Dear Santa, here is my political Christas WISH LIST…
You gave me Justin Trudeau in recent years and that was just mean and nasty 😖
I mailed my ballot for the CPC leadership race.
I voted for Dr. Leslyn Lewis to become the next CPC leader and, hopefully, Canada’s next Prime Minister. Her letter (see below) is a good example of the kind of thinking we need in Ottawa. It also addresses the terrible Net Zero policies being foist on Canada by the Liberals, NDP and Green parties. Those policies are seriously bad for Canada’s economy as well as the security and prosperity of nearly every citizen!
Santa, please put in my Christmas stocking a Minority Conservative Government with a dash of PPC MPs for good measure.
I hope that the next Canadian federal election will result in a Conservative Minority which will be short of a Majority by 5 seats (an explanation follows later in this essay). Ideally, here are my picks and rationale for three key positions:
Prime Minister - Dr. Leslyn Lewis
Leslyn is a International Trade lawyer. With this professional background, she will be well-suited to represent Canada on the international stage in trade relations and related topics.
As a woman, Leslyn will attract more female votes than most (all?) male candidates. With women comprising 50% of eligible voters, this is a massive election advantage.
As a person of colour, Leslyn will attract more votes from “minority” communities and “social justice” advocates. In Canada’s vote-rich major cities which historically vote ‘left’, this could well be a major factor favouring a Conservative win.
Dr. Lewis presents herself as level-headed, highly-educated and a well-informed critical thinker. In addition, she appears more thoughtful, fair, agreeable and trustworthy than Justin Trudeau. After the pandemic, all of these attributes are qualities that voters will surely favour in their ballot choices especially when compared to Justin.
Justin will look like a fool if he tries to label Leslyn as a “white supremacist”, “racist”, “misogynist” or any other of his favourite epithets that he tends to use to disparage his opponents. Compared to all other Conservative leadership candidates, Leslyn will ‘wear a suit of Teflon’ against Trudeau’s typical forms of attack.
Minister of Finance & Deputy PM - Pierre Poilievre
Pierre has a solid reputation for fiscal conservatism. It is backed by a strong understanding of the best policies to benefit the Canadian economy. He is an unapologetic supporter of corporations and business enterprises of all sizes while being critical of all crony relationships between corporate and government actors which abuse taxpayers and corrupt the natural and productive ecosystems of free markets.
Mr. Poilievre has served over 20 years as a Member of Parliament in opposition as a governing Minster. With this, he deep experience in Federal politics, he knows where Ottawa’s legislative ‘skeletons’ are buried. I believe that he will be the ideal mentor for a new PM like Lewis.
Pierre has a talent for delivering statements with cutting wit and surgical precision when addressing his political opponents. He is also not afraid to take criticism from any of his opponents. He would make the ideal “bad cop” for Leslyn’s “good cop” on politically volatile issues.
Why Pierre would also be a good choice for Prime Minister, he is an easy target for the Liberal election machine and the corporate media to smear and malign compared to Leslyn. I believe that, if elected, Dr. Lewis as CPC Leader will rally the full support of Conservatives nationally and be in best position to defeat Trudeau.
Conservatives would be wise to sell a Lewis-Poilievre “ticket” in the same manner that Americans sell President/Vice President ‘tickets’. Canadian voters will correctly view the combination of Lewis as PM and Poilievre as Finance Minister (and Deputy PM) as a combination that is greater that the sum of its parts. If compared to the Stephen Harper era when Jim Flaherty was Harper’s highly-respected wing man, such a “ticket” will bring serious political cache to the Conservative election campaign. When compared to the weak Trudeau/Freeland Liberal “ticket”, the CPC could also point out that the Liberals had lost the trust of Canadians and were unable to survive in power without a shady back room deal with Jagmeet Singh.
Minister of Justice - Roman Baber
Roman is highly-principled lawyer who possesses great respect for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He is passionate about Canada, it’s Constitution and the rule of law. As such, I consider Roman a good choice to begin the work to restore the trust of Canadians in our institutions of Justice. That trust has been seriously eroded under the Trudeau Liberals and it will take someone with the tenacity of Mr. Baber to doggedly tackle this issue and make real progress to repair the damage. Trust is earned and Roman will earn it.
As an immigrant from Russia, Roman’s fear of totalitarian regimes runs deep in his psyche. His desire to restore and protect Canadian freedoms is not negotiable. His input to key legislation decisions, such as those affecting Immigration policy, will be valuable.
7+ Peoples Party MPs including Maxime Bernier.
A new Conservative government with many rookies to federal politics (like Lewis and Baber) will benefit greatly from the deep experience of veterans like Bernier and Poilievre. Both of these men have demonstrated consistent support for Libertarian-Conservative policies for many years and this bodes well for constructive policy discussions.
With the PPC holding the balance of power in Parliament, the Conservatives will struggle to pass bills without PPC support. This will keep the new Conservative Minority government accountable to badly-needed Libertarian-Conservative policies in order to undo the damage left by two terms of Trudeau Liberal governments. In addition, both the PPC and CPC will benefit from sharing power while they gain experience governing in the post-Trudeau era.
The PPC also needs to establish its own credibility on the national stage. For far too long, this nation has been under the sway of Socialist, Post-Modernist and Cronyism influences promoted by Liberal, NDP, Green, BQ and “progressive” Conservatives. Under Bernier’s leadership, this group of MPs will have a great mentor to help them to shift this ideological pendulum. Max will help them to effectively navigate the politics of Parliament and to hold the Conservative minority to principled decisions based on Canada’s Charter Rights and Freedoms.
Final Comment & What I REALLY WANT.
As a longtime Libertarian, I have advocated for Less Government since the late 1970s. The above scenario is a far cry from what I really want, but it has a reasonable chance of becoming reality under our current, deeply-flawed political systems.
In reality, I want smaller and decentralized governments for Canada based on a similar implementations found in Switzerland and Lichtenstein. The powers of those local governments must the restricted to the defence of person and property rights in cases where harm and/or aggression imposed by others may threaten those rights. In addition, a small and strictly-limited national government would only serve to protect citizens from international threats while local governments handle all domestic concerns. Finally, central banking must be abolished and a national currency that is based on gold (or possibly Bitcoin) must be (re-)established to bring political and economic stability back to the nation.
No form of government will ever be ideal, but the centralization of vast amounts of government power has proven to be the downfall of every past empire throughout history. I highly recommend this book The State In The Third Millennium for anyone who seeks greater insight into the rise and fall of past empires. http://uidd.com.ua/en/2019/06/12/direct-democracy-the-only-way-of-the-state-in-the-third-millennium/
LETTER From Dr. LESLYN LEWIS
Dear Gene,
Politicians are promising to give you back your freedom, but they aren’t telling you how they are going to do it.
Your freedom is not something that any human can grant you. You were born with it, but your freedom can be taken away by your silence to injustice. You get it back by refusing to believe lies, waking up to the pressure being placed on you to give up your rights, and holding your elected officials accountable.
You get your freedom when you stand up and say “NO” to those who want to take it away.
They always have a new way, a new lie, a new pressure point. Take “Net Zero” for example. Net Zero sounds like a good idea. Who wouldn’t love a world with no pollution? But have you ever asked your Member of Parliament what it actually means? Almost nobody has, and yet Net Zero policies have contributed to both the recent complete collapse of Sri Lanka and the farmer protests in Holland. Canada is hurtling towards similar policies, and if we continue down this path, the Freedom Convoy will look like a footnote in history compared to the kind of unrest we are headed towards.
I am an environmentalist. I earned a master’s degree in environmental studies before the term “climate change” was even used as a political wedge. I am passionate about protecting our planet and especially our beloved nation. But I need to speak up about how unfair Net Zero calculations are, and the impact they are going to have on our economy, and indeed all aspects of life.
Carbon footprints
The obsession with carbon footprints that has led to the extreme policies in Holland is one of the driving forces towards the shift to digital currency – so that every activity, every purchase can be tracked for its “carbon footprint”. Currency and monetary value will be measured by carbon footprint in the future, and it will be digitized.
This is what happened in Holland and Sri Lanka to calculate that farming was bad for the environment. Take cattle farming, for example: everything that a cow eats during its lifetime is part of the Net Zero calculation of the carbon footprint of a cow. That includes all the food that was grown, its transportation, the nitrogen in the soil that produces the crops, the gas used in the production of the food, etc. When you sit down to eat a burger, they believe that just as you should be warned about the number of calories, you should also be punished for the carbon footprint it took to give you that burger – from growing the grain, to feeding the cow, to processing the meat, and to getting it to your dinner table. Eventually, it will be deemed too damaging for the planet to partake in meat and beef consumption.
How is it possible that we can be putting this kind of pressure on farmers, but an electric car or a computer is not subject to the same scrutiny? Net Zero calculations do not look at the damage that lithium and cobalt mines cause to the environment. Net Zero doesn’t care about the poor African children, as young as 5 years old, slaving in those dirty cobalt mines. Net Zero seems to only care about the nitrogen content of farming.
This is why people are protesting – they know in their gut that something is unfair.
We’re heading down the same path
Clearly, you don’t need a Master in Environmental Studies to know that something is wrong.
Years ago, Dutch farmers were promised that if they transitioned to sustainable farming, they could save their industry. Many farmers invested in expensive equipment that reduced emissions. Now the government is saying it isn’t enough – their government is forcing a 30% decrease in livestock farms (raising animals for meat, milk, and eggs). They have allocated $25.6 billion to help farmers transition to crop farming, relocate or shut down their farms.
Netherlands is the second-largest global agricultural food exporter. But these rules set out by their government are non-negotiable. There is no democratic discussion and their government refuses to budge.
Sound familiar? That’s because this is how cancel culture works. It makes government the lord over the people, and it labels anyone who challenges the lies that justify the policies as a conspiracy theorist. The result is that people are silenced and oppressed and their only outlet to combat the arrogance of government becomes protesting in the streets.
Governments around the world are legislating environmental policies based on a net-zero emissions output by 2050, which will surely affect our consumption choices as well as inevitably change the role of farmers within our society. Countries like the USA and the UK have even mandated a restoration of 30% of farmland to conservation areas.
Like the Netherlands, Canada did not meet its Paris Accord emissions targets. And now Canadian farmers are horrified to see what is happening in the Netherlands because our country is following the same destructive path. The Liberals’ Net Zero policy commitment is predicated upon the complete decarbonization of the entire food supply chain under a technocratic management system.
The survival of farmers will depend on a number of factors, including demanding that they are consulted in the operationalization of the Net Zero plan. Many farmers are already engaged in various carbon offset practices for which they currently receive no credits for their efforts. This lack of recognition has fuelled the belief that the government is out to destroy the agricultural sector.
The battle farmers need to fight is not opposition to the Net Zero plan, but the battle to hold government accountable by insisting on well-defined metrics that account for their verifiable, environmentally sustainable practices. Insisting that the government clarifies definitions around Net Zero policy, and presents clear criteria and metrics to achieving this mandate is not unreasonable, but rather necessary to put consumers and farmers at ease about food security, our supply chains, and our future production and consumption choices.
What comes next
With the fear of extermination looming over their enterprises, farmers all around the world and here in Canada have adopted innovative environmental solutions to ensure that their industry remains compatible with the increasing governmental focus on climate policy, and farmers have been calling upon this government to give carbon credits where they’re due.
The current calculations of carbon outputs fail to properly include animal farmers’ use of carbon capture use and storage (CCUS), largely through agricultural sequestration. An example of this is the CCUS by cattle farmers who often feed their cows with alfalfa (a crop which has high carbon capture yields). Cattle farmers are still not getting carbon credits for the sequestration process associated with the alfalfa production, or for dietary feed like seaweed that reduces methane gas.
Instead, the government’s one-sided formula views beef, dairy and poultry production in a carbon-cumulative manner, by including the carbon emissions of the plant that the animals eat, in addition to other factors. In this scenario, achieving a Net Zero mandate would essentially mean that all animal by-products need to be eliminated or greatly reduced by infusing alternative flesh proteins like insects or lab grown meat. The inevitability of eating insects, cloned animals and lab grown meat only arises because of the government’s skewed metrics.
Similarly, grain farmers don’t receive credits for crop sequestration, crop rotation, enhancements to soil to increase carbon sequestration, crop diversification, innovative technology, and the development of new crop variations that better capture GHGs in the soil. Instead, these farmers are still required to pay high carbon taxes on the electricity needed to dry their products before it goes to market. A true net-zero calculation would give these farmers an off-set credit for the carbon sequestration and capture resulting from their production.
If the Liberal government is truly concerned about the environment, then they must adopt a transparent plan with well-defined and improved metrics to account for CCUS in the farming sector.
Farmers have been doing their part. Now it’s time for government to invite them to the table and to reward smart environmental practices that are producing verifiable results of carbon reduction and sequestration.
Here is the simple fact. Canadian farmers have done more in the past few years to protect our environment than the government has done with its carbon taxes, or any other virtue-signalling policies.
As Prime Minister, I will make sure farmers have a seat at the table as we create a real plan to protect our environment.
I started this letter off discussing freedom. No matter how altruistic anyone’s motives might be, if we let our governments control how we farm and how we eat, we have handed over the staff of life that undergirds our freedom. And it will be difficult to get it back.
It’s time to stand up, stand with our farmers, and say “NO”. Our nation needs a courageous leader with vision and not just mere slogans. For over two years, I have been sounding the alarm about Net Zero within our party. Now we are seeing the impact of inactivity around the country.
Will you help me carry this burden of courageously confronting the lies that are destroying our country?
Net Zero is just the next scam that supporters of the political ‘left’ will promote aggressively to scare the public into compliant with their delusional dreams of achieving their version of “utopia”. It is kind of centrally-planned world governed by political elites and billionaires who will control all forms of media, all major supply chains, all medical services, all corporate food suppliers, and control the global population via a fully-digital economy and surveillance state.