SLOBODIAN: Trudeau's personal first-world problem is 'green' energy

There was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau playing global messiah on Sunday at the UN General Assembly Summit of the Future in New York, and committing another $5 billion in Canadian taxpayer money to support the United Nations’ 2030 agenda.Was the $50 billion in subsidies to Northvolt, General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen and Stellantis to build EV battery plants in Ontario and Quebec not enough?So much pain, for debatable gain. Why do we let this go on?Well, here's the official view. The staggering cost to push green energy is based on a supposed climate change ‘crisis.’ The science is by no means unanimous; many experts claim the official narrative exaggerates the situation. But, it gives the Trudeau Liberals cover to break the backs of so many, while enriching a select few.For, crisis or not, the push cuts a massive swathe of human suffering and monetary and ecological destruction.That swathe stretches beyond Canadians groaning under the weight of the Liberal’s carbon tax set to steadily increase until 2030, while stressed farmers who feed those who can still afford to eat have lost their mental and physical health. And many currently face losing their family farms.And what do the prime minister's policies mean elsewhere in the world?Green technology supply chains are rife with slave labour, the Commons trade committee heard Monday. That includes Chinese concentration camp inmates where severely persecuted and mistreated Uyghurs (those whose organs are yet to be required for harvesting,) are forced to mine lithium and manufacture solar panels.In the Democratic Republic of Congo, children as young as six — many abducted and trafficked by armed militias — slave in horror conditions in predominantly China-owned artisanal cobalt mines. Males earn as little as $2 a 12-hour day filling 40-kilogram sacks with heterogenite cobalt ore. Women and children are paid half that. Mining displaced thousands and ravaged the landscape for cobalt in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles, computers, and smartphones.These ignored atrocities were exposed a long time ago.Meanwhile, a ‘clean’ energy disaster from offshore wind turbines threatens US coasts.But, net-zero zealots don’t have a problem with such details. These are fools in the classical sense — clever, but not wise — and they are too busy saving the planet to worry about the lives they destroy doing so.It is this kind of foolishness that lets the federal Liberal government continue to funnel billions into ‘clean’ energy projects, while enriching foreign governments (and their special friends) with subsidies, and foisting the bill on hurting Canadian taxpayers.“We must recognize also that rich countries such as Canada have a duty to fight climate change, which is what we're doing through our commitment of $5 billion towards global climate financing effort,” Mr. Trudeau told the UN. Fact check: Canada is not exactly a rich country. It was once. But it has become a lot poorer since the unfortunate day that Mr. Trudeau took power.“We're at a global inflection point," he continued with Bible-belt preacher intensity, "faced with escalating instability, undermining the very foundations of the international order, beset by the increasingly dire costs of climate change, contending with rising inequality that is leaving the most vulnerable behind, plagued by the erosion of women's rights, LGBT+ rights and indigenous rights, and grappling with dire humanitarian crises, perpetuating record levels of displacement."Displacement because of mining apparently doesn’t count. The vulnerable apparently don’t include Uyghurs or those Congo kids breathing in poison, getting killed or having their bones crushed in frequent accidents, a situation so dire tech giants have been sued over it.Yet our hypocrite-in-chief urged world leaders to press on with green energy and not “bury our heads in the sand … in favour of short-sighted self-interest.”Ah, short-sightedness. Like Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne who ordered Canadian taxpayers Monday to “rally around and help” Northvolt, the subsidized Swedish electric auto battery maker that just cut 1,600 jobs at its Swedish plants because demand for EVs is waning.So what if factory effluent at Northvolt’s Saint-Basile-le-Grand plant might breach the Fisheries Act and impact the fish habitat?Presumably, Champagne also wants to top up the $1.34 billion in federal subsidies for the factory slated for production in 2026 along with the $50 billion in subsidies mentioned above. This, when manufacturers holding massive inventories of unsold EVs, are cutting back on production.And for good measure, the Liberals plunder besieged Canadian farmers, forcing them to pay a hefty carbon tax help to help subsidize the battery industry and other wasteful green projects and ridiculous, mostly unaccounted for spending.But the Liberals aren’t the only people lacking wisdom who roam the halls of Parliament.BC Green Party leader Elizabeth May owes Canadian farmers an apology even though they’d be justified in verbally shovelling piles of manure on it. This queen of peddling climate catastrophe hysteria had the contemptible gall to proclaim, without offering evidence, that a climate crisis is driving farmers to suicide, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.“I think we focus a lot on the carbon tax in this place without looking at the climate crisis and the real impact that has on Canadian farmers,” May told the Commons Monday, rattling on about floods and droughts being the “bigger picture.”“We really want to support the family farm. We know people living on farms are experiencing suicide because it is an extremely difficult life right now.”Is she wilfully deflecting blame or just wilfully stupid?If May really cared about Canadian farmers, she’d do some homework. The Liberal policies she supports — while wailing that climate change spells a “loss of civilization” — are driving farmers to despair.May responded to Ontario Conservative MP Lianne Rood’s call to relieve most farm operations of the burdensome carbon tax burden via Bill C-234 An Act To Amend The Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, a move worth $122 million annually.“It’s the government policies that are driving farmers to the breaking point now,” said Rood pointing to increased costs and a need to bring taxes down for farmers.Fertilizer is up 80%, machine fuel 78%, machinery costs 20%, feed 29%, barn and shed shelter 13%, and pesticides seven percent, noted Rood.According to the Agriculture Carbon Alliance, a sample of fifty of Canada’s 190,000 farm operations discovered that just those sampled had paid $329,644 in carbon taxes for one month in 2023. That amount is projected to triple to $893,944 by 2030 as carbon tax rates escalate to reach $170 per tonne of emissions.The Liberals justify this outright theft by proclaiming they’re reducing Canada’s carbon footprint. Yet, while fretting about Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions being “three times the global rate” at 17.7 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent per capita per year, they’re ushering in millions of carbon-emitting immigrants. Where’s the logic, the policy consistency in that? And where’s the justice in propping up China with renewable energy trade? Not to put too fine a point on it, Canada’s trade with China can be and is complicit in the Uyghur genocide — as a spokesman for the Alberta Uyghur Association also told the Commons trade committee. A more responsible governmentCetinkaya said trading with China on renewable energy technologies is “directly upholding forced labour systems.” And so, China's human rights crisis creeps into Canada. Can Canada legitimately continue to do business with China? To even ask the question is to point to the only possible answer. But the Trudeau Liberals carry on doing business. And, more than that. They send China cash.Even as Canadians struggle to make ends meet, Trudeau’s Liberals send millions in aid to China. That includes funding to advance “two spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender” rights; “foster dialogue” about female offenders in Chinese prisons; and increase “understanding” of sanitation workers.We’re expected to blindly believe that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) actually cares about these causes and sends Canadian money their way.“I don’t believe Canadian taxpayers should be sending any money to China,” said Opposition House leader Andrew Scheer.“We’re talking about a Communist dictatorial government that abuses human rights, quashes freedoms, violates rights of its citizens, and has a very aggressive foreign policy throughout the region.Notice that abused human rights, quashed freedoms, violated rights of citizens is also the Trudeau way of governing.The biggest threat to Canadians isn’t climate change. It’s the Liberals and their wasteful, illogical, extravagant, misguided pet priorities. There’s nothing — nothing! — they can do after cutting nine-year swathe of destruction to convince they are good for Canadians.Call an election.

SLOBODIAN: Trudeau's personal first-world problem is 'green' energy

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