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Base Policies on Reality – Not Myths, Models, Misinformation and Fearmongering

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Paul Driessen

Donald Trump and JD Vance have a mandate on energy, economic, immigration and other issues that won them 50% of popular, 58% of electoral and 82% of US county votes.

On January 20 they will begin tackling the numerous problems bequeathed them by the Biden-Harris Administration and Washington Deep State: illegal immigration of criminals, terrorists and opportunists; outrageous government spending by bloated federal agencies; wars and crises across the globe; and federal and state politicians and bureaucrats determined to slow or stymie their every move.

Mr. Trump will let the DOGE out, to cut government waste. Pundits and political pros are offering advice across the board. My suggestions center on the “climate crisis” and the destructive policies it has justified.

1. First and foremost, withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate straitjacket. Its terms and subsequent agreements require that the USA and other industrialized nations switch from fossil fuels to “clean renewable” energy and de-modernize agricultural and other practices, to eliminate “greenhouse gas” (GHG) emissions. That would bring blackouts, de-industrialization and job losses.

It would also mean now-rich nations must pay developing countries $300 billion per year for climate damage “compensation” and renewable energy financing. But China, India and other developing countries need not cut emissions and will continue using coal, oil and natural gas in ever-increasing quantities, to modernize, create vibrant economies and lift more people out of poverty. That would mean even zero fossil fuel use by Western nations would not reduce global atmospheric GHG levels at all.

Better yet, send the Paris document to Congress for Article II Senate advice and two-thirds consent. President Obama’s sly move of calling this accord a mere “agreement” that required no Senate “treaty” review cannot be countenanced. Paris was among the most far-reaching, impactful agreements in US history. It affects our energy, economy, jobs, living standards, healthcare, national security and more. It’s a treaty and should be treated as such.

2. Equally important, eliminate the institutionalized junk science, assertions and fearmongering that fossil fuel use has caused an existential climate crisis for people and planet. Begin by re-examining the 2009 Obama Environmental Protection Agency “Endangerment Finding” that carbon dioxide “pollution” threatens the American people’s health and welfare.

Fossil fuels provide 80% of America’s energy; raw materials for thousands of petrochemical products; and the foundation of our economy, health and welfare. Their emissions certainly contribute to the 0.04% CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere, but this miracle molecule enables and spurs plant growth, thereby feeding the animal kingdom and making nearly all life possible.

EPA’s convoluted finding defied science and reality. It allowed the Obama and Biden Administrations to justify biased climate “research,” anti-fossil fuel regulations, sprawling wind and solar installations, and the transformation of America’s entire energy system and economy.

The Endangerment Decision was likely the most “major federal action” in US history, yet it has no real statutory basis. It clearly defies the Supreme Court’s decisions in West Virginia v. EPA, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council and Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc., v. Raimondo.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin should direct the agency to formally and publicly reexamine the secretive process that EPA employed to ensure its “endangerment” decision – with no contrarian science, evidence, questions or public hearings permitted to challenge its preordained edict. A fair, balanced, scientific review would demolish the faulty Finding and bring the agency into compliance with SCOTUS rulings.

The President-elect’s appointment of energy and environmental “czars” and National Energy Council will build on those important steps, help restore reality and common sense to America’s energy and climate policies, rein in other Biden-era regulations and executive actions, and advance Mr. Trump’s promise of US energy dominance and economic resurgence.

Other actions the new Administration and Congress should take include the following.

3. Utilize the Congressional Review Act to reverse eleventh-hour Biden-Harris regulatory sprees – such as its ban on further coal leasing in the Powder River Basin.

4. Open all US non-National-Park areas for no/low impact evaluation and exploration, to identify prospects warranting more detailed assessments for critically needed metals and minerals. Most of these public land areas were deliberately made off-limits to such evaluations by Congress, courts and the Deep State, making it impossible to weigh surface values against potential for world-class subsurface deposits.

China’s recent ban on exports of several vital metals and minerals underscores yet again why America must not rely on adversaries for raw materials critical for US defense, aerospace, battery, AI, wind, solar and other industries – especially when those materials could be found and developed in America, under the world’s best pollution control and environmental protection rules, technologies and practices.

5. Reopen the Delaware-sized “coastal plain” of Alaska’s South-Carolina-sized Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas leasing, exploration and drilling. Congressional legislation in 2017 explicitly allowed those activities, but President Biden unilaterally cancelled all leases and permits in 2023.

6. Require that applicants for climate change research and modeling grants demonstrate that their previous models and studies have been confirmed by actual temperature, drought and extreme weather data and evidence; and provide computer codes and analyses so that reviewers can view and evaluate their work.

7. Define “sustainability” to reflect complete global life-cycle raw material requirements, mining and processing needs and impacts, energy required to produce raw materials and manufacture energy and other systems, and land, air and water pollution resulting from all those activities. This will ensure that wind, solar, battery, electric vehicle and other technologies are not classified as “clean, renewable and sustainable” merely because they don’t emit CO2 or pollution after they start operating.

8. End subsidies and fast-track permitting for wind and solar installations – especially offshore wind, where raw material requirements and costs are many times higher than for onshore turbines and far more excessive than that for combined-cycle gas generators.

9. Require that wind and solar projects, and associated backup battery and transmission line projects, meet the same environmental review standards and requirements as required for oil, gas, coal and metals mining, and nuclear projects, regarding local, regional and global air and water pollution, land and habitat destruction, wildlife disturbance and loss, and post-project equipment removal and land reclamation.

Even better, cancel the entire offshore wind program. Its electricity is weather-dependent and ultra-expensive, threatens wildlife and fisheries, and requires unjustifiable amounts of raw materials.

10. Expand and streamline programs to bring new nuclear power plants online, especially small modular reactors – to meet rapidly expanding needs for abundant, reliable, affordable electricity for data centers, artificial intelligence, and increasingly electrified households, technologies and industries.

11. Terminate Diversity Equity Inclusion, Environment Social Governance, and Environmental and Climate Justice programs, offices and funding. They only serve as twisted justifications for arbitrarily selecting preferred companies and communities that are often less qualified to serve public health and safety.

There is much more to be done. But this is a solid beginning for reducing or eliminating needless, excessive and harmful pseudo science, grants, policies, practices and regulations – and restoring government of, by and for the People.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

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Democracy Watchdog Says PM Carney’s “Ethics Screen” Actually “Hides His Participation” In Conflicted Investments

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Sam Cooper's avatar Sam Cooper

A democracy watchdog is warning that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s sprawling private investments, including substantial holdings in Brookfield as well as shares in more than 550 other companies, cause a disabling conflict of interest that cannot be solved by his so-called “ethics screen,” ultimately undermining Ottawa’s credibility and negating Carney’s capacity to confront hostile regimes, including China.

In a scathing statement this week, Democracy Watch urged Carney to fully divest his shares and stock options, arguing that Ottawa’s purported “screen” — which relies on Carney’s chosen staff to supposedly shield the prime minister from conflicted business decisions — actually “allows him to participate in, and hides his participation in, almost all decisions that affect his investments.”

“PM Carney’s so-called ‘blind’ trust isn’t blind at all,” the watchdog said. “He knows exactly what he put in, he chose his own trustee, can instruct them not to sell, and can receive updates at any time. On top of that, he owns stock options in Brookfield that he can’t sell for years, guaranteeing he stays tethered to these corporate interests.”

Democracy Watch cited the landmark 1987 Parker Commission on conflicts of interest, which concluded that top public officials must sell all investments outright and that blind trusts should be banned as ineffective “shams.”

These warnings echo The Bureau’s March 2025 pre-election investigation, which outlined in granular detail Carney’s deep entanglements with Brookfield and China.

The Bureau revealed that Brookfield, the $900 billion investment giant Carney joined in 2020, held over $3 billion in politically sensitive assets connected to Chinese state-linked real estate and energy conglomerates, as well as a significant offshore banking footprint. One of its headline deals — a $750 million stake in a Shanghai commercial property project dating back to 2013 — was tied to a Hong Kong tycoon with official links to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a central “united front” body identified by the CIA as a tool of Beijing’s overseas influence operations.

Brookfield’s heavy exposure in Shanghai was compounded last year when, amid China’s collapsing real estate market, Carney’s company secured nearly $300 million in emergency loans from the Bank of China. As The Bureau reported, this arrangement carried echoes of Carney’s tenure as Bank of England governor, when he helped facilitate the global expansion of the Chinese financial system and lauded the internationalisation of the renminbi as “a global good.”

While Carney claims to have stepped away from operational control at Brookfield before entering politics, The Bureau’s reporting suggested that his influence over the firm’s China strategy lingered well into his leadership tenure.

Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, reinforced the watchdog’s position in interviews with The Bureau.

“It was very unethical for Mark Carney to hide his investments in more than 560 companies for the past four months,” Conacher said. “Unfortunately, many media outlets failed to cover the conflicts of interest, especially regarding Brookfield, and failed to point out that his so-called blind trust isn’t blind at all.”

Conacher warned that Carney’s private holdings risk tainting not just domestic policy but also Canada’s international relationships and moral authority.

“Mark Carney’s investments will affect not only his decisions about laws, policies, taxes and subsidies that affect businesses in Canada but also, given Brookfield’s business interests around the world, will also taint the Canadian government’s relationships,” Conacher said. “This will weaken the government’s actions concerning other countries, including countries like China that interfere in Canadian politics and threaten Canada’s interests in many ways.”

In yet another pre-election investigation published in February 2025, The Bureau delved into Carney’s deep political and business networks that bridge global trade interests converging around China and pro-Beijing Western business elites — networks that illustrate the same theme of ethical conflicts haunting Ottawa today.

As Canada braced for a leadership change — with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau poised to step down in February — the central question of Carney’s campaign, as The Bureau reported, was whether he would govern differently from the deeply unpopular Trudeau. That framework held until Carney’s team succeeded in shifting baby boomer voters onto a new predominant election issue: that he was the best leader to confront President Donald Trump in a trade war — a claim that, in hindsight, appears absurd to critics, given Carney’s massive personal investment interests in American companies.

Regardless, back in February, Carney’s camp insisted he was a fundamentally different figure from Trudeau.

Yet The Bureau’s closer examination of Carney’s elite network — guided by the principle that long-standing relationships of trust and shared financial interests shape governance — revealed a constellation of global influencers deeply tied to the World Economic Forum and China’s trade and finance arms, particularly the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). At its core, this network of influential figures — whose stated goals center on consolidating financial power across borders to coordinate carbon-reduction policies and progressive social outcomes — included not just Carney and Trudeau but also former Canadian ambassador to China Dominic Barton, Trudeau campaign backers Mark Wiseman and Gerald Butts, and AIIB’s Jin Liqun, a senior Chinese Communist Party operative.

Carney’s influence also appeared to extend into Canada’s state broadcaster. Former Power & Politics host Evan Solomon — who in 2015 was embroiled in an art-dealing scandal involving Carney, whom he referred to as “the Guv” — later joined a consultancy with Carney’s wife and Gerald Butts. In a leaked email, cited in The Toronto Star’s 2015 art-dealing exposé, Solomon reportedly wrote: “Next year in terms of the Guv will be very interesting. He has access to the highest power network in the world.”

As it turned out, the ties between the former CBC art-dealing host and the former Bank of Canada governor stood the test of years. Solomon was ultimately chosen by Carney to run for the Liberal Party in Toronto and now serves as his Minister of Artificial Intelligence — a revealing trajectory that exemplifies the ethical ambiguity behind Carney’s deeply intertwined media, business, and political influence networks.

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It’s Time To End Canada’s Protectionist Supply Management Regime

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Giesbrecht

Senior Fellow Brian Giesbrecht says it’s time to stop coddling millionaire dairy barons. Supply management drives up grocery bills, blocks trade and makes Canada a global joke. Australia fixed it—we can too.

Canadians are paying the price for political cowardice

Canada’s outdated supply management system forces the average Canadian family to spend $500 a year to protect a small group of wealthy dairy producers, most of them millionaires. This protectionist regime enriches a few at the expense of many, drives up food prices and undermines Canada’s credibility in trade negotiations. It no longer fits the times, and it has to go.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about attacking dairy farmers. Most are hardworking, conscientious people who’ve built their lives around a system they didn’t create. They rise early, work long hours, rarely take holidays and deserve fair compensation if the system is dismantled. But good intentions don’t justify bad policy.

Under supply management, the government tightly controls how much dairy, poultry and eggs Canadian farmers can produce and imposes steep tariffs—sometimes more than 400 per cent—on imported products to limit competition. The result is artificially high prices, limited consumer choice and retaliatory tariffs from other countries.

This system, once designed to protect small family farms, is now dominated by fewer than 10,000 large operations, many worth millions. It no longer serves its original purpose, yet it remains in place because of political cowardice. Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney both know the system is flawed but won’t challenge it. Why? Because it’s popular in Quebec, a province with significant electoral influence. No party wants to risk alienating those voters.

Australia and New Zealand once faced similar challenges. They phased out their systems, fairly compensated farmers through levies and built globally competitive dairy sectors. We can too. Trump’s return to power may force our hand, but it also gives us an opportunity to act on what we should have done long ago.

Even without outside pressure, the inefficiency is clear. Every year, billions of litres of milk are dumped when quotas are exceeded. At the same time, Canadian companies like Saputo are forced to relocate abroad to reach global markets. Our artisan cheese producers are trapped in a small domestic economy while foreign markets block our exports in retaliation for our own protectionism.

The hypocrisy is glaring. We call for free trade but defend a system that imposes up to 400 per cent tariffs on imports. Our global partners are right to scoff.

Trump did. In a social media post, he wrote: “Canada is a very difficult country to TRADE with, including the fact that they have charged our Farmers as much as 400 per cent Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products.” And in his July 10 letter announcing 35 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods, he added: “Canada charges extraordinary Tariffs to our Dairy Farmers—up to 400 per cent—and that is even assuming our Dairy Farmers even have access to sell their products to the people of Canada.”

This isn’t just an American objection. High-quality dairy from France and Germany can’t be sold in Canada because of our import barriers. Their governments respond by blocking our dairy exports. Canada loses jobs, investment and credibility.

Some defenders claim foreign dairy is unsafe. But countries like France and Germany have food safety standards as strict as ours. And Canada already has legal mechanisms to block substandard imports. We don’t need tariffs for that.

Former Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay said it plainly: supply management is a dead end. So did Maxime Bernier, who made it a central issue during his bid for the Conservative leadership. The dairy lobby made sure he didn’t win. And we’re still stuck.

Now, all parties have voted to exclude supply management from current trade talks. We are entering negotiations that demand fair treatment while protecting one of the most unfair systems in the developed world. It’s a national embarrassment.

But this can change. A phased buyout funded by a modest, temporary levy—not taxpayer dollars—could end supply management and open our dairy sector to global opportunity. Australia and New Zealand proved it works. Their citizens don’t pay $10 for butter or yogurt. Neither should we.

It’s time to stop protecting the past. Dismantle the system. Free our producers. Lower grocery bills. Restore our credibility.

Maxime Bernier saw it in 2017. Trump is saying it again in 2025.

This time, we’d better listen.

Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge and senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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