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Alberta

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is leading the fight against our own federal government to save Canada

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Article submitted by Josh Andrus of Project Confederation

A lot of media attention of late has been focused on the Emergencies Act testimonies in Ottawa and Danielle Smith’s rise to the Premier’s Office here in Alberta.

However, the biggest development in federal/provincial politics in the last week might actually have happened in Saskatchewan, where Premier Scott Moe has taken a firm stance against the federal government in a document entitled Drawing the Line: Defending Saskatchewan’s Economic Autonomy.

The paper clearly sets out a problem and then proposes specific solutions.

First, the problem…

The Saskatchewan government has identified nine different federal climate change policies that are estimated to cost the province a total of $111 billion between 2022 and 2035 – the approximate halfway point to the federal government’s 2050 net-zero targets.

The costs of each of the nine policies are:

  • Federal Carbon Tax: $24.7 billion;
  • Oil and Gas Methane Mandate: $6.3 billion;
  • Oil and Gas Emissions Cap: $2.6 billion;
  • Fertilizer Mandate: $19.3 billion;
  • Clean Fuel Regulations: $34.9 billion;
  • Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate: $10.3 billion;
  • Federal Output Based Pricing System: $12.5 billion;
  • Agriculture Methane Initiatives: $0.5 billion;
  • Landfill Methane Mandate: $0.2 billion.

Don’t forget – these are just the direct costs.

We all know that the energy industry powers every other industry and, since energy is required to create almost every other product, as energy prices increase, costs for consumer goods will undoubtedly rise across the board as well.

Scott Moe and his team have a clear understanding of the problem and are deeply concerned about the impacts federal environmental policy can have on the economy.

For a province like Saskatchewan, where total provincial revenue for 2022 was just $17.2 billion, $111 billion is a gigantic cost.

And if that’s the cost to our neighbours, imagine what it will cost here in Alberta!

Remember too, this is just the first half of the federal government’s 2050 plan!

The economic costs of Net Zero 2050 are completely lost on the Trudeau government.

The 2021 Supreme Court of Canada ruling on the constitutionality of the Carbon Tax, as we noted at the time, creates a dangerous precedent where the federal government can essentially trample all over the constitutional jurisdiction of provinces using the Peace, Order, and Good Governance Clause embedded in the constitution.

This means that the Supreme Court has effectively ruled that the federal government can take control of practically any issue, simply by claiming that it is a matter of national concern – completely ignoring provincial jurisdiction.

Consider that the definition of Confederation, as espoused by the Oxford English Dictionary, is a union of sovereign groups or states united for purposes of common action.

Instead, what we now have is a federal government that has decided, upon the alter of climate change, to sacrifice our livelihoods and, with them, the very idea of Canada itself.

If we want to save this country, we need substantial reforms to the way this country is governed.

Thankfully, the Saskatchewan government’s paper also proposes some solutions that include:

  • Provincial legislation to clarify and protect constitutional rights belonging to the province.
  • Pursuing greater autonomy over immigration policy to ensure Saskatchewan has the people it needs.
  • Better recognition of Saskatchewan industry’s contributions to sustainable growth – for example, developing a carbon credit market to support our natural resource industries.
  • Preparing to take legal actions, legislative or otherwise, to maintain control of electricity, fertilizer emission/use targets and oil and gas emissions/production.

Here at Project Confederation, we’re very supportive of these ideas – in fact, many of them are ideas we’ve been promoting not just for Alberta, but for all of the west, since we launched as an organization.

So, props to Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan government for pushing us down the right path.

With your continued support, we can’t help but be excited about what we are capable of as we move forward.

Having seen significant success in Alberta already, we will be expanding our work all across Saskatchewan and the other western provinces in the coming months, as we take on Ottawa and prepare for the onslaught of a hostile federal government over the next few years.

If you’d like to get involved in our campaigns, you can sign up to volunteer with us here.

We also need financial support to continue with our work.

If you can afford to help fund our important work, please click here to make a contribution:

Thank you again to everyone for their help with this campaign and we look forward to working with you on many more issues in the future.

Regards,

Josh Andrus
Executive Director
Project Confederation

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Alberta

Alberta awash in corporate welfare

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From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

To understand Ottawa’s negative impact on Alberta’s economy and living standards, juxtapose two recent pieces of data.

First, in July the Trudeau government made three separate “economic development” spending announcements in  Alberta, totalling more than $80 million and affecting 37 different projects related to the “green economy,” clean technology and agriculture. And second, as noted in a new essay by Fraser Institute senior fellow Kenneth Green, inflation-adjusted business investment (excluding residential structures) in Canada’s extraction sector (mining, quarrying, oil and gas) fell 51.2 per cent from 2014 to 2022.

The productivity gains that raise living standards and improve economic conditions rely on business investment. But business investment in Canada has declined over the past decade and total economic growth per person (inflation-adjusted) from Q3-2015 through to Q1-2024 has been less than 1 per cent versus robust growth of nearly 16 per cent in the United States over the same period.

For Canada’s extraction sector, as Green documents, federal policies—new fuel regulations, extended review processes on major infrastructure projects, an effective ban on oil shipments on British Columbia’s northern coast, a hard greenhouse gas emissions cap targeting oil and gas, and other regulatory initiatives—are largely to blame for the massive decline in investment.

Meanwhile, as Ottawa impedes private investment, its latest bundle of economic development announcements underscores its strategy to have government take the lead in allocating economic resources, whether for infrastructure and public institutions or for corporate welfare to private companies.

Consider these federally-subsidized projects.

A gas cloud imaging company received $4.1 million from taxpayers to expand marketing, operations and product development. The Battery Metals Association of Canada received $850,000 to “support growth of the battery metals sector in Western Canada by enhancing collaboration and education stakeholders.” A food manufacturer in Lethbridge received $5.2 million to increase production of plant-based protein products. Ermineskin Cree Nation received nearly $400,000 for a feasibility study for a new solar farm. The Town of Coronation received almost $900,000 to renovate and retrofit two buildings into a business incubator. The Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada received $400,000 for marketing and other support to help boost clean technology product exports. And so on.

When the Trudeau government announced all this corporate welfare and spending, it naturally claimed it create economic growth and good jobs. But corporate welfare doesn’t create growth and good jobs, it only directs resources (including labour) to subsidized sectors and businesses and away from sectors and businesses that must be more heavily taxed to support the subsidies. The effect of government initiatives that reduce private investment and replace it with government spending is a net economic loss.

As 20th-century business and economics journalist Henry Hazlitt put it, the case for government directing investment (instead of the private sector) relies on politicians and bureaucrats—who did not earn the money and to whom the money does not belong—investing that money wisely and with almost perfect foresight. Of course, that’s preposterous.

Alas, this replacement of private-sector investment with public spending is happening not only in Alberta but across Canada today due to the Trudeau government’s fiscal policies. Lower productivity and lower living standards, the data show, are the unhappy results.

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Alberta

‘Fireworks’ As Defence Opens Case In Coutts Two Trial

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy 

By Ray McGinnis

Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert are on trial for conspiracy to commit murder and firearms charges in relation to the Coutts Blockade into mid-February 2022. In opening her case before a Lethbridge, AB, jury on July 11, Olienick’s lawyer, Marilyn Burns stated “This is a political, criminal trial that is un Canadian.” She told the jury, “You will be shocked, and at the very least, disappointed with how Canada’s own RCMP conducted themselves during and after the Coutts protest,” as she summarized officers’ testimony during presentation of the Crown’s case. Burns also contended that “the conduct of Alberta’s provincial government and Canada’s federal government are entwined with the RCMP.” The arrests of the Coutts Four on the night of February 13 and noon hour of February 14, were key events in a decision by the Clerk of the Privy Council, Janice Charette, and the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, Jody Thomas, to advise Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to invoke the Emergencies Act. Chief Justice Paul Rouleau, in submitting his Public Order Emergency Commission Report to Parliament on February 17, 2023, also cited events at the Coutts Blockade as key to his conclusion that the government was justified in invoking the Emergencies Act.

Justice David Labrenz cautioned attorney Burns regarding her language, after Crown prosecutor Stephen Johnson objected to some of the language in the opening statement of Olienick’s counsel. Futher discussion about the appropriateness of attorney Burns’ statement to the jury is behind a publication ban, as discussions occurred without the jury present.

Justice Labrenz told the jury on July 12, “I would remind you that the presumption of innocence means that both the accused are cloaked with that presumption, unless the Crown proves beyond a reasonable doubt the essential elements of the charge(s).” He further clarified what should result if the jurors were uncertain about which narrative to believe: the account by the Crown, or the account from the accused lawyers. Labrenz stated that such ambivalence must lead to an acquittal; As such a degree of uncertainty regarding which case to trust in does not meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” threshold for a conviction.”

On July 15, 2024, a Lethbridge jury heard evidence from a former employer of Olienicks’ named Brian Lambert. He stated that he had tasked Olienick run his sandstone quarry and mining business. He was a business partner with Olienick. In that capacity, Olienick made use of what Lambert referred to as “little firecrackers,” to quarry the sandstone and reduce it in size. Reducing the size of the stone renders it manageable to get refined and repurposed so it could be sold to buyers of stone for other uses (building construction, patio stones, etc.) Lambert explained that the “firecrackers” were “explosive devices” packaged within tubing and pipes that could also be used for plumbing. He detailed how “You make them out of ordinary plumbing pipe and use some kind of propellant like shotgun powder…” Lambert explained that the length of the pipe “…depended on how big a hole or how large a piece of stone you were going to crack. The one I saw was about six inches long … maybe an inch in diameter.”

One of Olienick’s charges is “unlawful possession of an explosive device for a dangerous purpose.” The principal evidence offered up by RCMP to the Crown is what the officers depicted as “pipe bombs” which they obtained at the residence of Anthony Olienick in Claresholm, Alberta, about a two-hour drive from Coutts. Officers entered his home after he was arrested the night of February 13, 2022. Lambert’s testimony offers a plausible common use for the “firecrackers” the RCMP referred to as “pipe bombs.” Lambert added, these “firecrackers” have a firecracker fuse, and in the world of “explosive” they are “no big deal.”

Fellow accused, Chris Carbert, is does not face the additional charge of unlawful possession of explosives for a dangerous purpose. This is the first full week of the case for the defence. The trial began on June 6 when the Crown began presenting its case.

Ray McGinnis is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy who recently attended several days of testimony at the Coutts Two trial.

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