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Opinion

Does Scottish gov’t turmoil signal the end of the ‘green’ agenda’s stranglehold on Europe?

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Former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

‘Green’ politics is now understood as a campaign for electoral and national suicide. With the coming European elections the writing is on the wall for globalist ‘progressives’ across the continent.

The First Minister of Scotland, Humza Yousaf, quit on live television on April 29, following the collapse of his left/Green Party coalition government. A power sharing agreement between his bizarrely named Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Greens was broken over the SNP’s retreat on Net Zero commitments.

Despite his camera savvy assertions, Yousaf’s departure has nothing to do with either duty or principle, which he stressed in the speech announcing his resignation. It is the result of a feared public backlash against higher taxes, over-regulation, and the madness of progressive “green” policies which prefigures a European political realignment.

READ: Net Zero’s days are numbered? Why Europeans are souring on the climate agenda

Yousaf’s coalition with the Greens fell apart because his SNP had recognized that the extreme Net Zero agenda was unrealistic, and could deliver only electoral suicide. The SNP under Yousaf had abandoned its “decarbonization targets” in early April, with Green co-leaders Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie describing Yousaf’s attempts to ditch extremely unpopular policies as “an act of political cowardice” and a “betrayal.”

As a result, the Greens withdrew support from the SNP, which fell one seat short of a majority in 2021. A new deal with a new leader is unlikely, and the chaos spells doom for the SNP with an election coming this year. The SNP remains in power – for the time being – albeit in a minority government.

Wider lessons for globalist ‘greens’

The lesson from Scotland is that the liberal parties of Europe face electoral meltdown. A recent report from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) warned of a “sharp right turn” following EU elections in June:

Inside the European Parliament, a populist right coalition of Christian democrats, conservatives, and radical right MEPs could emerge with a majority for the first time.

The future spells doom for the doomsayers, it seems, with the globalist agenda under severe threat. The existence of the globalist EU itself may be threatened, with Unherd saying in December that this decade may be the EU’s last.

The ECFR report continued:

This ‘sharp right turn’ is likely to have significant consequences for European-level policies, which will affect the foreign policy choices that the EU can make, particularly on environmental issues, where the new majority is likely to oppose ambitious EU action to tackle climate change.

Germany next?

The SNP’s partnership in power with the “green” zealots mirrors that of the government of Europe’s former economic and industrial powerhouse, Germany.

The crisis-hit Scholz administration relies on the support of a Green party whose policies have not only devastated the economy with deindustrializationlockdown debt, and soaring energy prices, but have also, as in Scotland, advanced a raft of extremist “progressive” issues, such as the promotion of the “trans” movement, opposition to border and immigration control, with both Green parties pursuing policies strongly resented by the public.

Greens Go Further! Green Party campaign leaflet, Berlin, 2021

Scotland’s Greens sought to ban wood-burning stoves, and Germany’s Greens were met with similar outrage with their decision to ban gas-fired central heating, and mandate the use of heat pumps. Yet the money for the subsidies required has run out – as “green” policies have helped to destroy the economy.

The Greens succeeded in closing the last of Germany’s nuclear power stations in August 2023, but the policy of replacing home heating which works with an expensive alternative that does not, was met with widespread opposition.

As a result, it is not just heat pump sales that have plummeted in Germany, but the sales pitch of the international “green” lobby.

Faced with defeat in the European elections, which the ECFR blames on “national parties start[ing] to respond to the changing opinions of their voters,” many parties of the liberal establishment are rowing back on Net Zero commitments – as well as on other issues beloved of the shock-haired shock troops of “progress.”

The face of globalist progressives

The co-leader of the Scottish Greens is Patrick Harvie, whose social media accounts notify readers that his pronouns are he/him.

The causes he supports are an object lesson in how Net Zero is not the only crazy agenda aggressively pushed by the Greens, whose policy platform is increasingly seen as electorally toxic. He is a self-described member of the so-called “LGBTQ+ community,” identifying as “bisexual.”

Like many progressive fanatics, he strongly supports the futile and avoidable destruction of the population and nation of Ukraine.

Here he is in 2020, championing the prescription of hormones and surgery to sexualized children as “trans healthcare.”

Naturally, he repeatedly describes Christians with disdain, labelling the Christian Institute as a “hate group.” The institute “campaigns for “the furtherance and promotion of the Christian religion in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.”

As Britain’s Telegraph reported, explaining the background to the collapse of Yousaf’s SNP-Green coalition:

Harvie’s determination to indulge his permanently-angry purple-haired activists even at the expense of the Scottish Government’s credibility was probably the last straw for many senior SNP ministers, if not for Yousaf himself.

Harvie is a strong advocate of abortion. He and his party describe the reminder that the lives of unborn children have value as “misinformation and intimidation,” as they seek to afford “dignity and privacy” to women killing their children, “as they are at every other medical procedure.”

SPUC, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, pointed out that the measure to legally enforce “buffer zones” around abortion facilities was “opposed by 70 percent” of the Scottish public.

The Greens in Scotland, as in Germany, vehemently oppose any attempt to control mass migration – however weak and belated.

The Greens have also refused to alter their stance on the now discredited notion of “gender affirming care” for children.

Against scientific advice, the Greens prefer to support the views of the “trans community,” saying “lived experience” is a better guide to reality than the clinical evidence that prescribing hormones and surgery to confused children is wrong, and causes irreversible harm.

The U.K.’s Cass Review, published in mid-April, cited a lack of “evidence based guidelines,” noting that pro-transgender organizations such as WPATH had exerted considerable influence in the adoption of the Dutch Pathway – a template which resulted in rapid access to hormones and surgery including for children.

Cass said in her introduction, “Although some think the clinical approach should be based on a social justice model, the NHS works in an evidence-based way.”

The rejection of the fast track to “puberty blockers” mirrors a similar preference for evidence-based decisions in Western electorates.

The Godless, nation-wrecking policies of national suicide have produced enough evidence of the motives, methods, and monumental disaster of the globalist Green agenda. It is anti-natalist, pro-open borders, anti-family, and seeks to promote the sexual distortion of the lives of what few children we still have. In a final irony, is also destroying the economic prosperity on whose subsidies it relies for its own survival.

Happily, “green” politics is now understood as a campaign for electoral as well as national suicide. This realization has spelled the end of the appalling Scottish coalition government, and with the coming European elections the writing is on the wall for globalist “progressives” across the continent.

Humza Yousaf’s left/Green government was just the first Green-backed coalition which has ended in disaster. It will not be the last. For the reality based community, the best news is yet to come.

Media

Cancel culture wins ultimate victory as murder of Charlie Kirk ghoulishly celebrated by radical Left, media included

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Meanwhile, CBC journo declares nuclear family to be an extremist construct. Plus! Old school journos fight back

I didn’t want to write this week about how Canadian media covered the assassination of Charlie Kirk. There was far too much coverage, way too much raw anger on social media and there’s probably more to come, so I figured it would be best to hold off.

That didn’t work. So this post is a little longer than usual, but it’s all good stuff. Let’s go.

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First, I have to say this: when people without the capacity to reason hear words with which they disagree and are unable to counter, they get frustrated. Then frustration turns to anger, which leads to demonization which is one bolt action rifle away from violence. We’ve seen it through cancel culture, in which Canada engages enthusiastically, often fueled by media no longer willing to fully defend freedom of speech. That predisposition is neither professional nor helpful if we wish to sustain a healthy, modern liberal democracy.

And we all know there is not a single university in our country that would have permitted Kirk to speak, likely citing the “security” artifice that so often is accepted by media at face value. We are also aware that a great many in the news industry would have supported the shutting down of Kirk (with whom I would have had many differences of opinion).

Take, for instance, the Tweeted reaction to Kirk’s death posted by the former chair of the journalism school at Thompson Rivers University, Alan Bass:

“Do you remember the Nazis? Sometimes unfortunately it’s necessary to kill evil people to save many lives.”

Bass is also listed as an editor for the Canadian Journalism Foundation.

Manitoba’s Minister of Families Nahanni Fontaine was not unhappy Kirk was killed, noting in a post initially missef by legacy media and that she later deleted that he was “racist, xenophic, transphobic, Islamophobic, white nationalist, sexist” you name it – “the man stood for nothing but hate.” She later apologized.

The federally funded news platform Cult Mtl said “to hell“ with Charlie Kirk “you reap what you sow” while a University of Toronto professor who labelled Postmedia fascist was on leave after Tweeting that shooting was “too good” for fascists.

Then, just when I thought there was no more to be said, CBC posted a list of “Some of Charlie Kirk’s most controversial takes” and that he “courted controversy with statements that seemed (my emphasis) designed to provoke those who disagreed with him” – an accusation that could be levelled at the doorstep of pretty much every opinion writer ever. Many on social media interpreted this post as excusing his murder in a “he had it coming” fashion. No doubt Bass enjoyed it, as he would have this piece by the Guardian, the UK’s voice of the Left. Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan complained CBC wasn’t properly laying blame, the Mother Corp switched from describing Kirk as a prominent conservative commentator to “far right activist” and stirred up a storm by failing to correct an expert who falsely claimed Kirk had called for the execution of gay people. Whew!

Enough. This clip – and it applies to all sides – illustrates the real problem. And I’ll leave it at that. For now.

Gurwinder 3d
“What we as a culture have to get back to is being able to have a reasonable disagreement where violence is not an option.” —Charlie Kirk
753 101

Speaking of tolerating the views of others, .Catherine Cullen, host of CBC’s “award-winning” The House, opened the Mother Corp’s cultural kimono last week and gave us all a good look at the goods while interviewing Industry Minister Melanie Joly. Prime Minister Mark Carney had planned for his cabinet to hear from Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the US think tank behind Project 2025 and almost certainly a fan of Charlie Kirk.

Joly defended the planned encounter as an exercise in understanding (it never took place) but Cullen focused on what she believed was one of the Heritage Foundation’s most intolerable positions.

“But this is a group that holds positions like this one: Quote, married men and women are the ideal natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceive,” said Cullen.

“Tell me about the decision to say we as a government can learn from this person rather than standing up against the positions that he’s advocating for.”

It appears from this statement that, within the CBC culture, the nuclear family is a radical proposition. Certainly some people see it that way. But a lot of people don’t. And while we all know many good people in single parent families, blended families and same sex families, for instance, the structure that so alarms the CBC has been aspired to for many, many thousands of years. It’s not necessary to agree with it. No one imposes it and if people have arguments against it, they can certainly make their case just as those who favour it should be able to do so without condemnation.

Mom, dad and the kids is hardly a radical construct. Just don’t say it out loud around the CBC which appears to have taken it upon itself to not just report the news but to redefine and police our culture.

What Cullen should have done was phrase her question without owning it. She could have conducted the interview by asking something like this:

“Minister Joly, there are some Canadians who strongly disagree with some of the positions promoted by the Heritage Foundation and object to you being open to engaging with them. What’s your response!”

But, she didn’t. The opportunity was instead seized to evangelize for personal beliefs and, in doing so, journalism was harmed.


Switching to CTV, Alberta’s new guidelines for athletics require all participants in female sports to confirm they were assigned to that biological category at birth.

That means students now have to sign a form attesting that is the case. CTV found – or was approached by – a 14-year-old volleyball player who called the guidelines unnecessary and “transphobic.” Its team also found the student athlete’s mother who, equally troubled, said she had spoken to thousands of parents and “Nobody is worried about their girls playing with trans girls and getting hurt in unfair play.”

Reporters Angela Amato and Connor Hogg apparently agreed because, despite assigning them both to the story, CTV was unable to find any parents in Alberta who agreed with the new sports guidelines. Indeed, it’s unclear they even tried.

Which is too bad because had they done so they could have produced a pretty interesting, fulsome story establishing a range of perspectives on the issue and fully informing their viewers and readers. Instead, they left one side of the debate convinced CTV is hostile to its perspective and diminished public trust in their craft and their employer.


Brickbat this week goes to Glen McGregor of Rogers‘ City News for completely unnecessary smartassery when he used his Twitter account to point out a typo in a Conservative Party news release. As he well knows, there is no shortage of political partisans on social media who are happy to mock their opponents on these occasions. McGregor inserting himself into their ranks only fueled public mistrust in journalism and City News’s reputation as an outlet that can be trusted to report without prejudice.

And a bow goes to Brian Kappler – who had a great career reporting for the Montreal Gazette and as a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery – for his dismantling of a CBC News report following Carney’s Monday announcement of things he says his government will do. Parental warning applies.

“Carney will never need sex again after this blow job,” Tweeted Kapler. “600 promises/claims in this; not one balanced with a performance check. Not one hint that all these handouts will blow up the deficit. And “elbows up” – once parroted so lovingly by CBC – has vanished down the memory hole.”

Undaunted, CBC’s The National carried on and its coverage was described to me by another journalist:

CBC led the newscast with six minutes of discussion out of a news release event in St John’s. Reporter wasn’t even there, just used video and multiple clips from the event, then filed out of Ottawa.

“Followed with boring talkback about more undefined help coming for business affected by tariffs. I mean, it’s not even effective propaganda.. They’re boring the audience to death.”

And there you have it. Yours truly isn’t the only one in despair for the trade within which he once toiled.

(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)

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Business

Carney’s Ethics Test: Opposition MP’s To Challenge Prime Minister’s Financial Ties to China

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Brookfield’s 2017 purchase of Teekay Offshore tied it to a corporate family whose LNG arm partnered with China’s COSCO to ship Russian Arctic gas under the shadow of Crimea-era sanctions.

In 2017, Brookfield, the investment giant that would later launch Prime Minister Mark Carney’s global business and political reach, bought control of Teekay Offshore Partners — a shipping deal that now casts a long geopolitical shadow.

On the surface, it looked like just another Brookfield deal. But behind it lies a complicated backstory, one that deepens concerns about the global-security risks lurking beneath Carney’s sprawling portfolio of more than 550 corporate holdings.

Teekay Offshore was part of the wider Teekay corporate family, which also included Teekay LNG Partners. That LNG arm entered a major joint venture with China LNG Shipping (CLNG), a subsidiary of COSCO, the Chinese state-owned shipping giant. Together, they financed and operated six ice-breaking carriers built to transport Russian natural gas from the Arctic Yamal LNG project.

The timing could hardly have been more sensitive. The Teekay-COSCO venture was launched in 2014 — the same year Russia seized Crimea and the West hit Moscow with sanctions. Five years later, in 2019, the U.S. government sanctioned a COSCO affiliate for carrying Iranian oil, which briefly caused Teekay’s joint venture with COSCO’s China LNG Shipping on the Arctic Yamal project to be treated as a “Blocked Person” under American rules.

The sanction was lifted after COSCO restructured its ownership.

Brookfield never owned Teekay LNG; its stake was in the Teekay Offshore arm, a separate division of the Teekay corporate family. But the two companies shared the Teekay brand, and as long as Brookfield remained tied to that structure, it was positioned uncomfortably close to a Sino-Russian natural gas venture that Washington had already flagged as risky.

COSCO – or China Ocean Shipping Company, a state-owned maritime giant – is a story in itself.

It has repeatedly faced U.S. scrutiny over its potential role in illicit and sensitive activities. In 1996, U.S. Customs agents seized 2,000 disassembled Chinese assault rifles hidden in containers on a COSCO ship at the Port of Oakland, allegedly bound for Mexican drug cartels. While official blame fell on Poly Technologies Inc. — a Chinese arms exporter — and the smuggling network behind the shipment, the incident heightened concerns about COSCO’s links to Beijing’s military and underground proliferation networks.

Other troubling episodes include a 1993 incident involving a COSCO vessel suspected of carrying chemical-weapons precursors to Iran, a 2015 seizure of explosives on a COSCO ship in Colombia headed for Cuba, and the 2019 U.S. sanctions on COSCO subsidiaries for violating Iran oil embargoes.

The Bureau has also reported on Canadian concerns. In December 1999, former Crown prosecutor Scott Newark wrote to an Ottawa intelligence review panel, noting that Canadian intelligence officials had long scrutinized COSCO’s activities at Vancouver’s port, citing alleged ties to both Chinese Triads and the People’s Liberation Army.

As Carney steps back into Parliament today, he is likely to face scathing questions from the Opposition not only about his Brookfield holdings and potential conflicts tied to deals like Teekay, but also over his government’s billion-dollar loan to BC Ferries for vessels built at a Chinese state-owned shipyard linked to Beijing’s civil-military fusion strategy.

This is where Carney himself enters the Brookfield story. After stepping down from the Bank of England in 2020, he joined Brookfield as Vice Chair and Head of ESG and Impact Investing. He later became Chair of Brookfield Asset Management. That means while Brookfield was still closely tied to Teekay Offshore, Carney was one of the most senior figures shaping Brookfield’s strategy — and holding significant personal stakes in its success.

Today, Brookfield has no exposure through Teekay. Teekay Offshore has since been renamed Altera Infrastructure and separated from its parent. In other words: while Brookfield has avoided direct legal risk, the reputational and geopolitical iceberg remains just beneath the waterline. Fresh controversy now looms in the case of the BC Ferries deal, in which the federal government, through the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which is overseen by Housing Minister and former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, has provided a $1 billion low-interest loan to help BC Ferries purchase four hybrid vessels built by CMI Weihai, a Chinese state-owned shipyard. Opposition MPs say the loan contradicts Carney’s “Buy Canada” rhetoric and risks strengthening a PRC enterprise under civil-military fusion policy, at a moment when Beijing is openly threatening to invade Taiwan — with vessels constructed by state-owned shipbuilders such as CMI Weihai potentially part of that buildup.

As The Bureau has reported, an Ottawa democracy watchdog has already warned that Prime Minister Carney’s sprawling private investments — including substantial holdings in Brookfield as well as shares in more than 550 other companies — create a disabling conflict of interest that cannot be solved by his so-called “ethics screen,” ultimately undermining Ottawa’s credibility and weakening Carney’s capacity to confront hostile regimes, including China.

“PM Carney’s so-called ‘blind’ trust isn’t blind at all,” Democracy Watch stated this summer. “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.”

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.

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