Peterson proposes populist alternative to WEF

Jordan Peterson has plans to start a populist alternative to the World Economic Forum, which he hopes to launch this fall. 

Dr Jordan B Peterson Tells Joe Rogan Of Plan For Alternative To World Economic Forum | Daily Wire - Greg Wilson:

January 28, 2023 - "Dr Jordan B Peterson laid out his plan to take on the globalists on 'The Joe Rogan Experience,' telling the podcast king in an extended interview posted Saturday that he is considering starting a populist alternative to the World Economic Forum [WEF]. Peterson told Rogan that he will be gathering a consortium this October/November in London as a kind of rival to the WEF. This group will discuss six questions pertaining to global philosophy and policy. While this first conference will be invite-only, it will be public, and Peterson noted that if successful, he would like to expand yearly.

"Some of the ideas — which are aimed at providing an 'alternative vision of the future … an alternative to that kind of apocalyptic narrative that’s being put forward, at least implicitly, by organizations like the WEF' — are as follows:

• How to get 'energy and resources at the lowest possible cost, as rapidly as possible, to the largest number of people around the world.'
• Engaging in a 'pro-human view' of earth stewardship.
• Putting forward a 'vision on the family policy front to facilitate the encouragement of and the maintenance of longterm, monogamous couples who are child-centered.'
• And discovering our 'story,' specifically as it relates to “voluntary play” rather than “the spirit of power” ruling.

"Peterson ... also took a clear shot at the globalist group that gathers in Davos to formulate progressive policies to impose on the world.

I’ve been trying to understand the driving ideas underneath this globalist utopian tyranny that seems to be developing from the top-down, and I think it’s driven at least in part by this religious vision that I already described — you know, that you have to construe culture itself, especially industrial culture, as the tyrannical father raping and pillaging everything in its way, which is [an] unbelievably dangerous way to think — too one-sided....

"Peterson blasted the progressive elites, who hint darkly at population controls and push policies that make food and energy expensive for the world’s poor.

>I’ve already felt that I’ve been at war for the last six months, and I would say it’s war because what I observed happening in Europe when I was there last was that … it’s pretty damn clear that the globalist utopians are willing to sacrifice the poor for the sake of the planet, you know, and they’re doing that by cranking energy prices up through the roof, and that means that people die....

"Peterson has clashed with leftist authoritarians in the past, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is a WEF regular. Peterson is also currently sparring with a psychology trade association that sought to sanction him for tweets it deemed offensive. The College of Psychologists of Ontario ordered Peterson to undergo 'social media communications retraining' or face a hearing on the potential suspension of his license to practice clinical psychology. Peterson made it clear he has no intention of submitting to the group’s demand."

Read more: https://www.dailywire.com/news/dr-jordan-b-peterson-tells-joe-rogan-of-plan-for-alternative-to-world-economic-forum

Economist's unrefuted case against lockdowns

Economist Douglas Allen, author of a 2020 report calling lockdowns one of Canada's greatest public policy failures, argues that it is important to keep making the case against them for the historical record.

Professor Douglas Allen still refuting lockdowns | Western Standard - Lee Harding:

January 29, 2022 - "Two years ago, Simon Fraser University economics professor Douglas Allen published an academic paper condemning pandemic lockdowns as doing more harm than good. 'An examination of over 80 COVID-19 studies reveals that many relied on assumptions that were false, and which tended to over-estimate the benefits and underestimate the costs of lockdown,' Allen wrote in April of 2021. 'The cost/benefit ratio of lockdowns in Canada, in terms of life-years saved, is between 3.6–282. That is, it is possible that lockdown will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in Canada’s history.'

"In an interview with Western Standard, Allen said his suspicions were already aroused a full year prior.... 'When the lockdowns first cane, ... I thought to myself, maybe I've misunderstood, we must be facing something that's three times worse than smallpox in the 17th century. I just thought I'd completely missed the seriousness of the virus,” Allen recalls. 'Almost immediately, I started doing my own research on this sort of stuff.... 

There was a group of economists in in UCLA, that by the end of the summer of 2020, had done such phenomenal work that really showed, I thought, that the lock downs were useless, that the virus was moving through populations exactly the same way, regardless of what the culture, the civilization, what governments were doing. And then I thought, ‘Okay, well, now it's over, right? There's no way we'll go back to lockdown in the fall.’ And of course we did.

"Allen said he got involved in a lawsuit to stop the lockdowns that was unsuccessful. 'I wrote a report that, when the lawsuit went nowhere, for nothing better to do, I posted it on my Facebook, I only have six friends on Facebook, but somebody shared it. I posted it on a Monday. And by Thursday, it went viral. And it was nonstop after that' Two journals asked him to publish reports, which Allen claims have been downloaded a “record” 70,000 times. 

"The question remains why a paper so sought by the public was almost completely ignored by the media. 'The mainstream media was part of the message, right? Whether they were literally in bed with the state or not, they went along with the beginning. Again, you're telling people certain things, and then you find out they're not true, you can either admit that you made a mistake, or you can just carry on with that narrative,' Allen explains. 'I personally don't believe in big conspiracies, I just think it was in every person's interest'....

Here you are, you're a politician. By the end of April of 2020, there had been a loss of wealth in the country by a third the stock market value just crashed, you had destroyed a third of the wealth of the country. Oops. And you're going to admit that? Not a chance, right? What you're going to do is say, ‘Well, we thought it would be two weeks to bend the curve, it obviously wasn't. We're going to have to go for another two weeks and another two weeks, and you're just hoping and praying that this thing goes away. And you can declare victory....

"The very infectious, but less lethal Omicron provided the way out of lockdowns, Allen says, but the damage to the economy and the lives that this took cannot be restored.

> When you're unemployed, your income goes down your diet, quality of diet goes down, your anxiety levels go up, your mental health goes down, all these things contribute to a shorter life. In the United States, for the first year of the pandemic, lost life years, due to just the unemployment part, is about 800,000 lives. If you convert the unemployment into lost lives. My impression is each category of costs swamps the benefits of lockdown..... 

Lost GDP. Certainly, that's important. But my goodness, that's just the starting of things. There has to be a full accounting of what you might even call the loss of livelihood, or the loss of living....  The deaths of despair, the overdoses, the suicides, and all these sorts of things have to be accounted for..... Deaths caused by lost cancer appointments or other health appointments, those sorts of things, the complete failure of the healthcare system has to be accounted for.”

Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/professor-douglas-allen-still-refuting-lockdowns/article_7d2f5c52-9ffc-11ed-b4fe-9b385fc66a03.html

Read study: https://www.sfu.ca/~allen/LockdownReport.pdf

Estimated 500 in Ottawa on Convoy anniversary

Parliament Hill police prepare for estimated 500 people to attend Freedom Convoy anniversary | National Post - Canadian Press:

January 27, 2023 - "The Parliamentary Protective Service expects 500 people to gather this weekend to mark a year since the Freedom Convoy occupied downtown Ottawa. The agency, which polices the precinct, says it will curtail some access to Parliament Hill.

"The public can still use the central and east gates to access the Hill lawn, but not the gates closest to the West Block, where the Liberals are holding their caucus meeting this weekend. The Parliamentary Protective Service says public tours have been cancelled and Ottawa Police will enforce the closure of Wellington Street to traffic. Ottawa city council voted this week to reopen Wellington Street to cars as soon as March, after a yearlong closure."

Read more: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/parliament-hill-police-prepare-for-estimated-500-people-to-attend-freedom-convoy-anniversary

15 vehicles towed, dozens of tickets issued as rally marks one-year anniversary of 'Freedom Convoy' in Ottawa | CTV News - Josh Pringle:

January 28, 2023 - "Ottawa police say there are 'no issues to report' as hundreds of people gathered in the Parliamentary Precinct to mark the one-year anniversary of the arrival of the 'Freedom Convoy' in downtown Ottawa.... As of 4:30 p.m., police and Bylaw Services officers had issued 81 parking tickets and 20 Provincial Offences Notices, while 15 vehicles had been towed from the downtown area.....

"On Saturday afternoon, a large group of people waving Canadian flags, U.S. flags and chanting 'Freedom' gathered on Parliament Hill. Drivers reported seeing a few people holding Canadian flags on Hwy. 416 overpasses heading into Ottawa. Two events were scheduled for Parliament Hill on Saturday, including a '1-year anniversary trucker arrival celebration' at 12 p.m., followed by a dance party....

"Another rally to mark the one-year anniversary of the Freedom Convoy is set for Parliament Hill at 12 p.m. on Sunday, followed by a dance party from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m."

Read more: https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/increased-police-presence-in-downtown-ottawa-as-hundreds-of-people-mark-freedom-convoy-anniversary-1.6250100

Smith calls for Trudeau to scrap 'Justin Transition'

Alberta premier Danielle Smith has penned an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asking him to meet with her to discuss his "Just Transition" program, which she warns faces "irrepressible opposition" in her province.

Smith asks Trudeau to agree on “Sustainable Jobs” alternative to “Just Transition” | True North - Rachel Emmanuel:

January 26, 2023 - "Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is proposing a sustainable jobs alternative to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 'Just Transition' proposal, which she says would face 'irrepressible opposition' from Alberta. The federal government has yet to table 'Just Transition' legislation, but Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said it would be a priority this spring. 

"In an open letter, Smith said the leaders have reached a crossroads in Alberta’s relationship with the Federal Government. 'We can continue with the endless court challenges, legislation to protect jurisdictional rights and inflammatory media coverage over our disagreements,' she wrote. 'Or, as is my strong preference, Alberta and Ottawa can work in partnership on a plan that will signal to all Canadians and investors from around the world that our governments have cooperatively designed a series of incentives and initiatives.'

"Those initiatives, the premier wrote, would seek to achieve objectives of substantially decreasing Canada’s and Alberta’s net emissions and accelerating private and public investment in infrastructure that utilizes and develops Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage, Bitumen Beyond Combustion, Geothermal technology, petrochemicals, hydrogen, lithium, helium, zero-emissions vehicles and nuclear technologies. They would also seek to attract a larger skilled workforce to positions in the conventional energy sector and emerging industries and increase LNG exports and other responsibly developed conventional oil and natural gas resources to Europe, Asia, and the United States, she said. 

"'Prime Minister, all of the above objectives need to be clearly articulated and integrated into any Federal legislation or policies your government seeks to implement in the coming months, or that legislation will face irrepressible opposition from Alberta,” Smith wrote. 'I genuinely do not want to see that happen,' she added, inviting the prime minister to meet with her in February to discuss the matter.... 

"Last week, Blacklock’s Reporter uncovered a June 1 briefing note to Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson which said ... more than 2.7 million Canadians face 'significant' disruptions in sectors that will be affected by climate change programs. 'The transition to a low carbon economy will have an uneven impact across sectors, occupations and regions and create significant labour market disruptions,' it reads....

"Smith has said 'Just Transition' is a social justice term meant to phase out the coal industry. 'To use that terminology, they’re virtue signaling to an extreme base that is openly advocating to shut down oil or natural gas,' she said last week. In her letter, she also implored Trudeau to drop the name 'Just Transition'....

'Vow that all provisions of any forthcoming legislation will be designed to incentivize investment and job growth in both the conventional energy sector as well as in emerging industries,' she wrote. 'Demonstrate that no provision of the Act will be designed to phase out or reduce Alberta’s conventional oil and natural gas sector and workforce.'

"The federal government has yet to respond to Smith’s letter."

Read more: https://tnc.news/2023/01/26/smith-trudeau/

UK Covid boosters discontinued for under-50s

U,K Becomes Latest Country to Ban Covid Boosters for Under-50s | Daily Sceptic - Will Jones:

January 25, 2023 - "Covid booster doses will no longer be available to healthy people under 50 from next month, the Government has said. The reason given by the JCVI, the Government’s vaccine advisory body, is because 'the transition continues away from a pandemic emergency response towards pandemic recovery'. 

"A number of countries have imposed similar bans on boosters for healthy under-50s, a trend that has been linked by observers to safety concerns, though public authorities have not confirmed this. The U.K. will continue to offer the first two doses to over-16s.

"The Government has also accepted JCVI advice that another round of Covid booster jabs should be dished out this autumn to the over-50s and other risk groups. The advisers have also called for senior citizens and those who are immunosuppressed to receive an extra booster dose this spring. These will be the seventh and eight jabs for thousands of Brits. The Mail has more.

Under the 2022 autumn Covid booster campaign which began in early September last year, over-50s, residents and staff at care homes for older adults and frontline health and social care workers are eligible for a jab.   

On top of these groups, five to 49 year-olds who are a clinical risk group, live with an immunosuppressed person or are carers have also been offered a booster – similar to that for the annual flu vaccine....

The JCVI also advised that the booster third dose which became available in 2021, will no longer be offered to those aged between 16 and 49-years-old who are not in a clinical risk group, from February 12th, 'as the transition continues away from a pandemic emergency response towards pandemic recovery'....

The NHS will continue to operate a smaller scale vaccine offer from mid-February onwards to ensure those eligible for first and second doses can still get their jabs, it said today."

Read more: https://dailysceptic.org/2023/01/25/u-k-becomes-latest-country-to-ban-covid-boosters-for-under-50s/

 

US CDC set Facebook speech policy in pandemic

Internal Facebook emails indicate the Centers for Disease Control dictated the platform's Covid speech policy during the pandemic.

Inside the Facebook Files: Emails Reveal the CDC's Role in Silencing COVID-19 Dissent | Reason - Robby Soave:

January 19, 2023 - "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) played a direct role in policing permissible speech on social media throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Confidential emails obtained by Reason show that Facebook moderators were in constant contact with the CDC, and routinely asked government health officials to vet claims relating to the virus, mitigation efforts such as masks, and vaccines. For a broader analysis of the federal government's pandemic-era efforts to suppress free speech — and whether they violated the First Amendment — see Reason's March 2023 cover story on the ramifications of these emails.... 

"The Facebook Files, which were obtained by Reason as a result of the state of Missouri's lawsuit against the Biden administration, reveal that the CDC had substantial influence over what users were allowed to discuss on Meta's platforms: Facebook and Instagram. The messages reveal an environment where the CDC kept tabs on Meta's moderation practices and regularly told the company what the agency wanted it to do.

"For instance, in May 2021, CDC officials began routinely vetting claims about COVID-19 vaccines that had appeared on Facebook. The platform left it up to the federal government to determine which assertions were accurate. Facebook's moderator notes that some of the above claims 'would already be violating'—an implicit admission that the CDC's opinion on the other claims would be a deciding factor in whether the platform would restrict such content. Facebook was clearly a willing participant in this process; moderators repeatedly thanked the CDC for its 'help in debunking'....

"For months, it was Meta policy to prohibit users from asserting that the pandemic may have originated from a lab leak. The platform revised this policy around the same time that the above email exchange took place. By July 2021, the CDC wasn't just evaluating which claims it thought were false, but whether they could 'cause harm.'

"Then, in November, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for children to receive Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. Meta proudly informed the CDC that it would remove false claims — 'i.e. the COVID vaccine is not safe for kids' — from Facebook and Instagram. Meta also provided the CDC with a list of new claims about vaccines and asked whether the government thought they could 'contribute to vaccine refusals.' The CDC determined that this label applied to all such claims.

"Meta frequently gave the CDC lists of pandemic-related topics that had gone viral, seeking guidance on how to handle them. And the CDC informed Meta 'to be on the lookout' for misinformation stemming from specific alleged misconceptions. Meta also kept the CDC apprised of criticism of Anthony Fauci, the White House's COVID-19 advisor and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). One email warned the CDC that Facebook users were mocking Fauci for changing his mind about masking and double-masking. The CDC replied that this information was 'very helpful.'"

Read more: https://reason.com/2023/01/19/facebook-files-emails-cdc-covid-vaccines-censorship/

Trudeau gov't pauses pilot gun grab launch in PEI

Liberals' gun grab to begin in Prince Edward Island | Western Standard - Matthew Horwood:

January 9, 2023 - "The federal government this year proposes to launch its long-promised national buyback of prohibited firearms starting in Prince Edward Island, according to a federal memo.... 'Prince Edward Island will be used as a pilot and will be the first point of collection based on the smaller number of firearms,' said an August 31 Transition Book for the Minister of Public Works.... No budget was detailed for the gun grab. The Parliamentary Budget Office in a 2021 Cost Estimate Of The Firearm Buyback Program put expenses at $756 million but warned details 'remain unclear'.... 

"Cabinet in 2020 enacted Regulations Prescribing Certain Firearms, which banned some 1,500 models of “assault style firearms.” The term was not defined.... Bill C-21 An Act To Amend Certain Acts currently before the Commons public safety committee proposed to expand the ban to include any 'rifle or shotgun that is capable of discharging centre fire ammunition in a semi-automatic manner.' Opponents have said the ban would affect commonly used hunting and sporting rifles....

"The launch in Canada’s smallest province would affect some 6,464 licensed gun owners in Prince Edward Island, according to figures from the Commissioner of Firearms. It is a fraction the number of licensed owners in New Brunswick (70,425), Nova Scotia (75,501), Newfoundland and Labrador (75,957), Manitoba (93,182), Saskatchewan (112,790), British Columbia (315,077), Alberta (328,723), Québec (486,406) and Ontario (624,448)."

Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/liberals-gun-grab-to-begin-in-prince-edward-island/article_af9070f8-9027-11ed-9f7a-53c2e0627e16.html

Clyde Do Something, "Trudeau's P.E.I. Pilot Firearm Confiscation Program CANCELED", January 20, 2023

Gun Buyback Pilot on Prince Edward Island Not Going Ahead: Report | Epoch Times - Noé Chartier: 

January 13, 2023 - "The federal government’s plan to start its firearms buyback program on Prince Edward Island as a pilot project is not going ahead, according to a news report. The information was first reported by Maritimes media group Saltwire Network on Jan. 12 , and was commented on by Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro.... A note posted on the Public Services and Procurement Canada website on Dec. 29 said the pilot phase of the gun buyback program would be starting in December 2022.... 

"Audrey Champoux, press secretary for Mendicino, told Saltwire the P.E.I pilot was 'one of many options on the table and should be considered out of date.' A spokesperson for P.E.I.’s Department of Justice and Public Safety told Saltwire the province had been informed of the buyback pilot last summer.... 'At this time, the Province is still awaiting further details from the federal government on how their buy-back program may be implemented,' said Vicki Tse.

"The federal government added 1,500 firearms to the prohibited schedule on May 1, 2020, a few days after the mass shooting in Portapique, Nova Scotia.... The Liberal government is attempting to increase the number of prohibited firearms by adding amendments to its Bill C-21. The two track approach includes adding new models to the prohibited list and creating an evergreen definition to capture all firearms the Liberals call 'assault-style.'

"Opposition parties, First Nations, and interest groups have pushed back on the amendments which will come under more scrutiny at the Commons public safety committee.... Meanwhile the Federal Court has approved on Jan. 11 the Province of Alberta’s application to receive intervenor status in six lawsuits challenging the 2020 firearms ban. Alberta has also said it would not cooperate with Ottawa’s plan to confiscate firearms in the province."

Read more: https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/ottawa-considered-pei-as-pilot-location-for-gun-buy-back-launch-before-reversing-course-100813330/

~30,000 in USA killed by ventilators in Apr. 2020

An Estimated 30,000 Americans Were Killed by Ventilators & Iatrogenesis in April 2020 | Substack - Michael P Senger, The New Normal:

October 5, 2022- "To date, we still don’t have especially good studies on the actual causes of excess deaths by state and country when the world first went into lockdown in spring 2020. For political reasons, these deaths were all generally been lumped together as 'Covid deaths,' but this coding was appallingly sloppy. According to the World Health Organization’s [WHO] initial coding guidance, if a decedent had either tested positive ... using a PCR test ... or been in contact with anyone who had within several weeks prior to their death, then the death should be classified as a 'Covid death'....

"Thus, this article reexamines data from the US CDC on all-cause excess deaths by state during peak lockdown in April 2020 using the information we now know to determine what actually caused them. This examination concludes that, contrary to popular belief, there was no uniquely deadly strain or variant emanating out of New York in spring 2020; this is clear from the fact that several states close to New York such as Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine experienced little to no excess deaths during that time period. On the contrary, over 30,000 Americans appear to have been killed by mechanical ventilators or other forms of medical iatrogenesis throughout April 2020, primarily in the area around New York.

"This result is not altogether surprising, as subsequent studies revealed a 97.2% mortality rate among those over age 65 who were put on mechanical ventilators in accordance with the initial guidance from the WHO — as opposed to a 26.6% mortality rate among those over age 65 who weren’t put on mechanical ventilators — before a grassroots campaign put a stop to the practice by the beginning of May 2020. As one doctor later told the Wall Street Journal, 'We were intubating sick patients very early. Not for the patients’ benefit, but in order to control the epidemic'…... 

"The ... area around New York experienced a particular hysteria for the use of mechanical ventilators in spring 2020 to an extent that other states did not.... [W]e can get a sense for the level of this hysteria from the hundreds of headlines advocating mechanical ventilators that sprung up around that time. "For example, Google yields hundreds of results for the query 'New York mechanical ventilators 2020.' A sample of the hundreds of headlines are ones such as: 'NY may need 24,000 more ventilators to fight COVID-19. Here’s how it could get them,' 'Which coronavirus patients will get life-saving ventilators? Guidelines show how hospitals in NYC, US will decide,' 'New York City Needs 400 Ventilators by Sunday, de Blasio Says,' 'Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces 1,000 Ventilators Donated to New York State,' 'A New York hospital is treating two patients on a device intended for one.” Likewise, Google yields hundreds of results for the query 'New Jersey mechanical ventilators 2020'.... This phenomenon was not nearly as pronounced in other states.....

"Given we now know that patients over age 65 were more than 26 times as likely to survive if they were not placed on mechanical ventilators, it’s not hard to see how this hysteria for mechanical ventilators in the New York area accounted for the particularly high excess death rates in that region. Additionally, because the neighboring states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine experienced little to no excess deaths during this time period, the overuse of mechanical ventilators and other medical iatrogenesis in spring 2020 provides a far more robust explanation for the particularly high rates of excess deaths in the New York area than does a particularly deadly strain or variant.

"So just how many people were killed by the overuse of mechanical ventilators and other iatrogenesis in spring 2020?... [W]e can form a conservative estimate based on the data above by using the percentage of excess deaths in a comparable state that did not experience as much ventilator hysteria.... 

"Michigan also experienced a high percentage of excess deaths per capita in April 2020. Michigan is even colder than New York and New Jersey in terms of its climate, and its low-income urban centers are even more dense, both of which were primary factors correlating with excess deaths in spring 2020. Like New York and New Jersey, Michigan also had a strict lockdown at that time. However, Michigan did not experience nearly the same level of hysteria for mechanical ventilators as did the New York area, and Michigan’s rate of excess deaths, while high, was more in line with that of other states. Thus, we can assume that if New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts had not engaged in ventilator hysteria, then their percentages of excess deaths per capita would have been more similar to that of Michigan....

"By subtracting the number of excess deaths that each state would have experienced if their excess death rate had been the same as that of Michigan from the number of excess deaths they actually experienced each week, we can see that in total, during April 2020, approximately 17,289 deaths in New York City, 7,347 deaths in New Jersey, 803 deaths in Massachusetts, 788 deaths in Connecticut, and 3,725 deaths in New York outside New York City were attributable to the overuse of mechanical ventilators or other iatrogenesis. All told, this data indicates that some 30,000 patients in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts were killed by mechanical ventilators or other medical iatrogenesis in April 2020."

Read more: https://michaelpsenger.substack.com/p/an-estimated-30000-americans-were

"Justin Transition" will have huge economic impact

Premier Smith 'sickened' by staggering disruption planned with Trudeau's Just Transition | Edmonton Journal - David Staples: 

January 16, 2023 - "The staggering scope of change that Justin Trudeau’s Liberals intend to impose on Canadians with their Just Transition program is made clear in a newly-released government document. The document — first reported by the online new[s] agency Blacklock’s Reporter and now obtained by Postmedia — are department speaking notes from June 1, 2022, for Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

"The document predicts 'significant disruption' for workers in key Canadian employment sectors in order to meet federal emissions reduction targets. 'The transition to a low-carbon economy will have an uneven impact across sectors, occupations and regions, and create significant labour market disruptions.'

"Included in the 'large-scale' transformation will be jobs in the following sectors — 1.4 million building trades workers, 642,000 transportation workers, 292,000 agriculture workers, 202,000 energy workers and 193,000 workers in manufacturing. In total, 13.5 per cent of Canadian workers in many of the highest-playing blue-collar sectors will face major disruptions.

"The document notes, 'Some regions, particularly in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador, where communities are more reliant on carbon intensive industries, will likely be disproportionally affected'.... Whether or not your blood is boiling about now will likely come down to which part of Canada you reside.

"If you’re from Quebec or British Columbia, provinces where hydro is king and where drastic action on climate change is seen as the ultimate moral good, such major disruption might well seem reasonable. Yes, a few eggs might well get broken to make the omelette of a greener world. Yes, some men and women who are earning high wages in a polluting industry might have to take lesser-paying jobs. But climate change is the most alarming existential issue of our times, right?... 

"But if you’re from Alberta, Saskatchewan or Newfoundland and Labrador, this plan might well strike you as madness, as a federal government that has lost all humility and common sense....

"Canada might contort itself and slash oil and gas production to lower emissions, but that will have no impact on worldwide emissions. Whatever the country does, the world’s several billion poor people will rightly continue to embrace burning fossil fuels so they can avoid starvation. If they don’t buy oil and gas from Canada, they’ll buy it from Russia, the Middle East or Venezuela. And, yes, we can all buy in to Trudeau’s plan for top-down federal government management of the economy, but we’ll be putting our faith in a government that has run up unprecedented debt, embraced energy scarcity policies that are already ratcheting up inflation, and grossly overspends even as it designs a phone app for incoming travellers that barely works.

"For my part, I note the vast differences of opinion between people in different regions of the country and I applaud the framers of the Canadian Constitution, including Peter Lougheed, for putting in place constitutional measures that can keep Canada united despite such differences, at least if the Constitution is respected... The framers, such as Lougheed, made sure that Alberta and other provinces have exclusive constitutional right to develop their natural resources. 

"This latest Trudeau scheme is so out-of-bounds, such a grotesque and misguided example of federal over-reach, that it’s evident either Trudeau has never read the Constitution, or he has no respect for it, nor for Alberta.

Read more: https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/david-staples-premier-smith-sickened-by-staggering-disruption-planned-with-trudeaus-just-transition

Justin Transition: Trudeau government plans to phase out Canada's oil & gas industry

The so-called “just transition” will leave Canadians cold and in the dark | True North - Gregory Tobin:

January 7, 2023 - "So what is the 'just transition'? At its most basic level, it is a plan to phase out Canada’s best in the world oil and gas industry. Leaving us with only unreliable and intermittent wind turbines and solar panels for our energy sources. And any fuels we do use [would be] imported from countries like Saudi Arabia and the United States. It also means replacing all oil and gas jobs in Canada – some of the highest paying jobs in the country and frankly the world – with jobs like solar panel installer.

"It’s unrealistic, but the Trudeau government is full steam ahead on it. Natural Resources Minister Johnathan Wilkinson, made a new year’s announcement that 2023 will see new legislation on the matter brought forward. They’ve even brought on board NDP MP Charlie Angus to help draft the legislation – another unfortunate sign that the Liberals have gone quite far left in their agenda.

"And with every passing item on their agenda, our allies outperform us.... In 2015 the United States exported zero LNG. But in 2022, America became the world’s largest exporter of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). It is simply ridiculous that Canada isn’t at the top of that list. We have the best product, made to the best standard, made by the best workers in the field, with extremely low emissions. The only thing stopping us from getting the product to market is government willpower.

"America is also becoming a leader in Carbon Tech – which is using technology to reduce emissions, or even remove CO2 emissions from the air and re-use it as an ingredient in all kinds of things like concrete, alcohol, carbon nanotubing and much more. Again, something Canada ... should be the world leader in.

"We’re already experiencing something called 'carbon leakage' – which occurs when Canada stops producing a given product, due to government efforts to reduce domestic emissions. But the demand for that product is still there, and so buyers end up going to places like China – who are happy to sell their coal and other products which are made with little to no environmental standards at all. And because of the government’s lagging behind, we’re also going to see 'job leakage' start to occur. Where workers who aren’t interested in being solar panel installers will go to the States or elsewhere to make big bucks in the Carbon Tech engineering world.

"But Trudeau does not seem to want to make Canada #1. And because of his attachment to an outdated eco-radical ideology, we have left it up to countries like Qatar and the United States to sell their LNG to the European nations begging for it. And they’ll make billions. Billions that could pay for hospitals, schools, roads, doctors, teachers, and good-paying jobs....

"Sadly, Trudeau fails to see the case for selling natural gas to a continent freezing to death. And also fails to see the case for capturing carbon while the world grapples with an emissions problem. It’s very frustrating. But so long as the prime minister can say he cut some domestic emissions somewhere, he is happy to do it, even if it leaves Canada behind. This 'just transition' off of oil and gas and nuclear is what has left Europe burning garbage to keep their kids warm. We cannot allow the same crisis to come to our shores. Canadians deserve better. 

"Let’s work towards an energy transformation – driven by innovation – that will allow us to continue using the energy and products we make here, to the best standards in the world, use Carbon Tech to make it all low emissions, and sell those products to a world that needs them. What we don’t need is more of the same old top-down bureaucratic ideas that don’t work, from a tired government, that leaves us and our allies cold and in the dark."

Read more: https://tnc.news/2023/01/07/tobin-just-transition/

China reports 60K Covid deaths since reopening

China reports nearly 60,000 people with COVID-19 died since early December | CBC News - Joe McDonald, Associated Press:

January 14, 2023 -"China on Saturday reported nearly 60,000 deaths in people who had COVID-19 since early December, offering hard numbers for an unprecedented surge that was apparent in overcrowded hospitals and packed crematoriums.... Those numbers may still underestimate the toll, though the government said the 'emergency peak' of its latest surge appears to have passed.

"The toll included 5,503 deaths due to respiratory failure caused by COVID-19 and 54,435 fatalities from other ailments combined with COVID-19 since Dec. 8, the National Health Commission announced. It said those 'deaths related to COVID' occurred in hospitals, which means anyone who died at home would not be included in the numbers.

"The report would more than double China's official COVID-19 death toll to 10,775 since the disease was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019. China has counted only deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 death toll, a narrow definition that excludes many deaths that would be attributed to COVID-19 in other places.... [As of January 20, the Worldometers website still reports 5,202 Covid deaths in China since the start of the pandemic. - gd]

"Hospitals across the country have been overwhelmed with patients, and funeral homes and crematoriums have struggled to handle the dead.

"Infection numbers now appear to be falling based on a decline in the number of patients visiting fever clinics, said a National Health Commission official, Jiao Yahui. The daily number of people going to those clinics peaked at 2.9 million on Dec. 23 and had fallen by 83 per cent to 477,000 on Thursday, according to Jiao.... 

"Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease physician and professor of public health at the Yale School of Public Health, said the number of COVID-19 deaths China is reporting may be a "significant underestimation'.... 'In order to be counted as a case, you have to be at a place where they can say you fulfilled all the requirements, and that's at a hospital.' Hospitals in China, he said, are located mostly in large cities where COVID-19 outbreaks have been reported, not in isolated rural areas. 'This is the Lunar New Year, people are travelling, going to the countryside where the population is vulnerable,' Ko said. 'We're really worried about what's going to happen in China as this outbreak moves to the countryside'....

"The health commission said the average age of people who died since Dec. 8 is 80.3 years, and 90.1 per cent are 65 and older. It said more than 90 per cent of people who died had cancer, heart or lung diseases or kidney problems....

"The U.S., South Korea, Canada and other governments have imposed virus-testing and other controls on people arriving from China. Beijing retaliated on Wednesday by suspending the issuance of new visas to travellers from South Korea and Japan."

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-updated-covid-death-toll-1.6714255

£4.5BN in UK Covid subsidies lost to fraud or error

Covid-19 support worth £4.5bn lost to error and fraud  | BBC Politics - Joshua Nevett:

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) national HQ, Nottingham, UK. Alan Murray Rush, CCBY-SA 2.0, Geograph.org

January 17, 2023 - "An estimated £4.5bn in Covid-19 support has been lost to error and fraud since 2020, the tax authority has revealed. The money was handed out through schemes to help households and businesses cope with the economic fallout of the pandemic. The scale of the money lost was detailed in a letter to a committee of MPs overseeing government spending. The letter says the estimate of £4.5bn did not count money recovered by the UK's tax authority, HMRC [His Majesty's Revenue and Customs].. 

"During the pandemic the government spent billions on a package of support to keep the economy afloat when lockdown restrictions were in place. Last year a forecast by the UK's official economic analyst, the Office for Budget Responsibility, estimated the total cost of pandemic-related rescue measures to be £310bn. 

"The chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Harriett Baldwin, asked the government to provide a breakdown of how much of that money was lost to error and fraud. In response, the chief executive of HMRC, Jim Harra, said the figure was estimated to be £4.5bn in total across two financial years, 2020-21 and 2021-22. Of this sum, £3.5bn was lost through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, £1bn through the Self Employed Income Support Scheme and £71m through the Eat Out To Help Out....

"In the letter, Mr Harra wrote that ... from the beginning of the pandemic, HMRC was 'clear that the schemes would be targets for fraud and also that customers operating at pace and under pressure would make mistakes'. The schemes, Mr Harra said, were designed 'in such a way as to minimise fraud and error while not unnecessarily delaying payments'....

"HMRC is in the process of attempting to recover Covid support lost to error and fraud. By the end of March 2022, HMRC said it had recovered more than £762m through compliance activity. Lord Agnew resigned as a Treasury minister last year, attacking the government's handling of fraudulent Covid business loans....

"Liberal Democrats say billions of pounds in tax has been left uncollected because thousands of HMRC staff have been transferred to work on Covid and Brexit schemes. In response to parliamentary questions, Treasury minister Victoria Atkins said about 1,250 HMRC staff were redeployed to work on Covid-19 schemes in 2021-22. She said revenue recouped by HMRC through compliance activity fell by £6bn in 2021-22, compared to the previous year....

"HMRC said it moves resources 'where and when they are most needed' and its compliance work 'provides good value to the taxpayer'."

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64304428

Health Canada report calls for zero alcohol consumption

A Health Canada-funded report recommends zero alcohol consumption, and calls for mandatory warning labels on all alcoholic beverages as a first step to that goal.

What's behind Canada's drastic new alcohol guidance | BBC News - Holly Honderich:

Warning labels on liquor bottles in Yukon, Canada, 2020. Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse / CBC.

January 17, 2023 - "In Canada, it should be Dry January all year round, according to new national recommendations that say zero alcohol is the only risk-free approach. If you must drink at all, two drinks maximum each week is deemed low-risk by the government-backed guidance.

"The advice is a steep drop from the previous recommendation, published in 2011. Those guidelines allowed a maximum of 10 drinks a week for women and 15 drinks for men.

"The new report, funded by Health Canada, also suggested mandatory warning labels for all alcoholic beverages....

"The nearly 90-page report, from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), details a variety of health risks associated with what was previously considered low alcohol consumption. According to the CCSA, any more than two standard drinks - each the equivalent of a 12-ounce (341ml; 0.6 pints) serving of 5% alcohol beer or a five-ounce (142ml; 0.26 pints) glass of 12% alcohol wine - brings an increase in negative outcomes, including breast and colon cancer. 

"It may be a rude awakening for the roughly 80% of Canadian adults who drink. Canadian experts say the drastic change in guidance - from nearly two drinks per day to two per week - is the result of better research over time....

"The new recommendations put the country out of step with several other Western nations. Australia's national guidance, published in 2020, recommends a maximum of 10 standard drinks a week. France suggests the same. The US recommends no more than two drinks a day for men and one for women, while the UK suggests no more than 14 "units" of alcohol - around six glasses of wine, or pints of beer - per week. But Canada is not a total outlier. As of 2015, the Netherlands' health council recommended that people abstained from alcohol altogether, or drink no more than one standard drink each day.

"It's still an open question whether Canadians - who love their beer almost as much as they love hockey - will be convinced to drink less because of this guidance. According to the Global Drug Survey, in drinking frequency, Canada does not rank in the top 10 countries globally, falling below the global average. But on the measure of 'feeling drunk', Canada jumped to the sixth spot, just behind the US and the UK....

"CCSA scientists and other experts say that mandatory labelling of all alcoholic beverages with health warnings, now common practice for cigarettes, is a necessary first step.... Still, mandating nationwide labelling would require sign-off from Health Canada. In a statement to the BBC, the agency thanked the CCSA for its work, saying alcohol use presents 'serious and complex public health and safety issues'. But it would not comment on adding health warnings to Canadians' drinks."

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64311705

Norway, Sweden had least excess deaths 2020-22

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data indicates that Norway and no-lockdown Sweden had the lowest percentage of excess deaths in 2020 through 2022: 

No-Lockdown Sweden Seemingly Tied for Lowest All-Causes Mortality in OECD Since COVID Arrived | Reason - Eugene Volokh, Volokh Conspiracy:

January 10, 2023 - "COVID lockdowns could have saved lives, by decreasing COVID deaths (and also incidentally decreasing some other deaths, for instance from auto accidents, from other communicable diseases, and the like). They also could have cost lives — for instance, through drug abuse deaths or suicides or homicides stemming from people being cooped up for months, drug abuse deaths or suicides or homicides stemming from economic damage and unemployment caused by the lockdown, cancers not caught early as people delayed early screening (even if such early screening would have been officially excluded from the lockdown), and so on. What was the likely aggregate of all these effects?.... 

"[T]o look at just one data point ... how did Sweden, which basically didn't lock down, fare compared to other prosperous countries? Sweden did have a higher COVID mortality rate than ... neighboring Norway, Denmark, and Finland. But what about what is sometimes called 'all-cause excess mortality,' which is to say total mortality in the country compared, on a percentage basis, to the pre-COVID mortality? Moreover, some of the effects of lockdowns (positive and negative) could have lasted well after the lockdowns.... What then about the all-causes excess mortality from 2020 to the present, rather than just based on the 2020 data or the 2020-21 data?

"A recent UK Office of National Statistics report says that Sweden and Norway were essentially tied for the lowest '[p]roportional all-cause excess-mortality scores' (which 'measure[] the percentage change in the number of deaths compared to the expected number of deaths (based on the five-year average [from 2015 to 2019])' among the listed European countries, looking at data from Jan. 2020 to June 2022: Their excess mortality was up 2.7%, compared to, say, 5.2% for Denmark, 7.1% for Finland, and 11.8% for the Netherlands....

"I also tried to do a similar analysis myself, based on OECD data (which covers most of Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel), for Mar. 2020 to Oct. 2022 (the most recent data I could find). Based on that data, Sweden seems to have had the lowest rate, even below Norway.... You can check my data in this spreadsheet; I downloaded the 2020, 2021, and 2022 weekly data from the OECD site, deleted a few Latin American countries that didn't have data for all the years, calculated the average excess death percentages for each year (see row 8 of each sheet), and then calculated the average excess death percentages for all three years (see row 2 of the 2022 sheet).

"I also asked our UCLA School of Law Empirical Research Group people to check into that, and they confirmed; here are the aggregate excess mortality percentages they reported (or see the Excel spreadsheet [linked in Reason article - gd]), though I think my data excluded the first 9 weeks of 2020 (as basically pre-COVID) and their analysis included it:

"Of course, there are obvious limitations with such an analysis.... 

• this is based just on comparing one no-lockdown country to other countries; perhaps Sweden was an outlier for other reasons (what if, for instance, it had also improved various unrelated health care measures in the last couple of years, more so than other countries had?).
• It would of course be helpful to also control for other factors, such as immunization rates over time, the fraction of the country that lives cheek-by-jowl in major population centers, more precise measures of age, and more.
• The excess mortality data may be imprecise in some respects, though the COVID mortality data might be as well.
• Total excess mortality is a crude measure in various ways; one might want to consider years of life lost (reasoning that, say, the death of a child with 70 years to live is even more tragic than the death of an adult with 7 years to live), or one might want to exclude suicide, or do something else.
• One might also want to try to look at more than mortality, and include serious but not fatal long-term health results (both from COVID and other sources), lost educational opportunities for children, and many other things....

"This having been said, I thought the information on Sweden was worth noting, and of course I'd love to know whether there is more reliable information.

"I should note that I have neither been a strong supporter or strong opponent of lockdowns... Whether or not they are sound is an important empirical question, which deserves more study. And to the extent that Sweden's experiment seems to have been at least potentially successful (though contrary to the judgment of health authorities in other countries), I hope that it leads people to study the question more closely."

Read more: https://reason.com/volokh/2023/01/10/no-lockdown-sweden-seemingly-tied-for-lowest-all-causes-mortality-in-oecd-since-covid-arrived/

Austrian gov't to end all Covid restrictions by July

Austria to ditch all Covid-19 laws this year: health minister | The Local.at:

January 15, 2023 - "Austria's health minister wants to bring the country back to 'normal' and said on Saturday that all of Austria's Covid-19 laws and regulations would be abolished over the course of 2023. This means that people would no longer need to report Covid-19 infections, Johannes Rauch said in an interview with Austrian daily Kronen Zeitung.

"The Green Party minister also said that, in his opinion, the current huge wave of infections in China no longer posed a great risk. 'We have taken the necessary precautionary measures. I don't see any signs currently of a major threat," he said. However, wastewater monitoring would remain in place. Austria examines the wastewater from all flights arriving from China for Covid-19 variants....

"Rauch does not think the virus is going away. Nonetheless, he believes Austria is well prepared: 'We have vaccines, we have drugs, we are monitoring the variants,' he said. After three years of the pandemic, Austria has achieved a high level of immunisation in the population, he wrote on Twitter.

"Covid-19 rules are not standardised across Austria and, outside of the capital, Covid-19 measures are no longer much in evidence. But restrictions in stricter Vienna are set to loosen, too: the current requirement to wear a mask (Maskenpflicht) on public transport in the city will be abolished soon, Rauch said. It was already dropped for the rest of the country last summer, although it is still compulsory to wear an FFP2 mask when visiting health and care facilities....

"Although Vienna's state government Covid-19 policies have typically been stricter than the national government's, Rauch told broadcaster ORF that he was confident that Vienna would slot in to the national regulations and said he planned to have discussions on the topic over the coming days. He said he expected that all nationwide regulations would be dropped within the first six months of 2023.

"The testing strategy is also set to change: only those with symptoms will be able to get free Covid-19 tests after June 30th, the minister said.... Rauch also said he would ... [amend] the law on epidemics, which he told Kronen Zeitung was 'not suitable for fighting a pandemic'.

Read more: https://www.thelocal.at/20230115/austria-to-ditch-all-covid-19-laws-this-year-health-minister

Hancock Diaries shed light on UK Covid politics

The truth about Matt Hancock | The Spectator - Isabel Oakeshott:

"Matt Hancock and I have almost nothing in common.... [I]mportantly, we fundamentally disagree over his handling of the pandemic.... How then could I have worked with him on his book about the pandemic? Some of my lockdown confidantes suggested it was a betrayal....  Quite the reverse. I wanted to get to the truth. What better way to find out what really happened – who said what to whom; the driving force and thinking behind key policies and decisions; who (if anyone) dissented; and how they were crushed – than to align myself with the key player?.... 

"In the event, Hancock shared far more than I could ever have imagined.... Published this week, co-authored by me, Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries are the first insider account from the heart of government of the most seismic political, economic and public health crisis of our times. I am not so naive as to imagine that he told me everything. However, since he still does not believe he did anything wrong, he was surprisingly inclined to disclosure. In an indication of how far he was prepared to go, the Cabinet Office requested almost 300 deletions and amendments to our original manuscript. Under pressure from me and out of his own desire that the book should be both entertaining and revelatory, to his credit, Hancock fought hard to retain as much controversial material as he could.... Here then – based not only on what is in the Pandemic Diaries but on every-thing I saw in the process of putting the book together – are what I consider the key lessons.

"The crusade to vaccinate the entire population against a disease with a low mortality rate among all but the very elderly is one of the most extraordinary cases of mission creep in political history. On 3 January 2021, Hancock told The Spectator that once priority groups had been jabbed (13 million doses) then ‘Cry freedom’. Instead, the government proceeded to attempt to vaccinate every-one, including children, and there was no freedom for another seven months.... Why did the goalposts move so far off the pitch? I believe multiple driving forces combined almost accidentally to create a policy which was never subjected to rigorous cost-benefit analysis.... Given the unprecedented speed at which the vaccine was developed, the government might have been expected to be extra careful about recording and analysing any reported side-effects. While there was much anxiety about potential adverse reactions during clinical trials, once it passed regulatory hurdles, ministers seemed to stop worrying....

"One of the most striking themes to emerge from internal communications is the scale of concern about Scotland.... Throughout the pandemic, far-reaching policy decisions, especially international travel restrictions and the timing of lockdowns, were distorted by what Sturgeon was doing or what No. 10 feared she might do. Hancock describes her move to mandate mask-wearing in secondary schools in late August 2020 as ‘one of her most egregious attempts at one-upmanship to date’, admitting the UK government was left ‘scrabbling around to formulate a response’. The UK government’s own guidance on face coverings had specifically excluded schools. Faced with an unpleasant choice between wheeling out the chief medical or scientific officer to say that the Scots were wrong or performing a U-turn, Downing Street chose the latter. That, rather than any medical reason, is why millions of schoolchildren were forced to spend months with grubby bits of material stuck to their faces....

"As far as Hancock was concerned, anyone who fundamentally disagreed with his approach was mad and dangerous and needed to be shut down.... Such was the fear of ‘anti-vaxxers’ that the Cabinet Office used a team hitherto dedicated to tackling Isis propaganda to curb their influence. The zero-tolerance approach extended to dissenting doctors and academics. The eminent scientists behind the so-called [Great] Barrington Declaration, which argued that public health efforts should focus on protecting the most vulnerable while allowing the g eneral population to build up natural immunity to the virus, were widely vilified: Hancock genuinely considered their views a threat to public health.... Anti-lockdown protests were quickly banned. When, in September 2020, the Cabinet Office tried to exempt demonstrations from the ‘rule of six’, Hancock enlisted Michael Gove to ‘kill it off’, arguing that marches would ‘undermine public confidence in social distancing’. Gove had no qualms about helping.....

"The accusation that he blithely discharged Covid-positive patients from hospitals into care homes, without thinking about how this might seed the virus among the frail elderly, or attempting to stop this happening, upsets and exasperates him. The evidence I have seen is broadly in his favour.... It later emerged that the primary source of new infection in these settings was in any case not hospital discharges, but the movement of staff between care homes.... Hancock knew he would be accused of ‘blaming’ hardworking staff if he emphasised the link (which is exactly what has now happened). He is on less solid ground in relation to the treatment of isolated care-home residents and their increasingly desperate relatives..... Behind the scenes, the then care home minister Helen Whately fought valiantly to persuade him to ease visiting restrictions to allow isolated residents some contact with their loved ones. She did not get very far. Internal communications reveal that the authorities expected to find cases of actual neglect of residents as a result of the suspension of routine care-home inspections.

"Hancock, Whitty and Johnson knew full well that non-medical face masks do very little to prevent transmission of the virus. People were made to wear them anyway because Dominic Cummings was fixated with them; because Nicola Sturgeon liked them; and above all because they were symbolic of the public health emergency. As early as 3 February 2020 – long before anyone outside the Department of Health was taking the prospect of a pandemic seriously – ministers were told the masks make no significant difference. In April 2020, the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) reiterated this advice. At the end of that month, the Sage committee said much the same thing, telling ministers that it would be unreasonable to claim a large benefit. An ‘obsessed’ Cummings was the driving force behind mandating mask-wearing in all healthcare settings – and then in retail and hospitality. On 28 June he messaged Hancock to complain that the government was being insufficiently ‘aggressive’ on the issue and demanding that they be compulsory in shops and for restaurant staff....

"There is no doubt that Hancock worked phenomenally hard to do what he felt was best, based on all the information available at the time. Day after day, he was forced to make tremendously difficult judgments, balancing sharply competing interests.... While vast sums of public money were wasted and the collateral damage from lockdowns and other Covid policies was enormous, I do not believe there was any kind of conspiracy, still less any malign intent on the part of our political leaders during the crisis. They may have been misguided; and got some things catastrophically wrong, but mistakes were made in good faith. Whether or not those errors will be forgiven by a public only just beginning to realise the full consequences is another question."

Read more: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-truth-about-matt-hancock/

World Economic Forum shows danger of elitism

Elitism, not populism, threatens our democracy | Toronto Sun - Lorrie Goldstein:

January 11, 2023 - "Elitism poses a far greater threat to democratic institutions than populism and the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland next week is a case in point.... It’s an annual meeting of 3,000 of the world’s global elites — billionaires, millionaires, tech giants, captains of industry, politicians, celebrities and bureaucrats, held in an uber-expensive, hard-to-reach ski resort in the Swiss Alps. 

"Created by German economist Klaus Schwab in 1971, originally as a business conference, it has grown under Schwab’s relentless promotion into an annual global gabfest that is simultaneously hilarious and alarming. Hilarious because it sees global elites emerging from their private jets and cocoons of privilege lecturing the rest of us on how to save the planet by consuming less to reduce our carbon footprint. Alarming, because we never see the deal-making that goes on behind closed doors at the WEF...

"The WEF has no power in and of itself. But it is a global incubator of terrible ideas, leading to bizarre government policies that inevitably develop when elitists who have no understanding of how ordinary people live, delude themselves into thinking that, having created many of the world’s problems, they know how to fix them.

"For example, their absurd idea that the pandemic was the ideal moment in history for a 'Great Reset' to power modern industrialized countries with wind and solar power. This as opposed to the current reality that nations around the world are now desperately scrambling to acquire more fossil fuel energy, because they forgot the importance of energy security in their obsession with so-called 'green' energy.

"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has spoken at the WEF and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is a member of its board of trustees. On the other hand, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre condemns it as an annual meeting of elites who understand nothing about the lives of ordinary people and in their arrogance, think they know what is best for them, vowing a Conservative government will have nothing to do with it. 

"While Liberals and liberal media have mocked Poilievre for engaging in tin foil hat conspiracies, Freeland herself in her award-winning 2012 book written before she entered politics, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else expressed similar concerns about the WEF. 

"So did former Conservative PM Stephen Harper, who twice spoke at the WEF and praised Schwab in his 2018 political memoir, Right Here, Right Now — Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption, for creating an 'outstanding organization' and a 'remarkable event' at the start. But he also described the WEF today, as 

a bit disturbing … in recent years, Davos has taken on an atmosphere of elitism that would be hard to surpass. 
Many of its attendees seem to view themselves as some kind of supreme world council.... 
The one commonality in virtually all the new, populist or disruptive political movements of recent years is their suspicion of such globalism.… They believe such ‘globalists’ do not share their values and do not care about their interests. And, too often, they are right.

"Award-winning New York Times global economics journalist Peter Goodman expressed similar concerns in his 2022 book, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World."

Read more: https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-elitism-not-populism-threatens-our-democracy

CBC breaks news of Mountie's offline website

Canada's state-funded news outlet, CBC, has decided to turn an internal RCMP investigation into a Mountie's offline website and erased YouTube channel into a national news story.  

B.C. Mountie's anti-Trudeau website raises concerns about discriminatory views within the RCMP | CBC News - Brady Strachan:

January 11, 2023 - "RCMP are investigating after a police officer in Trail, B.C., launched a satirical, political website called the Church of Trudeau mocking the Prime Minister and funding of Indigenous and LGBTQ+ communities. (churchoftrudeau.org)

A B.C. Mountie's anti-Trudeau website is causing waves in a small West Kootenay community and raising concerns about political bias among the ranks of the RCMP. The Church of Trudeau website was online last November and early December and featured theatrical performances by a man dressed up as multiple characters in what appears to be satirical political commentary about the Prime Minister and what the site referred to as 'left-wing Liberal ideologies.' CBC News has confirmed the identity of the man in photos and videos on the website as Trail, B.C., RCMP officer Brent Lord through a source familiar with the website and its contents. The RCMP says it is aware of the site and the matter is under review. 

"In one of four videos CBC News has obtained, Lord plays the role of a character he calls Father B, and professes to be 'the High Prophet of the Church of Trudeau" as he explains what the website is about, stating, "our religion teaches the importance of socialism, of cancelling everyone that offends anyone, of being woke and highly emotional.' A YouTube channel associated with the site that was scrubbed of content in December once stated, 'our goal is to convert sinful conservatives who belong to a fringe minority with unacceptable views into entitled socialist liberals just like us.' Lord does not mention his job as a Mountie....

"The website's contents and the views expressed by the officer are concerning, according to Trail Mayor Colleen Jones, who said she has had 'multiple conversations with the Trail RCMP detachment commander about it. 'It's definitely not anything a community wants,' Jones said.... 

"To Kash Heed, a former West Vancouver police chief and former solicitor general and minister of public safety, the political nature of the website is not in line with the standard of conduct expected of a police officer. 'The RCMP should be investigating this as a code of conduct breach for this particular member,' he said.... Heed likened the officer's political statements in the videos to cases last year of police officers expressing support for the Freedom Convoy movement and donating money to the organizers, which resulted in the officers being charged with misconduct and in one case demoted for their actions."

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/anti-trudeau-website-rcmp-trail-b-c-1.6684902

State media CBC decides BC Mountie’s anti-Trudeau website is 'discriminatory' | Western Standard - David Krayden 

January 12, 2023 - "If you needed more reasons to stop funding the CBC to the tune of $1.6 billion a year, look no further than how the state media covered the story of the RCMP member from Trail, B.C. who was running an anti-Trudeau website in his spare time. The line between opinion and news is not just blurred at Mother CBC, it is invisible.

"The website isn’t even active anymore but you can find it on the Internet Archive. 'His gospel explains why belonging to a fringe minority with unacceptable views is not tolerable and how Conservatives are always trying to deceive Canadians with silly words such as government debt, scandals, inflation, and other such nonsense,' reads the website. Do we have a problem here? Well, the CBC does. It ran a 'news' story under the headline of “B.C. Mountie's anti-Trudeau website raises concerns about discriminatory views within the RCMP.” 

"So now it’s discriminatory to oppose Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his policies? This is a satirical website to boot. But Liberals and progressives never have any sense of humour when they're the target of the jokes.... 

"Lord also cites Trudeau’s latest LGBTQ initiative, noting '$35 million in new project funding support aimed at addressing specific barriers to 2SLGBTQ+ equality. Now I'm not as smart as Justin Trudeau so I don't really understand what that means, but it sounds really good and if Justin Trudeau has implemented it then it really makes sense.... I trust you Justin, I trust.' This must be one of the 'marginalized communities' the CBC fears is being maligned by the website. It really is time to stop pretending LGBTQ people are in anyway marginalized in a society where the gay lifestyle is celebrated in print, television and film. Homosexual men and lesbian women on average make more money than their heterosexual counterparts and I have never been able to locate the 'gay community' on the map anyway. They don’t all vote Liberal and most would tell the federal government they don’t need to be funded as some kind of needy group. 

"CBC also found a former BC solicitor general/public safety minister and West Vancouver police chief to comment on the story. Kash Heed must also be a member of Thought Police because his words are truly Orwellian. 'We need to make sure we're hiring the right people and we have the policies, discipline and supervision in place to detect these types of behaviours and deal with them in a swift fashion.' Uh huh. We can’t have people thinking for themselves. 

"Do you think for a moment if this RCMP officer were sponsoring a pro-Trudeau website that lauded the government's immigration "policies and identity politics that the CBC would be fretting so? No, of course not."

Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/krayden-state-media-cbc-decides-bc-mountie-s-anti-trudeau-website-is-discriminatory/article_ddc804de-9286-11ed-b162-3bd2ce660b66.html

Young Chinese self-infecting with Covid

China Covid: Young people self-infect as fears for elderly grow | BBC News: 

January 6, 2023 - "When Mr Chen's 85-year-old father fell ill with Covid in December, it was impossible to get an ambulance or see a doctor. They went to Chaoyang Hospital in Beijing, where they were told to either try other hospitals or sit in the corridor with an IV drip.... The elder Mr Chen has now recovered, but his son worries that a second infection in the future could kill him....

"The final step in China's swift reversal of its contentious zero-Covid policy [came] on Sunday when it reopen[ed] borders for international travel. With mass testing, stringent quarantines and sudden, sweeping lockdowns gone, families like Mr Chen's are wary of what lies ahead. But younger Chinese, all of whom did not wish to be named, feel differently - and some told the BBC they were voluntarily exposing themselves to infection.

"A 27-year-old coder in Shanghai, who did not receive any of the Chinese vaccines, says he voluntarily exposed himself to the virus. 'Because I don't want to change my holiday plan,' he explains, 'and I could make sure I recovered and won't be infected again during the holiday if I intentionally control the time I get infected.' He admits he did not expect the muscle aches that came with the infection, but says the symptoms have been largely as expected.

"Another Shanghai resident, a 26-year-old woman, tells the BBC she visited her friend who had tested positive 'so I could get Covid as well'. But she says her recovery has been hard: 'I thought it would be like getting a cold but it was much more painful.'

"A 29-year-old who works for a state-run business based in Jiaxing, in the northern Zhejiang province, says she was thrilled when she heard the country's borders were reopening.... 'Life was ridiculous when I had to ask my manager's permission to travel. I just want life to get back to normal,' she says.... She herself has not tested positive for the virus yet, but concedes that - when her husband did - she wore a mask 24/7 at home, even when she was sleeping. 'I did not want us to be sick at the same time,' she says. 'But I'm not scared of the virus, as the severe symptoms are rare'....

"At least in the big cities, people have been returning to malls, restaurants and parks, and even queuing up for visas and tourist permits. The state-run Global Times newspaper declared 'normal times are back', attributing the line to interviews with Chinese.... But beyond the major cities, it is difficult to know how people - particularly in China's rural regions - are responding to an about-face in government messaging.

"For three years, state-run media presented the virus as a dangerous menace to society, vowing that it would achieve "dynamic zero-Covid" to keep the population safe. But that rhetoric has been turned on its head in recent weeks, with doctors regularly trotted out to call for calm over confusion.

"Mrs Li, a 52-year-old in Beijing, argues the government 'did the right thing' for the first two years but should have ended its zero-Covid policy in early 2022.... 'Also winter is the worst season to do it. Why not wait until next spring? And why didn't the government prepare enough resources before opening up?' she asks. '2022 was the worst year for us. I can only pray 2023 won't be any worse.'"

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64183281

Crown drops charges against Alberta Freedom Convoy organizer

Charges dropped against 2022 Freedom Convoy organizer | Red Deer Advocate - Paul Conley: 

Defence lawyer Maurice Collard (left) and Glen Carritt. Paul Campbell, Red Deer Advocate

January 10, 2023 - "Charges of assault and mischief laid following an altercation at a 2022 Freedom Convoy rally have been dropped against [Glen Carritt,] a former Innisfail town councillor. Crown prosecutor Alan Hogg withdrew the charges in Red Deer provincial court on Tuesday, the day set for a trial on the charges laid after the Feb. 3 incident in Sylvan Lake that happened as a convoy in protest of vaccine mandates passed through Sylvan Lake. Hogg provided no explanation to Judge Bert Skinner as to why the charges were withdrawn.

"RCMP were monitoring the convoy that had started out from Eckville earlier in the day. As the convoy passed through Sylvan Lake, RCMP said a pickup pulled out in front of the line of vehicles blocking them. RCMP alleged that Carritt, who was in the lead vehicle, got out and there was an altercation with the pickup driver. Carritt was charged, as was the other driver, who was charged with failing to yield to a pedestrian.

"Carritt said outside court that 'freedom has prevailed.' 'The charges were absolutely ridiculous. We were on a peaceful protest and our vehicle was actually assaulted, as well as a pedestrian, but I ended up with the charges. 

'We need to stop the division in this country and we need to continue moving forward for freedom. Our freedom of speech is being jeopardized and that’s our biggest freedom,' said Carritt. 'We need to continue to speak out and we need to have the ability to continue to speak out and we all need to continue to fight that fight'....

"Defence lawyer Maurice Collard said 'freedom and sanity have prevailed today. Mr. Carritt was protesting and standing up for civil liberties and bodily autonomy. These charges from the very beginning were nonsense. We intended to aggressively defend against them and we’re glad that we have seen the result we have today.' Collard said some 'hard questions need to be asked' about why Carritt was charged but other counter protesters were not charged."

Read more: https://www.reddeeradvocate.com/news/charges-dropped-against-2022-freedom-convoy-organizer/

No evidence Russian Twitterbots influenced 2016 US election

Study: Russian Twitter Trolls Did Not Throw the 2016 Election to Trump | Reason - Robby Soave:

January 9, 2023 - "Russia's efforts to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election in Donald Trump's favor by influencing voters on Twitter had no discernible impact whatsoever, according to a new study by New York University's Center for Social Media and Politics. 'We find no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior,' wrote the study's authors....

"Just 1 percent of Twitter users absorbed about 70 percent of the so-called Russian disinformation, meaning that a tiny fraction of overall users encountered actual Russian trolls. These users were overwhelmingly partisan Republicans; there is no reason to think that masses of gullible swing voters who might have voted for Hillary Clinton were hoodwinked by Russia and opted for Trump instead.

"And this finding closely tracks previous research on the same subject. A 2019 review by Science magazine found that just 1 percent of Twitter users were exposed to 80 percent of the misinformation present, and these tended to be older, extremely partisan users —people who were already voting for Trump.... Another study by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that 94 percent of Twitter users never shared this kind of content.

"The NYU study also replicates a central finding of these earlier reviews of the research: namely, the amount of time, money, and effort Russia spent on influencing social media users was a drop in the bucket compared with the work being done by the Trump and Clinton campaigns themselves, as well as the attention being paid to the candidates by U.S. media outlets....

"The news probably came as a surprise to many readers; unfortunately, mainstream and liberal consumers of political news have been conditioned to believe that misinformation—often of foreign and Russian origin—is the source of countless modern maladies. But time and time again, data tell a different story.

"As I wrote in my 2021 book Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn't Fear Facebook and the Future, 'the fact that the professional pundit class are themselves excessively active on social media probably makes them especially susceptible' to the idea that everything is Twitter's fault."

Read more: https://reason.com/2023/01/09/russia-twitter-trump-election-no-influence-fake/

Read study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35576-9

"Robby Soave: MSM ADMITS Russiagate Twitter Interference Had NO EFFECT On 2016 Election," The Hill, January 10, 2023

Canadian gov't to ban compact fluorescent bulbs

Fluorescent bulbs to be phased out to stop mercury pollution | Western Standard - Matthew Horwood:

Photo by Gilligone. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Jan 3, 2023 - "The compact fluorescent bulb, once touted by cabinet as a climate-friendly energy saver, will be phased out within a year due to mercury pollution. Environmentalists and regulators 20 years ago praised the bulbs as essential in addressing global warming, according to Blacklock's Reporter. 

"The Department of Environment in a regulatory notice said compact fluorescents will be banned. 'Most lamps for general lighting purposes would be prohibited by January 1, 2024,' said the Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement. The delay will 'allow retailers to sell their stock,' wrote staff....

"The bulbs contain trace amounts of toxic mercury, five milligrams, about the size of a pencil dot. The environment department said landfilling of bulbs led to unsafe dumping of 300 kilograms of mercury a year.

"The department said Canadians should instead use mercury-free, light-emitting diode or LED bulbs. More expensive LEDs would cost consumers nationwide about $35 million a year.... Canadians buy about 27 million mercury bulbs a year, by official estimate. Those sales ran as high as 85 million a year following mistaken promotion of compact fluorescents as being good for the environment.

"Cabinet in 2003 endorsed a Project Porchlight campaign to give away 200,000 compact fluorescents touted as energy savers compared to traditional incandescent Edison bulbs.... Environmentalist David Suzuki also endorsed the Project Porchlight campaign. 'We all have a role in protecting the health of our communities and reducing greenhouse gases,' said Suzuki. 'Project Porchlight is accomplishing both goals one light bulb at a time.'

"The Department of Natural Resources went further with 2014 regulations that banned the sale of 75 and 100 watt Edison bulbs as energy wasters. Regulators at the time downplayed the extent of mercury poisoning from compact fluorescents.... 'Are compact fluorescent bulbs safe? Yes!' said a Fact Sheet distributed to householders. 'They have a minute amount of mercury. If they break they do not pose a health risk.'

"The Department of Environment subsequently corrected the claim in a 2014 advisory What To Do If A Fluorescent Lamp Breaks. The bulbs contained enough mercury that homeowners should immediately 'remove people and pets from the room' in case of breakage, 'ventilate the room for 15 minutes prior to starting clean-up' and 'wear disposable gloves'."

"Canada in 2017 ratified the Minamata Convention on reduction of mercury poisoning in the environment. The pact is named after a Japanese city where some 10,000 residents were compensated for severe mercury poisoning. Releases by a local Chisso Corp. chemical plant in the 1950s and ’60s resulted in deaths and severe birth defects."

Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/fluorescent-bulbs-to-be-phased-out-to-stop-mercury-pollution/article_61601d1e-8b6f-11ed-a91d-5fb806915ba1.html