Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is standing by her proposed ban on gender reassignment treatments and hormone therapies for minors despite criticism from the left. Smith’s events in Ottawa and Toronto were met with protests by trans rights activists. True North’s Andrew Lawton discussed the policies and response to them in a sit-down interview with Smith, as well as the general tenor of Alberta’s relationship with the federal government.
Also, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has confirmed, after several days, that he supports the ban on puberty blockers for minors.
Plus, in today’s edition of Unjust Transition, Andrew speaks to Secure Energy CEO Rene Amirault.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre confirmed that he does not support the use of puberty blocking hormones for minors under the age of 18.
Poilievre has faced questions over his position at several media appearances since Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced plans to ban puberty blockers and hormone therapy for children aged 15 and younger.
Speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill Wednesday, Poilievre said he is against the use of puberty blockers for children, and that parental rights and children should be protected.
Until Wednesday morning, Poilievre had not said outright that he supports Smith’s stance, instead saying that he supports parental rights and that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should “butt out” of parents’ decisions and leave issues of schools and hospitals to provincial governments.
During his exchange with reporters, he asked them to state what ‘medical interventions’ they were referring to in their questions.
After some delay, with reporters telling Poilievre to check with his own party members as to what these interventions were, one reporter asked directly about puberty blockers and hormone treatments.
“For minors?” asked Poilievre.
“Yes,” said several reporters.
“Irreversible?” asked Poilievre.
Pierre Poilievre argues that adults should be free to make choices about their own bodies and voices opposition to prescribing puberty blockers to those under 18. pic.twitter.com/exb1bG5KUK
His followup question drew a momentary pause in the dialogue before a flurry of indiscernible questions came in.
“I think that we should protect children and their ability to make adult decisions when they’re adults,” said Poilievre.
“You are against puberty blockers for children under the age of 18, to be clear,” followed up one of the reporters.
“Yes,” responded Poilievre.
He then went on to say that Trudeau would ultimately back down on this issue as well, accusing him of only using it as a wedge issue to divide Canadians and distract them from the soaring cost of housing and his quadrupling of the carbon tax.
A Liberal MP who called on Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to appear before the House of Commons natural resources committee never actually invited her – even though he’s the chair.
Prior to Smith’s arrival in Ottawa, Liberal MP George Chahal said he hoped she would appear before the committee. When Smith agreed to come, he fell silent.
“When Premier @ABDaniellesmith comes to Ottawa next week, I hope she’ll explain to the Natural Resources committee why she’s putting clean energy investments at risk,” Chahal wrote in a post to X on Sunday.
When Premier @ABDanielleSmith comes to Ottawa next week, I hope she’ll explain to the Natural Resources committee why she’s putting clean energy investments at risk.
“I would be happy to come speak. Is this a formal invitation? As luck would have it, I just landed in Ottawa,” replied Smith, only hours later.
Chahal never replied. He did not invite Smith. In fact, the committee’s Conservative vice-chair, Shannon Stubbs, suggested that the hollow invite was nothing more than an empty gesture.
“George is the chair — the agenda is set in advance, including for yesterday’s meeting, which he knew despite his public show of an invite. He has not initiated a formal invitation outside of his X post, nor a discussion about the invitation,” Stubbs told True North, adding that Chahal “only plays political games.”
True North reached out to Chahal for comment but received no response.
Smith’s press secretary, Sam Blackett, said the invitation lacked substance and was nothing more “than a political jab.”
A similar event occurred last year, said Stubbs, when Smith was willing to appear at the environment committee on the same issue last October. The NDP and Liberals refused to invite her officially, even when they publicly said they wanted Smith to be there.
“He knows Alberta continues to lead the country in alternative/renewable energy development right now—as has been the case for decades too—despite the lies from anti-energy activists like the NDP-Liberals, so he sure doesn’t want her to show up to explain that reality,” said Stubbs.
Stubbs suggested that Chahal spend more time telling his government to fix its half a decade old unconstitutional law, bill C-69, scrap the oil and gas emissions cap, axe the carbon tax, and fix the budget, instead of taking juvenile shots at the premier of his province with faux public offers.
Smith was in Ottawa opening her province’s new representative office, which she hopes will strengthen the province’s relationship with partners on Parliament Hill and other parts of Canada and help Alberta stay informed on emerging decisions.
Smith also expected to meet with several federal ministers while in Ottawa, including Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan, and Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne.
Canadian taxpayers had to pay nearly half a million dollars so the Liberal cabinet could gather for an “affordability” retreat last summer which produced no new plans for the economy.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) received government records showing that the retreat cost taxpayers at least $412,000. Following that, data from online proactive disclosures and answers to order paper questions by the National Post revealed on Monday that the bill for the retreat had risen to $485,196.
The costs could be higher as some receipts are still outstanding, and various departments did not disclose their expenses related to the retreat.
From August 21 to 23, 2023, Trudeau and his cabinet convened at a waterfront hotel in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The retreat focused on addressing the affordability and housing challenges confronting Canadians.
“Spending more than four hundred grand on a three-day retreat to tackle affordability is tone-deaf and unacceptable,” said Franco Terrazzano, the CTF’s federal director, in a press release.
“It seems like the Trudeau government’s only solution on affordability is to waste other people’s money flying around the country talking to each other,” added Terrazzano. “It’s a shame they don’t have offices in Ottawa, or Zoom accounts, so they could do some of this work without spending thousands of dollars.”
The Privy Council Office, which organized the retreat, initially reported in November that it spent $160,467 on lodging and transportation.
Notably, the office reported $100,922 spent on hotel accommodations and a $52,394.53 hospitality bill for a “banquet” that the PCO claims was the cost of feeding all the attendees for the entirety of the retreat.
Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett released a video discussing the news shortly after it broke.
“Justin Trudeau had a $50,000 dinner at his so-called affordability retreat,” said Barrett. “This is the same guy who took an $84,000 vacation to Jamaica while Canadians were just struggling to afford to keep heat on their homes and to be able to put gas in their cars to get to work.”
These costs came as Canadians are lining up at food banks in record numbers reaching nearly two million people a month. A third of food bank users are children, said Barrett. He added that Canada is experiencing a housing and homelessness crisis, with active Canadian Armed Forces duty members also having to live on the streets.
The PCO also spent $36,277 on airfare for its staff and ministers, $58,891 for meeting room rentals during the retreat, $49,572 for equipment rentals, and $35,001 for the rental of communications and networking equipment.
“We are looking forward to continue to do the work we’ve been doing on housing and do even more,” said Trudeau as the retreat was wrapping up. “We recognize, and Canadians know that there’s not one silver bullet that’s going to solve the housing challenges.”
Despite the significant investment, the retreat ended with no new initiatives or announcements to address the core issues of housing affordability.
After serving nearly two years behind bars following charges for conspiracy to commit murder, Coutts Four members Chris Lysak and Jerry Morin have accepted a plea deal on lesser charges.
The conspiracy to commit murder charges have been dropped, and the two men were released Tuesday afternoon.
Bridge City News confirmed on X that Lysak pleaded guilty to a restricted weapons charge, and Morin pleaded guilty to conspiracy to traffic a firearm.
Justice Vaughan Hartigan accepted a joint recommendation by Crown prosecutors and defence counsel Daniel Song and Greg Dunn, resulting in both men being handed the equivalent sentences of time already served in custody.
The recommendation amounted to a sentence of three years for Lysak and about three and a half years for Morin.
Typically, detainees awaiting trial receive a credit of 1.5 days for each day served. Morin received additional credits for spending 74 days in solitary confinement, which received a multiplier of three days.
The initial allegations against the four men emerged from their participation in the 2022 Coutts border blockade, an event that culminated in the confiscation of a substantial cache of weapons by the RCMP, leading to serious accusations, including the alleged conspiracy to kill RCMP officers.
Morin’s lawyer released a statement on behalf of his client following the court proceeding.
“Mr. Morin has steadfastly maintained from the very beginning that he played no part of any alleged conspiracy to murder police officers and is relieved and grateful that those charges, and associated allegations, have been withdrawn by the Crown,” said Dunn.
“Moreover, the charge that Mr. Morin plead guilty to does not suggest that Mr. Morin at any time took firearms into Coutts, only that he agreed to,” he added. “It is unfortunate that Mr. Morin has spent two years of his life in custody awaiting this day.”
“To be clear, Mr. Lysak did not admit to possessing his handgun for a dangerous purpose. He did not attend the Coutts protests with the intent to harm anyone. He admits that his firearm was loaded with ammunition at the time of the police seizure, but denies having loaded and chambered the gun,” said Song.
A friend of Lysak’s called the whole ordeal a “miscarriage of justice.”
“To hold Canadians pre-trial for this length of time on a charge such as a restricted firearm or weapons trafficking, that’s unheard of,” Marco Van Huigenbos told independent journalist Mocha Bezirgan.
Van Huigenbos said that given the public attention to this case, having the two men plead guilty to lesser charges may have been a tactic.
“Because at this point, we now have guilty pleas, and a lot of people will say, ‘See, I told you so.’ (Serving) 723 days pre-trial is a travesty of justice in Canada, and it has to be treated as such. And there has to be a full inquiry into these prosecutions.”
The other two accused, Chris Carbert and Anthony Olienick, remain in custody on allegations that they conspired to murder RCMP members who were policing the border protest at the Coutts international crossing into Montana.
Premier Danielle Smith’s calm and measured statement Alberta’s new Alberta approach to gender identity has ignited a predictable firestorm of protest. Our political leaders tend to distance themselves from what they rightfully perceive as a policy minefield, strewn with the all too familiar labels of “transphobe,” “bigot,” “far right,” “hateful,” and so on.
Alberta’s guidelines cover a range of thorny issues on the gender file, including age restrictions for medical and surgical interventions. I consider them sensible, but my special interest is the effect of biological males who identify as women on women’s sport.
On this, Smith was candid about “unfair disadvantages” young women and girls face in sporting competitions.
“There are obvious biological realities that give transgender female athletes a massive competitive advantage over women and girls,” she said.
“That is why the Alberta government will work with sporting organizations active in our province to ensure that women and girls have the choice to compete in a women’s only division in athletic competitions and are not forced to compete against biologically stronger transgender female athletes.”
Smith takes the position that men who identify as women (“transgender females,” she says) have every right to participate in sport, but that this right is well addressed by the retention of the women’s category for biological women, with the creation of an open category where both biological males and females are welcome.
This is the solution to the “fairness” problem I have been advocating for since 2019, when I was president of Athletics Alberta.
Mine was the sole voice of opposition to Canada’s entire sport bureaucracy, which stood foursquare in favour of male-born athletes self-declaring into women’s sport with no mitigation whatsoever – not even a requirement for hormone treatment to offset an acknowledged physical advantage.
Moreover, under the rubric of gender “fluidity,” natal male athletes are permitted to compete as a woman in one sport, and as a male in another, or as a woman one season and as a male in the next.
Indeed, in a 2019 public statement, Paul Melia, former CEO of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport characterized the idea of female biological sex as “obsolete.”
“I think it is time for the sport community to reexamine its approach to sport categorization,” he said. “When we ignore what we know about the broad spectrum of human experience in the area of biological sex and gender identity we risk violating the human rights of the people who do not fit an obsolete definition of a biological female. We cannot then turn around and justify the harm in the name of fairness.”
What is most heartbreaking is that female athletes in Canada do not get support for sex-based protection even from the one government-funded entity that is supposed to be advocating on their behalf, Canadian Women and Sport.
Canadian Women and Sport condemned Smith’s announcement last week.
“We denounce the policy announced by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to ban transgender girls and women from women’s sport in the province,” the group said.
Most gallingly, it added, “This policy is not based on evidence.”
No evidence? There’s a mountain of evidence: male versus female athletic records; a vast archive of sport science literature on male versus female norms pertaining to all the various biomotor abilities; and anecdotal evidence galore of biological males who rank in the 200s to 300s of men’s sport suddenly ranking first or second in women’s sport.
As for “the science” that allegedly proves hormonal mitigation (and/or surgery) serves to level the playing field, consider that, to date, over nineteen peer review studies have shown that it is not possible to mitigate the male performance advantage through testosterone reduction. That is why the UK’s Sports Councils concluded in their 2021 Guidance for Transgender Inclusion in Domestic Sport that it is not possible to reconcile inclusion of male-born participants with safety and fairness to female athletes.
But, of course, Canadian sports policy bureaucrats have strayed so far beyond the looking glass that mitigation of the male advantage is not even relevant. Which begs the question as to why, if their theory is correct, we should have a women’s sports category at all.
At some point along this descent into madness, someone had to be the adult in the room. That “someone” turned out to be Premier Danielle Smith. Hopefully, as the tantrums command the media’s attention, she will keep in mind that polls routinely indicate that a majority of Canadians share her fair and balanced views.
Linda Blade is a sport performance professional with a PhD in kinesiology. She is the former president of Athletics Alberta and co-author, with Barbara Kay, of Unsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial are Destroying Sport.
In a scathing critique of the Trudeau government’s handling of the housing crisis, the Conservative party has Justin Trudeau for failing to address the problem.
Pointing to data released on Tuesday by Statistics Canada, the Conservative communications office highlighted a concerning decline in housing investment, particularly in multi-unit constructions.
According to Statistics Canada’s report, investment in housing saw a staggering 17.9% drop in December, marking the lowest monthly level since October 2020.
Massive drop in building permits in December coinciding with a boom in Liberal housing photo ops and spending.
The decline, the Conservatives argued, reflects the Liberal government’s inability to effectively tackle the housing crisis.
“As a direct consequence of Liberal inaction, average asking rents for all residential property in Canada reached a record high of $2,178 in December 2023. Justin Trudeau simply isn’t worth the cost,” read a release from the party.
“Trudeau has failed to get the gatekeepers out of the way so enough homes can be built for Canadians struggling to find a place to live.”
Of particular concern is the 31% decrease in investment in multi-unit developments, with Ontario experiencing a significant 45.2% decline in permits for such constructions. The Tories emphasized the crucial role these buildings play in addressing the housing shortage gripping the nation.
“The collapse in multi-unit investment is exacerbating the housing hell that Canadians are currently experiencing,” the Conservative statement said.
Highlighting the broader implications of the housing investment downturn, Poilievre pointed out that the total annual investment in housing fell by 9.7% in 2023.
The party also aimed at the Liberal government’s recent housing announcements and photo-ops, which he argued were incongruous with the stark reality on the ground.
“Trudeau continues to give hundreds of millions of your hard-earned dollars to the gatekeepers who get in the way of housing with red tape and delays.”
The oil and gas sector is central to Canada’s wellbeing and the federal government’s proposed emissions cap would inflict severe damage on the economy.
That was the stark warning the Business Council of Canada issued in a letter to key deputy ministers in charge of implementing the Liberal government’s policy.
Michael Gullo, the council’s vice-president of policy, emphasized that such a measure doesn’t consider the current status of the economy and would exacerbate existing challenges like inflation.
“Imposing an emissions cap will likely force operators to involuntarily curtail their production. This would effectively reduce the overall capacity of the most productive segment of Canada’s economy at a time when investment and growth is desperately needed,” warned Gullo.
“Some of Canada’s most reputable economists believe that an emissions cap would exacerbate the country’s inflation and affordability problems by applying a broad-based economic shock that will reduce tax revenues and add pressure to the federal deficit.”
Gullo reiterated the organization’s concerns regarding the regulatory framework released by the government in December, highlighting the significant departure it represents from the current approach to reducing emissions.
The council argues that the cap, if implemented, could destabilize crucial carbon pricing mechanisms and jeopardize the competitiveness of the oil and gas industry.
“Investments are not made on speculative legislation. It is simply unrealistic to assume that projects, technologies and decarbonization strategies will be deployed, permitted and operational in four years,” wrote Gullo.
The council also underscored the uncertainty surrounding the compatibility of the emissions cap with existing federal and provincial emission reduction programs.
There are concerns about the regulatory overlap and the potential for legal challenges from provincial governments, further complicating the economic landscape.
Moreover, the council highlighted the risk of diverting capital away from meaningful emission reduction strategies, which could impede the sector’s ability to transition to a low-carbon economy.
“The government’s inability to clearly describe each compliance option threatens to delay final investment decisions and exacerbates the conditions for capital flight by companies and their respective investors and shareholders,” wrote Gullo.
One of the world’s richest men has likened the Toronto Star to Soviet state media after Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said the newspaper is planning to write a “hit piece” about him.
In a post on X Tuesday evening, Poilievre accused the Star of mounting a “ridiculous attack” with a forthcoming story.
“The Toronto Star is trying to write a hit piece on the fact that my wife bought a small $300 splash pool a couple years ago which we paid for and put up ourselves,” Poilievre wrote. “Separately they are attacking us for the (National Capital Commission) installing a safety fence at Stornoway to protect our kids after threats to my family.”
The Toronto Star is trying to write a hit piece on the fact that my wife bought a small $300 splash pool a couple years ago which we paid for and put up ourselves.
Separately they are attacking us for the NCC installing a safety fence at Stornoway to protect our kids after… pic.twitter.com/1FdQ5CwnJG
Elon Musk, the owner of X and CEO of Tesla, replied.
“The Toronto Star has become Canada’s Pravda,” he wrote.
Pravda was the official newspaper of the Soviet communist party until the fall of the Soviet Union.
While the Toronto Star is not state-owned, it does receive significant financial support from the federal government along with many other Canadian newspapers.
Poilievre’s wife, Anaida, shared on her Instagram several supportive replies to Poilievre’s post.
“Explain to me how a 300.00 pool is a bigger deal than inviting a Nazi to hang out. Anyone? Can anyone help me here?!” said one comment, in reference to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s invitation to Nazi veteran Yaroslav Hunka to attend a reception for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Toronto.
“I have the exact same pool,” another comment said. “Splurged last summer for the kids since under Justin I cant (sic) afford much else. You having the same one instead of a 20k vacation should speak volumes.”
Poilievre’s post included a photo of his children in a shopping cart with the small pool on the cart’s lower rack. He also shared a picture of the pool erected and filled with water and a floating pool toy in the family’s yard, presumably at Stornoway, the official residence of Canada’s opposition leader.
The Star article Poilievre referenced was not online as of 7 p.m. Tuesday evening.
