Economy
Indigenous band could have been more help, says judge in Wisconsin Line 5 dispute
Fresh nuts, bolts and fittings are ready to be added to the east leg of the pipeline near St. Ignace as Enbridge prepares to test the east and west sides of the Line 5 pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac in Mackinaw City, Mich. on June 8, 2017. North America’s existential debate about the virtues and dangers of oil and gas pipelines faces a critical test today in Wisconsin. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Detroit News, Dale G Young
By James McCarten in Washington
The Indigenous band in Wisconsin that’s trying to shut down the Line 5 pipeline got a chilly reception Thursday from a federal court judge who is dismayed they aren’t doing more to help Enbridge Inc. avoid an ecological disaster.
The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa has asked district court Judge William Conley to order the pipeline shut down, fearing that heavy flooding last month could cause the line to spring a leak on their territory.
But from the outset of Thursday’s hearing, it was clear Conley — who ordered the two sides to work together last fall on finding a solution to their impasse — doesn’t believe the band is holding up its end of the bargain.
“The band has not helped itself by refusing to take any steps to prevent a catastrophic failure,” Conley said as the hearing got underway. “You haven’t even allowed simple steps that would have prevented some of this erosion.”
The day-long hearing ended without a decision on the band’s request for an injunction — and with the clear sense Conley is disinclined to grant one. “It’s an extraordinary request to make when the band is doing nothing,” he said.
But band lawyer Riyaz Kanji said he was pleased during an otherwise discouraging day that the judge gave indications he would establish a threshold for erosion damage that would trigger a shutdown.
“Unfortunately, from our point of view, he didn’t set that today — he’s not shutting it down,” Kanji said. “But we will remain hopeful that he will set a standard that will protect the river and its precious resources.”
Conley, who has already ruled that the band was entitled back in 2013 to revoke permission for the pipeline, was also unwilling to grant the injunction on the grounds that Enbridge no longer has the right to access the area.
“The harder thing to hear was that the judge appears unwilling … to issue an injunction because of Enbridge’s continuing trespass on the band’s lands,” Kanji said.
“It sounds like he’s thinking more in terms of financial penalties.”
In court documents, Enbridge has accused the band of being focused on a single outcome: the permanent closure of the pipeline on their territory “while refusing much less extreme alternative measures.”
The band argues that several weeks of flooding along the Bad River last month has washed away so much of the riverbank and supporting terrain that a breach is “imminent” and a shutdown order more than justified.
Enbridge insists the dangers are being overstated — and even if they were real, the company’s court-ordered contingency plan, which spells out the steps it would take, would be a far more rational solution.
“Enbridge will pre-emptively purge and shut down the line well in advance of any potential rupture,” the company says in its court brief, adding that the area remains under constant 24-hour video surveillance.
“Any flooding and erosion has not, and would not, catch Enbridge by surprise.”
But Enbridge has been rebuffed in its efforts to perform remedial work on the site, which would include using sandbacks and trees to fortify the riverbanks — a decision band chairman Mike Wiggins defended Thursday.
The band has the right under federal law to enforce its own water quality standards, which were “developed by careful evaluation of our relationships, as a people, with different parts of our hydrology in the Bad River watershed,” Wiggins told a news conference after the hearing.
“What was kind of put forward today was, ‘None of that stuff should matter. None of that stuff should exist. When Enbridge came knocking, you should have just let them do whatever they want,'” he said.
“We disagree.”
Heavy flooding that began in early April washed away significant portions of the riverbank where Line 5 intersects the Bad River, a meandering, 120-kilometre course that feeds Lake Superior and a complex network of ecologically delicate wetlands.
The band has been in court with Enbridge since 2019 in an effort to compel the pipeline’s owner and operator to reroute Line 5 around its traditional territory — something the company has already agreed to do.
But the flooding has turned a theoretical risk into a very real one, the band argues, and time is now of the essence. Lawyers for the band and its supporters were scheduled to hold a news conference after the hearing.
Line 5 meets the river just past a location the court has come to know as the “meander,” where the riverbed snakes back and forth multiple times, separated from itself only by several metres of forest and the pipeline itself.
At four locations, the river was less than 4.6 metres from the pipeline — just 3.4 metres in one particular spot — and the erosion has only continued.
The neighbouring state of Michigan, led by Attorney General Dana Nessel, has been waging its own war against Line 5, fearing a leak in the Straits of Mackinac, the ecologically delicate waterway where the pipeline crosses the Great Lakes.
“The alarming erosion at the Bad River meander poses an imminent threat of irreparable harm to Lake Superior which far outweighs the risk of impacts associated with a shutdown of the Line 5 pipeline,” Nessel argues in her brief.
“Without judicial intervention, it is likely that this irreparable harm will be inflicted not only on the band, but also on Michigan, its residents, and its natural resources.”
The economic arguments against shutting down the pipeline, which carries 540,000 barrels of oil and natural gas liquids daily across Wisconsin and Michigan to refineries in Sarnia, Ont., are by now well-known.
Line 5’s defenders, which include the federal government, say a shutdown would cause major economic disruption across the Prairies and the U.S. Midwest, where it provides feedstock to refineries in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
It also supplies key refining facilities in Ontario and Quebec, and is vital to the production of jet fuel for major airports on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, including Detroit Metropolitan and Pearson International in Toronto.
A lengthy statement issued Tuesday by the Canadian Embassy warned of severe economic consequences of shutting down the line, as well as the potential ramifications for bilateral relations.
“The energy security of both Canada and the United States would be directly impacted by a Line 5 closure,” the statement said. Some 33,000 U.S. jobs and US$20 billion in economic activity would be at stake, it added.
“At a time of heightened concern over energy security and supply, including during the energy transition, maintaining and protecting existing infrastructure should be a top priority.”
Talks have been ongoing for months under the terms of a 1977 pipelines treaty between the two countries that effectively prohibits either country from unilaterally closing off the flow of hydrocarbons.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 18, 2023.
— With files from The Associated Press
2025 Federal Election
Columnist warns Carney Liberals will consider a home equity tax on primary residences

From LifeSiteNews
The Liberals paid a group called Generation Squeeze, led by activist Paul Kershaw, to study how the government could tap into Canadians’ home equity — including their primary residences.
Winnipeg Sun Columnist Kevin Klein is sounding the alarm there is substantial evidence the Carney Liberal Party is considering implementing a home equity tax on Canadians’ primary residences as a potential huge source of funds to bring down the massive national debt their spending created.
Klein wrote in his April 23 column and stated in his accompanying video presentation:
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) — a federal Crown corporation — has investigated the possibility of a home equity tax on more than one occasion, using taxpayer dollars to fund that research. This was not backroom speculation. It was real, documented work.
The Liberals paid a group called Generation Squeeze, led by activist Paul Kershaw, to study how the government could tap into Canadians’ home equity — including their primary residences.
Kershaw, by the way, believes homeowners are “lottery winners” who didn’t earn their wealth but lucked into it. That’s the ideology being advanced to the highest levels of government.
It didn’t stop there. These proposals were presented directly to federal cabinet ministers. That’s on record, and most of those same ministers are now part of Mark Carney’s team as he positions himself as the Liberals’ next leader.
Watch below Klein’s 7-minute, impassionate warning to Canadians about this looming major new tax should the Liberals win Monday’s election.
Klein further adds:
The total home equity held by Canadians is over $4.7 trillion. It’s the largest pool of private wealth in the country. For millions of Canadians — especially baby boomers — it’s the only retirement fund they have. They don’t have big pensions. They have a paid-off house and a hope that it will carry them through their later years. Yet, that’s what Ottawa has quietly been circling.
The Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation has researched this issue and published a report on the alarming amount of new taxation a homeowner equity tax could cost Canadians who sell their homes that have increased in value over the years they have lived in it. It is a shocker!
A Google search on the question, “what is a home equity tax?” returns the response:
A home equity tax, simply put, it’s a proposed levy on the increased value of your home, specifically, on your principal residence. The idea is for Government to raise money by taxing wealth accumulation from rising property values.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has provided a Home Equity Tax Calculator Backgrounder to help Canadians understand what the impact of three different types of Home Equity Tax Calculators would have on home owners. The required tax payment resulting from all three is a shocker.
Keep in mind that World Economic Forum policies intend to eventually eliminate all private home ownership and have the state own and control not only all residences, but also eliminate car ownership, and control when and where you may live and travel.
Carney, Trudeau and several other members of the Liberal government in key positions are heavily connected to the WEF.
2025 Federal Election
Carney’s Hidden Climate Finance Agenda

From Energy Now
By Tammy Nemeth and Ron Wallace
It is high time that Canadians discuss and understand Mark Carney’s avowed plan to re-align capital with global Net Zero goals.
Mark Carney’s economic vision for Canada, one that spans energy, housing and defence, rests on an unspoken, largely undisclosed, linchpin: Climate Finance – one that promises a Net Zero future for Canada but which masks a radical economic overhaul.
Regrettably, Carney’s potential approach to a Net Zero future remains largely unexamined in this election. As the former chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), Carney has proposed new policies, offices, agencies, and bureaus required to achieve these goals.. Pieced together from his presentations, discussions, testimonies and book, Carney’s approach to climate finance appears to have four pillars: mandatory climate disclosures, mandatory transition plans, centralized data sharing via the United Nations’ Net Zero Data Public Utility (NZDPU) and compliance with voluntary carbon markets (VCMs). There are serious issues for Canada’s economy if these principles were to form the core values for policies under a potential Liberal government.
About the first pillar Carney has been unequivocal: “Achieving net zero requires a whole economy transition.” This would require a restructuring energy and financial systems to shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy with Carney insisting repeatedly in his book that “every financial [and business] decision takes climate change into account.” Climate finance, unlike broader sustainable finance with its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) focus would channel capital into sectors aligned with a 2050 Net Zero trajectory. Carney states: “Companies, and those who invest in them…who are part of the solution, will be rewarded. Those lagging behind…will be punished.” In other words, capital would flow to compliant firms but be withheld from so-called “high emitters”.
How will investors, banks and insurers distinguish solution from problem? Mandatory climate disclosures, aligned with the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), would compel firms to report emissions and outline their Net Zero strategies. Canada’s Sustainability Standards Board has adopted these methodologies, despite concerns they would disadvantage Canadian businesses. Here, Carney repeatedly emphasizes disclosures as the cornerstone to track emissions data required to shift capital away from “high emitters”. Without this, he claims, large institutional investors lack the data on supply chains to make informed decisions to shift capital to businesses that are Net Zero compliant.
The second pillar, Mandatory Transition Plans would require companies to map a 2050 Net Zero trajectory for emission reduction targets. Failure to meet those targets would invite pressure from investors, banks, or activists, who may pursue litigation for non-compliance. The UK’s Transition Plan Task Force, now part of ISSB, provides this standardized framework. Carney, while at GFANZ, advocated using transition plans for a “managed phase-out” of high-emitting assets like coal, oil and gas, not just through divestment but by financing emissions reductions. “As part of their transition planning, [GFANZ] members should establish and apply financing policies to phase out and align carbon-intensive sectors and activities, such as thermal coal, oil and gas and deforestation, not only through asset divestment but also through transition finance that reduces real world emissions. To assist with these efforts GFANZ will continue to develop and implement a framework for the Managed Phase-out of high-emitting assets.” Clearly, the purpose of this is to ensure companies either decarbonize or face capital withdrawal.
The third pillar is the United Nations’ Net Zero Data Public Utility (NZDPU), a centralized platform for emissions and transition data. Carney insists these data be freely accessible, enabling investors, banks and insurers to judge companies’ progress to Net Zero. As Carney noted in 2021: “Private finance is judging…banks, pension funds and asset managers have to show where they are in the transition to Net Zero.” Hence, compliant firms would receive investment; laggards would face divestment.
Finally, voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) allow companies to offset emissions by purchasing credits from projects like reforestation. Carney, who launched the Taskforce on Scaling VCMs in 2020, has insisted on monitoring, verification and lifecycle tracking. At a 2024 Beijing conference, he suggested major jurisdictions could establish VCMs by COP 30 (planned for 2025 in Brazil) to create a global market. If Canada mandates VCMs, businesses especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) would face much higher compliance costs with credits available only to those that demonstrate progress with transition plans.
These potential mandatory disclosures and transition plans would burden Canadian businesses with material costs and legal risks that constitute an economic gamble which few may recognize but all should weigh. Do Canadians truly want a government that has an undisclosed climate finance agenda that would be subservient to an opaque globalized Net Zero agenda?
Tammy Nemeth is a U.K.-based strategic energy analyst. Ron Wallace is an executive fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and the Canada West Foundation.
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