A leading member of a Canadian centre-Left party supporting Justin Trudeau’s minority Government has tabled a bill seeking to jail people who speak out in favour of hydrocarbon fuels. Charlie Angus is a leading member of the NDP party which has 25 seats in the Canadian Parliament, and his bill seeks to ban the commercial promotion of hydrocarbons by any means “that is likely to influence and shape attitudes, beliefs and behaviours about the product or service”. Angus’s bill (C-372) is given the Orwellian title of ‘An Act respecting fossil fuel advertising’, and under this proposed anti-free speech measure, a gas station retailer could be fined C$50,000 for offering a complementary coffee and doughnut with every full tank.
There is not much between Canada and the North Pole so without natural gas to heat their homes, the locals would likely die in their thousands during the winter. Without diesel trucks to transport food vast distances, famine would stalk the land. Yet Bill C-372 states in its preamble that “fossil fuel production and consumption has resulted in a national public health crisis of substantial and pressing concern, in a way that is similar to the public health crisis caused by tobacco consumption”. Smoking cigarettes is a voluntary and enjoyable pastime for some, but it has the unfortunate side-effect of causing death. Hydrocarbons keep people alive with power for clean sanitation, transport, domestic temperature control, food production and back-up for unreliable wind and solar power. Without hydrocarbon use, the only people able to live in most of Canada would be Eskimos huddled together for warmth in igloos.
Under the bill there is a blanket ban on the promotion of oil and gas. A curious clause bans the suggestion that the burning of some hydrocarbons and the emissions caused are “less harmful” than other fossil fuels. This provision would make it illegal to state the scientific fact that burning natural gas produces less than half the carbon dioxide than the burning of coal. It would also be an offence to suggest that the use of hydrocarbons would lead to positive benefits for the environment, the health of Canadians and the global economy. Whatever the facts based in science or economic observation, all these ‘wrong’ thoughts can be punished with a C$500,000 fine and two years in prison.
The bill’s attack on hydrocarbons is broad and even attempts to suppress sales at the retail level. Gas stations will be banned from issuing loyalty cards, cash rebates, tickets to prize draws and free gifts such as coffee and doughnuts.
If this was just the work of a lone parliamentarian green crank, it would be easy to laugh and dismiss. It is a private member’s bill and will struggle to be passed into law, but its promoter is a major figure in the NDP, and his party currently holds political sway since it helps prop up the minority Trudeau Government. “We welcome the NDP’s bill to the House,” said Kaitlin Power, the Press Secretary of Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. Speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, she added: “We will carefully assess its bill and look forward to productive debates and discussions around this important issue.”
The NDP bill is an attack on free commercial speech and seeks to demonise an industry that is vital to modern life. The belief that Canada, along with every other modern industrialised society, can remove hydrocarbon energy use within less than 30 years is a luxury, decadent affectation. It is the work of politicians with little understanding of science and the workings of a modern state. It fails to comprehend that life without hydrocarbons for 99.9% of people who have lived on planet Earth was hard, brutal and uncertain. Without reliable cheap fuel, all that ‘first generation to go university’ stuff will be replaced by working the land of the local warlord, or skivvying in his great house. It is the work of badly educated people who think they can outsource all their vital manufacturing to the emerging superpower of China, open their borders to all and sundry and squeeze the living conditions of existing residents, abolish traditional families, bend the knee to defund the police, or impose so many woke conditions they are unable to function properly, ditto external security services.
It is the belief system of a cult that wants to impose a massive supra-national programme of deindustrialisation, and still peddle the fantasy that we will magically stay warm, delicious food will be available at the press of an iPhone, and everyone will live in peace and harmony. It is the belief system of people who live in Imagine, one of the great John Lennon’s sillier songs.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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I am uncertain whether Charlie is an envirofacist or a warmunist, though, as he is from the NDP he is one or the other. He has sought and backed many a lunk-headed thing in the past, but this one takes the cake, as he represents Timmins and beyond (northern Ontario), and one has to wonder how he would get to Ottawa or around his riding if it weren’t for modern conveniences that rely on oil and gas? I guess he wants to return to the glories of carriage and sled (like those Krieghoff paitings)?
JEESH! Canada and England and Germany and Aus are really going nuts with this climate stuff. It will not end well.
Speaking of dreaming the undreamable dream, a California legislator has introduced a bill to raise the minimum wage to $50/hr.
If elected I promise to raise it to $100/hr.
As if there aren’t enough people living on the streets in Calicommia already !
The Alberta province produces way more fossil fuel than Canada consumes and exports it to Europe.
A draconian free speech bill may pass but the exports will continue because Trudeau needs the revenue.
Shut down Alberta’s energy bonanza, it may very quickly succeed from the nation of Canada. It’s much easier to for a Canadian province to succeed than a state in the US. The separatist movement in Alberta is quite strong…. it wouldn’t take much more than a stupid anti-free speech bill for the Trudeau government to be in big trouble with it’s western provinces.
Climate change and the pandemic and it’s draconian repression of the protestant churches in Alberta, only further fueled Alberta’s distain for Trudeau.
The anti-free speech, anti-farming, anti-fossil fuel crazies can only do propaganda and grandstanding plays because no one wants fossil fuels to go a way…. not anyone with any real power.
It has always baffled me why CANADA, of all places, would oppose “Global warming!
The NDP is not and never has been centre left. They have always been far left. The liberals used to be centre left perhaps, but are now just left, if not far left. Charlie represents Timmins – James Bay, his riding is larger than many US states, but has the population of a mid sized town. He gets elected by the retired union miners that represent most of the remaining people living there.
Not NSDP?
Mind you, to me, all these people are far left.
I am proud to have been called to the right of Ghengiz Khan!
This is a private members bill it has the same chance of succeeding as a snow ball in July. It is virtue signalling pure and simple. Charlie Angus is no senior legislator, he is an old member of an “al most always comes in third” leftist party which has never brought in any legislation.
Since Charlie Angus feels there is nothing good about fossil fuels and saying otherwise is an offence worthy of a criminal record and incarceration, I am sure he has removed all fossil fuels, products derived from fossil fuels and any products or activities that cannot exist without fossil fuels (most food stuffs, travel, recreation, shelter etc.) from his personal life. Perhaps someone can just check and ensure that is the case and, if not, we can nominate Mr. Angus for mega-hypocrite of the century and send him to political oblivion for fraud and incompetence.