as 2027 if a serious course correction takes place. The think tank’s director of fiscal studies, Jake Fuss, returns to the show to explain how.
GC Strategies was handpicked by the Liberal government to oversee the failed ArriveCan application. It was revealed on Wednesday that the firm has accumulated $258 million in federal contracts over the course of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s time in office.
Plus, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre blasted a pro-drug advocate’s racist tirade at a protest in Richmond, BC, where residents demonstrated against the opening of a safe injection site.
And there’s been a second shooting targetting the home of a Sikh activist in one week.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Noah Jarvis!
A constitutional rights group has sent a letter to Elections Canada and Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions, and Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic Leblanc, emphasizing that Canadians remain the arbiters of truth.
The letter came after Elections Canada recently developed a policy to monitor and counter what it calls “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
Addressed to Stéphane Perrault, Acting CEO of the Chief Electoral Office, The Democracy Fund’s letter outlines several concerns with the Elections Integrity and ElectoFacts website.
On the Election Integrity website, several types of objectionable conduct are outlined.
The conduct highlighted in the letter includes influence campaigns that undermine the electoral process, political parties or candidates using social media to disseminate false information about opponents, and external online efforts targeting diaspora communities to sway their voting decisions.
Elections Canada also purports to monitor media and the internet to identify potential election disruptions, misinformation, and impersonations that may hinder voter participation or cause confusion.
The Democracy Fund noted that Elections Canada has previously contacted social media companies to establish protocols for reporting cases of false information on the voting process and those seeking to impersonate the department.
The civil society organization noted several problems with Election Canada’s approach to monitoring online information.
One of the critiques is that it is not clear that Elections Canada has the legislative authority to report citizens or their online comments or attempt to influence platforms to remove “false information,” said The Democracy Fund in its letter.
“Even if it did, doing so without judicial review and oversight is arguably improper,” wrote senior litigator Mark A. Joseph, who signed the letter.
He added that the legality of prohibiting the publication of “false news” has been adjudicated by Canadian courts, and the relevant Criminal Code provisions have been struck down.
Joseph’s letter said that identifying “misinformation” and “disinformation” is one of the most difficult problems in epistemology and has bedevilled philosophers for millennia, remaining unsolved.
“Until such time as it is resolved, claims to epistemic certainty are unfounded,” he said, adding that there is no evidence that Elections Canada has resolved such a fundamental problem.
The third problem raised by TDF is that the language regarding “false information” is ambiguous, not accounting for comedic, parodistic, or satirical language, resulting in an overbroad and imprecise removal of information.
“It is not clear that Elections Canada could implement any process that would be better at ascertaining truth than citizens using normal human discernment,” said Joseph.
He said that any removal or attempted removal of “false information” would be an exercise in arbitrary or politically-motivated censorship.
“Worse still, in our experience, punishment for contravening speech laws is typically inflected upon minority communities, vulnerable groups, and political dissidents: those with privilege avoid sanction,” he wrote in the letter.
TDF concluded its letter by saying that any attempts to remove “false information” will ultimately erode civil liberties and democratic engagement. Limiting access to a range of moral and political ideas, regardless of accuracy, hinders citizens’ ability to engage with multifaceted debates, undermining their ability to think critically.
“We would respectfully recommend that Elections Canada restrict its conduct to publishing factual information about elections and the electoral process. It is safer and more practicable for the citizens of Canada to remain the arbiters of truth.”
In a statement to True North, Elections Canada said that Section 18.1 of the Canada Elections Act stipulates that the Chief Electoral Officer may provide the public with information relating to Canada’s electoral process and the democratic rights to vote and to be a candidate.
EC said that ElectoFacts is part of its efforts to give Canadians the information they need to participate in federal elections, including some of the questions EC is most frequently asked and some of the most prevalent misconceptions observed.
“We believe free speech is tremendously important. We also have a mandate to provide Canadians with easily accessible and accurate information about the federal electoral process directly from the source, and with verified sources,” said Matthew McKenna, spokesperson for Elections Canada.
He added that the non-partisan agency does not ask for content removal from social media providers unless there is impersonation of Elections Canada, which is illegal under section 481.1 of the Act, or inaccurate information claiming the election is on a different day, as this could disenfranchise electors.
“When we detect inaccurate information, our focus is to make sure accurate information is easily available.”
Those huge four-legged Imperial walkers stomping into the rebel base in Empire Strikes Back looked unstoppable.
Until they toppled over.
That’s what fighting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax feels like sometimes, but we have a moment right now to recreate that iconic Star Wars scene and trip up the carbon tax.
Getting politicians in the House of Commons to reject the Senate’s watered-down amendments and pass Bill C-234 is a real way to strike back against the carbon tax and get farmers relief.
This bill will provide a break to farmers who need it and tie up another leg of the carbon tax machine. Every time that happens, the tax gets wobblier and wobblier, until it hopefully crashes down completely.
Bill C-234 would remove the federal carbon tax from natural gas and propane used on farms. Farmers use these fuels to dry grain and heat barns and other buildings.
Farmers already have an exemption from the carbon tax for the gasoline and diesel they use on their farms. The government proactively included that exemption because it’s unfair for Canadian farmers to pay a carbon tax when they’re competing against farmers from the United States to Australia who don’t have to pay Trudeau’s tax. This legislation simply extends the exemption to other fuels Canadian farmers use.
The bill originally passed the House in March 2023, where it got unanimous support from the Bloc, NDP, Greens and Conservatives. Even three Liberal MPs voted for it. Then the bill got sent to the Senate.
In the Senate, unelected six-figure-salary-earning political appointees decided it was their job to fiddle with the bill and water down the relief for farmers. The red chamber opted to amend the bill and remove the exemption for the heating of barns and other buildings and end the relief after three years. That’s a huge blow to affordability on farms. These amendments will cost farmers $910 million over the next eight years, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Now that C-234 is back in the House, Members of Parliament need to reject the nonsense amendments from the Senate and just pass the bill in its original form.
Because getting the original bill passed as law means big savings for farmers.
Take the example of a mid-sized chicken farm in Saskatchewan. To keep the chickens alive, the farmer needs to heat the barns to above 30 degrees the entire year. Imagine doing that in January with the temperature plunging below minus 40.
One chicken farmer paid $23,000 in natural gas heating bills last year. Of that bill, about a third, or $7,500, is just carbon tax and GST on the carbon tax.
Farmers don’t have any other choice but to heat their barns. They live in rural areas where the only available and reliable heat source is typically natural gas. They usually can’t just switch to another way to heat their barns, and if they have the option, it can’t be done without a massive upfront cost. That’s a cost that few can afford, in part, because of all the money they waste paying the carbon tax.
If the House does not reject the amendments and instead passes the bill as mangled by the Senate, our chicken farmer gets zero relief and must continue to pay that $7,500 carbon tax bill. That carbon tax bill will increase as the federal government plans to jack it up every year until 2030.
Farmers have been waiting for relief since the bill was originally introduced in the House over two years ago.
MPs of all parties need to put this bill front and center and reject the Senate’s amendment to get farmers this much-needed tax relief. And it will trip up the carbon tax along the way.
Gage Haubrich is the Prairie Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
A majority of Canadians aren’t sold on the idea of granting assisted suicide to those who want it solely on the basis of suffering from mental illness, according to a recent Leger survey.
Under the current rules, only Canadians who suffer from an incurable physical illness, disease or disability or are enduring intolerable pain are eligible to receive euthanasia from a medical professional.
While the majority of Canadians, 77%, do support the regulations as they are, only 42% would like to see the program expanded to include people who are suffering exclusively from mental illness.
The remaining respondents of the survey said they were divided between being opposed, at 28%, and another cohort of 30% saying they didn’t know.
Health Minister Mark Holland tabled legislation to have people suffering from chronic and incurable mental illness included under the legislation’s purview beginning in March.
However, all provinces and territories asked the minister to pause the policy to make further consultations.
Nearly half of respondents, 47%, supported pausing the policy, agreeing that the government should take the necessary time and measures it needs to ensure that the program’s expansion is done correctly.
While 37% disagreed with the delay, saying that Canadians suffering from incurable mental illness have the same right to euthanasia as those who have already been deemed eligible.
Respondents in Atlantic Canada and Quebec showed the strongest support for expanding the program, whereas Albertans responded with the strongest opposition to it.
“Two-thirds of Canadians (65%) believe that people suffering from an illness that can affect their cognitive ability should be able to make a request in advance for medical assistance in dying. This proportion is higher among Quebecers (77%) and people aged 55 and over (69%). Albertans are more likely to be against advance requests (22% versus 15% in Canada),” reads the survey.
The legislation to delay remains before the House of Commons.
The survey was conducted last week and had 1,570 adult respondents. It cannot be assigned a margin of error as online polls are not considered to be true random samples of the public.
This week on the Alberta Roundup with Rachel Emmanuel, Rachel interviews Nadine Wellwood, a chartered investment manager who is embarking on a campaign to educate Albertans on the benefits of an Alberta Pension Plan. Wellwood, a former federal PPC candidate, says there’s been fear mongering about the pension, which has undeniable benefits for Albertans. Tune into the Alberta Roundup now!
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has denounced a supervised injection site advocate’s “racist tirade” against opponents of the controversial B.C. proposal.
Poilievre was responding to a video depicting an activist shouting at an Asian man who opposes the establishment of the site in Richmond, B.C.
Radical activist spews racist tirade against a Chinese man trying to protect kids from a drug injection site the NDP & Liberal governments are forcing into Richmond.
The video, which circulated widely online, shows the activist telling the man to “go back where he came from” and asserting that he doesn’t belong in Canada.
In the clip, she specifically tells the man to go back to Hong Kong.
“Radical activist spews racist tirade against a Chinese man trying to protect kids from a drug injection site the NDP & Liberal governments are forcing into Richmond,” wrote Poilievre on X.
Poilievre’s condemnation comes amidst a heated debate surrounding the proposed supervised consumption facility in Richmond. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside City Hall Monday to express their opposition to the plan, with many holding signs bearing slogans such as “no drugs, no drugs.”
The council meeting, where over 100 speakers were scheduled to share their perspectives on the controversial proposal, was marked by passionate arguments from both supporters and opponents of the drug site.
Richmond’s city council voted 8-1 last week to explore the possibility of establishing the facility on hospital grounds, emphasizing its role in providing a safe environment for drug consumption and offering essential recovery and treatment services.
City officials have emphasized that the primary aim of the supervised injection site is to prevent overdose deaths and facilitate access to vital health and social services for individuals struggling with substance abuse.
However, segments of the community, including residents and advocacy groups, remain skeptical about the potential consequences of such a facility. Concerns about increased crime, violence, and drug-related activities in the vicinity have fueled opposition to the project.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith have criticized the federal government for swearing off funding new roads – a statement on which Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has since backtracked.
Guilbeault said Monday that road construction encourages people to use cars, so the federal government would no longer provide municipalities with funding for new roads. He said those funds should instead be used to fight climate change.
“Our government has made the decision to stop investing in new road infrastructure. Of course, we will continue to be there for cities, provinces, and territories to maintain the existing network, but there will be no more envelopes from the federal government to enlarge the road network,” said Guilbeault.
Smith was the first premier to speak out against Guilbeault’s proposal on Tuesday. In a post to X, she said Guilbeault needed a reality check about life for ordinary Canadians.
“So now our Environment Minister wants to cut federal funding for roads… because we should all just walk more. Does this minister understand that most Canadians don’t live in downtown Montreal? Most of us can’t just head out the door in the snow and rain and walk 10km to work each day,” said Smith.
Ford posted to X shortly after Smith, saying that he was “gobsmacked” by Guilbeault’s announcement.
“A federal minister said they won’t invest in new roads or highways. He doesn’t care that you’re stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. I do. We’re building roads and highways, with or without a cent from the feds,” said Ford.
The Ontario government issued a press release Wednesday on its efforts about how it would be taking the next steps to widen Highway 7 to help fight gridlock on the 401.
Smith, speaking at an unrelated conference on Wednesday, elaborated on her response to Guilbeault’s announcement.
“Anyone who thinks that you can stop building roads has obviously not travelled outside of Montreal very much, and doesn’t understand how big this country is, and doesn’t understand what it takes to get to some of our resort communities,” said Smith. “I would say that the environment minister has once again demonstrated how tone-deaf he is on anything to do with environmental issues.”
“The environment minister has once again demonstrated how tone deaf he is on anything to do with environmental issues.”
Alberta Premier Smith is asked about Steven Guilbeault’s recent statements about the feds no longer funding roads. pic.twitter.com/fgGBGYJRup
Guilbeault backtracked on his comments Wednesday, claiming he should have been more precise with his language and that he was only referring to some road projects.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault claims he never said that the federal government will no longer fund municipal road projects. pic.twitter.com/r9Zt7Aootl
Guilbeault said that one-quarter of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, making walking, cycling, and public transit desirable alternatives in his and the government’s eyes.
“We must stop thinking that electric cars will solve all our problems,” said Guilbeault at a luncheon hosted by the public transit advocacy group Trajectoire Québec.
The Trudeau government has spent up to $30 billion to develop public transit since 2016, alongside the launch of Canada’s inaugural annual financing program for public transit projects, earmarking $3 billion annually for projects beginning in 2026, said Guilbeault.
The Liberal government had additionally spent $400 million to encourage walking, cycling and the use of wheelchairs, scooters, e-bikes, roller blades, snowshoes and cross-country skis, supporting infrastructure projects like multi-purpose trails, bike lanes, pedestrian bridges over roads, and the enhancement of lighting and signage to promote what is termed “active transportation.”
Outside of these investments, Guilbeault said that all levels of government must stop expanding the road network. He said that adding more roads and new lanes on existing roads has encouraged more car use, resulting in more congestion and more calls for road expansion.
“If you are a decision maker and you decide to build a government institution far from public transit systems, then by default, you are inciting people to use their cars to access that public service. All of our planning practices have to be coherent with these mobility objectives for the reduction of the ecological footprint of transportation and of greenhouse emissions.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has promised to stop using tabulators in Alberta elections.
Smith’s base has long called for more election transparency and decried the use of electronics in the ballot-counting process, believing tabulators increase the potential for tampering with results.
The premier promised to rid provincial elections of tabulators while speaking at a United Conservative Party fundraiser in Bonnyville on January 26.
“Are you going to end the use of voting tabulators across the province?” Smith is asked on stage, to which she simply responds, “yes.”
A video of the exchange has been viewed by True North.
The premier’s promise comes after tabulators were widely used in the 2023 provincial election, which the UCP narrowly won.
As part of Elections Alberta’s Vote Anywhere Service, electors could show up at any voting place and receive a ballot for their riding. Electors would fill out their paper ballot and slip it into a tabulator. The tabulators counted the votes and printed a form with the results for each riding on election day.
Voting results were delayed for hours on election night. Elections Alberta said the delay was caused due to the time it took to manually enter results the tabulators printed.
“We did not use any electronic data transfer from the tabulators, as the tabulators used for advance voting were never connected to a network at any time,” the agency told True North in June. “As a result it was a manual process to verify and enter these results.”
Elections Alberta said tabulators are an essential part of how it delivers the vote, and without them, it would need to sort hundreds of thousands ballots into electoral divisions before counting.
Elections Canada does not use any electronic voting or counting tools in federal elections, with ballots marked by pencil and counted by hand.
Ahead of the election, Smith told True North that she had “confidence” in Elections Alberta’s plan to use tabulators for the advanced vote because Elections Alberta would also preserve all paper ballots in case recounts were requested.
“I have confidence that because we have the ability to do a hand count as a follow up in the event there are close results, I believe that’s going to be sufficient,” Smith told True North at a press conference in April.
“That’s, I think, something that people expect in democracy – that you should be able to verify a vote if results end up very close.”
The government vendor who received tens of millions of dollars to build the controversial ArriveCan app has received $258 million in federal contracts since Justin Trudeau came to office.
The Conservatives are calling on the Auditor General to investigate every contract and every dollar paid to GC Strategies.
La Presse reported Wednesday that GC Strategies has won approximately 140 federal government contracts totalling $258 million since 2015. The Department of Public Services and Procurement announced that all these contracts will be subject to review.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett urges the Auditor General to further investigate GC Strategies, after revelations that the federal government awarded contracts to the firm totaling $250 million. pic.twitter.com/NV5WCStvLg
Auditor General Karen Hogan released a report Monday revealing that ArriveCan’s cost was an estimated $59.5 million, with $19.1 million being paid to GC Strategies, the biggest price tag among all contractors.
Auditor General Karen Hogan says multimillion-dollar ArriveCAN project had a "glaring disregard for some of the most basic and fundamental policies and rules and controls." pic.twitter.com/0qpfDKOr5z
The app was initially supposed to cost only $80,000.
Nearly half of these contracts were awarded to GC Strategies by the Canada Border Services Agency. Forty-six of the contracts were given to GC Strategies without a call for tender.
Following the news, Conservative MP Michael Barrett said that the two-person IT firm has done no actual IT work but has been paid $250 million in government contracts. With ArriveCan, GC Strategies received the contract but subcontracted the work out to others.
“It’s beyond reason that a two-person company operating out of a suburban basement could be doing $250 million in business with the federal government. And so today, that’s why we’re calling on the Auditor General to investigate every penny that has been paid to them,” said Barrett.
Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said Hogan’s report showed the cozy relationship between the Trudeau government and the contractors at GC Strategies. This company was involved in the development of the rules and requirements for making proposals.
“This seems, to me, akin to having the coach of one of the teams making the rules and directing the referee — an effective rigging of the process,” said Genuis.
Hogan said she was left perplexed by what she called the worst bookkeeping she had seen in years, when trying to evaluate what ArriveCan actually cost.
Conservative MP Kelly Block and Auditor General Karen Hogan discuss the "alarming lack of documentation" on the ArriveCAN app and Hogan's position that the pandemic does not excuse basic management and documentation failures. pic.twitter.com/Vj1vQsowKm
“This would be the first example I’ve seen where there is such a glaring disregard for some of the most basic and fundamental policies of rules and controls,” she said.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has called on the RCMP to expand its criminal investigation into ArriveCan. This call came only for the $60 million spent on ArriveCan.
Poilievre told La Presse Tuesday that his party would be taking steps to have two parliamentary committees look into this affair, the Public Accounts Committee and the Government Operations and Estimates Committee.
Pierre Poilievre urges PM Trudeau to let the RCMP investigate the ArriveCAN app following the Auditor General’s report, which unveiled a $59.5 million cost to Canadian taxpayers.
“A company with two employees, which is at the heart of the ArriveCan scandal, and which has an address in the basement of a house in the suburbs of Ottawa, received about a quarter of a billion dollars in contracts. It doesn’t make sense. There’s something askew. There are secrets. We need the truth. The scandal is bigger than ever,” said Poilievre.
ARRIVESCAM BOMBSHELL
La Presse is reporting the company that was paid $60 million for the #ArriveScam app has received at least $250 million in federal contracts since 2015.
What is this company? Why did they only have two employees? Where is your money going?
According to La Presse, the company has four, not two, employees.
True North reached out to both partners at GC Strategies but received no comment by the time of publication.
Public Services and Procurement Canada has suspended all contracts with GC Strategies at the Canada Border Service Agency’s request. The department has undertaken a review of the contracts awarded to this company.
“A thorough review of all contracts awarded to this supplier is underway to assess the overall risk associated with them, and PSPC will take appropriate action once the assessments are complete,” said Michèle LaRose, a spokeswoman for the department.
