Frontier Centre for Public Policy
No, Mr. Mayor outside organizers are not responsible for student radicalism
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
While there are malevolent outside actors doing what they can with universities, the influential corruption is internal.
In his May 1 press conference on the university student demonstrations, occupations, and riots, New York Mayor Eric Adams blamed outside professional organizers for radicalizing our young people in universities in New York, on campuses throughout the country, and around the world. Exactly who these sinister outside forces are, the mayor did not specify.
Of course, the mayor is correct that there are outside professional organizers and agitators who have infiltrated campuses and encouraged even more extreme measures by demonstrators. Everyone sees the uniformity across the country of materials provided, such as tents and signs.
Yes, these are malevolent forces bent on transforming or destroying the United States. But funders and organizers are facilitators and enablers, not primary motivators. Mr. Adams is right in saying that professionals are behind these upheavals. But outside agitators and funders are not shaping the hearts and minds of university students. Rather, the professionals responsible for students’ mindsets are not external to universities; they are the employees of universities, who have been working on the students, miseducating them, throughout their entire university careers.
The satirical website Babylon Bee gets it right. With reference to the occupation of the Columbia University administration building, the Bee article headline is “Oh No! Indoctrinated Woke Extremists Destroy Woke Extremist Indoctrination Center.”
Quoting an imaginary university official, the Bee stated: “‘We didn’t see this coming,’ said one official. ‘After spending decades brainwashing young, impressionable people into volatile, savage revolutionaries, we were shocked to see them unleash such volatility and savagery while trying to launch a revolution. We wish there had been warning signs along the way.’”
Would that this were only humorous parody. Alas, it is an accurate representation of our universities in the 21st century. The many professors who have joined the demonstrators-occupiers-rioters, and who knows how many administrators and staff, is proof of the nature of today’s education.
The Bee continued:
“Students who engaged in the violent attack were thankful for the years of intense training they received from the institution they were now actively working to destroy. …
“At publishing time, the school’s leadership was confident that the government would do nothing to impede their ongoing efforts to make the country worse and more dangerous.”
The many pleas from well-meaning observers for the occupiers to desist so that students can return to their classes are beside the point. Their classes are where they were radicalized. The faculty itself is almost entirely radicalized.
Left-wing university monoculture today is nothing like the Enlightenment-based university that I attended in the mid-20th century, where the emphasis was on searching for the objective truth of reality using reason, evidence, and well-founded conclusions. Universities have now rejected the search for truth in favor of activism based on far-left Marxist “truths,” which may not be questioned.
Among these “truths” is the certainty that all people in the world are divided between evil, ruthless oppressors and exploiters and innocent, noble victims. In this class conflict, which is the only important feature of human life, black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), LGBT people, females, the disabled, and Muslims are all innocent victims of whites, Asians, and Jews, heterosexuals, males, the able, and Christians.
“Victims” are represented in universities by grievance subjects, which at first leaked into but then flooded the humanities and social sciences. Feminist, Black, Queer, Islamic, and Disabled Studies do not exist to investigate truth and reality but to advocate for the victims they represent, and to spur change to the advantage of their designated category.
As part of this project, one common belief among grievance subjects, and now the humanities and social sciences, is that Western civilization must be abandoned as oppressive, and Western countries, such as the United States and Canada, must be transformed entirely or destroyed. Anti-colonial studies “prove” that these countries are in any case invalid and that the American and Canadian citizens are “colonial settlers” without legitimate standing.
University administrators are not innocent victims of these trends. On the contrary, they are primary instigators. They impose the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” manifestations of the “social justice” ideology, leading to official implementation of reverse racism, reverse sexism, and segregation. Discrimination against “oppressors” is not only tolerated; it is also systematically imposed and celebrated.
While student bodies have remained consistent in size, and the professoriat has, if anything, shrunk, not to mention the increased reliance on untenured, temporary “sessional” lecturers (a great financial saving), administrations have exploded in size, increasing to double or triple in most universities. One source of this is “DEI officers,” hired at every level and in every unit, at huge cost, to serve as political commissars policing thought and speech, so that no one can deviate from politically “correct” belief and expression.
Any professor, lecturer, or instructor professing opinions not in line with “social justice” and radical change are quickly identified and surrounded by DEI commissars and forced to confess error, go to re-education programs, lose privileges of various kinds—forget promotion and funding—and, if stubborn in deviation, termination outright, and banishment from the university. This puts great power in the hands of students, who only have to say that they are offended by what a professor says, and she (more rarely he today) is on the chopping block.
So while there are malevolent outside actors doing what they can with universities, the influential corruption is internal. If you block the outsiders, nothing will change. The universities are the source of the radicalism.
Philip Carl Salzman is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at McGill University and Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Ian Madsen
Canada’s growing LNG exports are opening global markets and reducing dependence on U.S. prices, if Ottawa allows the pipelines and export facilities needed to reach those markets
Canada’s LNG advantage is clear, but federal bottlenecks still risk turning a rare opening into another missed opportunity
Canada is finally in a position to profit from global LNG demand. But that opportunity will slip away unless Ottawa supports the pipelines and export capacity needed to reach those markets.
Most major LNG and pipeline projects still need federal impact assessments and approvals, which means Ottawa can delay or block them even when provincial and Indigenous governments are onside. Several major projects are already moving ahead, which makes Ottawa’s role even more important.
The Ksi Lisims floating liquefaction and export facility near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, along with the LNG Canada terminal at Kitimat, B.C., Cedar LNG and a likely expansion of LNG Canada, are all increasing Canada’s export capacity. For the first time, Canada will be able to sell natural gas to overseas buyers instead of relying solely on the U.S. market and its lower prices.
These projects give the northeast B.C. and northwest Alberta Montney region a long-needed outlet for its natural gas. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing made it possible to tap these reserves at scale. Until 2025, producers had no choice but to sell into the saturated U.S. market at whatever price American buyers offered. Gaining access to world markets marks one of the most significant changes for an industry long tied to U.S. pricing.
According to an International Gas Union report, “Global liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade grew by 2.4 per cent in 2024 to 411.24 million tonnes, connecting 22 exporting markets with 48 importing markets.” LNG still represents a small share of global natural gas production, but it opens the door to buyers willing to pay more than U.S. markets.
LNG Canada is expected to export a meaningful share of Canada’s natural gas when fully operational. Statistics Canada reports that Canada already contributes to global LNG exports, and that contribution is poised to rise as new facilities come online.
Higher returns have encouraged more development in the Montney region, which produces more than half of Canada’s natural gas. A growing share now goes directly to LNG Canada.
Canadian LNG projects have lower estimated break-even costs than several U.S. or Mexican facilities. That gives Canada a cost advantage in Asia, where LNG demand continues to grow.
Asian LNG prices are higher because major buyers such as Japan and South Korea lack domestic natural gas and rely heavily on imports tied to global price benchmarks. In June 2025, LNG in East Asia sold well above Canadian break-even levels. This price difference, combined with Canada’s competitive costs, gives exporters strong margins compared with sales into North American markets.
The International Energy Agency expects global LNG exports to rise significantly by 2030 as Europe replaces Russian pipeline gas and Asian economies increase their LNG use. Canada is entering the global market at the right time, which strengthens the case for expanding LNG capacity.
As Canadian and U.S. LNG exports grow, North American supply will tighten and local prices will rise. Higher domestic prices will raise revenues and shrink the discount that drains billions from Canada’s economy.
Canada loses more than $20 billion a year because of an estimated $20-per-barrel discount on oil and about $2 per gigajoule on natural gas, according to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy’s energy discount tracker. Those losses appear directly in public budgets. Higher natural gas revenues help fund provincial services, health care, infrastructure and Indigenous revenue-sharing agreements that rely on resource income.
Canada is already seeing early gains from selling more natural gas into global markets. Government support for more pipelines and LNG export capacity would build on those gains and lift GDP and incomes. Ottawa’s job is straightforward. Let the industry reach the markets willing to pay.
Ian Madsen is a senior policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
At what point does Ottawa admit its EV plan isn’t working?
Electric vehicles produce more pollution than the gas-powered cars they’re replacing.
This revelation, emerging from life-cycle and supply chain audits, exposes the false claim behind Ottawa’s more than $50 billion experiment. A Volvo study found that manufacturing an EV generates 70 per cent more emissions than building a comparable conventional vehicle because battery production is energy-intensive and often powered by coal in countries such as China. Depending on the electricity grid, it can take years or never for an EV to offset that initial carbon debt.
Prime Minister Mark Carney paused the federal electric vehicle (EV) mandate for 2026 due to public pressure and corporate failures while keeping the 2030 and 2035 targets. The mandate requires 20 per cent of new vehicles sold in 2026 to be zero-emission, rising to 60 per cent in 2030 and 100 per cent in 2035. Carney inherited this policy crisis but is reluctant to abandon it.
Industry failures and Trump tariffs forced Ottawa’s hand. Northvolt received $240 million in federal subsidies for a Quebec battery plant before filing for bankruptcy. Lion Electric burned through $100 million before announcing layoffs. Arrival, a U.K.-based electric van and bus manufacturer, collapsed entirely. Stellantis and LG Energy Solution extracted $15 billion for Windsor. Volkswagen secured $13 billion for St. Thomas.
The federal government committed more than $50 billion in subsidies and tax credits to prop up Canada’s EV industry. Ottawa defended these payouts as necessary to match the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which offers major incentives for EV and battery manufacturing. That is twice Manitoba’s annual operating budget. Every Manitoban could have had a two-year tax holiday with the public money Ottawa wasted on EVs.
Even with incentives, EVs reached only 15 per cent of new vehicle sales in 2024, far short of the mandated levels for 2026 and 2030. When federal subsidies ended in January 2025, sales collapsed to nine per cent, revealing the true level of consumer demand. Dealer lots overflowed with unsold inventory. EV sales also slowed in the U.S. and Europe in 2024, showing that cooling demand is a broader trend.
As economist Friedrich Hayek observed, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” Politicians and bureaucrats cannot know what millions of Canadians know about their own needs. When federal ministers mandate which vehicles Canadians must buy and which companies deserve billions, they substitute the judgment of a few hundred officials for the collective wisdom of an entire market.
Bureaucrats draft regulations that determine the vehicles Canadians must purchase years from now, as if they can predict technology and consumer preferences better than markets.
Green ideology provided perfect cover. Invoke a climate emergency and fiscal responsibility vanishes. Question more than $50 billion in subsidies and you are labelled a climate denier. Point out the environmental costs of battery production, and you are accused of spreading misinformation.
History repeatedly teaches that central planning always fails. Soviet five-year plans, Venezuela’s resource nationalization and Britain’s industrial policy failures all show the same pattern. Every attempt to run economies from political offices ends in misallocation, waste and outcomes opposite to those promised. Concentrated political power cannot ever match the intelligence of free markets responding to real prices and constraints.
Markets collect information that no central planner can access. Prices signal scarcity and value. Profits and losses reward accuracy and punish error. When governments override these mechanisms with mandates and subsidies, they impair the information system that enables rational economic decisions.
The EV mandate forced a technological shift and failed. Billions in subsidies went to failing companies. Taxpayers absorbed losses while corporations walked away. Workers lost their jobs.
Canada needs a full repeal of the EV mandate and a retreat from PMO planners directing market decisions. The law must be struck, not paused. The contrived 2030 and 2035 targets must be abandoned.
Markets, not cabinet ministers, must determine what technologies Canadians choose.
Marco Navarro-Genie is vice-president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and co-author, with Barry Cooper, of Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).
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