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Opinion

Ostriches on the runway

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11 months ago

12 minute read

PAUL WELLS

Dominic LeBlanc says it’s time to rise above partisanship. Watch the skies

“The protection of our democracy demands that we rise above partisanship,” Dominic LeBlanc told reporters Saturday morning in the lobby of the West Block’s backup House of Commons. “Canada isn’t the only country facing the threat of foreign interference. Many of our allies are, even now, having discussions on ways to protect their democracies against this scourge. If they can have reasoned and constructive discussions on this subject, Canada should be able to do the same. That’s why the prime minister tasked me [on Friday] with consulting, over the coming days, experts, legal scholars and opposition parties on what the next steps should look like — and determine who best may be suited to lead this public work.”

You can tell the Trudeau government is really badly rattled when it starts doing what it should have done in the first place. “Consulting experts, legal scholars and opposition parties” was an option in March, when Trudeau decided instead to lay the foundation for Friday’s debacle. Talking to people — in the old-fashioned sense of (a) showing the slightest interest in what they have to say and (b) allowing it to inflect your actions in any perceptible way — is always an option. Nor is it in any danger of getting worn out through overuse, where this government is concerned.

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“It’s our government’s hope that the opposition parties will treat this issue with the seriousness it deserves,” said LeBlanc, whose boss ignored a string of reports from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and whose early-warning system for news of Beijing’s intimidation against a sitting MP was named Fife and Chase.

LeBlanc opened the floor to questions. The first: Shouldn’t there be a public inquiry? “A public inquiry has never been off the table,” he said. “All options remain on the table.” This was change masquerading as continuity. Johnston took a public inquiry off the table three weeks ago. Trudeau accepted the un-tabling. By putting it back on the table, LeBlanc was bowing to what may be the inevitable conclusion of the last few days: that the opposition parties, by adapting a common line in favour of a full inquiry, may have made one inevitable.

Another characteristic of this government is that it views its tribulations as tests of other people. The short odyssey of David Johnston, in other words, is a learning opportunity for us all. “My job,” LeBlanc said, “is to, in the very next few days, in short order, ask opposition leaders to take this matter seriously. Not just to simply say, ‘Oh, there has to be a public inquiry.’ OK: Make suggestions about who could lead this public inquiry. What would the terms of reference be? What do they see as the timelines? How do they deal with the obvious challenge of respecting Canadian law that protects some of the most sensitive intelligence information?”

I should say I take LeBlanc at his word when he claims to be seeking input in good faith. As a general rule, his arrival tends to mark an improvement in this government’s handling of a difficult file. But just to be on the safe side, it’s worth saying some obvious things clearly.

The opposition parties should give input when asked. It’s useful for each of them to go through the exercise of conceiving in detail the proper handling of the election-interference file. And it’s good of the government to ask, albeit way later than it should have.

But everything LeBlanc plans to ask them — whether to have an inquiry, who should lead it, its mandate and deadlines and legal justification — remains the responsibility of the government. If the opposition parties chicken out, or play dumb games, or deadlock, or suggest people who decline to participate, the responsibility for designing a workable policy remains the government’s. I’m pretty sure Trudeau volunteered for the job of prime minister. In fact I’m sure there was something in the papers about it. He is in this fix now because he wanted Johnston to make his decisions for him. As I wrote nearly three months ago.

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LeBlanc kept saying an inquiry should be run by someone “eminent.” I mean…sure? Whatever? I suppose eminence shouldn’t be actively disqualifying, at least. But to me the craving for eminence is a strange instinct. Eminence is distinctly relative: I suspect more than half of Canadians could never, at any point, have told you who David Johnston is, or Julie Payette, or Craig Kielburger. I’ve come to suspect that “eminent” translates as “impressive to Katie Telford,” which is fine but, again, an odd criterion. Instead may I propose “competent”?

When I wrote about Johnston’s appointment in March, I a suggested a few alternative candidates for the job of deciding how to respond to the mandate for which I already thought Johnston was ill-suited. My list was concocted at random on a few minutes’ notice, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, purely for illustrative purposes. I could come up with a dozen other names, and I don’t even know what I’m talking about. If I were burdened in LeBlanc’s place with such a task, I’d begin by asking for a list of associate deputy ministers at the departments of Global Affairs and Justice, as well as a list of currently serving and recently retired ambassadors. Probably the guy who used to be the national director of the Liberal Party of Canada would be a bad idea, I guess I need to add.

I also might do some reading. I’d recall that when the lawyer Kenneth Feinberg was brought in to decide compensation for families of the 9/11 victims in the U.S., he couldn’t have been further from a household name. When James B. Donovan got Francis Gary Powers released by the Soviets, or Jean Monnet invented the European Union, or Elissa Golberg became Canada’s first civilian representative in Kandahar, they weren’t household names. They still aren’t. They were just good at their work. You know that uncomfortable suspicion that Canada is just six pals from the McGill alumni club who gather every Friday to carve up the spoils of elite consensus over pitchers of iced tea on the verandah of the Royal Ottawa Golf Club? The first step toward perpetuating that suspicion is the urge to find “eminent” people for technical work.

The title of today’s post is cryptic. When LeBlanc said our democracy depends on rising above partisanship, I thought, Uh-oh, and I started thinking about objects or creatures that don’t normally rise above much. Which led to a mental image of ostriches trying to fly. I actually have seen non-partisanship, many times, including from some of the most partisan operators in Canadian politics. But I still wouldn’t bet on it happening in any particular case. The incentives run all the other way. To insulate against it, politicians might want to read the latest from Alliance Canada Hong Kong, the diaspora group that has been chronicling foreign interference for years, for whom the issue is not a fun partisan football and the prospect of testifying yet again, to educate some eminent commissioner, is not appealing.

I keep saying the under-served constituency in this country is the people who would like to see serious problems treated seriously. Not in the sense of cheap theatrics — furrowed brows, jabby index fingers, “my time is limited” — but in the sense of, you know, seriousness. It feels cheap to lodge such a complaint. It’s too easy, too timeless. OK, smartass, what are you proposing? I dunno, more, uh…. seriousness, I guess. But I think everyone senses it.

Last September, the CBC’s Aaron Wherry reported, Justin Trudeau told his caucus “to focus on four Cs: competence, confidence, contrast and campaign-readiness (in that order).” I’m left wondering how the prime minister defines competence and how he thinks he’s doing. This is a guy who, when he made those remarks, was less than a year past deciding that the biggest problem with his cabinet was that Marc Garneau was in it.

Meanwhile, I checked with Pierre Poilievre’s Twitter account to see whether he had responded to LeBlanc’s overture. Here’s how the Conservative leader spent his Friday afternoon:

I sometimes wonder whether these people know we can see them. It’s time to rise above partisanship. Flap, you big gorgeous birds! Flap!

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Biden Administration Eager to Sign WHO Pandemic Treaty

Great Reset

Biden Administration Eager to Sign WHO Pandemic Treaty

Published on May 17, 2024

By

From Heartland Daily News

By Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph.D.  

The Biden administration signaled its support for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) new pandemic treaty expected to be finalized at its World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, the final week of May.

Pamela Hamamoto, the State Department official representing the United States at the meeting, stated that “America is committed to signing the treaty that will ‘build a stronger global health structure,’” wrote John Tierney, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor, in the City Journal.

Adoption of a legally binding pact governing how countries around the world are to respond to future outbreaks like the recent COVID-19 pandemic has been the goal of WHO-directed negotiations since 2021. The WHO, a United Nations-sponsored organization, came under sharp criticism for its handling of the coronavirus.

On May 8, attorneys general from 22 states sent President Biden a letter saying they oppose the accords which will turn the WHO into the “world’s governor of public health.”  The letter says giving the WHO such authority violates the U.S. Constitution, and could lead to censorship of dissenting opinions, undermine Constitutional freedoms, and give the WHO power to declare any “emergency” besides health including climate change, gun violence, and immigration.

Missteps on COVID-19

In a post on Twitter (now X) on January 14, 2020, the WHO stated: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”

Two weeks later, on January 30, 2020, WHO’s Emergency Committee issued a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), stating, “The Committee emphasized that the declaration of a PHEIC should be seen in the spirit of support and appreciation of China, its people, and the actions China has taken on the front lines of this outbreak, with transparency and, it is to be hoped, success.”

The WHO’s initial investigation into the origins of COVID-19 concluded it was improbable that the virus resulted from experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, though it later acknowledged that it could have come from a lab leak at Wuhan. The WHO’s investigation, which was thwarted by Chinese officials, ultimately reached no conclusion. President Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from the WHO, a decision reversed by President Joe Biden on January 20, 2021.

More Smoke and Mirrors

Further undermining the WHO’s credibility in setting policies on managing a future pandemic, the group decided to include Peter Daszak, president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, in its initial investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance prominently featured in an investigation by the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic into the government’s funding and lack of oversight of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, for which EcoHealth received grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institutes of Health.

In an interim report released on May 1, 2024, the subcommittee said there is “significant evidence that Daszak violated the terms of the NIH grant awarded to EcoHealth. Given Dr. Daszak’s apparent contempt for the American people and disregard for legal reporting requirements, the Select Subcommittee recommends the formal debarment of and a criminal investigation into EcoHealth and its President.”

After the release of the report, U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) told the Washington Examiner, “The World Health Organization covered up the Chinese Communist Party’s role in developing and spreading COVID-19 and has since failed to hold them accountable for the global pandemic that killed millions, upended our daily lives, and destroyed thousands of small businesses.”

Public Fed Up

The WHO’s shaky record on COVID, including its close ties to China and Peter Daszak, have taken a toll on the public’s willingness to accept its leadership in any future pandemics.

A poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates for the Center for Security Policy, released on April 17, found that 54.6 percent of likely voters oppose tying the United States to a WHO pandemic treaty, and just 29.0 percent favor such a move.

Agreements Bypass Congress

While providing few details, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January, WHO Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus said, “The pandemic agreement can bring all the experience, all the challenges we have faced and all the solutions into one. That agreement could help us prepare for the future in a better way.”

The “treaty” the Biden administration is eager to sign will likely be an executive agreement, like the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which was not presented to the U.S. Senate for ratification but contained “commitments” President Barack Obama pledged to honor.

Also in the works in Geneva are amendments to International Health Regulations, which Congress would not approve or disapprove.COVID

WHO’s Power Grab

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WS), sent a letter to President Biden signed by all 49 Republican senators, expressing their concern about the powers that could be handed to WHO, on May 2.

“Some of the over 300 proposals for amendments made by member states would substantially increase the WHO’s emergency powers and constitute intolerable infringements upon U.S. sovereignty,” the letter states.

Craig Rucker, president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), who has attended UN-sponsored conferences around the world for over 30 years, says the WHO is a destructive force.

“WHO’s performance during COVID-19 was a lethal combination of incompetence and dishonesty,” said Rucker. “The organization failed to protect public health and went to extraordinary lengths to cover up China’s role in fostering gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. Ratification of any WHO pandemic treaty would be nothing short of a travesty.”

Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph.D. ([email protected]) is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

 

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Energy

New Report Reveals Just How Energy Rich America Really Is

Published on May 17, 2024

By

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By DAVID BLACKMON

 

A new report by the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a nonprofit dedicated to the study of the impact of government regulation on global energy resources, finds that U.S. inventories of oil and natural gas have experienced stunning growth since 2011.

The same report, the North American Energy Inventory 2024, finds the United States also leading the world in coal resources, with total proven resources that are more than 53% bigger than China’s.

Despite years of record production levels and almost a decade of curtailed investment in the finding and development of new reserves forced by government regulation and discrimination by ESG-focused investment houses, America’s technically recoverable resource in oil grew by 15% from 2011 to 2024. Now standing at 1.66 trillion barrels, the U.S. resource is 5.6 times the proved reserves held by Saudi Arabia.

The story for natural gas is even more amazing: IER finds the technically recoverable resource for gas expanded by 47% in just 13 years, to a total of 4.03 quadrillion cubic feet. At current US consumption rates, that’s enough gas to supply the country’s needs for 130 years.

“The 2024 North American Energy Inventory makes it clear that we have ample reserves of oil, natural gas, and coal that will sustain us for generations,” Tom Pyle, President at IER, said in a release. “Technological advancements in the production process, along with our unique system of private ownership, have propelled the U.S. to global leadership in oil and natural gas production, fostering economic benefits like lower energy prices, job growth, enhanced national security, and an improved environment.”

It is key to understand here that the “technically recoverable” resource measure used in financial reporting is designed solely to create a point-in-time estimate of the amount of oil and gas in place underground that can be produced with current technology. Because technology advances in the oil and gas business every day, just as it does in society at large, this measure almost always is a vast understatement of the amount of resource that will ultimately be produced.

The Permian Basin has provided a great example of this phenomenon. Just over the past decade, the deployment of steadily advancing drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies has enabled producers in that vast resource play to more than double expected recoveries from each new well drilled. Similar advances have been experienced in the other major shale plays throughout North America. As a result, the U.S. industry has been able to consistently raise record overall production levels of both oil and gas despite an active rig count that has fallen by over 30% since January 2023.

In its report, IER notes this aspect of the industry by pointing out that, while the technically recoverable resource for U.S. natural gas sits at an impressive 4.03 quads, the total gas resource in place underground is currently estimated at an overwhelming 65 quads. If just half of that resource in place eventually becomes recoverable thanks to advancing technology over the coming decades, that would mean the United States will enjoy more than 1,000 years of gas supply at current consumption levels. That is not a typo.

Where coal is concerned, IER finds the US is home to a world-leading 470 billion short tons of the most energy-dense fossil fuel in place. That equates to 912 years of supply at current consumption rates.

No other country on Earth can come close to rivaling the U.S. for this level of wealth in energy mineral resources, and few countries’ governments would dream of squandering them in pursuit of a political agenda driven by climate fearmongering. “And yet, many politicians, government agents, and activists seek to constrain North America’s energy potential,” Pyle says, adding, “We must resist these efforts and commit ourselves to unlocking these resources so that American families can continue to enjoy the real and meaningful benefits our energy production offers.”

With President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump staking out polar opposite positions on this crucial question, America’s energy future is truly on the ballot this November.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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