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Alberta

Poor forest management, not climate change causing record wildfires: Forest Products Association of Canada and the Indigenous Resource Network

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Wildfire EWF-031 located southeast of Edson, AB. Image provided by the Government of Alberta.

Article submitted by Derek Nighbor, President and CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) and  John Desjarlais, Executive Director of Indigenous Resource Network (IRN)

Canada’s present and future wildfire threat demands more sustainable forest management

By Derek Nighbor and John Desjarlais
It may only be June, but Canada is facing one of its most extreme wildfire seasons in history. Already, over seven times the forested land base that Canada’s foresters sustainably harvest on an annual basis has been scorched by fire.

A 2021 study by the Canadian Forest Service, suggests the threat to communities is expected to increase in the future. It also highlights that remote First Nations communities made up almost one-third of all evacuees and evacuation events in recent decades and will be at the forefront of the impact in the future years.

To chart our path forward, it is important to recognize that 60% of the trees in Canada’s boreal forest are in the 61-140 year age range. As trees reach maturity, they lose their ability to sequester carbon and are at greater risk of succumbing to the effects of drought, windstorms, pests, and fire. And as our climate continues to change, the severity of these disturbances will continue to escalate.

Simply protecting forests across a natural fire-prone region like the boreal is not an effective climate strategy. Nor is it an effective public safety plan. This is further supported by findings of Parks Canada that show many of Canada’s parks are now net carbon sources due to worsening natural disturbances.

Indigenous leadership offers a deep understanding of how the forest evolves and how it can be managed in a way that is both environmentally and economically sustainable. For centuries, Indigenous communities have renewed and regenerated the forest, preserving biodiversity, and mitigating the impacts of wildfire by removing excess fuel (dead or decaying wood that can be kindling for the next fire) through cultural burns. These practices in turn make forests less prone to other disturbances like insects and disease.

In Finland, Norway and Sweden a January 2022 publication by the International Boreal Forest Researchers Association (IBFRA) shows how an active approach to forest management is paying dividends. Fire and natural disturbance levels are 50-60 times less than they are in Canada. Furthermore, Scandinavians are getting 5 to 7 times the amount of wood out of the same sized plot of land compared to Canada to produce low carbon products for domestic infrastructure, household, and bioenergy needs.

Much of the wood harvested to reduce fuel in the forest may be of insufficient quality for milling into lumber or other solid wood products. However, it presents an opportunity for bioenergy which is already Canada’s second largest source of renewable energy, provides five times the energy of wind and solar combined, and is the largest source of renewable energy in half the provinces. The CHAR Technologies-Lake Nipigon Forest Management Inc. partnership is a great example of what is possible. The proposed renewable natural gas (RNG) and biocoal plant in the Lake Nipigon Ontario area, will maximize the value of low-grade wood and help produce a steady, yearly revenue stream for Indigenous communities in the area.

There is a way to ensure our forests remain both productive and sustainable in Canada, and it’s not a choice between the environment and forest management. The two go together. We need to embrace more active management of our forests, collaboration with Indigenous communities, and look to lessons learned from the Nordic countries to help get us there. In the face of a changing climate, active management of our forests is more important than ever.

Derek Nighbor is the President and CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC).
John Desjarlais is the Executive Director of Indigenous Resource Network (IRN)

Alberta

Media melts down as Danielle Smith moves to end ‘transitioning’ of children in Alberta

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From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

After Alberta’s Danielle Smith put forth legislation to protect kids from being gender ‘transitioned,’ the Canadian media went on a predictable melt down, citing ‘experts’ who blatantly lie to advance the LGBT agenda.

A year after announcing her intention to combat transgender ideology and protect children, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has tabled three pieces of UCP (United Conservative Party) government legislation: 

  • The Education Amendment Act 2024 will require parental consent for “socially transitioning” children under the age of 16 (changing a child’s name or “preferred pronouns”). The bill also gives parents an “opt-in” option for any sexual or content at school. Smith has emphasized that the Alberta Teaching Profession Commission has the power to discipline teachers if they decide to break the law. 
  • The Health Statues Amendment Act 2024 will ban the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, as well as prohibit sex change surgeries on minors. 
  • The Fairness and Safety in Sport Act will ban trans-identifying men from female sports teams.  

Together, these three bills represent the most definitive pushback against gender ideology in Canada by any premier. Smith’s decision to announce her intent to pursue such legislation and then wait has turned out to be politically savvy—it has given the UCP government a good look at the LGBT response, and during that time the U.K.’s Labour government has successfully fought to maintain a similar ban in the courts and publicly rebutted many of the scare tactics used by LGBT activists.

Smith and the UCP are thus walking into this debate with eyes wide open, and are clearly certain that the public is on their side (it is) and that the legislation can survive the court challenges surely coming from LGBT activists. The policies are clearly popular with the UCP party’s base, who handed Smith a staggering 91.5% approval rating in her leadership review at UCP gathering in Red Deer last Saturday.  

The party also passed 35 policy resolutions, including several that indicate the UCP’s willingness to go further in fighting transgender ideology, with resolutions that would restrict “exclusively female spaces” like bathrooms and changerooms to females and designating transgender surgeries as “elective cosmetic procedures” not funded by the taxpayer. The motions received near-unanimous support.  

The Canadian press, unsurprisingly, is working hard to present policies that the vast majority of Canadians support as an attack on fundamental norms (albeit norms that only surfaced in the last few years and were never presented to voters). Global News ran the headline: “Alberta unveils 3 sweeping bills affecting trans and gender-diverse youth.” It is important to note that the press accepts the premises of transgender ideology as the starting point for their reporting, with heavy usage of nonsensical phrases like “gender-diverse youth,” which implies that there are many genders. 

In fact, Global News and other Canadian outlets trotted out talking points that have been definitively rebutted by the U.K.’s Cass Review and multiple medical studies—in fact, even the New York Times has been reporting on the permanent harms of puberty blockers over the past several years. An example from Global News: 

Alberta parents of gender-diverse youth like Haley Wray believe the new laws will give kids less choice — especially when it comes to health-care that is not permanent but instead, gives kids time to work through their identity struggles. 

‘Hormone blockers are a very valuable tool,’ Wray said, explaining they have a very small window of effectiveness to pause, but not prevent, puberty. ‘It is reversible because nothing changes. And what that does is it allows youth and families to have that that pause, that break to explore further, validate, understand what this means and know that permanent changes aren’t happening.’

Wray believes the proposed legislation will make the province a less safe place for tens of thousands of Alberta kids who aren’t straight. It’s why, Wray says, a growing number of families with transgender children are now grappling with whether Alberta is a place they can stay. ‘I know people who have, and I know people who genuinely feel like there is likely nowhere to go,’ she said. 

This is incorrect. Puberty blockers cause permanent damage, and children may be rendered permanently sterile after taking them for a relatively short period of time. Puberty is not something that can be “paused,” and it frequently causes irreversible rather than reversible damage. Smith and her government understand this, which is why they have decided to pass this legislation—not, as nearly every press outlet claimed, to “target trans youth,” but to protect them. 

The CBC chimed in with sentences like this one: 

Terms like ‘biological female’ and ‘biological male’ can be used to imply that transgender people are still their assigned sex at birth, despite their identity. 

To translate: a scientifically accurate and precise statement is now an ideological one, but inherently ideological language invented by the transgender movement over the past decade is, in fact, technically accurate. People can identify as anything they want; it is irrelevant to their biology. The CBC presents pointing this out as some sort of propagandistic attack on vulnerable people. 

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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Alberta

Alberta calling for federal election! Premier Smith demands feds scrap dangerous oil and gas production caps

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Premier Danielle Smith, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz and Minister of Energy and Minerals Brian Jean issued the following statement on the proposed federal oil and gas production cap:

“This production cap will hurt families, hurt businesses and hurt Canada’s economy. We will defend our province, our country and our Constitutional rights.

“Make no mistake, this cap violates Canada’s constitution. Section 92A clearly gives provinces exclusive jurisdiction over non-renewable natural resource development yet this cap will require a one million barrel a day production cut by 2030.

“The evidence is overwhelming. Three reports from reputable firms have shown that these regulations will sucker-punch Canada’s economy, a million barrels cut every day according to S&P Global, $28 billion a year in lost GDP according to Deloitte, and up to 150,000 lost jobs according to the Conference Board of Canada.

“The losses to GDP mean billions a year will disappear from the economy. Billions that won’t be going towards new schools, hospitals and roads, all for a reckless ideological scheme that will not reduce global emissions.

“Ultimately, this cap will lead Alberta and our country into economic and societal decline. The average Canadian family would be left with up to $419 less for groceries, mortgage payments and utilities every month. Canadian parents and workers will suffer while Justin Trudeau outsources the duty to provide safe, affordable, reliable and responsibly produced oil and gas to dictators and less clean producers around the world. We could be the solution. Instead, Ottawa would rather sacrifice our ability to lead.

“Tweaks won’t work. This cap must be scrapped. Alberta’s government is actively exploring the use of every legal option, including a constitutional challenge and the use of the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act. We will not stand idly by while the federal government sacrifices our prosperity, our constitution and our quality of life for its extreme agenda.”

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