Erin O'Toole's Carbon Tax Flip-Flop

As I mentioned the other day Erin O'Toole has foolishly decided to flip-flop on the topic of Canada's carbon tax. And that's is the only way to describe this. While running for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, O'Toole signed a pledge which read as follows:

I, Erin O’Toole, promise that, if elected Prime Minister of Canada, I will: Immediately repeal the Trudeau carbon tax; and, reject any future national carbon tax or cap-and-trade scheme.

That pledge, of course, was a big part of the reason that O'Toole beat out Peter MacKay for leadership. O'Toole appealed to the western provinces by calling MacKay a squish on resource issues. MacKay hit back, accusing O'Toole of secretly supporting the Trudeau climate agenda in one particularly heated debate. Here's Ezra Levant reluctantly commending MacKay for having O'Toole's number, and offering this conclusion on the current leader:

O’Toole supporting the carbon tax is disqualifying because he promised he wouldn’t, and he received support in return for that promise. So he’s untrustworthy. He’s a liar. It’s disqualifying because a carbon tax is a terrible idea, bad scientifically, bad economically.

He might have added that it specifically disqualifies him as a leader, since -- if reports from the Toronto Star and National Post are true -- his own caucus wasn't briefed on the change. “We all first heard about this from the CBC article,” one Tory M.P. told the Post. How can he ever have the confidence of parliament if he does things like this to his own members?

Of course, not everyone was upset by this development. Some were delighted. True North highlights this tweet from Trudeau crony Gerald Butts:

True North also points out a few notable and underdiscussed green goodies contained in the O'Toole proposal:

Other measures... include a study on “new taxes on frequent flyers, non-electric luxury vehicles and second homes to deter activities that hurt the environment.” A Conservative government would also spend $1 billion on domestic electric vehicle manufacturing and an additional $1 billion to deploy hydrogen technology.

Which is to say, he's all in.

Of course, O'Toole's counter to all of this is, first, that it is necessary for winning Ontario, and second, that at least his carbon tax is better than Trudeau's. I previously mentioned Dan McTeague's refutation of the first point. To the second, I would point to Derek Fildebrandt's argument in the Western Standard that the Tory plan is actually the worse of the two:

Under Trudeau’s plan, the federal government taxes consumers in provinces that do not have their own federally-approved carbon tax, and rebates a portion of it back to those consumers to spend as they see fit. Under O’Toole’s carbon tax, the federal government will impose a similar carbon tax, but instead of rebating it, will put into ‘green cards.' These green cards will be managed by a group of bankers appointed by O’Toole, and allow carbon taxpayers to spend the money collected on government-approved green purchases.... The real difference between the Trudeau carbon tax and the O’Toole carbon tax boils down to how taxpayers are allowed to spend the money collected from them. And on this front, Justin Trudeau’s plan is somehow, unambiguously better than O’Toole’s.

Several commentators think that this gamble will hurt the CPC's electoral prospects and O'Toole's career (Brian Platt mentions Patrick Brown as the nearest analogue, who outraged the conservative grassroots when he endorsed the carbon tax, so he had no one to back him up when other scandals arose, forcing him, finally, to resign). But the ever-cheerful sage Rex Murphy is concerned about its effects on the future of Canada itself:

The Conservatives are, if the rumours are true, about to enter an election, as a pale and timid version of the Liberal party, as near-partners to the NDP and the Greens. Out West voters will throw up their hands, sigh very deeply, stay at home, and really start thinking separation is the only way to go. Really, this policy is acid to Conservative support in the West and will, for some, force a rethink of their place in Confederation.

Back when O'Toole won the leadership race, I called on him to follow the advice of his fellow Ontarian, Shania Twain, to "dance with the one[s] that brought" him, meaning the Albertans and Saskatchewaners whose support gave him the 'W'. Instead, he's listened to the political consultant class who have long held that the path to Conservative victory is to copy the Liberals in every particular and to ignore the voters that they find embarrassing.

Well that choice seems to already be paying off... for Justin Trudeau. The latest polls suggest that, going into the rumored snap election to which Murphy alluded, Liberal support sits at 39 percent, six points above what they received in the 2019 General Election, which saw them barely hold on to power with a minority government. The Conservatives, meanwhile, are down seven points from the same election, at about 27 percent.

We tried to warn him.

In Canada, Nowhere to Run from Carbon Tax

In a 6-3 split decision issued this week, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the Trudeau government's carbon tax constitutional. The majority decision, written by Chief Justice Richard Wagner, held that Ottawa could legally impose the tax on all provinces because of the Peace, Order and Good Government clause of Canada's constitution, which allows the federal government to legislate on matters of national concern on which provincial governments are unable to act. Justice Wagner assumes that "unable" can also mean "unwilling," and then leans heavily on the "concern." He writes,

This matter is critical to our response to an existential threat to human life in Canada and around the world.... [Climate change] is a threat of the highest order to the country, and indeed to the world... The undisputed existence of a threat to the future of humanity cannot be ignored.

Faced with this histrionic language, it is worth noting that Wagner was first appointed to the court by Conservative PM Stephen Harper, before he was made chief by Justin Trudeau. Just another example of Harper's failure to tilt the Canadian judiciary in a broadly conservative direction during his nine years in office. Trudeau's government isn't making the same mistake.

The National Post tries to put the majority's thinking in context, explaining that, for the carbon tax to achieve its declared goal of rescuing humanity from anthropogenic climate change, no province may be able to opt out, because of the danger "of carbon leakage, where an industry in a province with carbon pricing might just locate to a neighbouring province without it."

That is, if the tax is imposed only on provinces which support the Liberal government in Ottawa, then businesses hoping to avoid the tax might just move to places like Alberta and Saskatchewan, which don't. But couldn't that reasoning be extended further? Why wouldn't businesses look to relocate out of Canada altogether?

CPC leader Erin O'Toole made just this point, warning of the "same risk of leakage of jobs and investment” to the United States, the great boogie man of Canadian political discourse. But I am thinking of countries like China, which will happily accept the jobs that western virtue signalers no longer want in their own country. Of course, China doesn't have the same concerns about carbon emissions that are so common in the west, but for our environmentalists, "out of sight, out of mind" is a key principle.

In any event, it seems that the only hope that foes of the carbon tax have going forward is for the Conservatives to win an election and repeal the law. And they might soon get their shot. Hopefully they don't screw it up.

Whither Alberta—and the Rest of Canada?

It was a good deal all around. The Keystone XL pipeline, which “adds a branch connecting terminals in Hardisty, Alberta, and Steele City, Nebraska, through a shorter route using a larger diameter pipe,” was the safest and most efficient way to ship crude oil in measures of scale—some 830,000 barrels a day—to the United States. Its cancellation was Joe Biden’s first official act. At least 10,000 American jobs will be lost and another nail has been hammered into that territorial coffin called Alberta. A good deal for the time has become a bad prospect for the future.

The consensus is that Biden, following in the footsteps of Obama, is catering to his woke-progressivist base and its environmental extremism by deep-sixing America’s energy industries in favor of expensive and unreliable Green technology. Donald Trump Jr. has a different or collateral explanation for Biden’s precipitous action. It is a gift to Warren Buffet and other Democratic Party donors.

Expanding on the younger Trump's take, Lorie Wimble explains,

Their methods of transportation, from rail lines to semi-trucks, benefit from the diminished effectiveness of the pipeline. The oil will still come, but now it will have to be transported less efficiently and at higher cost to consumers… Blocking Keystone XL has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with leftist megadonors.

Interestingly, climate change activists have tended to grow comparatively silent now that their president has promoted an energy alternative which is clearly more harmful to the environment than any conceivable state-of-the-art pipeline.

As NOQ notes,

Proponents championed [sic] that Keystone XL was going to be the cleanest pipeline project ever constructed while creating thousands of high-paying jobs. TC Energy partnered with four labor unions that would have generated $2 billion in earnings for U.S. workers. Plus, the company worked with five First Nations groups regarding equity.

But that still wasn't enough. The report goes on to point out that beyond a "black eye to the Trudeau government," this is "significant blow" to Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party. Kenney's government "invested $1.5 billion of taxpayer dollars in the project, plus about $6 billion in loan guarantees, to ensure KXL would be completed." Saskatchewan is also in the pickle jar, but Alberta is far deeper in the brine.

Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau has expressed pro forma “disappointment” with the cancellation, but Rex Murphy, Canada’s premier conservative columnist, does not see the debacle as a  “black eye” for Trudeau. Far from it. He suggests that the "honour' of Trudeau receiving Biden's first phone call as president is a "diplomatic quid pro quo perhaps for not making any noise over the slashing of Alberta’s prime industry.” Murphy poses the question of the hour to the rest of Canada:

Justin, it's for you.

If you allow the savaging of our economy, if you ignore what we in Alberta have contributed to you during the good times, if you side with rabid environmentalism, pour on carbon taxes and fuel emission standards, if you bar every effort to build even one damn pipeline: Why are we in this thing?”

He concludes: “And you know what ‘this thing’ refers to.”

This thing, of course, is Confederation, and although Murphy does not use the word, the only option, in the absence of a complete “re-imagining” of the country along fair and rational lines, is secession. For the situation in which Alberta now find itself cannot go on indefinitely. If a reasonable accommodation with the federal government is not forthcoming, a tectonic shift in political and national alignments will become necessary. 

There will be many problems, of course. As I’ve written before, there are too many Canadians and not enough Albertans in the province; the ratio will have to change and a Wexit party will have to replace the current, pro-federalist Conservative administration. Perhaps a third of the population is puckered for divorce, which is a promising start. But if Alberta follows the Quebec model, secession will take 50 percent plus 1. Time is running out.

Another major issue is the fact, as Murphy points out, that Alberta is landlocked. It would need to run an “independent” pipeline to tidewater, clearly through the adjoining province of British Columbia, for which approval may not be readily forthcoming. But Alberta wields a powerful bargaining chip. It is the land bridge from Eastern Canada to the Pacific Ocean which, if blockaded, would lead to economic tribulation for the country as a whole. A trade-off with British Columbia is far from inconceivable. In fact, it seems more than likely.

There is yet another significant political development to consider, one which has international ramifications. I refer not only to the perennial struggle between the radical Left and the conservative Right, which is embedded in history and is a function of the human psyche, but to its current instantiation. The seismic conflict we are now witnessing involves two great socioeconomic forces arrayed against one another for political dominance across the planet. These may be described as the movement for one-world hegemony, as per the Great Reset and UN Agenda 2030 on the one hand, and the rise of national movements on the other, in other words, Globalism against Populism. 

The former conceives itself as universal, the latter as revanchist. The former is proposed and backed by a coalition of billionaires, technocrats and political elites, the latter by ordinary people and patriotic citizens who feel disenfranchised and coerced. The Global orientation envisions the elimination of private property, the curtailment of private transportation, surveillance of entire populations, and top-down dirigiste control of subservient nations. The populist revolution, in contrast, envisages local autonomy for peoples that recognize a common heritage and tradition, that defend the principles of free speech, religious belief, and assembly, and that demand political and economic control of their own affairs. The Global initiative advances the belief in “climate change” and the necessity of expunging the fossil-fuel energy industry at whatever cost. Populism believes it can balance economic benefits with environmental concerns.

The conflict is heating up as we speak. At the same time that the Globalist phenomenon is being enacted by a pluto-techno cabal with its headquarters in Davos, populist sentiment is erupting in many different locales around the world—Scotland, Spain/Catalonia, the U.K. (Brexit), the U.S. (Texit), and elsewhere. According to the Institute for Global Change, “Between 1990 and 2018, the number of populists in power around the world has increased a remarkable fivefold, from four to 20. This includes countries not only in Latin America and in Eastern and Central Europe—where populism has traditionally been most prevalent—but also in Asia and in Western Europe.”

Within the present Canadian context, the federal perspective under Justin Trudeau is Globalist, heavily influenced by the Great Reset and what its main proponent Klaus Schwab calls the “fourth industrial revolution.” The Wexit movement in Alberta is plainly populist, consisting, in the words of the Institute for Global Change, of “hard-working victims of a state run by special interests and outsiders as political elites [who are seen] as the primary enemy of the people.”

Alberta for the Albrtans.

In the war between these two world-historical forces, global hegemony and local sovereignty, the Great Reset and nationalist populism—assuming nothing changes—Alberta will have to choose. If it goes the route of separation, it stands to reason that the rest of the country may begin to break up into several states, comprising the Maritime provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Ontario/Manitoba, British Columbia, and the three northern territories, Nunavut, Yukon and Northwest Territories, combining as a single federation.

In my estimation, Canada was never a coherent, overarching polity; the fault lines were always evident, incised by competing regional visions and needs, power imbalances, economic disparities and profound linguistic strife. Its eventual disintegration was probably foreordained. The break between the Eastern elites and the Western heartland is likely irremediable. There is certainly little sympathy in the rest of the country for Alberta’s plight. A recent Angus Reid poll shows that Alberta (and Saskatchewan) “will be fighting the battle to save the Keystone XL pipeline project on their own as the rest of Canada says it’s time to move on.”

Without the energy resources and capital generated by Alberta (and Saskatchewan), one wonders where the rest of the country can move on to? A Fraser Institute study finds that transfer payments make up over 27 percent of Atlantic Canada’s GDP, and that Alberta, with a diminishing tax base and a growing deficit, has financed most of the funds going to the Atlantic provinces and to Quebec. A myopic Canada does not understand that you can’t squeeze money from a dry well or that money does not drop from turbine blades.

In any event, given a Liberal-Marxist administration, a Leftist and parasitic New Democratic Party, a fantasy-driven Green Party, and a feckless Conservative Party that has sold its birthright as an electoral strategy, the choice would seem to me inevitable.

On Keystone, Trudeau Folds While Kenney Fights

In the wake of President Joe Biden's executive order killing the Keystone XL pipeline extension, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau issue a statement saying that he was "disappointed but acknowledge[s] the President’s decision to fulfil his election campaign promise on Keystone XL.” Which is to say, he folded.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, meanwhile, is going on offense, and he's trying to provoke the Prime Minister into following his lead. Kenney has been making the rounds on American television, pointing out that the U.S. and Canada have "the biggest bi-lateral trade relationship in world history," and that "the biggest part of that trade is Canadian energy exports." He continues,

We ship about, nearly $100 billion worth of energy to the U.S. every year. Keystone XL would have been a significant safe, modern increase in that shipment. It is very frustrating that one of the first acts of the new President was, I think, to disrespect America’s closest friend and ally, Canada. And to kill good-paying union jobs on both sides of the border and ultimately to make the United States more dependent on foreign oil imports from OPEC dictatorships. We don't understand it.

Kenney's been hammering away at the official account of this cancelation so that the shapers of Canadian opinion like the CBC can't just settle on a win some/lose some narrative, and then go back to cheering on Biden for not being Trump. For instance, here's Kenney at a press conference after Biden's E. O. was signed:

Let's be clear about what happened today: The leader of our closest ally retroactively vetoed approval for a pipeline that already exists, and which is co-owned by a Canadian government [the province of Alberta], directly attacking by far the largest part of the Canada-U.S. trade relationship, which is our energy industry and exports. The portion of the Keystone XL pipeline that crosses the Canada-U.S. border between Montana and Saskatchewan was installed last summer. It was built following a decade of rigorous environmental analysis and approval.... This decision was made without even giving Canada the opportunity respectfully to make the case for how Keystone XL would strengthen U.S. nation and energy security, how it would bolster both economies, and how our two countries could find a path together on climate and environmental policy.... That's not how you treat a friend and an ally.

Most pointedly, he's called out Trudeau's handling of the whole affair, and couching it not in the language of lazy partisanship we're so familiar with, but in the language of patriotism and duty. He's challenged the PM to do his job and fight for Canada. For an example, this letter Kenney wrote to Trudeau:

By retroactively revoking the permit for this project without taking the time to discuss it with their longest standing ally, the United States is setting a deeply disturbing precedent for any future projects and collaboration between our two nations. The fact that it was a campaign promise makes it no less offensive. Our country has never surrendered our vital economic interests because a foreign government campaigned against them....

We must find a path to a reconsideration of Keystone XL within the context of a broader North American energy and climate agreement.... Should that not happen, the federal government must do more than express disappointment with the decision.... I strongly urge you to ensure that there are proportionate economic consequences in response to these unfair U.S. actions.

Kenney's appeals to Trudeau's patriotism are admirable, but unlikely to hit home. Justin is, ultimately, a post-national man, and so loath to come to blows with the new, respectable Leader of the Free world. He would, no doubt, prefer the economic boost of the pipeline as a boon to his own reputation but not having to make a tough decision which could alienate either Canadian voters or the environmentalist left might be good enough for him. It's certainly in character.

If At First You Don't Secede... Wexit

The idea of secession seems almost inevitably to surface in times of national turmoil, political disarray, ideological and ethnic pillarization and economic resentment. In the wake of the Great Fraud, aka the 2020 American election, there is a whiff of secession in the air.

Rush Limbaugh worries that America is “trending toward secession.” Texas GOP chairman Alan West suggested that law-abiding states should “bond together and form a union of states that will abide by the constitution.” Though he asserted “I never say anything about secession,” the implication was certainly present. Texit is in the wind. Rep. Kyle Biedermann (R-Fredericksburg) said “I am committing to file legislation this session that will allow a referendum to give Texans a vote for the State of Texas to reassert its status as an independent nation.”

Canada has undergone two secession movements originating in the province of Quebec, based on a founding schism between two distinct peoples—which novelist Hugh MacLennan called the “two solitudes” in his book of  that title—culminating in a clash between two legal traditions, Quebec’s Napoleonic civil code and the ROC’s (rest of Canada) common law, and two languages, French and English.

Two referenda were held, in 1980 and 1995, the second defeated by the narrowest of margins, 50.58 percent to 49.42 percent. It is hard to say if separation would have been a “good thing,” whether Quebec would have prospered and Canada grown more coherent. I would hazard that the first prospect would have been enormously improbable, the second at least remotely possible.

Sunrise in Calgary? Or sundown?

The independence movement is alive today, but in another province. Alberta, which is Canada’s energy breadbasket, has suffered egregiously under the rule of Eastern Canada’s Laurentian Elite, beginning in modern times with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s low-pricing, high taxing National Energy Program (NEP) in 1980, which devastated Alberta’s oil industry.

According to the BOE report, “Economic disaster quickly followed. Alberta’s unemployment rate shot from 4% to more than 10%. Bankruptcies soared 150%.” Home values collapsed by 40 percent and the province plunged into debt. The debacle has climaxed with son Justin’s Green-inspired economic destruction and effective shutdown of the province’s energy sector. Unemployment has risen to more than 11 percent, thousands of residents are leaving the province, debt is soaring and cutbacks have severely impacted daily life.

As a result, a potent secession movement, known as "Wexit," has gathered momentum and solidified into a new political party. In addition, the Wildrose Independence Party of Alberta registered as a political party on June 29. Its platform includes asserting the independence of the province, redefining the relationship with Canada, developing natural resources, and creating a Constitution of Alberta.

After having increased the job-killing carbon tax during—of all times!—the COVID pandemic and lockdown that had already pulverized the nation’s economy, prime minister Justin Trudeau has announced he will raise the tax almost sixfold to $170 per tonne by 2030, thus breaking the Liberal government’s promise “not to increase the (carbon) price post-2022.” According to the Toronto Sun, “That will increase the cost of gasoline by about 38 cents per litre, plus the cost of home heating fuels such as natural gas and oil.”

And according to Kris Sims at the Sun, “Based on the average annual use of natural gas in new Canadian homes, it would cost homeowners more than $885 extra in the carbon tax.” Filling up a light duty pickup truck will cost a surplus $45 per tank, and an extra $204 for the big rigs that deliver dry goods and comestibles. But that “won’t be the end of the increased cost the Canadians will face, starting with a $15 billion government investment in other climate change initiatives.” 

All Canadians will be hard hit, but Albertans, who once fueled the engine of Canadian prosperity and who have the resources to do so again, will feel the provocation and injury even more profoundly. As Rex Murphy writes in the National Post, it is “the province that carries most of the weight, bears the most pain and has the least say in this mad enterprise.” The tax, he continues, will “injure the very farmers who have been stocking the supermarket shelves during COVID, put oil workers (at least those who still have jobs) out of work, increase the cost of living for everyone, place additional strain on the most needy and antagonize a large swath of the Canadian public.”  

Kyle Biedermann is on the money when he says that “The federal government is out of control.” This is as true of Canada as it is of the United States, at least with respect to the major agencies of government. For this reason, I support the secession movement in Alberta. The province has no alternative if it is to survive a faltering and repressive Confederation saddled with an out-and-out Marxist prime minister, a de facto alliance with Communist China, an infatuation with an unworkable and unaffordable tax-subsidized Green technological program, a $400 billion deficit, a national debt exploding past the $1 trillion mark, and, in short, nameplate disasters like Trudeau’s A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy cabaret. 

Alberta’s survival depends on restoring its energy sector to full capacity and shucking off the federal burden of over-regulation, crushing taxation, Green fantasy-thinking and unpayable debt. Murphy again:

This new carbon tax will throw a spike in the heart of the oil and gas industry. Keep in mind that it is but the most recent in a long string of policies designed to hamstring the industry, block its exports and drive investment out of the province.

For Alberta, it’s leave or die. Other provinces may eventually have to follow the same route as Canada disintegrates under the brazen incompetence and global-socialist doctrines of the current administration, with no relief in sight.

As oil executive Joan Sammon writes, “Inexpensive energy is imperative for a thriving economy, manufacturing excellence, economic mobility, job creation and a future of prosperity.” Clearly, there must be citizen pushback against the economy-killing decrees of a myopic and virtue-signaling government. People must put pressure on their elected representatives to resist the deliberate dismantling of the free market that will cost them the life of material abundance and comfort they take for granted. They must rid themselves of their infatuation with leftist memes, policies and hypocrisies.

I have a neighbor, a staunch adherent of our high-taxing, socialist administrations, who drives across the border to the U.S. to fill up her car at around one third the domestic price of fuel. She remains oblivious of the cognitive dissonance that governs her practice. Such thinking and behavior are what qualify as ultimately “unsustainable.” 

It's now or never.

The industry, too, Sammon writes, “needs to take back control from the preaching class and remind them that their lifestyles have been brought to them by the men and woman of the oil and gas industry.” The “green zealotry” that drives their anti-market efforts will destroy Alberta and lead eventually to the economic collapse of the entire country. Alberta, however, is at present the only province with a robust secession movement and, given its resource-rich milieu and the independent character of a large segment of its inhabitants, the only province in a position to save itself.

In any event, the message to Alberta is simple and straightforward. If at first you don’t secede, try and try again. The Overton Window is closing fast.

As Canada Goes Green, Canada Goes Broke

It’s no longer news that the Liberal government of Canada under Justin Trudeau and his “social justice” cronies Gerald Butts and Chrystia Freeland have pulled out the stops in an effort to destroy the major source of Canada’s energy sector, the oil-gas-pipeline industry in the province of Alberta.

The oil sands have effectively become a dead letter. Every pipeline project has been quashed and energy companies have decamped for sunnier climes. The decline in Alberta’s GDP is pegged at 11.3 per cent. Unemployment and under-employment are rampant. The Alberta secession movement has acquired momentum and a political party, Wexit Canada, rebadged as the Maverick Party, has been formed—although the province’s Conservative premier Jason Kenney remains a staunch federalist and majority sentiment remains “loyalist.”

What Canadians do not seem to understand is that as Alberta goes, so goes Canada. For more than 50 years Alberta, Canada’s energy producing breadbasket, has been a major net contributor to the rest of the nation via the Equalization Formula in which “have” provinces subsidize their “have not” counterparts.

As Canada under the Liberal administration has now become a heavily indebted “have not” country, Alberta was its last remaining mainstay—until Alberta itself imploded thanks to the energy crushing policies of the federal government. It is now a “have not” province. 

Indeed, as Canada goes Green, Canada goes broke, forcing it to increase its debt load and enact burdensome domestic programs that will impoverish its citizens and devastate the productive classes. At a steadily approaching inflexion point, Canada will face the spectre of default—a time-honored South American prospect.

In an article for the National Post, former Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis shows why she would have been a far better choice for the Conservative nomination than the waffly, Andrew Scheer-like Erin O’Toole. Lewis reveals how the new creeping socialism operates, confiscating not our property but our wealth via various levies like a home equity tax, a ubiquitous carbon tax, a new tax on the private sale of homes costing home owners a portion of their retirement savings, and a “perpetual debt scheme reminiscent of Argentina.”

What is taking place, she warns, is “a quiet and bloodless revolution that seeks to control our lives through economic dependency.” Conrad Black believes “the government… has lost its mind”—though more likely it is acting quite deliberately, in full knowledge and intent, cleverly pursuing a soft totalitarian agenda. Meanwhile, most Canadians linger in a condition of blissful oblivion as the country they believe is theirs and continue to be proud of is being insidiously stolen from them before their very eyes.

Regardless, Canadians on the whole believe in big government and continue to vote left, ensuring that Trudeau’s Liberals and the New Democratic Party (NDP) helmed by Jagmeet Singh will likely retain control of parliamentary business and national policy. A recent Angus Reid poll indicates that nearly 60 percent of Canadian women would vote today for either the Liberals or the NDP under these two leaders. Such are the wages of feminism.

Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces—aka the “Laurentian Elite”—trend massively socialist, as do the major conurbations like Halifax, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. There can be no doubt that socialism is the name of the game. Trudeau has boasted that China’s “basic dictatorship” is his favorite political system and, as Spencer Fernando writes, is far too week to stand up to Chinese Communist pressure.

Trudeau, we recall, lamented the passing of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, “join[ing] the people of Cuba in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.” Similarly, Jagmeet Singh had this to say: “He saw a country wracked by poverty, illiteracy & disease. So he lead [sic] a revolution that uplifted the lives of millions. RIP #Fidel Castro.”

Trudeau’s approval rating has taken a hit of late but carrots count in moving the dray electorate forward. A new Angus Reid poll indicates where his strength lies province by province. Many Canadians are happy to allow the government to borrow hundreds of millions to subsidize their idleness with a monetary COVID response package, dubbed CERB (Canada Emergency Response Benefit), recently increased by 20 percent, rendering it difficult for many entrepreneurs and businesses to hire service personnel who relish living off the government dole.

Nevertheless, despite his many false promises, numerous scandals, proroguing of parliament for several months on the pretext of mitigating COVID, fiscal incontinence, 600 million dollar media bribe (sugar-coated as a “bailout”), and overall economic witlessness (“the budget will balance itself”), Trudeau’s carrots to select beneficiaries enable him to retain a considerable voting constituency and markedly improve his chances of re-election.

Indeed, The Liberal Party can count on an ample war chest. A recent special report here at The Pipeline demonstrated that, of the top ten third-party spenders that influenced the previous election, eight of them were leftist groups, outspending their rivals on the right by a factor of over 15 to 1. The CBC poll tracker indicates that the Conservatives are currently trailing the Liberals by 5 percentage points but, as the propaganda arm of the Liberals and favorite son Trudeau, its results should be met with a degree of skepticism.

Nonetheless, the Conservatives are likely no match for the combined electoral clout of the Left in this country. The cash-strapped, media bête noire, the People’s Party of Canada, is the best option for Canada’s (and Alberta’s) future, but it may not garner a single parliamentary seat—as was the case in the last election. This is to be expected. The Liberals may form a minority government once again, but with the NDP hitching a ride it would in any case be tantamount to a majority. Canada’s premier columnist Rex Murphy speculates, with considerable evidence, that Trudeau and Singh have formed “a (silent) concordat.”

Alberta had better get its act together before the Overton window closes. Alea iacta est.

In Canada, Between a Sponge and a Soft Place

Ottawa’s orchestrated vendetta against Canada’s energy sector, located primarily in the province of Alberta, is an instance of sublime indifference to the laws of physics, the math behind energy realities, Canadian living standards and the national welfare. It is part and parcel of the campaign to bring Canada in line with the U.N.’s anti-capitalist, globalist wealth-transfer program advantaging the Third World—in actual fact, benefiting only the ruling class of these nations.

And it is, of course, a scheme for enriching investors and "green" industrialists for whom the Green Technology adventure has become a government-fed cash cow, abetted by public gullibility and self-righteousness. Conservative Alberta is now at risk of bankruptcy. 

(Wikipedia).

Canada’s great conservative thinker, George Grant, wrote in Lament for a Nation that "Canada was predicated on the rights of nations as well as on the rights of individuals.” He might also have written “the rights of provinces.” The book’s subtitle, The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, bespeaks Grant’s abiding fear that the country had forgotten its conservative origin in communal solidarity and had sold its future to a managerial elite wedded to the notion of unmitigated “progress.”

A devout traditionalist, Grant was skeptical of unrestrained capital markets and of what he called, in Technology & Justice, “technological ontology.” Liberals—and some Conservatives—consider him out of touch with modernity, a throwback to a pre-modern age. But his emphasis on individual responsibility and commitment to the values of truth and justice remain the core of conservative thinking. In the “Afterword” to Lament, his widow recalls one of Grant’s “simplest statements: ‘It always matters what each of us does.’”

Modern Canadian conservatism owes much to Alberta-born Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party, which was succeeded by the Canadian Alliance and ultimately by the Conservative Party of Canada. As articulated in his The New Canada, Manning believed in fiscal prudence, the need to control the deficit and to live within our means, in doing away with redistributive economics and progressive taxation and relying instead on market forces and job creation. He believed in the reduction of federal power and in the provincial management of political and economic responsibilities. For advocating such ideas, Manning said, “We were called everything under the sun, from fascists to traitors to racists.” How such a sensible and mature platform can be condemned as “far right,” extremist, or as some sort of nascent fascism boggles the mind. 

Preston Manning (Wikipedia).

Manning understands energy and its crucial importance to priming the engine of prosperity, facilitating job creation and strengthening the Canadian economy across the board. He urges provincial cooperation to “put enormous pressure on the Federal government to get pipeline rights of way to both the Pacific and the Atlantic.” In his new book Do Something!: 365 Ways You Can Strengthen Canada Manning writes: “[W]e need unobstructed transportation corridors to the Atlantic, Pacific and the Arctic to move our resources to tidewater and world markets. We need a federal government that’s supportive of these kinds of measures rather than one that obstructs.”

Manning is also deeply concerned about the corrosive prospect of growing Western alienation. “The problems with the energy sector,” which he lays at Ottawa’s door, “and the inability to get resources to tidewater and world markets are all fueling Western alienation.” He is right. Wexit is picking up momentum and Wexit Canada is now an official political party.

Former Conservative PM Stephen Harper (aka “Harperman,” as the socialist rabble and environmental scientist Tony Turner maligned him) was often tarred as “far right” for his fiscal prudence (which steered us through the 2008 financial meltdown) when, to be accurate, he was a “conservative centrist” some of whose policies—maintaining high immigration rates from Muslim countries, or refusing to re-open the abortion debate—consorted with Liberal positions. Some have criticized him, too, as being somewhat ambivalent on the oil patch, neglecting to build a sufficient pipeline distribution network. Harper did not govern as effectively as he could have, but as a trained economist he understood the industry that contributed massively to the country’s prosperity.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is leading Canada to an Argentinian-type default and economic collapse, setting his sights on net-zero in more ways than one, is no friend of George Grant, Preston Manning or Stephen Harper; he is much closer to his father’s socialist influence Harold Laski, who was Pierre Trudeau’s mentor at the London School of Economics. Laski held that capitalism inevitably led to internal contradictions, economic crashes and depressions, and proposed the socialist control of natural resources and property to be shared by all of society’s stakeholders.

Harold Laski (1893 - 1950), circa 1940.

The predictable irony, of course, endemic to all socialist regimes, is the splintering of society into warring interest groups, the eventual imposition of top-down single party rule, and the disintegration of a common culture once based on historical precedent and loyalty to one’s neighbor. As we see in the Western world today—Canada is no exception—the sense of unity has been replaced by entitlement categories like ethnicity, race, gender, creed, class and selective political persuasion.

Indeed, in opposition to Grant’s sense of national unity, which inspired both Manning and Harper, Trudeau has stated that Canada is a “post-national state” that has no “core identity.” A country that has no core identity is not a country preoccupied with issues of national unity and the economic foundation on which it rests. Trudeau is not interested in the oil patch but in the national patchwork. He is an outright socialist—perhaps Marxist is a better term—and an aspiring globalist who lusts for a seat in the United Nations’ bloated hierarchy. 

Notwithstanding his sentimental effusions about the country he leads, Trudeau is, to put it bluntly, anti-Canadian, and his animus against the energy sector and the economic stability it provides is par for the course. Like a good Marxist, he is busy steering the nation into monumental debt and abject penury. Tex Leugner, one of the lay leaders of the Wexit movement and editor of the ActionAlberta newsletter, is very clear on this. “Each day,” he writes, “Canada loses between $80 and $100 million because of the failure of our Federal Government to allow pipelines to be built. At this rate, over the next 12 months that amount could balloon to as much as $36.5 billion lost to the Canadian economy! As this money is lost, our Federal debt continues to increase.” And that’s only for starters. Statistics Canada reveals that the “poverty gap” under Trudeau has grown—in figures for 2018, two years before he had a chance to do even more damage. 

The question now, following the election of the waffly Erin O’Toole to the Conservative Party leadership, is whether the Conservatives can be counted on to pursue a sane, nation-restoring agenda. O’Toole is committed to net-zero emission by 2050; if he ran an online journal, it might be called The Pipedream. Indeed, he has just signed on to the Paris Climate Agreement in a doomed attempt to out-Trudeau Trudeau. Considering that there is no hard scientific evidence that the globe is warming, that the U.S. as major signatory has pulled out of the Accord, and that, in any case, China and India, the world’s largest polluters, have no intention of reducing emissions, the Agreement is not worth the paper it is written on, though it will cost its adherents dearly. O’Toole is merely virtue-signaling for electoral purposes. 

The only leadership candidate reliably true to the tradition of Grant and Manning was Derek Sloan, who may find himself cast into outer darkness for, among other things, voicing justifiable suspicion of Canada’s chief health minister Theresa Tam’s loyalties. Hong Kong-born Tam was all over the map in her COVID recommendations, hewing closely to the China-inspired line of the World Health Organization while sitting on one of its prestigious boards.  

Justin & son.

The fact that she happens to be Chinese was (and is) irrelevant, but it was enough to generate accusations of racism from the Asian community and from Conservative MPs Gordon Chong and Pam Demoff. “[T]he Conservative Party that I know does not stand for this kind of garbage,” Chong blustered. Demoff for her part accused Sloan of “racism, misogyny, and bigotry.” The attempt to “cancel” Sloan and destroy his political career is evidence, once again, of how easily people can be duped into taking offence at reasonable skepticism—or how cynical they can be in trying to score political points. I have indicated in a previous article for The Pipeline that Tam’s behavior was highly dubious, lying about the mode of viral transmission and even removing vital information from airport message screens regarding flights from China into the country. O’Toole has not come to the defense of Sloan and is cannily playing the popularity game, which seems to make him, at best, a Diet Conservative. 

Clearly, the Conservative Party has some trouble aligning itself with true-blue conservatism represented by a genuinely conservative politician like Sloan, an upholder of traditional usages and institutions, a stringent anti-socialist, a Canadian patriot, and a vigorous supporter of the energy industry. Alberta is where the country’s energy resides. Sloan is where the Party’s energy lies. It is by no means surprising that both have come under the shadow of repudiation. 

Erin O'Toole (left).

There can be no doubt that a mushy O’Toole would make a better Prime Minister than a spongy Trudeau, but this does not change the fact that Canada’s two major energy fields have been suffering catastrophically and, barring a miracle, will likely continue to do so. One field is obviously the oil/gas/pipeline sector, which is in process of being phased out. The other is Canada’s political energy zone, presumably a national endowment, which has been going increasingly woke. With these two sources of revivifying energy—generated power and political intelligence-and-integrity—seemingly moribund, Canada would have little future to speak of.

Dance with the One That Brung Ya

As John O'Sullivan has mentioned, the Conservative Party of Canada has just selected a new leader: Durham, Ontario M. P. Erin O'Toole. O'Toole succeeded in edging past former Progressive Conservative leader Peter MacKay, as well as the more right-wing candidates, Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan.

O'Toole himself ran as essentially the "Buckley Rule" candidate, referring to the founder of National Review's mid-'60s proclamation that his magazine would support "the rightwardmost viable candidate" in a given election. Despite his not-particularly-conservative voting record, O'Toole leaned hard on his military service during the campaign to sell himself as "True Blue O'Toole," manly patriot, not like progressive pretty boy like MacKay (who was famously named 'Canada's Sexiest Male MP' by The Hill Times in the early oughts, a fact which should have disqualified him from the start), who can actually hold Justin Trudeau to account in opposition (unlike Lewis, who doesn't yet have a seat in parliament) but is moderate enough (unlike, according to some, Sloan) to win a general election.

There's a lot of balancing going on in that pitch, one that sticks close to the political consultants' standard playbook: right-wing enough to win out west, centrist enough to pick up a few more seats in Ontario and then form a government.

That is, of course, a tenuous balance. That playbook also advises conservatives to go all-in on green initiatives to win in the Greater Toronto Area, and offer Western Canada... well, nothing. Except not being Trudeau that is. But western Canadians have a fiercely independent streak, and they've acted on it before, breaking off from the Progressive Conservative Party in the '80s (in rebellion against a Tory leader who they felt was unresponsive to their interests) to form the Reform Party, which supplanted the the P. C. Party within five years.

The "unite the right" movement of the early 2000s healed that divide and led to the creation of the modern Conservative Party, but it would be foolish for O'Toole to assume that's the end of the story. Consequently, O'Toole made it a point to launch his leadership campaign in Calgary, and he's racked up western endorsements, including from Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who proclaimed that O'Toole is "committed to a fair deal for the West and a strong future for our resource industries."

Only time will tell whether that is an accurate assessment. O'Toole has been all over the place on the resource sector, initially calling for an end to fossil-fuel subsidies -- a questionable description of industry-specific tax deductions for one of the largest contributors to Canada's economy, especially since the so-called renewable energy industry against which it is competing wouldn't exist without massive government subsidies -- before backing away from that pledge. He's also advocated repealing the Liberal's carbon tax, which he pledged to replace with "a national industrial regulatory and pricing regime," essentially a carbon tax by another name.

Alberta's support was definitive in O'Toole's beating out MacKay, and as much as he's likely being told to break left right now to appeal to the Toronto suburbs, he should heed the advice of a fellow Ontarian, and "dance with the one that brought" him. Because Alberta's economy has been hit harder by Covid-19 and the lockdowns than any other, and western discontentment have the potential to tear the party and the country apart.

Fitch Downgrades Canada's Credit Rating

Fitch Ratings, one of the big three global credit rating agencies, has announced it's downgrading Canada's credit rating from AAA to AA+. This is due to the tremendous debt -- roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars -- the Canadian government took on to prop up the economy during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Though the Trudeau government was quick to argue that Canada's economy remains strong and that the country in an ideal position to turn things around, this does have the potential to significantly increase the cost of government borrowing and of doing business. That danger, moreover, will be amplified if, as some think, there are further downgrades to come:

David Rosenberg... has been predicting a downgrade on Canada’s sovereign debt since late April and thinks this won’t be the last. “The real question is: What took so long?’ .... Canada’s excessively leveraged national balance sheet has looked a lot like China, Italy and Greece for quite a while.” While Ottawa may appear to be in “solid” financial shape to some, this has “masked bloated debt ratios” in households, business sectors, and most of the provinces, he said. “This won’t be the last ratings cut, I can assure you,” said Rosenberg.

Now, it is true that governments worldwide have responded to the pandemic by racking up what would normally be unthinkable amounts of debt. Consequently, it is likely that Canada won't be the only country to have its rating downgraded.

But one thing that makes Canada unique is the shame that its governing elite feels about one of the pillars of its economy. As Dan McTeague of Canadians for Affordable Energy said the other day in an excellent piece on Erin O'Toole's environmentalist pitch in the CPC leadership contest,

Rather than championing Canada's hydrocarbon industry and creating economic growth with our country’s wealth of natural resources, O’Toole’s policies seem most focused on maintaining the what-seems-to-be-required, green-is-god image of so many politicians.... Our natural resources are an asset to this country, not a liability. They keep energy affordable, and give us one of the highest standards of living. O’Toole and other political candidates seem determined to remain blind to that fact.

You would hope that this turn of events would cause Canada's governing class to thank its lucky stars for the energy sector, a potential launchpad for recovery. But unfortunately they'll probably keep just hoping for pats on the head from similarly green-obsessed organizations like the UN  -- and how's that been working out for them?

Eventually someone is going to have to grow up and start taking things seriously.

Erin O'Toole, Environmentalist

Back in March I drew your attention to an article by Canadian Tory insider Ken Boessenkool which argued, in the wake of an election which saw the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) pick up 26 seats, that the party needed to go all in on environmentalism.

Vote for us, the Conservatives said, and we’ll cut your taxes.

Vote for us, the Liberals said, and we will address climate change.

This worked wonders across western Canada, in rural Ontario, around Quebec City, and in a smattering of ridings in Atlantic Canada. But new polling for Clean Prosperity conducted by Conservative pollster Andrew Enns from Leger suggests climate change was a key reason why the Conservatives failed to gain ground in the 905.

I pointed out at the time that this was specious reasoning, since the Conservatives are less likely than ever to win in the Greater Toronto area because of the collapse of the New Democratic Party as a viable electoral (and vote-splitting) force, not to mention the fact that the polling he cited was done by the carbon-tax activist group Canadians for Clean Prosperity. It isn't that surprising that their conclusion was Canadians Love Carbon Taxes!

Shockingly, Erin O'Toole, purported co-front runner in the CPC Leadership race, seems not to have read my post. (He must have skipped his press clippings that morning). That is, he sounds like he's going all in on the Boessenkool theory. At last week's leadership debate, his opponents hammered O'Toole's plan to introduce a "national industrial regulatory and pricing regime" as being a carbon tax-like scheme that would harm consumers and the oil and gas industry alike.

O'Toole [replied that] the party needs a serious environmental platform for the next election. "I'm the only one who has a detailed plan. It's disappointing to see Mr. MacKay attack that. If we're not clear on the environment in the next election ... we're not going to be able to get pipelines built," O'Toole said.

It's a surprising tack for True Blue O'Toole to take. His whole campaign is built upon contrasting himself with Mr. Progressive Conservative, Peter MacKay, but here he is going all in on alienating the west.  Maybe he figures he can get away with it because they have no where else to go -- what are they going to do, vote Liberal?

But O'Toole is counting his chickens before they're hatched. He isn't leader yet, and western Canadian party members can still give that title to someone else, perhaps Derek Sloan or Leslyn Lewis.

Hopefully they do something to make it clear to O'Toole or MacKay or whoever wins that the party's base can't be ignored.