From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

After lashing out at a reporter who pressed him about his investment holdings, Prime Minister Mark Carney has since admitted he will “probably” have to recuse himself on certain governmental matters because of potential conflicts of interest.  

Since taking office from Justin Trudeau a week ago, Carney on Tuesday admitted that he will “probably” have to recuse himself from certain governmental matters due to potential conflicts of interest. The prime minister made the concession shortly after lashing out at a reporter when asked whether his large private investment holdings present an ethical issue.

During a Tuesday press conference in Canada’s Arctic, Carney was asked directly if he would have to recuse himself from certain governmental matters in a similar way as to what was required by former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin.

“Yes. We are having discussions, and a trust has been created,” he answered, adding that “along with the Ethics Commissioner, probably some screens will be put in place.” 

Carney said that his “assets” have been put in a “blind trust well in advance of the requirements.” 

“So they’ve been disposed of. But what happens is that there’s a discussion with the Ethics Commissioner for certain screens around certain issues, and that’s a process that is underway,” he added. 

“It’s a natural process, and of course, it’s part of the way our system works. And I very much respect the system and those screens become public as they’re developed.” 

He was then asked why he did not disclose any potential conflicts of interest in a forthcoming manner. He said this was a question for the “Ethics Commissioner if there is anything that has a major impact, then it’s clear there will be a screen.”  

“I can say we are working quickly. I’m working quickly when it comes to those issues.” 

Carney’s Tuesday statements came shortly after he lashed out at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reporter Rosemary Barton when the journalist pressed him on his assets. Barton said she found it “very difficult to believe” there were no possible conflicts of interest now that he is prime minister.

Carney seemed to become visibly annoyed with the line of questioning, telling Barton to “look within herself.”  

Before becoming prime minister, Carney worked for Brookfield Asset Management and the United Nations special envoy on climate action.

Recent reports claim that Carney held $6.8 million in Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. stock options before quitting the company.

Conservative leader calls out Carney’s potential conflicts of interest 

Responding to the chatter, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre told reporters that the prime minster is “trying to distract from his many scandals and conflicts of interest as well as his disastrous record as Justin Trudeau’s economic advisor by talking about Trump.”  

“He’s the guy who sold out to Trump,” said Poilievre, adding that six days after U.S. President Donald Trump “threatened Canada” with tariffs “to steal our jobs,” Carney “announced to Brookfield shareholders that he would move his headquarters from Canada to New York.”  

“And when you asked him about it, he lied to your face,” he added.   

Poilievre said the Conservatives have this evidence “in writing and we proved it.”  

“He sold out Canada. He put his profit ahead of our people and he did exactly what Donald Trump wanted. Never before have we had a prime minister so conflicted and compromised and yet so little scrutinized,” he added.  

Carney, an admitted “elitist” and “globalist,” is reportedly due to call a federal election this weekend, just days after being installed as prime minister following the Liberal Party leadership race.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

“When something is unsustainable, it eventually stops,” former Vice President Al Gore said in an op/ed published by The Wall Street Journal. Given recent events, one might think Gore was referring to the ruinously costly attempts by governments of the Western world to force an energy transition via trillions of debt-funded dollars in subsidies for unreliable, intermittent energy sources like wind, solar and green hydrogen.

It has become obvious to most in the energy business now that the stick-and-carrot approach to a forced transition implemented by the Biden administration is not just unsustainable but a colossal failure. The stick of heavy-handed regulations and mandates combined with the carrot of economically ruinous government subsidies has resulted in a massive uptick in the national debt along with a playing field littered with dozens of bankruptcies by both startups and pre-existing green energy companies alike. Collectively, their waste of federal dollars makes the Obama-era Solyndra failure look like pocket change.

As critics of the Biden Green New Deal suite of policy choices repeatedly warned, the rent-seeking industries that became the chosen clients of the Democratic Party over the last four years – wind, solar, electric vehicles and green hydrogen – cannot displace fossil fuels in any scalable sense because the laws of physics don’t allow it. Too many companies in these industries also cannot be sustained for more than short periods of time without constant new injections of additional government subsidies, all of which in the U.S. have the impact of increasing the national debt.

When the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act passed on party line votes in congress in 2022, I and others warned that the Democrats in congress and the Biden White House viewed the bill as just an initial down payment on their long-term goals. A steady succession of new IRA-type debt-funded bills would be required in the coming decades to sustain the transition, and without those added tranches of trillions of dollars in additional subsidies, most startups in those non-competitive energy businesses would ultimately fail. It wasn’t hard to see this coming.

In his op/ed, Gore writes all this financial carnage off with his typical climate alarm fearmongering, saying things like “treating the transition to a sustainable economy as optional isn’t an option,” and “the cost of inaction is indefensible and unbearable.” To which the only proper response is to ask Gore to tell that to all the lower income Americans who have seen their utility bills and food prices inflate to unbearable levels as they have borne the brunt of the inevitable outcome of the policies Gore, Biden and their cronies have happily forced onto the public. It’s one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the poor to the wealthy in global history. If you want an example of unsustainability, there it is.

Most hilariously, Gore states that “in the U.S., the fossil-fuel industry, its allies and captive policymakers seek to punish companies and investors pursuing sustainability goals with frivolous lawsuits, smear campaigns and the withdrawal of state-controlled funds under management.” Holy smokes, talk about a prime example of Clintonian projection, there it is.

No industry has been subjected to a decades-long constant stream of frivolous lawsuits and smear campaigns from critics quite like the coal and oil and gas industries have sustained in modern times. Right now, today, the oil industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars defending itself against a well-organized lawfare campaign in which left-wing law firms recruit friendly, mostly-Democrat officials in cities, counties and states around the country to file frivolous lawsuits claiming billions of dollars in unsubstantiated damages related to climate change theoretically caused by emissions coming mainly from China. That is the very definition of a frivolous smear campaign and lawfare campaign rolled into one.

But it is Gore’s complaint about the effort by the Trump administration to implement a “withdrawal of state-controlled funds under management” that really takes the cake here. Apparently, this former vice president believes that elections really don’t matter at all.

But elections do matter, policies can change and billions of dollars in funds awarded to political cronies of one president can indeed be clawed back by another. Gore can rage against these winds of change all he likes, but that is American democracy in action.

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.