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Opinion

The dangerous slippery slope of activist-driven climate lawsuits

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4 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Joseph Quesnel 

Canadians should be concerned climate activists are pushing climate change litigation – or climate change tort cases – at the U.S. state and local levels.

We should all be prepared if this bizarre new legal trend introduced by climate change alarmists comes to Canada.

Canadians have noticed most extreme climate change-inspired ideas – like banning natural gas furnaces – originate from liberal parts of the United States and eventually find their way northwards to our provincial legislatures or city halls.

Lawyers – supported by climate change alarmist organizations – are inventing new legal theories to allow state governments to sue energy companies for alleged contributions to global climate change. Lawyers even attempt to link oil companies to specific extreme weather events.

American observers became alarmed when the Hawaii Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling in that state allowing oil companies to be sued in state courts for their alleged contribution to climate change.  U.S. Legal critics were concerned how this climate change litigation could turn state courts into regulators of global climate change. They argued this was improper given that inter-state and foreign energy policy and commerce is federally regulated.

Canadian judges will have to deal with similar federalism/jurisdictional issues if these nuisance lawsuits come to our courts. Green activists on both sides of the border are determined to handicap the energy sector through the courts and lower levels of government.

Lawyers are basing their legal theories on unjustified certitude regarding climate change.  The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the most prominent so-called “authority” on climate science – actually presents a nuanced and cautious view of this topic. Politicians and journalists often blame specific weather patterns or events on climate change with little evidence.

Canadian author Joanne Marcotte, in her book Inconvenient Doubts: Climate Change Apocalypse: Really? reminds us that so-called experts miss three key points about IPCC reports: 1) They include varying degrees of confidence and probabilities, rarely mentioned by the media; 2) Some statements refer to specific regions but are often generalized globally; and 3) An extreme weather event becomes a disaster only if a region cannot respond effectively.

Lawyers pushing these anti-oil lawsuits are really saying courts can determine with certitude these oil companies are causing climate change or they can be blamed for specific weather events.

Activists are pushing their anti-energy agenda in the courts because they are losing the war of ideas in democratically elected legislatures. Canadian voters are rejecting these unnecessary and costly green policies because they are being economically crushed by spurious and environmentally pointless carbon taxes that unnecessarily inflate all basics including food and gasoline prices . Activists realize this and want unelected and unaware judges to become arbiters on an incredibly complex and nuanced issue like global climate change.

Drivers should be wary because once courts allow provinces to attack oil companies they may come after them.  Activists know transportation is the second biggest contributor to carbon emissions after the energy sector.

Canadian litigants raised climate change at the Supreme Court of Canada when several provincial premiers challenged the constitutionality of the carbon tax – a clever way to bypass democratic legislatures and impose their anti-energy policies on courts and lower levels of government.

Canadian consumers should be able to choose energy sources best for them.  We should not allow activists to use courts – as they have in the United States – to impoverish everybody through by imposing extreme and unscientific anti-energy climate policies through the backdoor.

Joseph Quesnel is a Senior Research Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Crime

‘We’re Going To Lose’: Steve Bannon Warns Withholding Epstein Files Would Doom GOP

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Cohen

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon warned on Friday that Republicans would suffer major losses if President Donald Trump’s administration does not move to release documents related to deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and associations.

Axios reported on Sunday that a two-page memo showed the Department Of Justice (DOJ) and FBI found no evidence Epstein kept a “client list” or was murdered, but public doubts have continued. Bannon said on “Bannon’s War Room” that failure to release information would lead to the dissipation of one-tenth of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and significant losses for the Republican Party in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election.

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“It’s not about just a pedophile ring and all that, it’s about who governs us, right? And that’s why it’s not going to go away … For this to go away, you’re going to lose 10% of the MAGA movement,” Bannon said. “If we lose 10% of the MAGA movement right now, we’re going to lose 40 seats in ’26, we’re going to lose the [presidency]. They don’t even have to steal it, which they’re going to try to do in ’28, because they’re going to sit there and they go, ‘They’ve disheartened the hardest-core populist nationalists’ — that’s always been who governs us.”

Bannon also demanded the publication of all the Epstein documents on “Bannon’s War Room” Thursday. He called on the DOJ to go to court and push for the release of the documents or for Trump to appoint a special counsel to manage the publication.

Epstein was arrested in 2019 and charged with sex trafficking. Shortly after, he was found dead in his New York Metropolitan Correctional Center cell shortly after. Officials asserted that he hanged himself in his cell.

However, Epstein’s death has sparked years of theories because of the malfunctioning of prison cameras, along with guards admitting to falsifying documents about checking on the then-inmate. The DOJ inspector general later confirmed that multiple surveillance cameras outside of his cell were inoperable, while others captured the common area outside his door.

Both Bannon and Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson have speculated that Epstein had connections to intelligence agencies.

Former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta allegedly indicated that Epstein was tied to intelligence, according to Vicky Ward in The Daily Beast.

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espionage

FBI’s Dan Bongino may resign after dispute about Epstein files with Pam Bondi

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From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Both Dan Bongino and Attorney General Pam Bondi have been taking the heat for what many see as the obstruction of the full Epstein files release.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino took the day off on Friday after an argument with Attorney General Pam Bondi over the handling of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s case files.

One source close to Bongino told Axios that “he ain’t coming back.” Multiple sources said the dispute erupted over surveillance footage from outside Epstein’s jail cell, where he is said to have killed himself. Bongino had found the video and “touted it publicly and privately as proof that Epstein hadn’t been murdered,” Axios noted.

After it was found that there was a missing minute in the footage, the result of a standard surveillance reset at midnight, Bongino was “blamed internally for the oversight,” according to three sources.

Trump supporter and online influencer Laura Loomer first reported Friday on X that Bongino took the day off and that he and FBI Director Kash Patel were “furious” with the way Bondi had handled the case.

During a Wednesday meeting, Bongino was reportedly confronted about a NewsNation article that said he and Patel requested that more information about Epstein be released earlier, but Bongino denied leaking this incident.

“Pam said her piece. Dan said his piece. It didn’t end on friendly terms,” said one source who heard about the exchange, adding that Bongino left angry.

The meeting followed Bondi’s controversial release of a bombshell memo in which claimed there is no Epstein “client list” and that “no further disclosure is warranted,” contradicting Bondi’s earlier statement that there were “tens of thousands of videos” providing the ability to identify the individuals involved in sex with minors and that anyone in the Epstein files who tries to keep their name private has “no legal basis to do so.”

The memo “is attempting to sweep the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal under the rug,” according to independent investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger in a superb analysis published on X.

“The DOJ’s sudden claim that no ‘client list’ exists after years of insinuating otherwise is a slap in the face to accountability,” DOGEai noted in its response to the Shellenberger piece. “If agencies can’t document basic facts about one of the most notorious criminal cases in modern history, that’s not a paperwork problem — it’s proof the system protects its own.”

Carlson offered the theory that U.S. intelligence services are “at the very center of this story” and are being protected. His guest, Saagar Enjeti, agreed. “That’s the most obvious ,” Enjeti said, referencing past CIA-linked pedophilia cases. He noted the agency had avoided prosecutions for fear suspects would reveal “sources and methods” in court.

Investigative journalist Whitney Webb has discussed in her book “One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein,” how the intelligence community leverages sex trafficking through operatives like Epstein to blackmail politicians, members of law enforcement, businessmen, and other influential figures.

Just one example of evidence of this, according to Webb, is former U.S. Secretary of Labor and U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta’s explanation as to why he agreed to a non-prosecution deal in the lead-up to Epstein’s 2008 conviction of procuring a child for prostitution. Acosta told Trump transition team interviewers that he was told that Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” adding that he was told to “leave it alone,” The Daily Beast reported.

While Epstein himself never stood trial, as he allegedly committed suicide while under “suicide watch” in his jail cell in 2019, many have questioned the suicide and whether the well-connected financier was actually murdered as part of a cover-up.

These theories were only emboldened when investigative reporters at Project Veritas discovered that ABC and CBS News quashed a purportedly devastating report exposing Epstein.

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