GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau Liberals attacking free speech on climate change

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While Liberal MPs desperate to get re-elected next year are busy knifing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the back, the Trudeau government has just passed a draconian new law against free speech aimed primarily at Canada’s oil and gas sector.

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Buried in two paragraphs of the more than 500 pages of Bill C-59, omnibus legislation implementing budgetary measures previously announced by the government, are vague new rules under the Competition Act, ostensibly intended to combat “greenwashing” – when individuals or businesses makes false claims about the environmental benefits of their products or policies.

This includes efforts to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions under the Trudeau government’s climate change plan to achieve “net zero” emissions in 2050.

The legislation classifies false claims as deceptive marketing practices and expands the power of the federal government through its competition bureau to impose fines of up to $750,000 on individuals and $10 million on businesses (or 3% of annual gross revenues) for a first offence, and up to $1 million for individuals and $15 million for businesses for subsequent offences.

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It also provides for criminal prosecution if the claims are found to have been made knowingly or recklessly.

In order to defend themselves, an individual or company that “makes a representation to the public in the form of a statement, warranty or guarantee of a product’s benefits for protecting or restoring the environment, or mitigating the environmental, social and ecological causes or effects of climate change,” must be able to prove it was based on an “adequate and proper test.”

Similarly, any claims about a “business or business activity” doing the same must be based on “adequate and proper substantiation, in accordance with internationally recognized methodology.”

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Aside from the vagueness of these requirements, which are open to broad interpretation, the law doesn’t define what an “internationally recognized methodology” is. The new legislation also imposes a reverse onus on anyone or any business being investigated by the government to prove their claims, as opposed to the previous practice that required the competition bureau to prove they had engaged in greenwashing.

The competition bureau will be required to investigate any person or business alleged to have broken the law if a complaint against their products or activities is filed by six or more Canadian adults – which critics say is an open invitation to climate activists to overwhelm the federal bureaucracy with complaints – once this provision comes into effect a year from now.

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As a result of this legislation, companies in the oil and gas sector are removing statements from their websites, social media and communications with the public that could conceivably violate the vague wording of this legislation, including the Pathways Alliance, a collection of Canada’s largest oilsands companies.

The governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan have condemned the new legislation as a “gag law” that censors free speech contrary to the Charter and was approved without federal consultation with their provinces. Both have vowed to fight it in the courts.

In response, Trudeau said it’s important “people build their positions and their decisions around facts.”

While “freedom of expression, freedom of people to share their points of view, is extraordinarily important” because “it’s one of the foundations of a free and open democracy,” Trudeau said, “we need to make sure that people are debating and discussing and basing their worldview on things that are anchored in truth and reality.”

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Beg your pardon?

In fact, the Trudeau government has repeatedly made statements with regard to reducing Canada’s emissions that weren’t anchored in “facts” or in “truth and reality.”

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It said after it was elected in 2015 that it would reduce Canada’s emissions to at least 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 under the 2009 Copenhagen climate accord.

According to the latest federal government data available, Canada’s emissions in 2020 were just 9.8% below 2005 levels, and in 2022, 7.1% below 2005 levels, meaning we’re going backwards, moving further away from the 2020 target.

Prior to the 2019 federal election, the Trudeau government said the carbon tax’s federal fuel charge would be frozen at $50 per tonne of emissions as of 2022. After the election, Trudeau announced it would increase annually starting in 2023 until it reached $170 per tonne in 2030.

In 2021, then environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson told The Globe and Mail: “We will see year-on-year reductions – absolute reductions (in emissions) – starting in 2020 through to 2030. We have high confidence that’s actually going to be the case.”

In fact, according to the latest federal government data available, Canada’s 2021 emissions went up 1.8% compared to 2020, while 2022 emissions went up 1.4% compared to 2021.

“Truth and reality” indeed.

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