Can one imagine a government never being so?:
First, the government’s determination to keep the consultations submissions secret until compelled to disclose them by law eviscerates its claims to support open, transparent government. There is simply no good reason to use secrecy as the default for a government consultation. While officials claimed that submissions “may contain confidential business information”, the actual results demonstrate the argument had little merit. Indeed, the government could have used openness as a default and redacted any confidential information as needed. A government that supports openness should not be forced to disclose information from a public consultation only under threat of failing to comply with its own access to information laws.
Second, the participation of the Internet platforms was more extensive than previously disclosed. While Google released its submission, there were also submissions from the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft, Pinterest, TikTok, and Twitter. Further, in addition to TekSavvy and Tucows, the large Canadian telecom companies (Bell, Rogers, Telus, Cogeco, Quebecor and Shaw) provided a joint submission. These submissions contain important data that should be publicly available, not hidden by the government. For example, TikTok reported that in the first quarter of 2021, content that violated its community guidelines accounted for less than 1% of all video and that 91.3% of the videos it removed were identified and removed even before a user reported them. Other notable submissions included the CBC, which argued for a special recognition of threats to journalists as content that incites violence and hate speech, and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which called months ago for the removal of Russia Today from Canadian broadcast systems.
Third, the criticism of the government’s plans were even more widespread than previously revealed. Indeed, reviewing the submissions uncovers very few supportive comments of the government’s online harms from either organizations or the hundreds of individual submissions. For example, the big Canadian telecom companies warned that the proposal could disincentive investments in 5G networks and opposed disclosing basic subscriber information without judicial authorization. Their submission – along with others in the sector – reinforces how inexplicable and damaging it is that Innovation, Science and Industry Minister Franรงois-Philippe Champagne has seemingly abandoned digital and Internet policy. Vesting responsibility in Canadian Heritage (what does Canadian Heritage have to do with online harms anyway) has been disastrous for the development of balanced, effective digital policies.
The most notable submission came from Twitter (its must read submission is here), which warned that the proactive monitoring of content envisioned by the government:
“sacrifices freedom of expression to the creation of a government run system of surveillance of anyone who uses Twitter. Even the most basic procedural fairness requirements you might expect from a government-run system such as notice or warning are absent from this proposal. The requirement to ‘share’ information at the request of Crown is also deeply troubling.”
Further, it didn’t pull any punches with respect to the government’s website blocking plans, literally likening it to China, North Korea and Iran:
The proposal by the government of Canada to allow the Digital Safety Commissioner to block websites is drastic. People around the world have been blocked from accessing Twitter and other services in a similar manner as the one proposed by Canada by multiple authoritarian governments (China, North Korea, and Iran for example) under the false guise of ‘online safety’ impeding peoples’ rights to access information online.
Further, there are no checks or balances on the commissioner’s authority, such as the requirement of judicial authorization or warnings to service providers. The government should be extremely mindful of setting such a precedent – if Canada wants to be seen as a champion of human rights, a leader in innovation and in net neutrality globally, it must also set the highest standards of clarity, transparency and due process in its own legislation.
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Facebook hasn’t ruled out blocking news on its platform in Canada over the Liberal government’s news revenue-sharing bill, a company executive told MPs Tuesday.**
The Canada Revenue Agency paid nearly a half million in rent subsidies to a phantom company that had no leases and never filed a tax return, records show. The Agency to date has not disclosed the scope of fraudulent Covid relief claims it paid without cursory background checks: “Some individuals may be taking advantage.”
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Internal whistleblower emails and memos disclosing allegations of misconduct by senior Canada Revenue Agency executives yesterday were removed from public access by federal lawyers. The documents were mistakenly filed in Federal Court: “The Court has ordered that the documents be removed from the public record.”
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Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem yesterday acknowledged missing repeated inflation targets and warned higher interest rates may risk driving the economy back into recession. “We got some things wrong,” Macklem told the Commons finance committee: “Are there some risks? Yes.”
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CMHC quietly approved a $200,000 grant to promoters of a home equity tax, according to Access To Information records yesterday disclosed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “Culture change is hard,” read one email by a tax promoter to CMHC managers: “We work to make the politically impossible (now) possible (sooner than later).”
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First of all, the idea that ‘greed’ is the reason prices are going up would require us to believe that people just turn on a switch and become greedy out of nowhere.
Does Singh expect us to believe that the big companies weren’t greedy before inflation surged, but are now greedy all of a sudden?
Further, the fact that he’s saying the ‘simple answer’ is ‘greed,’ demonstrates incredibly bad faith on his part.
Singh is ignoring the role of massive government spending, the Bank of Canada debasing our money, the carbon tax, anti-energy sector policies, and world events such as Russia’s war against Ukraine, sanctions, and supply-chain disruptions.
Singh expects us to believe that none of that matters, and that it’s only some newfound ‘greed’ that is causing rising prices.
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A third of federal Covid-era borrowing had nothing to do with Covid, says a Parliamentary Budget Office report. Budget Officer Yves Giroux earlier warned that taxpayers face an “astronomical increase” in debt interest costs: “Do you believe the Government of Canada is living on a credit card?”
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Your duty is to yourself only:
Liberal MP Yasir Naqvi (Ottawa Centre), parliamentary secretary for emergency preparedness, was director of an insolvent marijuana company that owed millions in unpaid federal tax, records show. Naqvi did not comment: “I recognize my duty every single day to seek out the truth.”
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I'm sure it was just overlooked:
A Liberal donor, Edmonton lawyer Bob Aloneissi, yesterday was named a Court of Queen’s Bench judge. The Department of Justice praised Aloneissi’s “humble roots” without mentioning his contributions to the Party: “His experience of working at his family’s inner city grocery store allowed him to appreciate many different cultures.”
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It's just perks:
Drivers and luxury transportation cost the Trudeau Liberals nearly $35,000 during a November United Nations Climate Change Conference in Scotland.
The COP26 summit delegation included in its budget $10,000 for PCR testing, and $34,000 to a company called Little's Chauffeur Drive. In total, the delegation spent $217,106.97 during the summit.
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NEW FROM ME: Of the 127,147 km. the Prime Minister has flown since resuming travel last June, about 40% of that travel happened within the past seven weeks — including three flights from Ottawa to BC in a little over two weekshttps://t.co/Fdgzxgq4sx pic.twitter.com/YkSh73Jk8i
— ๐ฝ๐ง๐ฎ๐๐ฃ ๐๐๐จ๐จ๐๐๐๐ช๐ข๐ (@BryanPassifiume) April 21, 2022
What people are overlooking, aside from the fact that carbon is not a pollutant, is that by not growing food, people die:
The policy makers at Agriculture Canada are concerned about greenhouse gas emissions from wheat, barley and other cereal crops.
In a discussion document released in March on reducing emissions from fertilizer applied to cropland, Ag Canada says that Canadian cereal growers produce more nitrous oxide gas than farmers in Europe, Australia, Ukraine and the United States.
“Available data show that Canadian cereal production likely has one of the highest levels of emissions intensity (amount of GHGs emitted per unit of product) amongst major exporting countries,” the document says.
“Canada’s emission intensity for cereals in 2017 is higher than those reported for the United States, the European Union and (other regions).”
Ag Canada says cutting such emissions is critical because the federal government wants to reduce fertilizer related emissions 30 percent by 2030.
The discussion paper includes a table, using data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to emphasize that Canadian cereal crops produce the highest amount of nitrous oxide emissions in the developed world.
Mitch Rezansoff, executive director of the Canadian Association of Ag Retailers (CAAR) disagrees with the analysis and the FAO data.
“The majority of the fertilizer we use is banded into spring crops. And Europe is pre-dominantly winter crops… (and) the majority of fertilizer would be broadcast (in the EU),” Rezansoff said April 12 during an Agriculture Canada virtual town hall, held so members of ag sector could respond to the 30 percent reduction target.
“I will make a statement. Canada is not the worst. I don’t believe that,” added Rezansoff, who asked Ag Canada officials to explain how the FAO came up with the numbers
Also - it's only electricity:
Once again, the canary in the coal mine is Ontario where the Ford Progressive Conservative government, pressured by several dozen municipal councils, has asked the operators of the province’s electricity grid — already 94% emissions free — to consider achieving net zero emissions by 2030 by eliminating natural gas, five years earlier than even the Trudeau plan.
Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator responded this would cause blackouts, cost $27 billion and increase residential electricity bills, already being massively subsidized by taxpayers and ratepayers, by 60% or $100 a month.
Logically, this makes zero sense because natural gas is needed to back up intermittent wind and solar power anyway.
The Trudeau government last month released a “discussion paper” on its “Clean Electricity Standard” policy to make Canada’s electricity sector achieve net zero emissions by 2035.
In a response written by Robert Lyman and Parker Gallant for the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses, a non-profit organization representing small and medium sized companies across Canada, they rightly described the discussion paper as a word salad of nonsense.
They wrote it’s oblivious to the complexity of transforming the electricity grid, has no concept of the time frames needed to build new power plants and no understanding of the enormous costs.
In other words, it’s another example of politicians running through the hallways with scissors because they have no understanding of energy issues and the dangers of blowing up the electricity grid in pursuit of an unattainable, ruinously expensive goal.
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