Frontier Centre for Public Policy
ECO Extremism under reported in Canada
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
How many remember that shortly after the federal government introduced emergency legislation against convoy protesters there was a real terrorist attack on a Coastal GasLink pipeline worksite in British Columbia?
Ottawa and Canadian security agencies are ignoring a threat posed by eco-extremists motivated by self-righteous climate change alarmism.
How many remember that shortly after the federal government introduced emergency legislation against convoy protesters there was a real terrorist attack on a Coastal GasLink pipeline worksite in British Columbia?
About 20 masked assailants wielding axes entered a pipeline worksite and intimidated Coastal GasLink workers and caused millions of dollars of damage to equipment and vehicles.
While politicians and mainstream media were fixated on bouncy castles and hot tubs, armed fanatics were intimidating human beings with weapons and destroying energy infrastructure.
There was bare mention of it in the media. Politicians made cursory mention of it on social media. Unlike the convoy protests, there were no in-depth investigative pieces immediately after the eco-terrorist attacks against Costal GasLink.
Eventually some media picked up on this terror attack, but then downplayed it.
CBC’s Fifth Estate months later aired a program that attempted to disparage an RCMP unit meant to investigate extremist attacks on energy sector infrastructure. In a piece of over 40 minutes, less than a minute was devoted to exploring the February 2022 terror attack.
The CBC wrote more about the attack and did identify the culprits as anarchists but did not explore their ideological motivations. It was almost like they were just anarchists bent on destruction without a coherent ideology.
Perhaps if they would do a deep dive, they would discover that the anarchists believing they are helping an Indigenous resurgence have been raised on a diet of unscientific climate change alarmism.
I recently compiled research for a Frontier Centre study that looked at this looming eco-extremist threat.
Besides the Coastal GasLink attack, there are extremist groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion (in Canada). Traffic disruptions caused by Just Stop Oil have already led to bodily harm and unnecessary deaths in the UK where traffic mayhem ensued over a stunt on a bridge.
Canada has a serious blind spot when it comes to extremism associated with the far left. CSIS and Public Safety Canada are endlessly fixated on extremism associated loosely with the right, like Incels or anyone concerned about forced injections via vaccine mandates.
In Canada, the threat comes from various “Indigeno-anarchists” who believe they are supporting Indigenous people even as they attack energy projects that help First Nation communities. I discovered these extremists teach and recruit at our universities. Many professors are activists who normalize terrorism against the energy sector. Many were involved in the 2019-2020 Wet’suwet’en rail blockades that opposed Coastal GasLink.
Winnipeg activists were certainly involved. During the Wet’suwet’en blockades, they engaged in five major actions in Manitoba, from a demonstration outside an RCMP station to an action where “Indigenous warriors” blocked CN and CP rail tracks for several hours.
Calling themselves anarchists, they engaged in acts that could cause bodily harm and affect people’s ability to travel on passenger trains. Here is a document confirming they intended to commit “railroad sabotage.” Anarchists also make open mention of acts of sabotage and damage to drill sites associated with Coastal GasLink.
Central to the problem is problematic and torqued up climate change rhetoric that is causing unnecessary fear and anxiety within the public and is radicalizing people. If you believe the “earth is on fire” – which is a false belief held by many activists – some become radicalized to commit damage property and threaten lives.
Manitobans and Canadians must address the looming eco-terrorist threat before it’s too late.
Joseph Quesnel is a Senior Research Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Let’s Make Canada Great Again!
Trump’s Team Unity… Tulsi Gabbard, JD Vance, President-elect Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jun., Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy… if they’re able to do all they’re promising, Canada will be more uncompetitive yet, writes Brian Giesbrecht and the best and brightest will leave
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Trump will make America so tempting to the talented, that we’re going to get more uncompetitive still
“The number of people migrating to the US is not the main concern, more importantly it is who is leaving.”
The “brain drain” is a problem that has been a real concern for Canada at many times in our history. In the 1990s it was a topic fiercely debated by policy wonks, politicians and other concerned Canadians. Many of our best and brightest were benefitting from expensive college and university educations here, then promptly moving south for better opportunities.
Simply put, when Canada raises taxes, and stifles economic opportunity for young people here, while the Americans are lowering taxes and opening up their economy to the south of us, we can expect to see much of our best talent move south.
That’s what we have been seeing for some time now — doctors, engineers, trades and businesspeople of all types moving to escape the high taxes and the stagnant economy they see in what is today’s high-tax, big government, woke Canada.
Since 2015, housing costs have risen much faster than wages, making house ownership and rent costs absolutely punishing. Excessive immigration numbers have only added to the misery. Canada, for many years considered to be one of the best western countries in which to live is now one of the worst.
Canada’s current brain drain trickle can be expected to turn into a flood. Trump has promised to deregulate, lower taxes and “drain the swamp”. His appointment of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to the mischievously named “DOGE” (Department of Government Efficiency) is evidence of his seriousness.
As evidence of how quickly things are turning, consider the huge stock market gains that happened as a direct consequence of Trump’s election. Clearly, the “smart money” is anticipating that Trump’s promises to “drill, baby, drill” and reinvigorate an over-regulated and over-taxed Biden economy are more than empty promises.
So, while right now Trump is busy trolling Democrats with his cabinet picks, by the time we get around to a spring election here it is probable that Trump will have the American economy galloping along. Meanwhile, at the same time that Trump is lowering taxes and deregulating, the Trudeau government is going in exactly the opposite direction.
Chrystia Freeland is determined to raise the capital gains tax. A capital gains tax hike will cause widespread damage. Meanwhile her proud socialist colleague, Steven Guilbeault — who has never seen an extra tax or regulation he doesn’t like — is dead-set on hiking Canada’s job-killing carbon tax yet again.
And let’s not forget the Trudeau affirmative action, DEI, merit-killing philosophy that has steadily eroded our competitiveness and standard of living. When contrasted with the Biden race-based version of the same, it was bad enough that Canada’s productivity continues to fall relative America’s. (Our sickly dollar is barely over 70 percent of theirs, while our government expenditures make up a staggering 44% of GDP.)
The contrast between the two economies can only be expected to become more pronounced as Trump’s America becomes increasingly merit-based. DOGE will take a meat cleaver to government spending, and the DEI, critical race theory Bidenite mush, will be trashed.
While Canada is still dealing with such woke idiocies as boys in girl sports, child mutilation in the name of gender ideology, and pretending to believe indigenous activist claims about secret burials of indigenous school children, Trump’s America will look very attractive to ambitious young Canadians who want to skip the wokeism, and raise their families in a country that rewards hard work. It will be hard to blame our best engineers, and tradespeople from heading down to exciting opportunities in Texas, Montana and elsewhere in the United States, when their talents are not appreciated here.
Many have already departed. Canadian accents are increasingly common in Texas. The contrast between a Trump America that rewards hard work, and a Trudeau Canada that only taxes it will be stark. Enterprising Canadians will face the choice of staying in a Canada that takes bigger and bigger bites out of paychecks, or moving to a country that doesn’t.
Let’s remember that many of our highly educated doctors and professionals are recent immigrants, with no special loyalty to Canada. Steven Harper also spoke of the “anywhere people” and the “somewhere people”. Those in the first category are the educated and privileged class whose have the money and talent that make it possible for them to move anywhere in the world on short notice. We need both the talented immigrants and “anywheres”, but they will be the first to leave.
Canada has gone through similar brain drain episodes before. During the 1990s there was a very real concern that we were losing far too many good people. A debt problem that began with the big-spending Pierre Trudeau government got steadily worse, our civil service was bloated, and taxes were far higher than they were for our American counterparts. To their credit, the Chrétien/Martin government introduced a budget in 1995 that helped with those problems.
The incoming Steven Harper government 2006-15 further stemmed the tide of departures by building a competitive economy that had our dollar at par with the American dollar. For a brief time the Canadian dollar was even higher! In these days of our pathetic 70 cent dollar it now seems hard to believe that even happened.
There seems to be little hope that the current Liberal government — still dug in in Ottawa — will take steps to make our economy competitive with Trump’s. As Kevin O’Leary explains, the damage that Trudeau has done to the Canadian economy is incalculable.
Canada has been on a slow downward slide since 2015. This has been Canada’s “lost decade”.
But there are reasons other than just the economic for wanting to leave. Under Justin Trudeau Canada has become not only a poorer place, but a directionless dystopia for many conservative-leaning Canadians. Extreme progressivism — “woke” — is the Trudeau Liberal religion.
As Eric Kaufman points out, extreme beliefs, such as “a man becomes a woman by saying so,” the belief in such economy-killing absurdities as “carbon-zero by 2040,” “borders don’t matter,” “merit-based hiring is systemic racism” etc are accepted by only a small minority of Canadians, and yet those are the policies the current government is forcing on everyone.
To add insult to injury we have Trudeau tweeting “a trans woman is a woman,” “we accept all comers,” “Canada is a genocidal nation,” and other such inanities. The great majority of Canadians do not want Trudeau’s “post-national state with no core identity” bilge. They want Canada back.
Trump has promised to rid his country of the extreme progressivism that Americans so convincingly rejected on Nov 5. Post-election surveys have revealed that the single most important issue that persuaded swing voters to vote for Trump was Kamala Harris’s support for taxpayer funding for transgender surgery for prison inmates.
This bit of woke craziness proved to be a bridge too far even for those who usually voted Democrat.
We can expect to see a virtual war on woke when Trump assumes power. In fact, it is already happening. Absurdities, like men forcing their way into women’s sporting events and women’s spaces will come to an end. Most Americans simply don’t want radical progressivism. As Professor Kaufman’s survey shows (above) — neither do Canadians.
The old saying is that living next to America is like sleeping with an elephant. Every time that the elephant moves, we had better do so too. With the election of Donald Trump, Canada must quickly adjust to the moves that elephant makes. Or suffer the consequences.
The chance to do so will likely be next spring, when Justin Trudeau will finally be forced to call an election. His election strategy will almost certainly be the same one he has used against previous Conservative challengers — he accuses them of being “like Trump.” But this time this strategy might not work.
If Trump’s America is humming along on all cylinders, while Trudeau’s weak, woke Canada looks pathetic in comparison, this time Canadians might say, “Yes, like Trump’s America. That’s exactly what we want!”
We need our best and brightest to stay here. We need to end the brain drain. We can do that by making Canada into a 2025 version of the Canada we used to know.
Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He was recently named the ‘Western Standard Columnist of the Year.’
Business
The “GST Holiday”… A Smokescreen For Scandal
A GST holiday sounded like it might be a good thing, but it turned out to be a gimmick to distract us from more serious issues, writes Marco Navarro-Genie.
One more racket from a government that rules by racket
The Prime Minister’s proposed GST holiday and $250 rebate scheme, initially estimated at $6.2 billion, is yet another calculated ploy to distract Canadians from the ethical failures of his government. Though the rebate portion was abandoned in Parliament, the GST holiday remains a superficial gesture in a government-induced affordability crisis.
This tactic highlights the government’s willingness to appear generous (with our money) while burdening taxpayers with increased debt to mask corruption and maintain power.
At the heart of this deflection lies the Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) program, dubbed by critics as the “Green Slush Fund.”
The Auditor General recently revealed shocking improprieties within the program. The findings include that the federal ethics office reported at least 90 violations of ethics rules and nearly $400 million handed out to companies linked to SDTC board members. This gross misuse of public funds undermines the program’s goals of fostering green innovation, instead solidifying public skepticism about Ottawa’s ethical compass.
Efforts to hold the government accountable for its mismanagement have faced significant obstruction. Parliament has requested unredacted documents related to the scandal but has been met with resistance from the government. Trudeau’s administration has provided vague justifications for its refusal to comply, citing reasons such as protecting commercial confidentiality and national security.
The Speaker of the House, a Liberal MP, ruled that Parliament has the constitutional right to demand these documents. He ordered the government to release them unredacted. However, weeks have now passed, and the government continues its obstructionist tactics. Parliament has been stalled for weeks, effectively freezing legislative proceedings.
Under parliamentary rules, the House can halt all proceedings until the government complies with the Speaker’s ruling. However, the Speaker lacks direct enforcement power, leaving the opposition parties to hold the line. Last week, the government attempted to submit documents but presented them in a heavily redacted form, further eroding trust.
The standoff highlights the lengths the federal government will go to avoid transparency. By refusing to release the documents, the Liberals undermine Parliament’s authority and delay critical legislative work to protect themselves from scrutiny.
The two-month GST holiday passed with NDP support, removes the GST/HST from:
- Prepared foods: Items like pre-made meals and restaurant dining.
- Children’s essentials: Clothing, footwear, and diapers.
- Select gift items: Categories remain vaguely defined.
However, basic groceries are already GST-exempt. According to food policy expert Sylvain Charlebois, the average Canadian household will save only a few dollars. This gesture is hardly a windfall in the context of surging inflation and housing costs — driven mainly by the government’s policies.
The fundamental aim of the GST holiday is not economic relief but political manipulation. By framing the Conservatives’ refusal to pass the broader $6.2 billion package as heartless, the government seeks to paint the Official Opposition as the Grinch who stole Christmas.
Liberal MPs have already taken to social media to attack the Conservatives for “denying Canadians a tax break.”
The government seems silent about the fact that the Bloc Quebecois also voted against the tax gimmick. Meanwhile, the NDP has shown a willingness to facilitate this naked vote-buying bid, further eroding its credibility as an opposition party.
The Conservatives have remained steadfast, demanding full transparency on the SDTC scandal before regular proceedings in the House can resume. This stance, however, has allowed the Liberals to weaponize affordability relief as a wedge issue.
The GST holiday’s costs, like most federal spending under this government, will disproportionately fall on Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia. These three provinces already bear the brunt of federal revenue extraction through resource wealth, only to see their contributions funnelled into vote-rich areas of central Canada to prop up an increasingly unpopular government. The move further stokes resentment in the West, damaging national unity.
How this standoff will resolve is anyone’s guess. The government appears content to drag its feet, betting that public fatigue will weaken opposition resolve. Yet it remains clear that Liberals are willing to misspend billions in borrowed money to hide how they’ve misused hundreds of millions on partisan rewards and cronies. This cynical strategy prioritizes the political survival of their arrangement with the NDP over fiscal responsibility and democratic accountability.
For democracy to function, Parliament must assert its supremacy, hold this minority government to account, and ensure transparency in the face of systemic corruption and mismanagement. The NDP’s collaboration with the offenders may make it impossible, however. Allowing the government to defy Parliament and the Speaker’s ruling sets a dangerous precedent, weakening the foundations of Canadian democracy.
Marco Navarro-Genie is VP Policy and Research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He is co-author, with Barry Cooper, of COVID-19: The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2020).
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