Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is defending the controversial carbon tax – while admitting that households are paying more even with the rebate payments.
Plus, following the violent assault of Chris Elston, also known as Billboard Chris, at a trans rights rally in Vancouver, Vancouver Police are seeking witnesses and investigating the incident.
And amid allegations of “racism” by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, suspected public office holders, and the People’s Republic of China, a new poll reveals that Chinese Canadians are more likely to believe that the Communist Chinese regime actively interfered in Canada’s elections.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Rachel Emmanuel and Andrew Lawton!
Former Conservative interim leader Candice Bergen surprised many after announcing her immediate resignation from Parliament in early February. Bergen sat down with True North’s Andrew Lawton to discuss her plans for the future. Plus, Bergen breaks down the “four pillars” of conservatism.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s legal team is telling CBC News to retract a recent news story about contact her office has had with Justice officials over Coutts border blockade charges, saying the outlet is seeking to revive a “manufactured controversy.”
The letter, dated Sunday, gives notice of the premier’s “intention to bring an action against the CBC.”
It addresses “related recent CBC News articles and broadcasts, which transparently seek to sensationalize allegations already fully addressed by the Premier and resuscitate a false and defamatory narrative against the Premier, her office, Alberta Crown prosecutors, and the administration of justice in Alberta.”
The letter lists a Jan. 9 article from CBC in which the outlet cites anonymous sources and alleges that the premier’s office contacted Crown prosecutors challenging their assessment and direction on Coutts border blockades charges. The story granted anonymity to sources who feared they could lose their jobs.
Smith’s lawyer calls the report “unsourced and unfounded.”
CBC wrote that the Premier’s conduct was “improper on so many levels – it’s pure interference with Crown independence.” CBC later updated its story with an editor’s note saying the original version of the story neglected to note that CBC had not seen the emails in question.
“This was irresponsible reporting by the CBC, presumably to sensationalize a political narrative,” Smith’s lawyer writes.
In response to the allegations raised in the CBC report, the non-partisan civil service conducted a four-month search of all ingoing, outgoing, and deleted emails and found no evidence of any contact between the premier’s office and any prosecutor about Covid-19 related prosecution.
“With the Email Article now demonstrably baseless, the Premier and her office demanded a retraction and an apology from the CBC, including an apology to Alberta Crown prosecutors, for the harm done to individual reputations and to Alberta’s justice system,” Smith’s lawyer argues.
CBC did not retract the story or issue an apology following the premier’s initial request.
Then, on Wednesday, CBC reported on a newly-released call between Smith and controversial street pastor Artur Pawlowski. On the call, Smith says she’s been in weekly contact with Justice officials regarding the pastor’s criminal charges from his involvement with the Coutts border blockade.
CBC’s report argues that the call reveals that Smith’s conversations “with top Alberta Justice officials about pandemic-related prosecutions were more frequent and specific than she has admitted publicly.”
Smith responded to the report on Wednesday, saying she already told the public that her staff worked with Justice officials to determine how to help those charged “with non-violent, non-firearms COVID-related charges.”
Smith’s lawyer says the second story comes two months later with CBC “apparently seeing a need to revive a manufactured controversy.”
“The CBC now again blatantly ignores the Premier’s prior statements and recasts the harmful and defamatory narrative of unlawful interference and deceit by the Premier and her office,” the letter says.
On the call, Smith is heard telling Pawlowski multiple times that she is unable to intervene in the legal matter.
“There isn’t really a mechanism for me to order them to drop cases,” Smith responds. “It’s just the way our legal system works, I’m afraid.”
CBC Head of Public Affairs Chuck Thompson says the CBC stands by its journalism on this story and, if necessary, “will defend it in court.”
Her lawyer calls the CBC report “defamatory,” saying it alleges “that the Premier has lied to the public about appropriate contact with a Minister in her government about COVID-19 related prosecutions.”
“The defamatory nature of the Article is transparent,” the letter says.
“On its face, based on a phone call that the Premier herself described to Albertans months ago, the Article states that the Premier has improperly discussed specific pandemic-related prosecutions with ‘justice officials’. Among other defamatory statements and innuendo, the Article reports that the Premier and other Alberta officials have therefore misled Albertans.”
Smith’s lawyer demands the CBC retract the article and remove it from online platforms and broadcasts, including social media. Smith also wants an apology and correction published online and issued in news broadcasts.
CBC has until April 28 to comply with the request, or the premier threatens to bring further action under the Defamation Act.
The letter also says Smith won’t comment on the matter, unless CBC issues an apology, retraction and correction.
Canada Post’s newly-unveiled electric vehicle fleet to fight climate change may not be as effective as it sounds, according to an environmental policy expert.
As part of a long-term plan to electrify 14,000 delivery vehicles by 2040, 14 Canada Post battery-electric delivery vehicles hit the street of Nanaimo, B.C., this past month. In an attempt to reduce carbon emissions, Canada Post is replacing their current gas-powered vehicles with battery-powered “electric cargo vans.”
Jerome Gessaroli, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, says that while there is “strong scientific evidence” to suggest that high carbon emissions contribute to climate change, whether electric vehicles (EVs) have any measurable effects in lowering carbon emissions is an answer that is “not completely straightforward.”
“You need to consider the carbon emissions of an EV over its lifecycle, from manufacturing through to its end of useful life. What the studies show is that an EV must be driven 10s of thousands of Kms before it will ‘break-even’ or make up for the emissions they produce during the manufacturing phase,” he said.
Gessaroli noted carbon emissions are lowered “depending upon how the electricity that powers EVs is generated.”
An EV that runs on electricity produced by hydroelectric, nuclear, or other non carbon-generating will lower overall emissions. An EV that uses electricity generated by a coal or oil plant might “make things worse.”
“Another factor is that it is more carbon-intensive to manufacture an electric vehicle than a gas combustion vehicle, mainly due to manufacturing batteries. So as newer EVs use larger batteries to extend their driving range, they become even more carbon-emitting during the manufacturing process,” he said.
Suromitra Sanatani, the Canada Post Chair for the Board of Directors, said in a March 9 press release that last year the “corporation set aside more than $1 billion to cut emissions and move forward on the electrification of its last mile fleet.” Gessaroli advises that companies should make decisions in EV investments depending on whether they are “financially the best alternative.”
“Generally speaking companies should choose the overall lowest cost of reducing carbon emissions after taking all important business and financial factors into account,” he said.
The academic noted that federal and provincial governments often provide subsidies to reduce emissions, but these are very expensive which can be unfair to lower-income people.
“The vast majority of EVs are purchased by higher income people because EVs are more expensive than gas cars. So, governments are redistributing taxes collected from everyone, including lower-income wage earners to higher-income people that are buying EVs. That is a very regressive government policy.”
There are other cost-effective, “bang for the buck” alternatives to cut back on CO2 and greenhouse gases Gessaroli suggests. He thinks that trying to reduce methane emissions– often produced in the natural gas sector– is a more worthwhile pursuit.
In an attempt to “avert the worst impacts of climate change,” the Government of Canada has advanced a net-zero emission future by 2050. Sanatani highlighted that Canada Post’s new initiative is in line with the government’s goal.
“Canadians expect their postal service to play a leading role in the country’s transition to a low-carbon future. It’s a responsibility that Canada Post embraces,” she said.
To help achieve their net-zero target, in 2022 the Government of Canada mandated that every passenger vehicle sold in Canada will need to be electric by 2035. By 2026, one-fifth of all passenger cars, SUVs and trucks sold will need to be electrically-powered.
Gessaroli says net-zero emissions by 2050 is “an aspirational goal rather than a practical goal.”
“If a true effort to meet that goal was undertaken, it would be very very expensive and force significant changes to how we live. I’m not convinced that is necessarily in the best interests of Canadians. The ultimate success of climate policy is dependent upon whether the largest emitters, such as China, India, and the United States can substantially reduce their emissions as well.”
This week on the Alberta Roundup with Rachel Emmanuel, Rachel discusses Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s comments hinting at a possible lawsuit against CBC.
Also on the show, Rachel talks how the Independence party turfed former leader Artur Pawlowski.
And finally, Rachel discusses whether electronic tabulators will have a role in the upcoming provincial election.
More than 1,000 conservative activists, thinkers and politicians gathered in Ottawa for the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference, which CSFN president Jamil Jivani says is about finding conservative solutions to Canada’s political challenges. Among the speakers were Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, and former prime minister Stephen Harper, who predicted a conservative renaissance in Canada. Do you think he’s right? Jivani sat down on True North’s Andrew Lawton Show to discuss.
The Independence Party of Alberta says they split ways with former leader and controversial pastor Artur Pawlowski because of his “divisive” rhetoric — and that the party wants nothing to do with a phone recording of him and the premier.
Pawlowski was elected to head up the fledgling party in September, but lasted just seven months before the party board voted to remove him earlier this week.
Party President Dan Duggan said the party knew Pawlowski was controversial, but gave the infamous freedom fighter a chance. Within months, he said Pawlowski’s tone turned negative, “divisive,” and “condescending.”
“I’m talking about (Pawlowski) accusing Alberta Health Services services of intentionally killing people or the Covid-19 vaccine being a weapon,” he told True North.
“I don’t believe that the Independence Party of Alberta was any more good fit for Pastor Art than Art was for the Independence Party of Alberta. He needs a platform to be able to share his passion and his message unfettered without any kind of structure that he himself has not created.”
In January, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced that she would not be able to grant clemency to those charged for breaching pandemic restrictions as she had initially hoped.
The announcement came weeks ahead of Pawlowski’s court hearing in Lethbridge, and he responded by calling Smith a “Kenney 2.0.”
“We are not going to hope with you, we need to change this government,” he said, demanding that Smith step down after she did not meet with pastors nor offer compensation.
Duggan said those remarks were not sanctioned by the Independence party. He also said he had many conversations with Pawlowski about changing his tone, but the former leader said he refused to be “stifled.” The board eventually decided to respond at a “punitive level.”
“We respect him for the sacrifices he made for the strong message of freedom,” Duggan said, adding that the decision was not personal.
“But the way he went about it in this party was not reflective of this party’s culture, of at least, its policies, of its bylaws, and of his mandate.”
The provincial board of directors passed a motion on Tuesday night in accordance with its bylaws to remove Pawlowski as leader. Pawlowski was informed the vote was happening only once the motion was passed.
In a statement posted to Facebook, Pawlowski said the board voted to remove him on his 50th birthday with a “transgender secretary spearheading this attack.” He said his removal followed months of the board demanding he stop speaking about God, drag queen shows, and abortion.
“A handful of directors decided to remove the leader that you elected and override your democratic voice. A censorial, top-down, controlling, corrupted, lying and tyrannical organization,” he wrote.
“In conclusion, I truly believe that this party has been infiltrated for a simple reason: we grew too big, too fast and we had become a real tangible threat to the corrupted establishment.”
The decision to turf Pawlowski has been met with mixed results from party members. Duggan said some have expressed displeasure, while others have thanked the board for having the courage to stand up.
He said the board can’t make exceptions for requiring accountability even when the timing is unfortunate. The party now finds itself without a leader less than two months ahead of a provincial vote.
“We’ll take a bit of a hit,” Duggan admitted. “But I guess the best analogy I can give you is after the tornado went through this tree, it will lose most of its leaves and it’s probably lost a lot of major limbs, but our roots are very, very strong.”
Pawlowski, meanwhile, says he will still be running as an independent candidate in the upcoming election.
“I will always stand for what is right, I will defend freedom and I will forward the idea of individual independence wherever I go, even if I have to do it alone.”
Following his exit, a private phone conversation of him and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith discussing the pastor’s Coutts border blockade criminal case was released online.
Duggan said the conversation was not made public during Pawlowski’s tenure or representation under the Independence party.
“I’m just not interested in being involved in that. It doesn’t have anything to do with our party,” he said.
“If he chooses to respond with that vitriol and toxicity and mudslinging and slander and accusations, to be perfectly honest with you, I’m not interested in going down that path. That’s not what this party is.”
Pawlowski faces charges of mischief for allegedly inciting protesters to continue blocking the international border crossing at Coutts, Alberta in early 2022. He is also charged under the Alberta Critical Infrastructure Defence Act with wilfully damaging or destroying essential infrastructure, and has a lengthy trail of charges stemming from breaching Covid-19 restrictions which includes jail time.
In the recording, Pawlowski tells Smith he’s facing 10 years in prison and blames the premier for not following through on her earlier promises to grant clemency.
The phone call has landed the premier in hot water, with outlets like CBC claiming it reveals that Smith has been in contact with Justice officials more than she’s previously admitted. The premier’s office has responded by hinting at a possible defamation suit against CBC.
The court heard Pawlowski’s case in February and is expected to make a ruling in May.
The federal government’s refusal to tackle illegal border crossing has placed demands on the border cities where asylum claimants are housed, Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati says. Despite the agreement between Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden to close the Roxham Rd. loophole, Diodati isn’t convinced it will deal with the problem.
During the summer, high-powered, stripped-down john boats race the waters around the St. Lawrence River’s Cornwall Island smuggling cut-rag tobacco into Quebec in the dead of night.
In the winter, it’s snowmachines pulling sleds.
The island is near perfect for such trafficking.
The Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, the epicentre for moving human cargo and contraband tobacco, sits on Cornwall Island, where it straddles the Canada-U.S. border and has territory in Quebec, Ontario and New York State.
The bodies of eight migrants have been pulled from the St. Lawrence River in the Quebec section of Akwesasne, according to authorities, while a 30-year-old man described by friends and family as a local human smuggler remains missing.
Six bodies were recovered on Thursday night, while the body of one adult and a child were recovered on Friday.
If anything, this should cause concern and merit closer intelligence, especially since Quebec’s Roxham Road was officially shut down when U.S. President Joe Biden recently visited our nation’s capital.
During the time this unsanctioned border crossing was being played, some 40,000 illegal border crossers crossed into Canada via the United States.
The victims were of Indian and Romanian descent were attempting to enter the United States from Canada, said Lee-Ann O’Brien, deputy chief of the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service. The bodies included two children under the age of three, both Canadian citizens.
The missing man, Casey Oakes, was last seen boarding a small, light-blue boat at 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, wearing a black vest, black face mask and black toque, according to a press release from Akwesasne police.
Joe Oakes, the man’s great-uncle, said his nephew was “probably bringing those guys across,” referring to the people whose bodies were found.
Oakes said his nephew made this kind of trip often – once every week or every other week – carrying migrants from Canada to the U.S. for money, as do others in the community. He said there was bad weather on Wednesday night when Casey boarded his brother’s boat. “They know the river, but he probably just couldn’t handle it that night,” he said.
In April 2022, six Indian nationals were rescued from a sinking boat in the St. Regis River, which runs through Akwesasne Mohawk Territory. A seventh person spotted leaving the vessel and wading ashore was later identified as a U.S. citizen. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials described what happened as a human smuggling incident.
On Friday, Akwesasne police said the first body was located around 5 p.m. Thursday in a marsh area. They said the area was searched further by a police marine unit with the help of the Canadian Coast Guard and the Hogansburg Akwesasne Volunteer Fire Department.
Air-support units with the Quebec provincial police and Ontario Provincial Police were expected to assist with the investigation.
In February, local police reported an increase in human smuggling into the Mohawk territory.
“The nature of human smuggling and recent weather conditions have resulted in our first responders being put at risk when completing life-saving events,” the police force said in a news release back then.
“In the past few days, immigrants have required transportation to the hospital, which not only is a concern for their health, but also reduces our own ambulance availability in Akwesasne.”
Hardly a week goes by that the Cornwall Regional Task Force, a joint operation representing the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Cornwall Police Service, the OPP and the Ontario Ministry of Finance, doesn’t throw a wrench into tobacco smuggling.
Its job is to enforce the law along Cornwall Island’s regulated and unregulated borders, gather intelligence, interdict smuggling operations, and conduct investigations into the illicit flow of black-market tobacco.
The focus now, as the ice moves out, is the high-powered john boats driven by men wearing black.
A city council candidate in Cambridge’s 2022 municipal election has filed an application with the Ontario Superior Court alleging a series of over 30 election irregularities that took place.
Nate Whalen, a candidate for city council in Cambridge’s 3rd Ward, is alleging a multitude of irregularities with the electoral process, from candidate nominations to the tabulation of the ballots.
The alleged irregularities include issues with online voting, eligible voters being unable to vote, issues with the scrutineering process, and candidates being left off of the ballot.
In an exclusive interview with True North, Whalen says he first began to notice irregularities in August 2022, when city clerk Danielle Manton disallowed scrutineering for the candidate nomination process.
Scrutineers are individuals designated by candidates to oversee the counting of ballots on election day. They are not generally used when candidates are submitting the paperwork to be placed on the ballot, though Whalen’s complaint says they should be.
“Typically at every step of the process in a municipal election you should be able to have scrutineers present to oversee the process to make sure it is done properly,” he says.
“I emailed the clerk and said ‘Hey, I’d like to come out and scrutinize the nominations’ and she said, ‘No, you can’t do that, it’s a private process.’”
One of the key allegations regarding the nomination process was the city’s unwillingness to accept the nomination of Cambridge resident Michelle Goodridge to run in as a Ward 1 candidate, despite Goodridge submitting all of the necessary paperwork and 25 nomination signatures.
Goodridge told True North that in June 2022, she submitted 28 signatures to the city clerk, who signed off on her nomination papers and told her she was free to begin campaigning. But, Goodridge says a clerical error was made – that the city misplaced a page of her signatures, causing her application to be denied by just one signature.
“I received the call minutes after the deadline to confirm nominations that I had been rejected. I promptly met with the clerk the following day at City Hall and had the three supporters from the missing page email her saying they had endorsed me. Despite this meeting, I was told I could not continue to run,” says Goodridge.
Goodridge says that Manton had the authority to allow her to run and had made reasonable accommodations for other candidates, but no such accommodations were made for her. Emails confirm that Ward 4 candidate and eventual winner Ross Earnshaw was able to correct an error in his application after the nomination deadline, an opportunity not afforded to Goodridge.
“When someone tells you everything is in order and goes through a nomination checklist with you that they signed off on, you assume you have done everything necessary so I had no reason to believe this would happen to me.”
Manton declined to comment when reached by True North.
Cambridge’s Ward 1 Councillor Donna Reid says that she has not heard of any of the allegations, and that no constituents have addressed the issue with her.
“I assume the people who will look into this will look into this very carefully,” said Reid.
Whalen also asserts that eligible voters were unable to vote, either in-person or online.
Whalen claims that a constituent had reached out to him, telling him that the municipality’s website crashed and prevented residents from voting online, as well as preventing potential voters from finding their polling station.
At 8:17pm, approximately an hour after Whalen received the text from a constituent, the City of Cambridge announced that online voting would be extended past the original deadline of 8pm to 8:30pm.
Whalen also claims that he personally saw two voters turned away from voting a minute before the polling station closed at 7:59. He claims that the two women who were turned away told the poll workers that they attempted to vote online but were unable to.
Whalen was also concerned with the scrutineering process during the election.
Paul Robertson, a long-time election worker and scrutineer, says that the scrutineering process during the Cambridge election was unusual and unlike anything he had ever seen.
He says that as a scrutineer, he was unable to verify that the voting machines were reset after test voting and that test ballots were not added to the official tabulation. Whalen, who was also a scrutineer during the election, gave a similar account to Robterson’s in his sworn affidavit.
“I was not permitted to confirm or observe that no ballots were yet cast or that the tabulators were functioning,” reads Whalen’s affidavit.
Two days before the election, the city clerk declared an emergency because two candidates for the Waterloo Catholic District School Board election had been left off of the ballot. Because of this, the city clerk changed the scrutineering process so that scrutineers could not see who voters had voted for in an effort to protect the results of the postponed school board election.
According to Robertson, scrutineers were unable to observe the sealing of unused ballots, the closing of the polls, and were unable to challenge questionably marked ballots.
“We never got to see the ballots that were rejected by the [tabulation] machine. We got a verbal description of what they looked like, all because they did not want to turn that ballot around and let us see what someone may have put an ‘x’ in the trustee voting box for the Catholic school board election,” said Robertson.
In early December, Whalen requested the City of Cambridge release a series of election records through the 1996 Municipal Elections Act.
In total, Whalen’s website lists 30 irregularities with the election, none of which has been proven in court.
Whalen attributes the large number of alleged irregularities to negligence, incompetence, and the fact that the 2022 election was the city clerk’s first time managing an election.
“There was definitely some negligence and in my opinion there’s definitely some incompetence here,” says Whalen.
Councillor Reid says that she would be “very surprised” if there were any irregularities in the 2022 Cambridge election.
“I would be very surprised to find there were irregularities. I have a lot of faith in our clerk’s department, and they work extremely hard to make sure that everything is done according to the statues.”
The City of Cambridge declined to comment as the case is before the court.
