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Wednesday, June 07, 2023

Links - 7th June 2023 (1 - Justin Trudeau)

Survivors of mosque mass shooting asked Amira Elghawaby to apologize - "Before Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s first special representative on combating Islamophobia, made a surprising apology for past comments on Quebecers she received a phone call from surviving members of the 2017 mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque. The co-founder of the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre, Boufeldja Benabdallah, revealed in an interview with a Montreal radio talk show that he and other members of the mosque picked up the phone on Tuesday, shortly after the National Assembly of Quebec asked her to resign, to plead with her to clearly apologize for past writings that he said lacked perspective...   The criticism of Elghawaby began almost immediately after Trudeau appointed her on Jan. 26. It stems from an opinion piece she co-wrote in 2019, which said that a “majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment.”... critics have pointed out another opinion piece from 2013 in which she implied that Quebecers are obsessed with the purity of their race and a tweet since deleted from 2021 in which she said she was going to “puke” in response to an author recounting French Canadians as having been the largest group of people victimized by British colonialism... Blanchet said on Thursday it is clear in his mind that Elghawaby cannot occupy this position – and that it should just be abolished altogether. But he laid the blame solely on Trudeau.  “He made an institution which was set to deal with racism into a political instrument that would oppose the Muslim community to the Quebec nation, and create a harmful amalgamation between secularism and Islamophobia,” he said in a press conference.  Although he said she is “very smart” and a “great communicator,” Elghawaby embodies a “very Torontonian” vision of Quebec, which led to many biases"
Clearly the survivors have Stockholm Syndrome!

EDITORIAL: The feds aren't just coming for the Sun - "The danger of the Trudeau government giving itself more power to regulate content on social media — see Bill C-11 where politicians and bureaucrats will decide what they think you want to watch — was driven home this week by its ham-fisted attempt to remove a column by Sun Media’s Lorne Gunter from Twitter and Facebook.  It came from a communications bureaucrat — governments are crawling with them today — about a Sept. 26, 2021 column based on a confidential government document Gunter had obtained, outlining plans to massively expand the reasons refugee applicants could be admitted to Canada.  The document was authentic and clearly a matter of public interest, given the Trudeau government’s publicly stated intention to significantly increase immigration and refugee levels.  In response, the bureaucrat wrote to Twitter and Facebook the day after the column appeared, asking them to “remove/unpublish” a “post linking to an article on the Toronto Sun website containing serious errors of fact, risking undermining public confidence in the independence of the (immigration and refugee) board as well as the integrity of the refugee determination system.”...  Unsurprisingly, the Trudeau government has a lot of would-be censors working for it.  As reported by The Canadian Press, in response to a written question from Conservative MP Dean Allison, the government said it attempted to censor content on social media 214 times between January 2020 and February 2023 over such things as its interpretation of “offensive language.”  As University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, Canada research chair in internet and e-commerce law, noted on his website: “It is difficult to separate the government’s willingness to censor social media posts with its broader internet regulation agenda” including C-11, which is about to become law.  Peter Menzies, former vice-chair of the CRTC, has warned C-11 will “open the door to state-controlled media” and when “internet regulation falls into political hands, Canadians will regret it for the rest of their lives.”"

Trudeau gets ridiculed for suggesting Canadians use credit cards to make large purchases - "the prime minister explained how borrowing money as a government is similar to using a credit card and suggested Canadians use their credit cards to pay for their tuition and home renovations... “A PM advising to borrow at 28 percent interest to build wealth?”"

LILLEY: As Trudeau sputters falsehoods, he's looking like Baghdad Bob - "Trudeau has denied his government has any “intersections” with the Trudeau Foundation, blamed its problems on the Great Satan that is the Conservative Party, and invented the idea that Conservatives hate charities. He’s also denied that his justice minister, David Lametti, said that he would look into a request to take natural resource rights away from provinces even though Lametti’s comments were broadcast live and are still up on YouTube.  On this front, Trudeau blamed premiers for spreading “misinformation” — his way of saying the premiers were lying when, in fact, he is the one not telling the truth...  “It’s a foundation of my father’s name that I have no direct or indirect connection with,” Trudeau said.  That might be believable if the Trudeau family didn’t pick three members of the foundation’s controlling body while the industry minister inside the Trudeau government picks another six. This claim might come close to the truth if the man who wrote the report in election interference in the 2021 election wasn’t a former president and CEO of the foundation and the man asked to investigate new allegations wasn’t a former member of the foundation’s governing body. There are also the senators appointed by Trudeau who have or had connections to the foundation such as Peter Harder, Patricia Bovey, Frances Lankin, Renee Dupuis and Patti LaBoucane-Benson. Trudeau even appointed two people with ties to the foundation to run his senate advisory panel that would recommend people for appointments – Huguette LaBelle and Dawn Lavell-Harvard.  These senate appointments, plus many other plum appointments going to Trudeau Foundation hangers on, saw Conservative Senator Denise Batters dub the foundation of the Trudeau government’s farm team as early as 2018."

Dr Jordan B Peterson on Twitter - "Why stop at Pride Season (June-Sept). Every day should be Pride Day (or else). Brought to you, Canadians, by your government and your tax dollars"

Liberals reject balanced budget and mandatory voting as official policy

Opinion: The Liberals can no longer pretend deficits don’t matter - The Globe and Mail - "Liberal Party of Canada delegates said “no” to balanced budgets and “yes” to censoring online news content. Though these policy resolutions are non-binding on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, they do speak volumes about modern Liberal values. A majority of Liberal delegates who showed up to vote supported “exploring options to hold online information services accountable for the veracity” of their news content, in apparent obliviousness to the Orwellian nature of the proposal. Mr. Trudeau was quick to insist this “is not a policy we would ever implement.” But for a government that has already embarked on the slippery slope of seeking to regulate the internet with Bills C-11 and C-18, and which is preparing legislation to police “online harms,” Canadians could be forgiven for having their doubts. What is not in doubt, however, is that the party that rescued Canada from a debt spiral in the 1990s has officially decided that deficits do not matter any more. Of course, we did not need a Liberal convention confirm this. The Trudeau government’s 2023 budget, which abandoned all pretexts of seeking to eliminate the deficit in the foreseeable future, told us so.  Still, delegates at the convention voted down a resolution from the Liberals’ Quebec wing calling on the party “to develop a clear, costed proposal for a return to balanced budgets” and include it in the Liberal platform for the next election. Even before its defeat, Mr. Trudeau indicated that he did not think much of the idea... that’s the thing about a debt crisis: You never know you’re in one until it hits you. Suffice it to say, it is not very meaningful for Liberals to rely on comparisons of Canada’s debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio with those of other developed countries to suggest we have nothing to worry about. Investors do not apply the same criteria to Canada as, say, the United States, which has a federal budget that’s in far worse shape than ours, but boasts an economy that remains the world’s biggest and most innovative... Beyond the U.S. dollar’s global attractiveness, our differences come down to our diverging prospects for growth and wealth creation. Canada’s are not so great. We consistently lag on the productivity indicators that investors watch most closely. We have systematically eroded our comparative advantage in natural resources, a self-inflicted economic wound if ever there was one. On the critical measure of GDP per capita, we are treading water and dangerously close to sinking. We are getting progressively poorer.  The Trudeau government has failed to show that it grasps the seriousness of the situation. It touts its historic “investments” in electric vehicle and battery production, but it has provided no evidence to support its massive subsidization of foreign automakers other than to point to what the U.S. is doing. It has locked in spending far above prepandemic levels without justification, despite nearly doubling the federal debt to more than $1.3-trillion since 2019, with more to come... The world has moved from an era of easy borrowing to one of tight money. Outside of their convention bubble, the Liberals can no longer pretend otherwise."

Liberals' convention pitch to fight online disinformation denounced as assault on free press - "Without debate, Liberal Party members passed a policy resolution to combat online disinformation this weekend that critics warn could give the government control over Canadian media outlets.  The resolution calls for the Liberals to "explore options to hold online information services accountable for the veracity of material published on their platforms, and to limit publication only to material whose sources can be traced."  "It's deeply troubling this was sort of waved through at the Liberal convention," said University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist.  "It's a dangerous proposal," said Geist, the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law. "It's one that we would see, I think, in far more repressive regimes. It isn't appropriate in a country like Canada that has a commitment to freedom of expression, freedom of the press and a robust democracy."... Geist said it shouldn't be up to the federal government to decide "who is a good journalist and who is a bad journalist" and come up with new regulations for those seen as "not good."  He said reputable journalists in Canada who use unnamed sources to break stories that make the government uncomfortable could "land in the bucket of bad journalists" because they didn't identify sources and are "therefore subject to the regulation."  Geist is calling on the Liberal government to distance itself from the proposal.  MP Rachael Thomas, the Conservatives' critic for Canadian heritage, pointed to stories that relied on journalists speaking to sources confidentially. She cited stories about the SNC-Lavalin affair and the ongoing controversy about the Liberal government's handling of foreign interference attempts."

The anti-hate materials Saskatchewan is trying to banish from schools - "The Government of Saskatchewan is currently trying to purge its classrooms of something known as the Canadian Anti-Hate Network toolkit.  Developed using $268,400 in federal funds and actively promoted by the Trudeau government, the materials are pitched to teachers as a way to “prevent hate” in the classroom. But according to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, the 53-page package is a “not high quality” and loaded with political bias.  Saskatchewan isn’t the first to criticize the toolkit. In a recent blog post, former Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis claimed that the toolkit was itself “shockingly hateful.” Earlier this year, the toolkit briefly obtained national attention due to its assertion that Canada’s pre-1965 flag was a hate symbol... The toolkit repeatedly asserts that Canada — and Canadian schools in particular — are plagued by a worrying and dangerous rise in “hate-promoting social movements.”... What the report does not do is provide much context as to the actual size of the Canadian hate movement. It reports that an “alarming number” of Canadians attended 2017 Charlottesville, even though only two Canadians are known to have attended. It says that Canada has a “massive problem” with hate because Canadian users are the third largest nationality on the fascist web forum Iron March (behind the U.K. and the U.S.). What it doesn’t mention is that the total number of Canadian accounts on Iron March is just 88. This isn’t entirely off-brand for the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. On its website, the group has a bit of a habit of citing threats from “hate groups” that are occasionally just a poorly constructed social media page with a handful of followers... The 2018 Toronto van attack — which killed 10 people — is cited as evidence that Canada is susceptible to violent extremism by “incels”; groups of misogynistic men who blame their celibacy on women. Attacker Alek Minassian “cited his beliefs that women should be punished for not wanting to be sexually active with him,” it reads.  There’s just one problem: It came out during trial that this admission never really happened, that Minassian wasn’t an incel and that he was mostly motivated by a desire for notoriety. Nevertheless, Minassian’s case is twice cited in the toolkit, including in a section claiming that misogyny is a way to “attract and unite people of colour to hate groups.”... Teachers are told to be on the lookout for student usage of TikTok and Telegram...   In early 2020, illegal rail and road blockades held across the country caused an estimated $270 million in damage to the Canadian economy. The protests were held in support of an anti-pipeline breakaway faction within the Wet’suwet’en First Nation. Although the faction framed themselves as the only legitimate representatives of the community, they were actively disavowed by both the community’s elected leadership and much of its hereditary leadership.  None of the preceding context is mentioned in the toolkit, and the blockades are only cited in order to mention the “threats” faced by blockaders as evidence of anti-Indigenous racism... memes should be flagged as potential “hate promoting” rhetoric given that they occasionally appear in “anti-feminist and incel groups.”...   The toolkit includes a page listing “five common defences of hate propaganda.” Number two is the phrase “this is a free speech issue.”"

Kevin Pacitti 15 🇨🇦🇮🇹🇬🇧 on Twitter - "Friendly reminder…. 🇨🇦’s Liberal enviro terrorist @s_guilbeault Steven Guilbeault broke into Mayor Ralph Klein’s private home in Calgary, broke the law and trespassed on private property. Ralph’s wife Colleen was traumatized for years. Now he’s a liberal Cabinet minister"

John Robson: Trudeau's a climate hypocrite, but doesn't realize it - "Canada’s climate alarmist-in-chief not only has what is likely the largest carbon footprint in the country, he doesn’t care. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes dozens of private jet trips a month, often short hops to avoid traffic, while 24 Sussex pumps out CO2 as if Al Gore lived there. Doesn’t he know there’s a global warming crisis?... it’s not a good look for him to insist we can all dramatically cut our greenhouse gas emissions without damaging our lifestyles but can’t fix his own. Or for normally loquacious environmentalists to be struck dumb when the National Post asked for comment. It’s not just him, of course. Al Gore famously lives in carbon-spewing splendour that progressives also excuse , and every year the great and good fly to luxury resorts to discuss how to make the rest of us stop living like pigs. Or like them...   Remember when U.S. “climate czar” John Kerry, who thinks greenhouse gasses form a layer half an inch thick at the top of the atmosphere, was criticized for flying a private jet to Iceland to accept (drum roll please) a climate award? He retorted haughtily, “It’s the only choice for somebody like me who is travelling the world to win this battle.… I can’t sail across the ocean. I have to fly, meet with people and get things done.” Whereas you can walk and eat bugs.  Which brings me to the huge hoo-ha over the latest IPCC warning of (drum roll please) a decade to avoid rhetorical disaster involving, as it has been described by various sources, “Earth … getting unmanageably hotter still ,” “the point of no return ,” “ a critical threshold ” and “The chance to secure a livable future for everyone on Earth … slipping away ” if we overshoot the 1.5 C temperature increase that science says is a totally arbitrary political invention.  No, really. Everybody who’s anybody says it’s 1.5 C or burn. Yet The Atlantic’s Weekly Planet alarmathon recently blurted out , “The figure comes from the Paris Agreement.… But here’s the thing: 1.5 degrees, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, isn’t based on any scientific calculation.” Gee. Now you tell us. Then shamelessly peddle it anyway.   The New York Times just said if it were in Fahrenheit even our stupid American readers might get it, then added: “Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist, uses the analogy of a fever: Think about how much worse you feel when you run a fever of 101.3 degrees Fahrenheit, 2.7 degrees above normal. That fever is the equivalent of what the planet is facing.”  You couldn’t contrive a more misleading analogy if I gave you a week. There’s nothing “normal” about temperatures in 1850, and Earth, which has no immune system, didn’t die during the warmer period known as the Holocene climatic optimum."

EDITORIAL: Time for straight answers to ArriveCan questions - "The ongoing ArriveCan boondoggle would be farcical if it weren’t for the millions of taxpayer dollars that are caught up in the contorted procurement policies of the federal government.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s reaction to a Globe and Mail story detailing how the app was subcontracted by a two-person company to multinational companies was shocking in the way he sought to shrug off his government’s responsibility for this mess. The Globe reported that GC Strategies received millions of dollars in federal funds to work on IT projects and then subcontracted the work to six larger companies.  Trudeau’s response was to blame the civil service...  The ArriveCan app was designed for travellers to upload their travel documents and vaccine records when returning to Canada. It’s estimated it cost around $54 million to develop. In response to that hefty price tag, one tech company said a technician was able to replicate the app in two days for far less money. It’s largely unused now that travel restrictions have been lifted.  This is on top of $20 million spent on the practically useless COVID app that used Bluetooth technology to detect exposure to people nearby who had the virus.   It could be that no one in the federal government has any expertise in technology and they were all bamboozled by fast-talking tech types. Or it could be taxpayers got taken for a ride."

GUNTER: CBC is so cozy with Trudeau government because they have the same interests | Toronto Sun - "The Libs and CBC have the same interests, live in the same neighbourhoods, share the same values (and prejudices).  They agree on climate alarmism, the size of government, the need to combat the pandemic with complete lockdowns and vaccine mandates, criminal justice leniency, wide-open immigration, the superiority of the public sector over the private, and Internet censorship, among other topics.  Several times during the Freedom Convoy protests the Liberals overreacted because their “intelligence” was based on biased, melodramatic, wrongheaded CBC coverage.  Canada’s intelligence service and major police agencies told the Liberals the convoyers were not being financed by Russians or white supremacists. They weren’t assaulting residents and passersby. And they weren’t bent on overthrowing Canada’s democracy. But the CBC said they were. And since the Liberals have more confidence in the CBC than in the RCMP or CSIS, cabinet willingly went with the CBC version.  The CBC was all for imposition of the Emergencies Act. The Trudeauites and Mother Corp reinforced each other’s panicked, paranoid view that the convoy represented an existential threat to Canadian institutions... Under the Liberals, CBC employees have become much more financially comfortable.  According to an access to information request from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), since 2015 when the Liberals returned to power, not only has the government added nearly $300 million a year to the CBC’s general budget, they have also permitted the corporation to double the number of employees making more than $100,000 a year — from just over 400 to well over 900... No skin off the Liberals’ nose if d the CBC uses its government grant to move nearly 1,000 of its 7,400 employees up into the top five per cent of all Canadian income earners. Also, thanks to the Taxpayers Federation we know the CBC paid out $51 million in bonuses and salary increases during the first two years of the pandemic.  The Trudeau government gave the state broadcaster $63 million in special COVID funding. Mother Corps turned around and handed $51 million out in bonuses of roughly $14,000 a piece to hundreds of its employees.   This is all more evidence that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is not so much a vital part of the country’s communications environment as it is an enormous, bloated bureaucracy. It has seven vice-presidents, 10 directors general and five directors of finance.  It’s huge, it’s expensive, it’s blinkered and self-indulgent, and worst of all it doesn’t respect the views or entertainment tastes of the vast majority of Canadians who have no choice but to support it through their taxes.   The Corporation’s president, Catherine Tait no longer even pretends to be objective. She openly complains about the Conservatives and their leader Pierre Poilievre."

WARMINGTON: Trudeau gets help from CBC's Marg Delahunty in stopping reporters' questions | Toronto Sun - "“We were mad,” said Guillaume St. Pierre, president of the Parliamentary Press Gallery and a journalist with the Journal de Montreal. “It should not have happened.”... It looked like scripted shtick as Trudeau’s photographer Adam Scotti got into position for the photo op. Some press gallery members complain it was orchestrated, but the PMO denies that.  “We played no role in providing access to Mary Walsh and her team into Parliament,” the PMO said.  What is obvious is those trying to change the channel to save Trudeau’s political career are pulling out all the stops to run out of the clock. U.S. President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit this month. While Walsh’s pride of Newfoundland character is merciless on conservative politicians — laying a kiss on former prime minister Stephen Harper, teasing then Conservative leader Andrew Scheer how he was going to blow the upcoming election and of course the famous ambush on Mayor Rob Ford’s driveway that scared his young kids, in which he said he didn’t know who it was and called the police — she is known to yuk it up with Liberals...   Not everybody saw the humour in it, though. Behind Walsh, actual reporter Louis Blouin, of Radio-Canada and vice-president of the press gallery, started to ask a question but the prime minister was able to ignore it and flee.  St. Pierre said Blouin was “pissed off” about it and sent a note of complaint immediately.  Walsh, who was granted temporary day pass credentials, essentially helped the PM avoid another embarrassing scrum with tough questions, like what happened Tuesday. Instead, her audience with the PM will be featured on the next 22 Minutes show.  While this act may be hilarious for some, helping Trudeau avoid answering about Chinese election meddling is infuriating for others"

EDITORIAL: Can’t deny it: Canada’s broken | Toronto Sun - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been adamant over the past few months that Canada isn’t broken. Perhaps he should stop and listen to Canadians because a two-thirds majority in this country think things aren’t working as they should... Women were more likely to agree the country is broken at 70% compared to 64% of men. Younger voters were also more likely to say the country is broken than older voters.  Of course, women and younger voters are key to Trudeau’s voting coalition – he needs them to win – and right now, they don’t think the country is working properly. In Ontario, 70% agree the country is broken, in Atlantic Canada it’s 69% and in British Columbia it’s 65%, meaning that this isn’t just grumpy, old Conservative-voting Alberta – this is nationwide.   We are dealing with record-setting inflation and despite steady employment, the threat of a recession remains on the horizon. The issues at the passport office continue with too many people waiting months for a document that used to take days to process. Our legal immigration system is broken, with federal officials saying that it takes five years to process a skilled tradesperson trying to enter the country; but last year, a record 39,000 people crossed illegally into Canada at Roxham Road. Canada’s spending per capita on health care is among the highest in the OECD and our system doesn’t deliver. Government ministers break ethics rules on a routine basis and face no consequences.  Now, we see our military can’t defend our borders as two Chinese spy balloons had to be shot down by the Americans... A country that can’t provide basic services to its citizens and can’t defend its borders is the definition of broken. Seems most Canadians know that while the guy at the top, Trudeau, is in denial."

Ben Woodfinden: Trudeau's hollow progressivism behind refusal to raise federal flags - "The flags have now been lowered for over three months and according to the official half-masting notice, they are to be lowered “from now until further notice,” which is extremely unusual. Masting notices usually specify a defined time period in which the flag is to be half-masted. So a determination was never formally made for when they would be returned to full-mast. This has created the strange situation we find ourselves in now, where any decision, whether that be to keep them lowered indefinitely or return them to full mast, is going to be a “political” decision that will be criticized.  The prime minister was right to lower the flags. But his intent to turn the flag into a wedge issue is misguided and reckless. It risks turning what was a serious gesture to recognize one of the dark chapters of Canadian history into a cynical ploy that will create division and do nothing to get us closer to achieving meaningful reconciliation... Trudeau has said that he “would not raise them again until we have worked enough with Indigenous communities and leadership to make a clear determination that it was time to raise them again and continue the hard work of reconciliation.” But what exactly does this mean? What criteria will be used to judge when Canada is fit to fly its flag at full-mast again? This is classic example of the hollow progressivism that is the hallmark of Justin Trudeau... Trudeau at times sounds like he is a man in opposition, not the man who has been prime minister for the last six years. Trudeau could have implemented the 94 calls to action offered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But in reality he prefers hollow gestures... O’Toole has said he would raise them Sept 30, the national day of commemorating Truth and Reconciliation"
Canadian flag will return to full mast after Remembrance Day: ministers - "The Canadian flag will return to full mast after Remembrance Day on Nov. 11, marking the end of the longest period in Canadian history that the flag has been at half-mast."
There was never a confirmation that they were graves either
So much for his virtue signalling

WARMINGTON: Trudeau now branding opponents "flat Earthers" | Toronto Sun - "To describe those who don’t agree with him, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau routinely uses labels such as “racist, fringe, extremists or misogynistic.”  But this was a whole new level of insult... “that may not seem like a very serious thing, because someone who believes the Earth is flat is not going to necessarily cause tremendous harm to everyone else, but the ability to start to believe something that simply isn’t true — because enough people are telling you and enforcing that around you — actually starts creating real problems, and can bring us as a society to very scary places.”  He explained Canada needs internet monitoring “to make sure we are protecting people’s freedom of speech, freedom of expression, making sure marginalized communities traditionally oppressed by majorities continue to be protected in all the ways they need to be in societies because there are lots of tools for majorities to oppress minorities everywhere in the world."

U.S. states more attractive to energy investment than Canadian provinces including Alberta - "Canada has one of the largest reserves of oil and gas in the world, and a world-leading industry to harness it. Despite these advantages, self-inflicted policy failures continue to make Canada a less-desirable place to invest. Specifically, investment in the oil and gas sector fell from $76 billion in 2014 to $29 billion in 2022. This means less money and resources available to develop new energy projects, infrastructure and technologies. While many factors are at play, in the eyes of energy investors, our unattractive policy environment continues to be a major deterrent to investment... Why is this happening? In short, uncertainty around environmental regulations, disputed land claims and the cost of regulatory compliance. Consider that, on average, 62 per cent of survey respondents for Canada indicated that uncertainty over disputed land claims was a deterrent to investment compared to 24 per cent for the U.S. Investors also have a more positive view of the regulatory regime in the U.S. For instance, 73 per cent of respondents for Canada cited the cost of regulatory compliance as a deterrent to investment compared to only 35 per cent for the U.S. And 63 per cent of survey respondents for Canada indicated that stability, consistency and timeliness of the environmental regulatory process scared away investment compared to only 38 per cent in the U.S. Investors are also concerned about nationally-imposed regulations that affect provincial-level energy sectors. In 2020, the Trudeau government enacted Bill C-69, which inserted subjective criteria—including the “social impact” and “gender implications”—into the evaluation process of major energy projects, creating more uncertainty over the federal approval of projects. Similarly, the Trudeau government passed Bill C-48, which bans large oil tankers carrying crude oil or persistent oils (including upgraded bitumen and fuel oils) off B.C.’s northern coast and limits access to Asian markets. And the government created an arbitrary cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry (while all other GHG emissions were exempt) and new rules on methane emissions. Energy industry leaders have also expressed concerns over the federal government’s clean-fuel standards, which mandate that firms selling gas, liquid and solid fuels reduce the amount of greenhouse gases generated per unit of fuel they sell. Clearly, Ottawa’s aggressive regulations are hampering the competitiveness of the Canadian oil and gas industry, which fuels the economy and produces jobs in Alberta and across the country"

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