In the least surprising news of the year, another Trudeau government cabinet minister has been found guilty of breaking ethics laws and using taxpayers money to enrich their friends. Minister of Small Business and International Trade Mary Ng gave $20k worth of taxpayer money to her close friend for “media training.” The ethics commissioner said “there’s no excuse” for this violation, but it looks like Ng won’t need one anyways.
This is the SIXTH time a member of the Trudeau government has been found guilty by the ethics commissioner for breaking the law. At what point do we just give up hoping that politicians will be honourable and instead admit that maybe they just don’t care?
Tune in to the latest episode of Ratio’d with Harrison Faulkner.
Robert Lyman is a board member of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada and a former federal senior bureaucrat.
Few people in Canada seem to know much about the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO). The role is part of the Canadian government but it is not accountable to the elected government of the day. Rather, it acts as an independent source of economic and financial analysis to Parliament.
For those more familiar with the United States government, the PBO is roughly the counterpart to the Congressional Budget Office, provides independent economic analysis to the US Congress.
On November 8 of this year, the PBO published a report on the projected impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on Canadian Gross Domestic Product (GDP), looking out to the end of this century.
Its findings should have made headline news, considering its relevance to the government’s current climate policies. Typically, however, they went largely unreported or ignored.
I will not attempt to provide a simplified version of the complex methodology used by the PBO. I will though summarize what it found.
Under a scenario in which emissions reduction policies of all the governments in the world stall at today’s levels and no country meets the commitments it has made to reduce emissions further, Canada’s GDP in 2100 will be 6.6% smaller than it otherwise would be.
What would it otherwise be? Under the modest assumption that Canada’s GDP growth from 2021 to 2100 averages 2% per year, Canada’s GDP in 2100 would be 388% higher than it was in 2021.
So a reduction of that income by 6.6% would mean that Canada’s income will only be 381.4% higher than it was in 2021.
Wow! Fantastic news!
But wait, as they say in the game shows, there’s more.
Under a scenario in which all the countries of the world meet the commitments that they have made in their voluntary emission reduction plans submitted to the United Nations, then Canada’s GDP in 2100 will be 5.8% smaller than it would otherwise be, or 382.2% higher than it was in 2021. Still great news!
Is this unusual? Actually, no it is not.
Other authorities have attempted, using different methodologies, to calculate the projected effect of rising GHG emissions and temperatures on income.
The United Nations, in its AR5 Working Group II report, projected that by 2100 the negative impact on global GDP would be only 3%. So global income would only increase by 97% of what it would do otherwise.
The United States Congressional Budget Office, using its own methodology, projected that the effects of climate change will, on net, reduce U.S. GDP by 1% from its projected level by 2050. So, the PBO is more pessimistic than other sources, but still projects that climate change will have a negligible effect on future national income.
The PBO did not attempt to answer the obvious other question: How much will it cost Canadians, in terms of lost national income, if we destroy our resource economy and force all energy consumers to switch to expensive, scarce and unreliable wind and solar energy sources?
That’s the bad news. You haven’t read about that in the media, either.
The Alberta government is recommending prosecutors don’t pursue charges against firearms owners whose guns were deemed illegal under the Trudeau government’s 2020 order in council.
A news release from the province said Alberta is taking back constitutional jurisdiction for handling charges under the Firearms Act, and Alberta’s Crown prosecutors will now determine whether or not to pursue charges.
“While respecting operational independence on individual cases, the new protocol issued by the attorney general provides prosecutors with guidance on how to evaluate the public interest when determining whether or not to pursue charges,” the release reads.
The province’s new protocol says it’s not in the public interest to proceed with prosecuting a charge of possession of a banned firearm when: The accused lawfully obtained the firearm or prohibited device prior to May 1, 2020. the firearm or prohibited device was reclassified as prohibited on May 1, 2020; and when the accused has not been charged with any other offences related to the possession or use of that firearm.
In May 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was banning more than 1,500 models of firearms, including guns explicitly used for sport shooting and hunting. The government put an amnesty in place until October 2023.
When that amnesty expires, Albertans who still possess their legally-acquired property could face jail time under the Criminal Code.
Justice Minister Tyler Shandro says Albertans should not automatically be considered criminals because they own a firearm that was legally purchased and possessed.
“This new protocol for prosecutors will help prevent otherwise law-abiding individuals from facing criminal charges and potential time in jail,” Shandro said in a statement.
“At the same time, law enforcement and prosecution resources can be prioritized for actual violent and repeat offenders while not further clogging our already busy courts.”
Alberta Chief Firearms Officer Teri Bryant said the steps will ensure public safety is taken into consideration “when assessing whether charges against otherwise law-abiding citizens are appropriate.”
In September, Shandro said he would obstruct the gun grab by any means necessary. He also said he wrote to the RCMP that the confiscation scheme is not a provincial priority and is an inappropriate use of RCMP resources.
Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick have since joined Alberta in opposing Ottawa’s bid to use local policing resources as confiscation agents.
The way Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act, was pushed through the House of Commons and on to the Senate is “an utter embarrassment,” according to a leading observer of the file.
The bill completed its first reading on Wednesday in the House of Commons after the Liberals struck down debate on the bill’s second reading, promptly sending it to the Senate.
When put to a vote in the House, the bill passed with 213 votes for and 114 votes against. The Bill was supported by Liberal, NDP, Bloc Quebecois and Green Party MPs.
The Liberals claim that the law only sets out to force major social media companies like Facebook to negotiate revenue sharing deals with Canadian media companies, however, critics have argued that at its foundation it mandates payments for links.
In a blog post, Canada research chair of internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, Michael Geist, called the legislative review “an utter embarrassment.”
“The government cut off debate at second reading, actively excluded dozens of potential witnesses, expanded the bill to hundreds of broadcasters that may not even produce news, denigrated online news services as “not real news”, and shrugged off violations of international copyright law,” wrote Geist.
“All the while, it acknowledged that mandated payments for links are the foundation of the bill with officials stating that individual Facebook posts accompanied by a link to a news story would be caught by the law.”
In a tweet yesterday, Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner equated sharing news links on social media companies to “Facebook and Google (stealing) local journalists’ articles.”
gov’t will always support quality, fact-based and local Canadian journalism in a fair digital marketplace. This bill makes it harder for big digital platforms like Facebook and Google to steal local journalists’ articles and repost them without credit on one of their networks 3/3
The comment quickly garnered backlash, with some pointing out that Hepfner herself has shared links from news sources without explicitly giving credit to the source.
If linking to news stories is "stealing", I assume all Liberal MPs will henceforth refrain from stealing by refusing to link to any news stories on any of their social media accounts. Yes? https://t.co/BCUwJa5req
Members of the Official Opposition have criticized the bill during the final days of debate in the House, calling it an affront to the freedom of the press and an attempt by the Liberal government to stack the cards in their favour.
On Tuesday, Conservative MP Brad Redekopp said that the bill “has the potential to tip the scales towards” the governing NDP-Liberals.
“This legislation is one of three Internet censorship laws that the NDP-Liberal government has brought in since the last election,” said Redekopp.
“Simply put, this law would force Facebook, Google and other Internet companies to prioritize CBC and other government-approved news outlets on our feed over the smaller alternative news media platforms that may be more critical of the NDP-Liberal view of the world,” he continued.
“This legislation has the potential to tip the scales toward the NDP-Liberals during elections. Big tech recognizes that and they do not want to be tools of censorship in Canada or anywhere else.”
Facebook has warned the Canadian government that it could block access to news sharing in Canada on its platform should the bill become law.
“If this draft legislation becomes law, creating globally unprecedented forms of financial liability for news links or content, we may be forced to consider whether we continue to allow the sharing of news content on Facebook in Canada as defined under the Online News Act,” said Facebook’s head of media partnerships for Canada Marc Dinsdale.
Alberta’s Ministry of Education has approved a new tuition-free, public charter school serving Edmonton-area students. The decision comes amid a growing conversation around parents’ rights and school choice across the country.
The Edmonton Classical Academy is an expansion of the Calgary Classical Academy, which opened in August 2022.
School founder Caylan Ford said she only planned for a Calgary location, but families in Edmonton began contacting her “desperate” for their kids to access a classical education.
“We thought that we need to try to expand as much as we can while preserving the culture and integrity of the vision,” she told True North.
According to the Edmonton Classical Academy’s website, the school will offer academically rigorous liberal arts education focused on developing “the knowledge, virtues, and habits befitting free citizens.”
The school is a smartphone-free environment. Its stated priorities are traditional pedagogy and teacher-led classrooms, the pursuit of truth, a focus on character, and a knowledge-rich curriculum centred on classical literature, philosophy and art.
“The program aims to develop pupils’ sense of intellectual, moral, and aesthetic discernment, so that they can distinguish truth from falsehood, and right from wrong,” the site reads.
The school will offer K-8 classes beginning in the 2023-24 academic year. The Calgary location has approximately 300 students in grades K-6. Both schools will expand each year until they serve all grades from K-12.
Ford said there’s some confusion about what charter schools are in Alberta. She said they’re tuition-free public schools. They’re also nonsectarian, meaning no affiliation with a particular religious denomination, community, or church.
“They offer a distinct either philosophical or pedagogical approach, or they serve, in some cases, very specific student communities,” she said.
“We accept any student who wants to seek moral and intellectual excellence. That obviously means different things for each person,” she said. “But that part is what we’re looking for.”
Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said choice in education allows students to grow and learn in an environment best suited for their unique needs.
“It allows parents to make decisions that will set their children up for personal, academic and professional success,” she said in a statement on the approval of the school.
“That is why we will continue upholding and supporting the option to receive a public charter education in Alberta as well as our efforts to improve accessibility to public charter education across the province.”
Charter schools receive the same funding per pupil as any other public school board in the province. Ford said it’s also free of the “bureaucracy” of large central boards, instead being run by a nonprofit organization with its board.
“That enables a little bit more flexibility and also makes sure that we’re actually adhering to a specific philosophical vision that can’t be so easily captured ideologically,” she said.
The school is still searching for a physical location. Ford said they secured a building for the Calgary location a month and a half before the school opened.
“With this approval, we’re in a better position to work with local school boards and potentially other partners to try to identify a facility that will be able to have the program,” she said.
Discussion around school choice and charter schools has ramped up in Canada recently. Pandemic school closures, union disruption and public school board battles over “woke” issues have contributed to the uptick in interest.
In November, Ontario education workers’ strike action shut down schools for a couple of days. Doretta Wilson, the former executive director of the Society for Quality Education, said school shutdowns occur with each negotiation.
“We’ve got to get around all of this constant labour strife. The way to do that is to offer some competition in the system, and school choice is that competition,” she told True North last month.
Paige MacPherson, the associate director of Education Policy at the Fraser Institute, argues that it’s long overdue for Ontario to offer school choice. The province must allow parents to use tax dollars for a school of their choice and make alternative schools more affordable to families, she argued in an op-ed published in True North last month.
“The CUPE strike was just the latest example of Ontario children being held hostage by the gatekeepers of the government-run public school system,” MacPherson wrote.
“It’s time for the government to stop exclusively funding the current one-size-fits-all system and start funding students instead.”
The City of Edmonton won’t say by which forum racist attacks were made against Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi.
Sohi said he received racist attacks in response to the city’s joint decision with the Edmonton Downtown Business Association (EDBA) not to install a Christmas tree this year at this year’s Holiday Light Up event.
“I am unable to confirm whether the mayor received messages by phone, email, mail or social media,” a city spokesperson told True North.
EDBA executive director Puneeta McBryan said she received received “a combination of racist, xenophobic, and some just outright nasty/foul and aggressive language.”
She said such comments were made on the organization’s social media account, voicemails, emails and comments under media articles.
One letter to the editor published in the Edmonton Sun, which appears to have been deleted, said the association should have adopted Canada “as is, not with the dream of making it what you chose to leave, or perhaps you shouldn’t have left your home country.”
Another letter shamed the mayor for cancelling the tree.
“Then to make matters even worse, he says that people who don’t agree with him are racist because they are upset,” the letter reads. “Once again, shame on you mayor.”
As previously reported by True North, the EDBA decided not to have a giant Christmas tree at its Holiday Light Up event for the first time since 1999. The city said it won’t step in to provide a tree due to the environmental impact of cutting down and transporting a mature natural forest tree.
Following that decision, Edmonton City Manager Andre Corbould and EDBA board chair Martin Kennedy released a joint statement saying a small number of people are using the situation to make racist attacks on Edmonton Downtown Business Association staff and Mayor Sohi.
“Those actions do not reflect the views of either the vast majority of Edmontonians or the organizations we lead,” the statement reads. “They are inappropriate. We do not tolerate online hate and bullying, and we will not be swayed by such behaviour.”
Corbould and Kennedy told concerned citizens they decided not to install a Christmas tree — it was not the mayor’s or city council’s decision. The pair also apologized for not communicating the activities better, which led some people to believe that Churchill Square would not be a festive place.
“However, that oversight did not justify some of the activities which followed,” they continued.
In a video posted to Facebook last week, Sohi delivered a poem about the incident.
“There won’t be a tree in the Churchill Square, but that doesn’t mean the mayor and council doesn’t care,” he said.
“I’ve heard some people call me a Grinch, but accurate info can be found in a pinch.”
The EDBA previously said the annual Christmas tree display draws in many residents, but the foot traffic doesn’t translate into business for Edmonton shops and restaurants. The group rethought the event to fix the oversight and replaced the Christmas tree with other light installations, like a life-sized bison.
The city told True North it estimated the cost to install a tree and provide public programming at $124,000.
Instead, Corbould and Kennedy said the EDBA’s Light Up event would include new art installations, music, a Christmas market, games and holiday illuminations.
They said city administration supported the “evolution” of the event, which will decorate trees around Churchill Square as a “festive forest” complemented with lanterns. In addition, the City Hall ice rink will be open, and City Hall will be filled with seasonal holiday decor.
“While we understand that some are disappointed by the evolution of these holiday celebrations, we want to reassure Edmontonians that there will be fun and family-friendly holiday activities throughout December — including the illumination of living holiday trees in both Churchill Square and Rice Howard Way.”
Quebec’s top public health official Dr. Luc Boileau advised residents to stay at home and avoid going out for the holidays if they show any symptoms of being sick.
Boileau made the statements during a Wednesday afternoon press conference citing concerns about the spread of Covid-19, influenza and other respiratory viruses.
“If you are sick or have symptoms, then you stay home and avoid contacts with others — in particular the most vulnerable,” said Boileau.
Despite the warning, Quebec will not be reintroducing mask mandates or limits on gathering sizes, according to the top doctor.
“We’ve studied the situation very carefully with other jurisdictions. We are in contact with our colleagues in Ontario regularly and we looked at the risk of evolution in the community. Considering that immunity has been acquired by a lot of citizens and also vaccination has been very popular during the last few years,” explained Boileau.
“We still do not recommend a more intensive approach for the regulation of the contagion with the wearing of masks or to reduce gatherings.”
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Quebec had some of the harshest lockdown measures including enforcing a curfew and banning the unvaccinated from certain stores like Walmart.
Official statistics from the province report there’s been 1,300 new cases in the last 24 hours with 4 deaths reported.
At the federal level, chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam told Canadians to not “let (their) guard down” over Covid-19.
“In Canada, variations in population level of immunity, and current global trends suggest that an uptick in COVID-19 could occur in the new year,” claimed Tam.
“With the increased prominence of these variants in Canada, at a minimum, we could see a slower decline and a higher plateau in the number of infections, as well as hospital admissions in Canada as this respiratory virus season plays out.”
In a recently made available closed-door interview with staff members of the Public Order Emergency Commission, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Freedom Convoy participants and Fox News are the leading culprits in online discourse that is “destabilizing our democracy.”
Plus, public health officials are warning about an “uptick in Covid-19 cases” – once again suggesting Canadians “stay home” during the holidays if they’re sick.
And the national governing body of figure skating has gutted “man” and “woman” from its official vocabulary and will instead opt for terms more in line with gender ideology. Are we witnessing the end of gender in sports?
Tune into The Daily Brief with Anthony Furey and Jasmine Moulton!
Mackenzie Moir and Bacchus Barua are analysts at the Fraser Institute.
Although the worst of the pandemic is now in the rearview mirror, Canada’s health-care system continues to struggle with poor resource and staff availability, health-care worker burnout, and chronic hospital overcapacity. And Canadians now also face the longest wait times for elective surgery on record.
According to the Fraser Institute’s latest annual survey of physicians, patients could expect a median wait of 27.4 weeks between referral to a specialist by a general practitioner and receipt of treatment in 2022, the fourth consecutive year wait times have increased. This year’s median wait is almost three times longer than the 9.3-week wait recorded in the first national survey in 1993, and 6.7 weeks longer than deemed “reasonable” by physicians.
The survey covers all 10 provinces across 12 core medical specialties and measures waits for “elective” surgeries, which are scheduled (in contrast to emergency surgeries) but are still medically necessary. If patients wait too long for some elective procedures, they may experience deteriorating health, permanent disability and sometimes death.
Of course, wait times vary considerably depending on the province and specialty. Prince Edward Island reported the longest wait time this year (64.7 weeks) while Ontario reported the shortest (20.3 weeks). We also see significant variation between specialties. For example, patients across the country face the longest waits for neurosurgery (58.9 weeks) and plastic surgery (58.1 weeks) while wait times for radiation (3.9 weeks) and medical oncology (4.4 weeks) were the shortest.
To be clear, this isn’t a COVID problem. While the pandemic and associated surgical postponements may help partially explain why wait times have increased over the past three years, waits for elective surgeries were remarkably long before the first recorded case of COVID-19 in Canada—in 2019, Canadians faced a median wait of 20.9 weeks for elective care.
The pandemic has also affected the research environment, with the national survey response rate this year coming in at 7.1 per cent. Although 850 specialists still responded to the survey, this year’s response rate is lower than in years preceding the pandemic.
That said, these findings align with data from decades of domestic research and international surveys that reveal Canada’s poor access to timely care. For example, in 2020 the Commonwealth Fund (CWF) found that Canada ranked at the bottom (11th of 11) for both timely specialist appointments (under four weeks) and elective surgeries (within four months). A similar study from the CWF found similar results in 2016, long before the pandemic.
Given these lackluster results and Canada’s continued and outsized reliance on the performance and generosity of our health-care workers, policy solutions are long overdue.
For years, the research has revealed familiar findings. Other countries with similar or lower spending on health care (as a share of their economies), which outperform Canada, employ markedly different approaches to universal health care. Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland all either partner with the private sector for the financing and delivery of universal care, or rely on the private sector as a pressure valve when the public system is overburdened. They tend to also incentivize the responsible use of resources by expecting patients to share the cost of treatment (with exemptions for vulnerable populations), and fund hospitals based on activity (instead of Canada’s “global budgets”).
Of course, these countries also faced their own challenges during COVID. But the difference is they entered the pandemic with more resources and shorter wait times and will, therefore, likely emerge in a better position, too.
If Canadians want to see their health-care system improve and wait times reduced, the provinces must consider bold reforms. It’s hard to imagine a more pressing policy issue in Canada today.
Mackenzie Moir and Bacchus Barua are analysts at the Fraser Institute.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that while he “believes in free speech,” online discourse is “destabilizing our democracy” – and he argued that Freedom Convoy participants and Fox News are leading culprits. Trudeau made the remarks during a closed-door interview conducted in September by the Public Order Commission (POEC).
The PM’s remarks were only recently made available via a newly posted summary of the interview conducted behind closed doors by staff members of POEC – the commission tasked with investigating Trudeau’s controversial invocation of the Emergencies Act.
“The government believes in free speech,” the summary of Trudeau’s remarks reads. “But with social media, there is a new way to foment anger and hate that is different from anything we have seen before, difficult to counter, and it is destabilizing our democracy. He raised the examples of spoof websites that look real.”
Trudeau told POEC staff that the Freedom Convoy reflected a global rise of misinformation and disinformation and insinuated that many of those who disagreed with his government’s Covid-19 policies were built on falsehoods and wrong facts.
“Our democratic system is designed around the sharing of ideas and having an opposition whose job it is to find fault in those ideas, to force governments to think everything through and be able to defend its decision. The problem arises when disagreements are built on falsehoods or wrong facts because then it becomes difficult to have a real debate and genuine exchange of ideas,” the summary continues.
Trudeau drew a parallel between the Freedom Convoy and mass killings that were carried out by perpetrators influenced by online extremism. Trudeau specifically mentioned the 2018 Toronto van attack and the 2017 Quebec City Mosque shooting as examples of violent incidents motivated by participation in extremist social media forums.
The Prime Minister expressed concern about the Canadian public losing confidence in Canada’s institutions and governments. However, Trudeau blamed the Freedom Convoy for this erosion in public trust, saying that the country had to live through three weeks of “chaos” that shook Canadians’ confidence in peace, order, good governance and the rule of law.
The interview summary also contained Trudeau’s account of his call with U.S. President Joe Biden, during the time of the Freedom Convoy where he told the President that much of the Convoy’s funding was coming from the United States and that much of the amplification was coming from Americans on social media and Fox News. This claim about the funding was later proven to be inaccurate at POEC hearings.
The Trudeau government has tabled several pieces of legislation that would regulate Canada’s internet further, including Bill C-11, Bill C-18 and a yet to be tabled bill concerning “online harms.”
On Wednesday, new Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted to True North’s Andrew Lawton that it looked like Trudeau was attempting to “muzzle” Canadians with this approach.
